Seeking transparency whilst embracing ambiguity: skip level leadership dynamics during strategic change

Extant, literature shows that it is important for leaders to create clarity and transparency to foster trust with their followers but also that it is important for leaders to construct slightly different meanings for each audience they face, to ensure buy-in for strategy implementation. This paper illuminates how these two contradictory dimensions of leadership coexist within a senior team in a financial institution, during the implementation of strategic change. A two years study of a multilevel team, formed by top, senior- and lower-level managers, uncovers the dynamics through which meanings are constructed through upward and downward sensemaking and sensegiving. Different leadership dynamics emerge, formal and skip level. Skip level leadership dynamics are characterized by junior managers and top manager enter in direct leadership relationships, bypassing the senior manager, in search for greater transparency. In doing so they disrupt the formal leadership relationship with the senior managers, affecting their leadership identity through sensebreaking. The temporality of this study allows to unveil that skip level leadership can be unsustainable, and tend to revert to formal leadership, favoring the existence of pragmatic ambiguity, where meaning construction is controlled by the senior managers mediation. Controlled attempts to create direct communication between top and junior managers are created, but only provide an illusion of transparency

Automated job interviews and the implications for young jobseekers

The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the hiring process has increased radically, especially during the pandemic. There is a growing demand among employers for video interviewing services offered by digital hiring platforms especially in recruiting young jobseekers. Whilst these new technologies intend to bring greater efficiency and objectivity into the hiring process, little is known about the impact that they might have on young job candidates. Our research explores these technologies from the perspectives of the ultimate users: young jobseekers. The emergent picture is one of opacity, complexity, and uncertainty. In this report, we illustrate how young jobseekers are affected by and draw attention to the lack of transparency they face during these AI-led experiences. We put forward a series of recommendations for employers, hiring platforms and policymakers

Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the job interview process: toolkit for employers, careers advisors and hiring platforms

This toolkit has been designed to provide employers and careers and employment advisers with crucial information on how to support young people in their transitions to the labour market in the context of new technologies used in recruitment and selection processes. The toolkit is a chance to consider how Asynchronous Video Interviews (AVIs) are being used in recruitment, and the implications for job-seekers, platforms and employers. It is underpinned by in-depth qualitative interviews with young job-seekers and an evidence review Our research sets out to demystify some of these technologies and to highlight the lived experience of young people undergoing recruitment in this format, and to provide guidance to employers and careers and employment services on the implications for their practice. It builds on detailed research conducted by Dr Zahira Jaser and team, at the University of Sussex Business School, who used a mix of interviews of young job seekers, analysis of material published by Hiring Platforms and of technologies used in Asynchronous Video Interviews (AVIs)

The real value of middle managers

Summary. Middle managers have long had reputations as ineffective or weak supervisors. But research shows that, in fact, they’re often the people that make an organization run smoothly between hierarchies. Especially today, as companies become more reliant on virtual modes of management and communication, investing in these managers as “connecting leaders” is vital. To do so, focus on four key types of connecting leaders and their associated practices. There are rewards and challenges for each; but successfully addressing them can help make your business more successful coming out of the pandemi

