Leadership, Trust, and Effectivemess in Virtual Teams

Many organizations are using virtual teams to meet the increasing time and quality expectations of contemporary marketplaces. While virtual teams present advantages for cost control, access to expertise, and serving markets, they also engender practical challenges as a result of the geographic and temporal distribution of members. Previous research has suggested several factors that are critical for the functioning of virtual teams. We build upon this research with an exploration of the relationships between team leader personality, team member trust, and perceived team effectiveness in virtual teamwork. Participants in the study included 873 virtual team members within a combined government and commercial engineering environment. Our findings suggest that multiple facets of a team leader’s personality have a significant impact on team effectiveness, but this effect is largely mediated through team trust. Implications for organizational managers, virtual team leaders, and the research community are discussed

Virtual teams are here to stay: how personality traits, virtuality and leader gender impact trust in the leader and team commitment

Teleworking has, today, become a necessity for many organizations, so effective virtual team management is critical. This study analyzes the influence of the personality traits of virtual team workers on team efficiency. To do so we examine the effects of subordinates’ personalities on the trust they give the virtual team leader and the impact of this trust on commitment to the team. We also discuss how the team's degree of virtuality and the leader’s gender influence the relationship between personality and trust. The findings showed that extroversion has a positive effect on trust felt in the leader, and that this trust has a positive effect on commitment felt toward the team. On the other hand, it was observed that neuroticism had a more negative effect on trust in more virtual environments. The leader’s gender had no significant effect. The study offers advice for virtual team management and discusses its limitations and future research directions

The emergence of the forensic and legal project manager

The worldwide emergence of the distinct legal project manager role is symbolic of the evolving shifts in the management structure of legal projects within all legal service provider entities and brings a new career path for legal environments. This context statement offers a self-reflection of my vision, journey and contribution to global public works delivered through the establishment of the ‘International Institute of Legal Project Management’ (IILPM) that I founded in 2017. The IILPM has become the first and only professional global community of certified legal project management (LPM) practitioners worldwide. It has achieved graduates in fifty-two countries of the world, supported by a global network of accredited training providers in fourteen countries and university partnerships in six countries. It has established practice models for legal matter management, legal process improvement and investigation case management, underpinned by project management principles and practices. An analytical autoethnographic approach was used to explain my thinking, approach and methods to achieve the public works and to overcome the key challenges that I have personally experienced and overcome. It reflects on how the public works has influenced the legal profession worldwide and helped transition the emergence of the legal project manager role from a state of flux to a more defined position. It covers my contributions to research, developed industry standards and frameworks, competency assessment models, training programmes, a multi-tiered credentialing system, workplace practice tools, and other publications, as well as providing a platform for the annual international conference regime, and the innovation-based professional awards programme. This qualitative-based self-reflection considered the ‘interdisciplinarity’ makeup of legal project management, the ‘post-bureaucracy’ managerial influences within the legal profession that has enabled changes in legal practice changes that has recognised the role, and the ‘post-professionalism’ influence on the traditional legal practitioner role that has help supported the emergence of the legal project manager that is now occupied by both lawyers and non-legally qualified allied legal professionals

Competitive advantage during industry 4.0: the case for South African manufacturing SMEs

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, Uni- versity of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fullfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Engineering. Johannesburg, May 2018With the expected disruption of industry 4.0 and the current challenges that SMEs face in South Africa, there is an increasing threat that SMEs will lose any competitive advantage they currently have. This exploratory study investigates how South African manufacturing SMEs can remain competitive during the fourth industrial revolution. Data, in the form of current literature, was analysed using thematic content analysis. From the analysis process, 8 emergent themes were used to organise the results of the study. Notable findings towards generating competitive advantage included: The location of SMEs within clusters, collaboration with disruption leaders, the sharing of outcomes across the value chain, the shift of business models towards a service and software orientation, the use of data driven insights to find and capture high margin markets and the increased effectiveness of labour through technology use. The study also found that the use of the IoT and cloud computing can significantly reduce infrastructure requirements and promote a competitive advantage.MT 201

Educational leadership in culturally and linguistically diverse and complex international schools

