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                                                                                                                                             Autumn 2012
In This Issue
DCP Earns HUB Status
Recommended Reading
Women Engineers: A National Study of Attrition and Persistence
Women, Wit & Wisdom on Facebook
Catching Falling Stars
The New Science of Building Great Teams
How Organizational Learning Affects A Firm's Flexibility, Competitive Strategy, and Performance
Individual Differences and Leadership: Contributions to a Third Tipping Point
Dear Clients & Partners, 
 

Welcome to the Autumn 2012 edition of Executive Edge, where we share current leadership theories and research sourced and abstracted from preeminent academic journals and leading management authors. 

 

We hope these insights will facilitate your success as a leader and aid in the development of others. Do let me know if you'd like to know more about any of these studies. 

 

Sincerely,
 
DCP Margarett

 
Margaret D'Onofrio
Principal / Executive Coach
D'Onofrio Consulting Partners Earns Historically Underutilized Business (HUB) status 

We are pleased to share that in order to help our clients reach their diversity goals, D'Onofrio Consulting Partners has recently been certified as an "Historically Underutilized Business" (HUB).

 

Earlier this year, we were awarded Women Business Enterprise (WBE) status by the two national certifying bodies shown below. 

 

WBENC NWBOC

  


AUTUMN READING
The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations
ldrshipbj   
by James M. Kouzes  and Barry Z. Posner
 
The 25th anniversary edition of this bestselling business classic is completely revised and updated. One of the best research-based leadership books written. 
__________________________
 
Inspired & Unstoppable: Wildly Succeeding in Your Life's Work!
Inspired   
by Tama Kieves 
 Featured on Oprah Radio, this sought-after speaker and career coach has helped thousands worldwide to discover, launch, and live their true work in the world.  Inspired & Unstoppable shows us how to stay true to our personal and professional vision.
Featured Article
FROM THE WEB
WomenEngineers

 
While 20% of engineering school graduates are female, only 11% are practicing engineers, in spite of academic, federal, and employer interventions to address this gender gap. Project on Women Engineers' Retention (POWER) was designed to understand factors related to women engineers' career decisions.  You can view a short video, read the key findings and download the full report from this link. 
__________________________ 

ZengerFolkman Getting 360 Degree Reviews Right
 
by Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman. HBR Blog Network Sept 2012. 
 
Zenger and Folkman identify nine characteristics of 360 reviews that are done well. 
__________________________ 


FeatW3 Logo Women, Wit and Wisdom is now on Facebook. Click the W3 logo above and like our page. We post research and thought-leadership, ideas and advice, women in the news and more. For anyone who is interested in advancing women's development, please visit us and join the conversation. 

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Follow the links below to stay connected with news, information and more great resources that we're sharing on these social media sites.
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DCP leadership   

Catching Falling Stars: A Human Resource Response to Social Capital's Detrimental Effect of Information Overload on Star Employees

 

Academy of Management Review (Summer 2012) Vol. 37, No. 3, P. 396 Oldroyd, James B.; Morris, Shad S. 

  

The greater visibility and productivity of star employees makes them more likely to be sought out by others and to gain an information benefit through their abundant social capital, but not all of the information effects of stardom are advantageous. It is hypothesized that star employees' healthy social capital may generate an unintentional side effect of information overload, which can be minimized through human resource (HR) management. 

InfoOverload 

A connection is drawn between star employees, affiliatory network impacts, and information overload, highlighting practices that might lead to a decline in job performance for stars. 

 

This helps realize a new comprehension of how the information processing restrictions of stars may shape information flow and the stars' performance. A focus on the potentially onerous cognitive constraints of social capital also stresses the situational mechanism of information flow of star employees. Key HR strategies that take aim at the individual, organizational, and network structure-side levels may ascertain whether star employees undergo overload within and across organizations. 

 

The curvilinear relationship between information overload and performance dictates that stars have to carefully manage the information flow stemming from their social capital, rather than simply concentrate on increasing their social capital. Therefore, the development of this new theory of information overload for star employees emphasizes the implicit stress between stars' preferred social structures and how capable they are of using those resources for individual and organizational advantage. 

Managing Employee Withdrawal During Organizational Change


JOM Journal of Management (05/12) Vol. 38, No. 3, P. 890 Fulgate, Mel; Prussia, Gregory E.; Kinicki, Angelo J. 

 

It is vital that organizations implementing change better comprehend employees' negative reactions to change so that outcomes can be more effectively managed. Antecedents and results of employees' threat appraisal during organizational change are analyzed, with positive change orientation and change-related fairness constituting the former and multiple forms of employee withdrawal comprising the latter.