The connecting leader. Aligning leadership theories to managers’ issues

“During performance reviews we had to assign A-E ratings to our employees. However, to maintain a normal distribution each manager was handed pre-decided ratings from HR. That round I was handed two Bs and a D. I had to review three team members, who in my opinion were two As and a B. I tried to influence my boss to get me a better hand of grades, but not only I failed in securing that, I was also told not to disclose the forced rating mechanism, which was a confidential organizational policy. I still remember the tears of this ambitious, and diligent young lady who received a D from me. I wanted to explain that I really meant to give her a B, but I couldn’t. By doing that I would have let down my boss, and the company. She left after 6 months.” (Middle-Manager, Financial Institution) The middle manager in the opening vignette appears as performing an ordinary, mundane, bureaucratic activity: assigning performance ratings to direct reports. It is one of those activities that would fall into the category of “manager”, rather than “leader” - according to a long lineage of literature (Bennis and Townsend, 1989; Zaleznick, 1977) that sees managers as strategic administrators, and leaders as inspirational influencers. Despite more and more scholars are seeing this longstanding division as obsolete (Collinson and Tourish, 2015), the performativity of our writing influences business students, as well as MBAs and executive development programmes through publications exploring “How managers become leaders” (Watkins, 2012) or “When managers become leaders” (Chiu et al., 2017). 40 years after Zaleznick’s paper, scholars still proceed by asking MBA students whether these terms are “synonyms or separate” (Kniffin et al., 2019), reinforcing an outdated contradiction. The contradiction survives because most leadership theories are not adequate to analyse the complexity of managers actions. On the one hand they romanticise leaders and depict them as heroes who can save followers, distancing them from the day to day mundanity of administration (see servant leadership, Van Dierendonk, 2011; authentic leadership, Avolio and Gardner, 2005; transformational leadership, Bass et al., 1996). On the other, they deny the existence of the concept of leadership as a redundant extra-ordinarization of management, depriving managers from opportunities of reflection on how to influence and connect (Alvesson and Sveningsson, 2003; Learmonth and Morrell, 2017). However, another way to look at leadership is emerging (Collinson, 2014, 2020; Jaser, 2017, 2020), one that considers it as a relational, dialectic process, in which leaders face and deal with dilemmas and conflicts, in the process of connecting multiple relationships (Fairhurst, 2016). The Connecting Leader: Serving Concurrently as a Leader and Follower (Jaser, 2020) is an edited collection of chapters that aims to develop this perspective further. It is published in the Leadership Horizon series (edited by Michelle Bligh and Melissa Carsten, and founded by James Meindl), and follows in the footpath of previous books that aim at overcoming romanticized conceptions of leadership (see Uhl-Bien and Ospina, 2012; Uhl-Bien et al., 2009). For a connecting leader (CL), leadership involves struggle, crossing power differentials, engaging with dilemmas

Setting myself free

After my banking career wore me down, I found my way back to research—and mysel

Voice work, upward influence during change ‘when time is of the essence’

This paper explores when and how middle managers (MMs) convey voice to the top during strategic change, when they do not have the time for lengthy persuasive upward influence tactics such as issue-selling. I investigate this phenomenon through a 33-month study of a risk management team in a large bank as it tried to overhaul its risk management systems after catastrophic scandals. I make three contributions. First, I complement the issue-selling literature by theorizing voice work as the purposeful efforts made by middle and lower managers to pass challenges from the bottom to the top during change. These efforts are grouped into three sets of moves: relational, reflexive and skip level. Second, I contribute to the voice literature by explaining when MMs decide to speak up through relational moves (balancing and integrating) and how they shape their voice message through reflexive moves (preparing and refining). Lastly, I refine our understanding of skip level voice by defining skip level moves (overriding and reinforcing), introducing nuance into how lower managers’ voice can strengthen or destabilize MMs. Voice work ultimately enriches our processual understanding of voice as a dynamic phenomenon worked on by multiple layers of management. Theory is built by amalgamating literatures on voice and on MMs’ upward influence, and by analysing them through the sociological lens of work.</p

Coming out as Palestinian

After years of not speaking publicly about my heritage, I now feel a duty to proclaim it</p

Voice work, upward influence during change ‘when time is of the essence’

This paper explores when and how middle managers (MMs) convey voice to the top during strategic change, when they do not have the time for lengthy persuasive upward influence tactics such as issue-selling. I investigate this phenomenon through a 33-month study of a risk management team in a large bank as it tried to overhaul its risk management systems after catastrophic scandals. I make three contributions. First, I complement the issue-selling literature by theorizing voice work as the purposeful efforts made by middle and lower managers to pass challenges from the bottom to the top during change. These efforts are grouped into three sets of moves: relational, reflexive and skip level. Second, I contribute to the voice literature by explaining when MMs decide to speak up through relational moves (balancing and integrating) and how they shape their voice message through reflexive moves (preparing and refining). Lastly, I refine our understanding of skip level voice by defining skip level moves (overriding and reinforcing), introducing nuance into how lower managers’ voice can strengthen or destabilize MMs. Voice work ultimately enriches our processual understanding of voice as a dynamic phenomenon worked on by multiple layers of management. Theory is built by amalgamating literatures on voice and on MMs’ upward influence, and by analysing them through the sociological lens of work.</p

An introductory review to anti-palestinian racism in society and organizations

Presents key dimensions of anti-Palestinian racism (APR):−the denial of Palestinian existence−the denial of Palestinian suffering−the defamation of Palestinians. Engages with recent reports, examples from the press and direct testimony to provide examples of APR. Considers APR in the context of intersectionality with other diversity concerns, including antisemitism. Offers suggestions toinform diversity policies for protecting Palestinians and their supporters from this form of discrimination especially in UK HE institutions.</p