Maxwell 2022 Educational leadership in culturally and linguistically diverse and complex international schools The complexities of the culturally and linguistically diverse and complex international school context of leadership contribute to the high turnover of international school principals with the average tenure reported as being 3.7 years. This study sought to understand the leadership practices of successful international school principals who have demonstrated a capacity to sustain tenure beyond the average of 3.7 years by asking the research question: Why are some international school principals able to successfully navigate culturally and linguistically diverse and complex international school contexts and experience tenure beyond 3.7 years? Guided by this question, this study was conducted within a constructionist epistemology and guided by an interpretivist, symbolic interactionist theoretical framework using a case study methodology. The study was situated within the international school context. Participants were experienced international educational leaders who have worked in international schools as system leaders (2), school leaders (8), and school middle leaders (18). Data was collected from the international school system leaders and school leaders through conceptual interview and member checking methods. Data was collected from the international school middle leaders through an online questionnaire. All data were analysed using the Saldana coding cycles and strategies and the NVivo coding program. The new understandings which have been identified through these analyses of data collected through this study indicate that successful international school principals make meaning of the culturally and linguistically diverse and complex international school context through the lens of international school principal leadership attributes. Further, the new understandings indicate that the successful international school principal, again through the lens of the international school principal leadership attributes, intentionally enacts vision centred leadership in specific areas with others who are in the context of leadership. Recommendations arising from this study addresses two key aspects of the role of an international school principalship. The first key aspect includes recommendations that focus on international educational organisations. These recommendations provide suggestions as to how to explore and develop programmes and policies which will facilitate and support successful and sustainable leadership in culturally and linguistically diverse and complex international school contexts. The second key aspect offers recommendations focussing on future research inviting the exploration of the characteristics of successful international school leadership and aspects which support and facilitate this success

E-Government, transparency, reputation and performance. An empirical study in a sample of Spanish municipalities

Different streams of the Resource-Based View of the Firm (RBV) research have tested diverse relationships among intangible strategic resources and performance in heterogeneous industries, which have made a considerable contribution to our knowledge about firms and competition. The RBV establishes that those organizations capable of creating and developing strategic resources will have a competitive advantage and will enjoy a superior performance. Despite the substantial research effort, scarce empirical work has been developed trying to test the resourcebased view postulates in the public administration domain. The aim of this study is to examine how a set of strategic resources (e-government, transparency and reputation) can be the drivers of performance in public organizations, developing a theoretical model based on the RBV. The methodology considers a structural equation model (SEM) in order to test the hypotheses formulated in a sample of 78 Spanish municipalities. A group of models were designed considering performance as the dependent variable, and measuring it in six different ways: with three indicators of performance (economic activity index per capita, employment, and performance factor) and three indicators of performance growth (economic activity index growth, employment growth and population growth). The empirical research revealed a positive relationship between e-government and transparency, transparency and reputation, e-government and reputation, and reputation and performance, while the relationship between e-government and performance was not supported. Based on empirical findings, several implications emerge for scholars and practitioners; mainly that the RBV presents an adequate perspective for analysing public organizations, and that the development of strategic resources highly linked to local governments could be a source of competitive advantages with a positive impact on several indicators of city performance, and this should be considered by practitioners

