The Nature of Organizational Leadership: Understanding the Performance Imperatives Confronting Today's Leaders - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0787952907 ISBN 13: 9780787952907

Publisher: Pfeiffer & Co, 2001

Synopsis

The quality of an organization's top leaders is a critical influence on its overall effectiveness and continuing adaptability. Yet, little current research examines leadership within the context of organizational structure, such as how leaders influence organizational performance in those key moments when an executive's action is critical to driving the organization forward. This book represents a significant contribution to the literature of leadership, combining a contextual approach to organizational leadership with an in-depth treatment of the cognitive, social, and affective dynamics underlying that leadership. The Nature of Organizational Leadership, using an interdisciplinary approach that draws from the work of scholars in both management and psychology, provides a much-need organizational perspective on the problems to confronted by top executive leaders and the requisite behaviors, attributes, and outcomes necessary to lead organizations effectively.

About this title

About the Author

STEPHEN J. ZACCARO is associate professor of psychology and associate director of the Center for Behavioral and Cognitive Studies at George Mason University. He is the coauthor (with Anne W. Riley) of Occupational Stress and Organizational Effectiveness.

RICHARD J. KLIMOSKI is professor of psychology, director of the Center for Behavioral and Cognitive Studies, and associate dean, College of Arts and Sciences, at George Mason University. He is the coauthor (with Neal W. Schmitt) of Research Methods in Human Resources Management.

From the Back Cover

The quality of an organization's top leaders is a critical influence on its overall effectiveness and continuing adaptability. Yet little current research examines leadership within the context of organizational structure-such as how leaders influence organizational performance in those key moments when an executive's action is critical to driving the organization forward. This book represents a significant contribution to the literature on leadership, combining a contextual approach to organizational leadership with an in-depth treatment of the cognitive, social, and affective dynamics underlying that leadership. The Nature of Organizational Leadership, using an interdisciplinary approach that draws from the work of scholars in both management and psychology, provides a much-needed organizational perspective on the problems confronted by top executive leaders and the requisite behaviors, attributes, and outcomes necessary to lead organizations effectively.

From the Inside Flap

Leadership has always been a major topic of research in psychology, spawning thousands of empirical and conceptual studies. Too often, however, such findings assume that leadership at the top of the organization reflects the same psychological and sociological dynamics as leadership at lower organizational levels. This book, the fourteenth volume in the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology's Organizational Frontiers Series, brings together scholars from the fields of both management and psychology to offer a more broadly defined perspective of organizational leadership, showing how the quality of leadership clearly changes across organizational levels.This valuable resource describes the nature of organizational leadership and the performance imperatives-cognitive, personal, political, technological, financial, and staffing-confronting organizational leaders. Examining these imperatives in detail, the book weaves them into postulates for effective leadership at the top of the organization. The authors identify the "leadership moments" those imperatives give rise to-the places where key leadership decisions, choices, and actions need to occur to ensure organizational effectiveness-and describe their implications for practice and application. The contributors describe the leadership attributes and processes needed to meet performance imperatives and explore how to identify and develop effective executives, examining leader selection, training and development, and assessment. The Nature of Organizational Leadership provides a contextual framework for understanding executive leadership that is lacking in prior theories and models in the psychological literature, systematically integrating multidisciplinary contributions to produce a conceptual perspective that will influence future research on organizational leadership. Stephen J. Zaccaro is associate professor of psychology and associate director of the Center for Behavioral and Cognitive Studies at George Mason University. He is the coauthor (with Anne W. Riley) of Occupational Stress and Organizational Effectiveness.Richard J. Klimoski is professor of psychology, director of the Center for Behavioral and Cognitive Studies, and associate dean, College of Arts and Sciences, at George Mason University. He is the coauthor (with Neal W. Schmitt) of Research Methods in Human Resources Management.

Edition details

• Publisher: Pfeiffer & Co
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0787952907
• ISBN 13: 9780787952907
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 504
• Editor: Zaccaro Stephen J., Klimoski Richard J.