This article examines the impacts of two types of meeting facilitation across traditional and GSS environments-process and content facilitation- on meeting processes and outcomes. Results indicate uniformly positive consequences of content facilitation. In the context of this study, process support was found to negatively affect meeting structures. To some extent, these negative impacts were moderated by GSS use. These results are explored from the perspective of structuration theories and research on transactional and transformational leadership. Implications for meeting facilitation are discussed and future research directions proposed. 1.

Many of the designations used by the manufactures and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Every attempt has been made to supply trademark information about manufactures and their products mentioned in this dissertation. A list of the trademark designations and their owners appears below. Trademark notice Access, Netmeeting, Sharepoint Team Services, Windows, and Windows 2000 Server are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation Post-it is a trademark of 3M Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds Professional Quest is a trademark of Dipolar Pty Limited Yahoo! Groups is a trademark of Yahoo! Domino is a trademark of IBM/Lotus Authorware is a trademark of Macromedia Toolbook is a trademark of Click2Learn

an earlier version of this paper, and to members of the Senior Teams Workshop and the Negotiations, Organizations, and Markets Seminar at the Harvard Business School for ideas and inspiration. We benefited from comments provided by three anonymous reviewers and the Editor of Leadership Quarterly. A DYNAMIC MODEL OF TOP MANAGEMENT TEAM EFFECTIVENESS: MANAGING UNSTRUCTURED TASK STREAMS Leadership research relating top management team demographics to firm performance has produced mixed empirical results. This paper suggests a new explanation for these inconsistencies. We first note that a given top management team (TMT) is likely to face a variety of different situations over time. Thus, while TMT demographic composition is relatively stable, the TMT task is dynamic and variable. In some situations, team members have similar information and interests (a symmetric distribution); in others, information or interests diverge (an asymmetric distribution). Based on team effectiveness theory, we then argue that, unless group process is managed accordingly, asymmetric distributions of situation-specific information and interests will reduce TMT decision-making effectiveness. We develop leader process choices to mitigate the potentially

Abstract not found

Group work is widespread in education. The growing use of online tools supporting group work generates huge amounts of data. We aim to exploit this data to support mirroring: presenting useful high-level views of information about the group, together with desired patterns characterizing the behaviour of strong groups. The goal is to enable the groups and their facilitators to see relevant aspects of the group’s operation and provide feedback if these are more likely to be associated with positive or negative outcomes and where the problems are. We explore how useful mirror information can be extracted via a theory-driven approach and a range of clustering and sequential pattern mining. The context is a senior software development project where students use the collaboration tool TRAC. We extract patterns distinguishing the better from the weaker groups and get insights in the success factors. The results point to the importance of leadership and group interaction, and give promising indications if they are occurring. Patterns indicating good individual practices were also identified. We found that some key measures can be mined from early data. The results are promising for advising groups at the start and early identification of effective and poor practices, in time for remediation.

TSER Contract SOE1-CT97-1072Executive Summary This report deals with the role of educational background in diffusion of management knowledge. The role of educational background as a carrier of management knowledge has been one of the main issues in the Creation of European Management Practice project (the CEMP project). This report addresses two issues on this matter: educational background as a provider of management knowledge and educational background as a legitimating factor in managerial qualification systems. The first issue is based on a study of the relationship between 551 Norwegian managers ’ educational background and their management competence. The results from the study of business education and engineering education as providers of management knowledge reveal that there are no strong relationship between type of educational background and managerial meta-competence. This suggests that the diffusion of management knowledge from so-called management education is quite meager at least regarding direct influence on managers ’ competence reservoir. The second issue conceptualizes previous research in the field. Based on these

Abstract not found

Abstract not found

This case study investigated how the executive (i.e., CEO, COO, CIO) leaders of a mid-west financial organization increased their credibility during a planned organizational change. This research focused specifically on the relationship between the leaders’ communication of a planned change and the leadership teams’ credibility. A qualitative methodology approach was used to capture the individual experiences from the employees. Phenomenological interviewing was the primary source of data collection and analysis. Data collection included face-to-face interviews with 25 participants, a thorough review of archival data and participant observer field notes. The results suggest three themes and seven categories contributed to the building of leadership credibility through meaningful and effective communications: The Change 1. Re-branding the Vision: The leadership team had a vision, to re-brand the organization; 2. Employee Support of Change: Most participants supported the new vision and thought the change to consistent and streamlined processes across all local banks was long overdue; 3. Connectedness to New Organization: Most participants began to identify with the change through the new logo and wearing the logo pin. They felt a strong sense of connection or “oneness” with the new organization; The Leaders 4. Unified Leadership Team: Most participants saw the three leaders function more as a leadership team than as individuals as they communicated a unifying change message; 5. Credible and Visible Leaders: Most participants believed leadership credibility increased during the change and thought the change helped the leaders become more visible to the organization during the change process; The Communication 6. Communication Process: In most instances participants believed a well structured, well orchestrated, multi-channel communication process was critical for supporting the change and for increasing the leaders’ credibility; 7. Reinforcing the Change: Face-to-face, follow-up meetings helped to reinforce the change and were perceived by most participants as significant for increasing leadership credibility. Analysis of the data suggests a strong, positive relationship among 1) the nature of the change (a re-branding that was viewed positively by participants), 2) the credibility of the leaders was evident in their communication throughout the change process, and 3) the change communication process was perceived as well structured by participants.

This paper explores an additional alternative for understanding of organizational leadership, that of the praxis of leadership (Kakabadse, 1991). The argument put forth suggests that leadership acts are the results of each individual's interpretation of what they should or should not do, bounded by the discretion inherent in their roles. Thus, any consideration given to leadership as a construct, must incorporate an analysis of context, which in turn requires analysis of the economic, political and cultural relations of organization and society. Hence, the concept of leadership praxis provides a unifying concept for organizational and leadership understanding.