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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Related BAR Consortium Reports and Presentations

Many of the qualitative themes and findings from this study were also used to enhance the study on Baldrige CEO Attitudes and Motivations: Developing a Model of Excellence.

Research report on the results of this study were presented at the Baldrige Award Recipients (BAR) Consortium meeting in Cambridge, MA September 30, 2009. Presentation slides (PDF) Download

Preliminary findings were presented at the BAR meeting in New Orleans, October 1, 2008.

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.

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