Head-teacher and school principal development in Ghana: theory into practice

This qualitative case study is based on a collaborative web-based leadership training program offered by the Commonwealth of Learning (COL), Canada, the Faculty of Education, Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN), Canada, and selected educational institutions from four English West African countries (Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and The Gambia) in 2010. While this study focuses on the Ghanaian context, the program’s general design provided a select group of headteachers and school principals in participating countries with the following: innovative knowledge and skills in school management to enhance their professional skills and effectiveness; a forum to exchange ideas and experiences for managing primary and secondary schools, and; opportunities for their continued professional development. The final objective was to develop a formal training manual that “master trainers” would use in their respective countries to train other school leaders. Faculty from MUN provided administrative and academic expertise, including the research and theoretical basis of the program. Six local trainers who were selected from each participating country, brought their expertise and their knowledge of local context, and ensured thoughtful reflection on each of their own country’s circumstances and practices. The COL provided financial support to ensure that the program was developed and implemented successfully. The program was carried out in two phases (beginning in Ghana and ended in The Gambia) leading to the development of a final training manual that master trainers would use in their respective countries to train other school leaders. Ghana started implementation of the training in 2011. Within the last decade or so, Ghana has consistently experienced considerable decline in students’ academic performance both at the basic and secondary school levels due to several factors including leadership inefficiencies. The leadership training program as it applies to Ghana seeks, therefore, to introduce modern leadership practices which focus on local conditions to participating headteachers and school principals. In doing so, the aim is to improve the teaching and learning environment within the Ghanaian school system. The current study investigated successes and challenges that characterized the training and implementation of skills for school leaders within Ghana. Of particular interest here, is what the trainees (mostly headteachers and school principals) learned, the processes through which they intended implementing the new skills, knowledge, and abilities (SKAs) to their workplaces, and the socio-cultural factors that influenced the implementation processes. The design of this study relies on theoretical perspectives elucidated by instructional leadership theory (Hallinger & Murphy, 1985), transformational leadership theory (Bass, 1985), distributed leadership theory (Sheppard, Brown, & Dibbon, 2009), and the transfer of learning framework (Baldwin & Ford, 1988). The methodology used for data collection was a semi-structured, open-ended questionnaire, followed by one-on-one, face-to-face interviews. The sample consisted of 36 respondents made up of 30 headteachers, two coordinators (one doubled as a trainer), three trainers who participated in the manual development training in Ghana and Gambia, one faculty member from MUN who provided expertise and contributed to the development of the training manual, and one Ghanaian consultant who collaborated with the COL and MUN representatives before the program started. Findings revealed that headteachers and school principals who undertook the training successfully developed contemporary leadership SKAs. Most trainees endeavoured to implement what they learned in the training program at their workplaces, but factors such as resistance to change, lack of employer support, and poor conditions of service caused a relapse in their ability to apply contemporary leadership skills. In light of these findings, recommendations are made for program improvement and further development in addressing issues of social content in the adaption and implementation of skills for future trainees

An analysis of Total Quality Management implementation in Mexican large industry

At the beginning of the 1980s Mexico's Federal Government decided to end the imports-substituting policy to join the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT). As a result of the fast changes of the last decade in terms of international trade, Mexico's new policy rapidly evolve to one leading the country to a totally open economy. This situation moved Mexican companies towards the need to improve their competitiveness for survival. Because of the previous success of Japan in achieving an outstanding improvement on the quality of its products, most Mexican large industrial organisations have introduced TQM into their management systems. Since there was no previous knowledge on how to do that in Mexican organisations, they have had to follow the strategies used in other countries for this purpose. However, because some companies have reported some trouble in this endeavor, the initial objective of this thesis was to investigate if TQM has been useful, in terms of improving the satisfaction of stakeholders and company's profitability, for Mexican large industrial organisations. To probe the effectiveness of TQM in Mexican industry, a study was conducted on 82 large industrial organisations;7 1 (86.6%) of them reported the implementation of TQM on their management system. Initially, the degree of penetration of TQM was measured. For this purpose,a conceptual business management system as developed, incorporating in it the more popular quality management concepts or techniques, grouped in 7 sub-systems. Then the degree of TQM implementation as measured for each company and correlated to stakeholders' satisfaction and financial profitability. A good degree of correlation, given the sample size, was found between stakeholders' satisfaction and TQM (0.45), but not between this variable and the financial profitability reported by the companies investigated (0.04). However, the research found a significant correlation between the degree of implementation of some of the subsystems of the conceptual system and the profitability of certain sub-sectors of the industrial sector. For this reason, it was decided to analyse in a greater detail the strategies followed by organisations that showed a reasonable financial performance during the last four years. This analysis considered the influence of other internal and external non-TQM variables to succeed, financial speaking, in TQM implementation. As a result of the investigation, the thesis proposes a procedure for the design of a TQM system. This proposal is expected to increase the possibilities of a Mexican industrial organisation to improve its financial performance by an adequate in corporation of TQM into its management system