Group dynamics! Behold the different decision pathways:

• Group leader makes decision alone (no influence felt, low conflict, fast time)
• Group leader assigns expert to make decision (little influence felt, low conflict, fast time)
• Group leader consults with group and then makes decision (some influence felt, low conflict, slower time)
• Mathematical computations (some influence felt, low conflict, fast-ish time)
• Voting (some influence felt, low conflict but can alienate minority, fast-ish time)
• Consensus (full influence felt, high conflict, slow time)

So depending on your goals, you may need to choose what method of decision making you use…..

Groupthink was named in 1972 (!!!) by Irving Janis, based on research such as WW2 military planning. A flaw in an otherwise desirable system that has a strong leader and a cohesive group with these features:

• Illusion of invulnerability
• Collective rationalization
• Stereotypes of outgroups
• Belief of the inherent morality of the group
• Pressure placed on dissenters
• Self-censorship
• Illusion of unanimity (created from previous two)
• Self-appointed mind guards (arise in response to previous three)

The dominant response is the phenomenon where someone already skilled at something improves while under observation, and someone unskilled at something decreases their performance. WHAT. Developed by Robert Zajonc, for further investigation.

Also social loafing is covered but I already knew that one.

Social facilitation is also a thing, similar to dominant response.

The question of whether more heads is better depends on whether the tasks can be divided up, and also what the secondary typology of measuring performance outcomes are, such as:

• Additive tasks (such as tug of war – prone to social loafing)
• Disjunctive tasks (the score of the best individual is the group score)
• Conjunctive tasks (the score of the worst individual is the group score, such as in mountain climbing)
• Compensatory tasks (mathematical average of group performance)
• Discretionary tasks (group has autonomy to determine performance measurement)

Conditions for team effectiveness:

• Must have inderdependence
  • Otherwise the “team” is just a co-acting group
• Team must also have clearly delineated authority
• Team must also be stable over time

Hill’s model for team leadership:

Then there’s a segment on leading virtual teams that I’m not going to spend any time on haha

Ok so I’m officially behind now, so time to catch up a little bit! Gonna blitz this chapter RQ

Suggested definitions of innovation:

• Any idea, practice, or material artifact perceived as new by the relevant unit of adoption
  • Innovation is always relative to the group it’s being introduced to

Categories of innovations:

• Goods innovation
• Process innovation
• Service innovation
• Structural innovation
• System innovation

Organizational innovation is fostered and restricted by determinants:

• Managerial determinants
• Organizational determinants (size/complexity/etc)
• Environmental determinants

And that’s the end of our show! Bonk!

Forging change is hard, just like the name, you’re taking something metal and banging on it until it’s something different, which is hard to do. Here are some major obstacles to forging change:

• Lack of management visibility and support
• Inadequate skills of management
• Employee resistance
• Lack of organizational capacity for change
• Changes can easily be zero-sum, benefitting some while harming others

Attempting and failing change can poison the current culture worse than it is, due to the perceived conflict-centered relationship and a perceived loss of control

Different kinds of organizational change:

• Developmental change (natural growth, creating new things where there was nothing before)
• Transitional change (going from one situation to another)
• Transformational change (radical and sweeping changes)
• To avoid a crisis, it is proactive change
• To respond to an existing situation, it is reactive change

Three typical responses to change:

• Resistance
• Ambivalence
• Acceptance

At an individual level, resistance is often framed merely as survival, without interest in how it affects others or the bigger picture. Disposition and neuroticism also have a big effect on receptivity to change

Transformational leadership has an edge over transactional leadership in coping with change, especially as tapping into the big picture and the long game are trademarks of transformational leadership

Interesting tidbit: resistance is actually a beneficial resource during change, by creating a two-way conversation that helps refine and resolve the change. This only works if everyone has good faith and shared goals

Implementation steps: bleh. I’ll do this later

Leaders must select/develop/implement strategy in order to achieve large, ambitious goals. There are four different levels of strategy.

• Corporate strategy: strategy implemented by C-suite executives to: “boost combined performance across all businesses and programs and devising wats to innovate new approaches to take advantage of cross-business synergies that can be leveraged to gain a competitive advantage” dafuq this only applies to once an organization is already large
• Business strategy: the approaches, actions, and steps that are devised to produce intended results and achieve goals in one specific line of business or in one particular program
• Functional strategy: the practices and behaviors used in operating specific business processes and activities
• Operating strategy: specific and concrete steps taken to manage key operating units

Strategic planning is the process of setting this all up. It must be developed with buy in from the entire organization because implementing it is everyone’s responsibility.

