Directions Using the cited research from the textbook as a starting point, you are to find a… 1 answer below »

Directions

Using the cited research from the textbook as a starting point, you are to find a current (as recent as possible) related journal article, preferably on the same topic. You should then read the current article and compare its’ results and findings to those summarized in the text. After determining whether the results and findings are the same or different from those cited in the textbook, you then need to explain what those similarities or differences mean, in plain English.

The point of the exercise is to find another article dealing with leadership and strategic change in healthcare organizations. If that is not possible, find another article dealing with leadership and strategic change. You do not want to merely summarize the article. You want to indicate whether the article you found is consistent or inconsistent with the Denis,Lamothe and Langley (2001) findings. Then you want to discuss what these results, as a whole (both articles together), mean to leaders and managers in terms of being able to plan and conduct a change effort.

All cited material must include both internal citations and a complete reference list at the end of the paper. A cover sheet should minimally indicate the name of the Research Report, the name of the course, the student's name and the date.

CITED MATERIAL FROM TEXT BOOK

Research report 9.1 Collective leadership and strategic change in healthcare organizations

Denis, J.-L.., Lamothe, L. and Langley, A (2001) The Dynamics of collective leadership and strategic change in pluralist organizations, Academy of Management Journal, 44(4): 809-37

The study was designed to examine leadership from a process perspective focusing on what leaders do to mobilize others in a system of interrelationships. They set out to examine the dynamic construction, deconstruction of leadership roles over time.

Method

The study was partly planned and partly opportunistic, and was partly deductive (inspired by theory) and partly inductive (inspired by data). A case study approach was adopted because this enabled the researchers to trace processes in their natural contexts and study the temporal sequence of events.

The research process

Five cases were studied over a 10-year period. The first involved a hospital that was negotiating with a medical school to acquire a teaching mission. The data drew the researchers’ attention to the importance of collective leadership and the link between leaders’ tactics and their capacity to remain in leadership positions. In this case, after an earlier change imitative had failed, a new leader emerged and mobilized the leadership team to pursue the teaching mission. But the united leadership team moved too fast for many others in the hospital and an election led to the team being dissolved and replaced, slowing down the once rapid process.

The second case, which involved a small hospital developing a new emergency care service, was planned to replicate and test the conceptual model that was emerging from the first study. A new leader replaced the management team, built credibility with the board and achieved internal and external support for the new mission, but a group of physicians put in place implement the development of the emergency service pushed to develop it more extensively than the CEO and board felt was possible. Conflict lead to the departure of the physicians and a halt to the project.

Building on their emerging model of collective leadership, the third case focused on how a new CEO positioned himself within an existing leadership constellation. Over the course of these three case studies, four observations emerged as important: 1. Periods of substantive change tend to be associated with complementary and united leadership constellations. 2. Leadership constellations are fragile because of the possibility of disconnections between members (strategic coupling), between members of the leadership constellation and environment demands and constraints (environmental coupling).

3. Because of this difficulty of maintaining alignment at all three levels, change occurs in a cyclical fashion as opposing forces are reconciled on a sequential, rather than a simultaneous, basis. For example, after a leadership constellation has developed a commitment to change, it may need to seek support from external stakeholders. This may not be easy (problems with environmental coupling) and might require the leadership constellation to make concessions. This may lead to problems within the leadership constellation (strategic coupling). The resolution of these differences may, in turn, require further compromise, creating problems for some members with their organizational constituents (organizational coupling). These problems may be resolved before the change can progress. 4. Leadership affects political positions. The way others perceive and judge a leaders actions, such as conceding or failing to deliver on promises affects their credibility and survival in a leadership role.

Denis et al, went on to observe that four factors-slack resources, internal social embeddedness, creative opportunism, and a combination of time, stakeholder inattention and the protection of formal position-could help create sufficient temporary stability to allow substantive change to become irreversible before political changes made it impossible.

Four years after the start of the project, moves to consolidate the teaching hospital network in Quebec presented a new opportunity to extend the research to more complex cases. Two further cases were studied involving the merger of three hospitals. Denis et al. found that increasing the number of pluralistic dimensions made it much more difficult to establish a unified leadership constellation, achieve anything more than partial coupling, than break free from a cycle of shifting alliances, and manage the sequential attention to different goals.

Denis et al. concluded that greater complexity increases the need for counterbalancing sources of stability, such as slack resources, internal social embeddedness, creative opportunism, and time, inattention and the protection of formal position, if substantive change is to be achieved.

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