People possessing a high degree of positive change orientation perceive changes positively, have confidence in their abilities to fulfill the demands presented by changes, and assume a more active and positive approach toward changes. Change-related fairness gives employees a sense that management is trustworthy, which makes them less uncertain about current changes and gives potential future actions a measure of predictability. 
 
Meanwhile, outcomes of threat appraisal include intentions to quit, absenteeism, and voluntary turnover. The results of structural equation point to the existence of negative relationships between threat appraisals and positive change orientation and change-related fairness. There also is a positive correlation between threat appraisals and absenteeism and intentions to quit, which anticipate voluntary turnover. Differential intervening effects on relationships between antecedents and consequences are evident in threat appraisals. 
 
Findings validate the theory that the malleability or statelike nature of positive organizational behavior constructs such as positive change orientation show potential for explaining the reasons and the approach for individuals' reactions to organizational change. They also support the prediction that change-related fairness is a key determinant of employees' responses, which verifies the generalizability of fairness research within the organizational change context. Change-implementing organizations can monitor employee threat appraisal to characterize specific change aspects as problematic or threatening, and this can direct the apportionment of resources to proactively evade undesirable outcomes.

 

How Organizational Learning Affects a Firm's Flexibility, Competitive Strategy, and Performance


Journal of Business & Economic Studies (08/01/12) Vol. 65, No. 8, P. 1079 Santos-Vijande, Mara Leticia; Lopez-Sanchez, Josangle; Trespalacios, Juan Antonio  

 

An organization's ability to learn is key to staying competitive in the modern business environment. Organizational learning (OL) acts as a forerunner to a firm's ability to adapt to evolving market conditions, known as strategic flexibility. Organizational learning and strategic flexibility simultaneously support the implementation of differentiation and cost-leadership strategies, which allows firms to reduce costs without degrading different levels of the firm, and to improve customer and business performance. Firms need to constantly renew their skills and resources to maintain a competitive advantage, particularly in turbulent business environments. Organizational learning is possible when the transfer of individual knowledge takes place through social interactions with different groups of individuals as a result of a shared interpretation. The accumulated knowledge, in turn, enables individuals to learn from the organization, creating a on-going, two-way process of knowledge transfer among individuals, groups, and the organization. 
 
Recent research has defined OL as containing four main stages: information acquisition, knowledge dissemination, shared interpretation, and organizational memory. In information acquisition, information can come from internal or external sources. Dissemination of knowledge can take place through formal meetings and training, or through information interactions among individuals. Shared interpretation aims to analyze the information from a global viewpoint to achieve consensus on the meaning of the information and its implications for the firm. This may require questioning the prevailing mental models and stored knowledge, and rejecting obsolete and misleading beliefs or data. Organizational memory represents all the knowledge a firm gathers, which requires proper storage and availability to all individuals to facilitate its retrieval. 

  

Individual Differences and Leadership: Contributions to a Third Tipping Point 


LeadershipQtrly The Leadership Quarterly (08/12) Vol. 23, No. 4, P. 718 Zaccaro, Stephen J.  

 

Research into leader individual differences has experienced two tipping points, and is possibly on the brink of a third.
 
The first tipping point occurred in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and moved leadership research away from a primary focus on individual difference and toward a more situationism perspective. For the next 30 to 35 years, leader traits and individual differences largely fell out of favor in leadership models. Individual differences were still considered important in some research areas, like management selection and development, but most textbooks and summary treaties published after this tipping point neglected the importance of leader traits as drivers of leadership effectiveness. 
 
The second tipping point came after several advancements appeared in leadership research from about 1977 to 1991, and moved the mainstream focus back toward a broader inclusion of individual differences in leadership models. The first advancement was the publication of several articles that took more advanced methodological approaches to some earlier studies, including using meta-analytical strategies to reanalyze earlier data. A second advancement was the appearance in research and practice domains of models and ideas that emphasized the inspirational influence of leaders. While these models did not explicitly advocate for an individual difference approach, they did state that leadership style was based strongly in trans-situational behavioral qualities of an individual leader. 
 
Now, a third tipping point is approaching that will move leadership research toward more complex models of leader individual differences and their efforts on leadership outcomes. 

  

On a Final Note
 
I hope you have enjoyed this issue of Executive Edge. 
If you would like information on any of the articles included in this edition, please send me an email.
 
If you know of someone who would be interested in receiving a copy, don't hesitate to send it along by clicking the icon below. 
 
Until next time, enjoy the Autumn season!
 
 

Margaret D'Onofrio

Principal/Executive Coach

 

 



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Margaret D'Onofrio
Principal & Executive Coach
Four Oaks Place, 1330 Post Oak Boulevard, Suite 1600
Houston, TX 77056
Tel: (713)-963-3673
Fax: (281)-286-1129


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