Relationship Between Idealized Leadership Behavior and Change Initiative Success

Change is an important process that organizations must go through to remain competitive. However, change initiatives fail resulting in costly financial losses for the organizations. Idealized behavior is critical to the effectiveness of change initiatives. The purpose of this quantitative correlational study was to examine the relationship between idealized behavior and change initiative success. Midlevel managers who successfully implemented 1 or more change initiatives in any industry in the United States (n = 105) were conveniently selected to participate in the study. The Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) Form 5X-Short was used to measure idealized behavior and the Project Implementation Profile (PIP) was used to measure change initiative success. The overall model, simple linear regression, revealed a statistically significant relationship between idealized behavior and change initiative success, F (1, 103) = 7.803, p < 0.006, R2 = 0.070. The independent variable (change initiative success) was also significant, p < 0.006. The results of the study provide a practical model for understanding the relationship between idealized behavior and change initiative success. Keywords: Idealized Behavior, Transformational Leadership, Change Initiative, Change Implementation, Correlational Study

Limited Consequences of a Transition From Activity-Based Financing to Budgeting: Four Reasons Why According to Swedish Hospital Managers

Activity-based financing (ABF) and global budgeting are two common reimbursement models in hospital care that embody different incentives for cost containment and quality. The purpose of this study was to explore and describe perceptions from the provider perspective about how and why replacing variable ABF by global budgets affects daily operations and provided services. The study setting is a large Swedish county council that went from traditional budgeting to an ABF system and then back again in the period 2005-2012. Based on semistructured interviews with midlevel managers and analysis of administrative data, we conclude that the transition back from ABF to budgeting has had limited consequences and suggest 4 reasons why: (1) Midlevel managers dampen effects of changes in the external control; (2) the actual design of the different reimbursement models differed from the textbook design; (3) the purchasing body’s use of other management controls did not change; (4) incentives bypassing the purchasing body’s controls dampened the consequences. The study highlights the challenges associated with improvement strategies that rely exclusively on budget system changes within traditional tax-funded and politically managed health care systems.

Wall Street and the Housing Bubble

We analyze whether midlevel managers in securitized finance were aware of a large-scale housing bubble and a looming crisis in 2004–2006 using their personal home transaction data. We find that the average person in our sample neither timed the market nor were cautious in their home transactions, and did not exhibit awareness of problems in overall housing markets. Certain groups of securitization agents were particularly aggressive in increasing their exposure to housing during this period, suggesting the need to expand the incentives-based view of the crisis to incorporate a role for beliefs. (JEL D14, D83, E32, E44, G01, G21, R31)

Assessment of Processing Capacity

Research over the last 10 years on Latin square tasks (LST) suggests a significant potential for their use in assessing fluid cognition. In the current work, we outline the LST and the more complex Greco-Latin square task (GLST). The objectives were (1) to validate the appropriateness of LST as measures of fluid cognition in business managers and (2) to demonstrate the separation of the LST into working memory and deductive reasoning components. Participants were 264 midlevel managers from four large international companies. Consistent with expectations, SEM analyses indicated that the GLST and the LST are highly correlated with fluid intelligence (Gf), and that working memory load could be differentiated from reasoning load in the LST and provided incremental predictive validity of Gf. Results are supportive of our expectations and provide evidence that LST are appropriate for psychological assessment as they are based on a strong theory of fluid cognition, have sound psychometric properties, and have substantial pragmatic utility in terms of the capacity for rapid item generation.

Highway Vulnerability Assessment: A Guide for State Departments of Transportation

A methodology is provided for state departments of transportation (DOTs) to conduct vulnerability assessments of their highway assets. This tool allows state DOTs to assess the vulnerability of their physical assets, such as bridges and tunnels; to develop possible countermeasures to deter, detect, and delay the consequences of terrorist threats; to estimate the capital and operating costs of such countermeasures; and to improve security operational planning. The audience for this methodology is broad—from senior officials involved in the initial planning stage of the process, to midlevel managers charged with developing the assessment plans and procedures, to field personnel. The state DOTs must organize and manage a multidisciplinary team whose members have a working knowledge of the department’s mission, its critical assets, and its policies, plans, and procedures. The methodology involves six steps for conducting a vulnerability assessment of highway transportation assets. They provide a straightforward method for examining critical assets and identifying cost-effective countermeasures to guard against terrorism. The criteria used in selecting the preferred approaches include availability, accessibility, transparency, replicability, reasonableness, scalability, robustness, costeffectiveness, and modularity.