leadership system design for sustainable excellence: ceo perspectives
Paper, Poster and Virtual Presentation at the Business as an Agent of World Benefit: Manage by Designing in an Era of Massive Innovation, Case Western University, Cleveland.
Sponsored by: Case Western Reserve University, United Nations Global Compact, and the Academy of Management
summary
This paper builds on professional leadership and management system design practice and in-depth interviews with CEOs to develop a theoretical foundation for the design of “custom” leadership systems that facilitate the transformation of organizations to create sustainable value for multiple stakeholders.
This study was an inductive, qualitative theory building study. CEOs from fourteen Baldrige award recipients were chosen as participants because they had all successfully transformed their organizations to create value for multiple stakeholders. The participant organizations included representatives from a variety of industries including: large service business, large manufacturing, small business, education (K-12 and higher ed), and healthcare. In-depth interviews were conducted with the CEO of each organization. The average length of the CEO interviews was nearly 2 hours. Qualitative Data Analysis Software (NVivo8) was used to analyze over 500 pages of the verbatim transcripts from the interviews and organization documents to develop the model for designing custom leadership systems.
This study produces several themes and findings related to designing leadership systems for sustainable excellence including: leadership system design considerations, a leadership system model, the benefits of an explicit leadership system and the application of the findings to address social and environmental issues. The study provides guidance to inform the design of custom leadership systems that create sustainable value for multiple stakeholders.
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cite this paper
Latham, J. R. (2009, June). Leadership System Design for Sustainable Excellence: CEO Perspectives. Paper, poster and virtual presentation at the Business as an Agent of World Benefit: Manage by Designing in an Era of Massive Innovation, Case Western University, Cleveland.