The individual with the leadership responsibility must undertake strategic leadership and must have strategic vision to do so.

Strategic leaders who tend towards transactional behaviors will work within the existing culture, norms, rules and procedures. By doing so, these leaders reinforce the existing culture, norms and rules that have already been established. Transformational leaders will challenge the existing culture, norms, and rules and make changes to realign these with a new vision. Transformational leaders challenge the existing order and inspiure employees to explore new ways of doing things. The transactional or transformational tendencies of strategic leaders will lead to distinct elements within the organization being emphasized over others, which results in the creation of different cultures and organizational structures. The most effective leaders are those who are able to adopt transactional or transformational behaviors, depending on which behavior fits best the given situation.

Trying a different business model is disruption, which makes you a genius if it works and an idiot if it fails.

Strategic vision differs from mission statement. Such a thing as a vision statement exists, but Nike doesn’t have one, so why did you choose Nike as your example, you ridiculous textbook?

An organization’s values are essential, and identifying them explicitly is nice except that we already know people are bad at knowing what they actually think and are riddled with cognitive dissonance. So this doesn’t feel very informative.

Setting objectives based on the mission, vision and values is the connection to the day-to-day. To do this, DO A SWOT ANALYSIS LOL

This chapter is really underwhelming me.

Implementing and executing strategy is the most challenging and time-consuming step for top executives (sure, if you just made up a strategy). Management is vital in this stage, and organizational skills are critical here.

Situational and personal characteristics of strategic leaders (ooh ok I’m back in):

• Discretion (situational): the ability to make choices and take actions. Interesting nugget, the leader’s perception of their own discretion is a major factor!
• Flexibility (situational): the ability to react quickly to new information
• Managerial wisdom (personal): the capacity to recognize patterns and understand people and their relationships
• Interdisciplinary view (personal): Recognize the impact of departmental decisions on other departments
• Problem-oriented (personal): Inclination to seek out the source of a problem
• Committed to differentiation (personal): Constantly examine what they can do differently to offer unique value
• Student of technology (personal): interested in how new technologies can provide opportunities
• Bottom-line focus (both): Understanding the important role of generating revenue and controlling costs

Successful strategic leaders have five key characteristics: interdisciplinary view, problem-oriented, committed to differentiation, student of technology, and focus on the bottom line.

This whole chapter is probably going to be a huge joke considering how crooked sports can be (the bigger the sport org, the more the problems, and FIFA is the biggest and baddest sport org ever and doesn’t even get a namedrop).

Wait ok I’m back in, it literally goes over essential ethics frameworks.

• Ethics: the distinguishing between right and wrong
• Values: the amount of emotional weight put on a general or specific noun
• Morals: the enactment of ethical principles
• Teleology: the idea that actions are judged based on the consequences of those actions, and therefore actions that are for the greater good are good
• Deontology: the idea that actions are judged based on the moral principle and the consequences are not a factor in judging the actions

Ethical dilemmas are whenever an action has the potential to benefit or harm others.

Ethical conduct flows from leadership, and establishing an ethical code of conduct is vital to help establish an ethical culture.

Ultimately though, I expect that leading by example is the only way to make things happen.

This diagram shows the Issue-contingent model, which is basically like algebra for decisions. Consider each of the following in your decision:

• Magnitude of consequences: how severe the consequences are
• Social consensus: how clear the sides are from a societal view
• Probability of effect: how likely each outcome is
• Temporal immediacy: a multiplier effect based on how quickly the results will be visible
• Proximity: how “close to home” this material hits the decision makers
  • This is the main issue that allows systemic racism and sexism to keep hitting big orgs over and over
• Moral intensity: The manner of decisionmaking. Essential to recognize the moral quandary in each decision. Using moral judgment in doing so is vital.

They give an example to test your moral decision making apparatus with. I feel like I ate that situation like a wood chipper and immediately saw all the way through the different options and the key moves to make. I’m like a fucking chess grandmaster for ethical dilemmas. Or something.

Why are sports orgs so crooked? lol

1. Unethical behavior is rewarded
2. The values of top level management are incongruent with organizational values
3. An organization may appear ethical but its actions indicate otherwise
4. An ethical climate cannot exist where unethical behavior is justified (e.g. goes unreported)