Long Tail Leadership

The increased weighting of digital natives in a fattening long tail has added complexity to organizational leadership, particularly during the global COVID-19 pandemic. Trends affecting the individual come from social, economic, and technological sources and affect leadership behaviors, and this in turn affects society. In order to understand this interconnection, lower-level influences and how they affect the higher-level visible signs are discussed. These lead to influences on behavior. Influences are felt as intensity and embeddedness of engagement, decision-management, feedback ability, and motivators. This chapter begins with a discussion of causes for this phenomenon and concludes with ways to work with the long tail, either from within as a member or externally as a leader. The chapter ends with a brief comment on future research based on findings discussed in this chapter.

Toward the Promise

Those in higher education stand on the cusp of an opportunity—an opportunity to fulfill the promise that higher education will provide access to liberty, freedom, resources, respect, ownership, and the ability to pursue happiness. The dominance of Eurocentric and Western knowledge, practices, beliefs, and perspectives in organizational leadership programs has yet to be disrupted. Consequently, many doctoral programs reinforce colonialism and White superiority instead of affirming and preparing students to work in a diverse and pluralistic society. This chapter presents some practical ways structural racism in higher education can be interrupted through a program overhaul and redesign to center justice and equity in all aspects of the program.

Role of Organizational Diagnosis in Improving Employee-Centred Strategies in the IT&C Sector

The paper pleads for the importance of organizational diagnosis in order to develop new employee-centred strategies. In order to remain competitive, especially in the COVID-19 context, organizations from the IT&C industry needs to improve employee-centred strategies and to align the business processes with these strategies. The empirical research aims to provide through quantitative and qualitative sources an accurate picture of the organizational diagnosis in order to adapt suitable HR processes. The study uses 300 employee responses from the IT&C industry in order to draw the positive elements (eg. good perception of organizational leadership, excellent communication in teams and satisfaction towards adaption to COVID-19 pandemic) and areas to improve (such as for example: workload, internal bureaucracy and integration as well as adaptability and organizational change) resulted from the organizational diagnosis.

Organizational Leadership Styles and Utilization of Evaluation Results

The greatest concern in programme management, given the potential of programme or project evaluations to inform decision-making, remains how to ensure the results of an evaluation are used for the intended purpose and how information from an evaluation process and/or the products are applied to practices and decision-making processes. This article presents a research that sought to explore the degree to which organizational leadership style impacts the use of evaluation findings for programme improvement. Based on the pragmatic paradigm and informed by the Utilization Focused Evaluation Model and Knowledge Use Theory, the research adopted a descriptive and correlational design using mixed methods. The study’s sample comprised of 232 project staff from Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) based in Kisumu Central Sub-County, Kenya. Content analysis method that involved coding and identifying themes from respondents’ responses was used to analyse the qualitative data obtained from key informant interviews. Both percentages and frequencies were used to summarize the quantitative data. The instrument reliability was assessed through pilot testing and Cronbach alpha of 0.908 attained. A hypotheses H01: Leadership style does not significantly influence utilization of evaluation results was tested at α = .05 level of significance, but it was rejected because P = 0.000 < 0.05. The study established a statistically significant relationship between organizational leadership style and the utilization of evaluation results. In so doing, it reinforces the existing literature by helping to understand the way organizational leadership style influences the utilization of evaluation results. It fills a gap in the literature, thereby contributes to the appreciation of the factors that enhance and predict the utilization of evaluation results.

Farmer social networks: The role of advice ties and organizational leadership in agroforestry adoption

With the decline in public budgets for agricultural extension support, ties between members of farmer groups are becoming more important to facilitate information transfer about agroforestry. This paper examines the role of social network ties in predicting organizational leadership in an agroforestry-based farmer group. Using social network data derived from interviews with members of farming groups based in the Ayeyarwady Delta of Myanmar, we established a positive relationship between advice-seeking ties and organizational leadership. In other words, farmers who were highly sought for agroforestry advice were more likely to be elected as leaders of the farmer group. Results show the frequency of interactions through advice-seeking ties also had a positive influence on the probability of farmers holding leadership positions. We found a core–periphery structure for the advice networks, whereby farmer leaders were overrepresented at the network core. Interestingly, general members of the farmer group were also in the core of the core-periphery structure, suggesting that engaging with farmers without leadership roles can also effectively disseminate agroforestry information to peripheral farmers. We conclude that farmer groups are valuable in agroforestry adoption and persistence and further analyses of formal leadership structures are needed to support more transparent and accountable governance.