Leading Professionals

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Empson
Keyword(s):  
Mergers And Acquisitions ◽  
Distributed Leadership ◽  
Investment Banks ◽  
Professional Organizations ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Consulting Firms ◽  
Complex Power ◽  
Plural Leadership ◽  
External Stimuli

This book analyses the complex power dynamics and interpersonal politics that lie at the heart of leadership in professional organizations, such as accounting, law, and consulting firms, investment banks, hospitals, and universities. It is based on scholarly research into many of the world’s leading professional organizations across a range of sectors, including interviews with over 500 senior professionals in sixteen countries. Drawing on the latest academic theory to analyse exactly how professionals in organizations come together to create ‘leadership’, it provides new insights into how leaders lead when there is no traditional hierarchy to support them, their own authority is contingent, and they must constantly renegotiate relationships with relatively autonomous professional peers. It explores how leaders persuade highly intelligent, educated, and opinionated professionals to work together; how change happens within professional organizations; and why leaders so often fail. Part I introduces the concept of plural leadership, analysing how leaders establish and maintain their positions within leadership constellations, and the implications for governance in the context of collective or distributed leadership. Part II examines the complex, challenging relationships between professionals as they seek to influence their organizations, including the phenomena of leadership dyads, insecure overachievers, social control, and the rise of the management professional. Part III examines the shifts in the locus of power as professional organizations grow, adapt, and react to external stimuli such as mergers and acquisitions and economic crises. The conclusion identifies the paradoxes inherent in professional organizations and examines the role of leaders in attempting to reconcile them.

Leadership and Ambiguity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Empson
Keyword(s):  
Financial Crisis ◽  
Global Financial Crisis ◽  
Professional Organizations ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Conventional View ◽  
Organizational Crises ◽  
Leadership Group ◽  
The Global Financial Crisis ◽  
Plural Leadership ◽  
Global Law

This chapter examines in detail the leadership dynamics of the plural leadership group: who they are, who has the power to decide who they are, how they work together under normal circumstances, and how their dynamics change in response to a crisis. The conventional view is that organizational crises demand a clear and decisive response from ‘strong’ leaders. Yet this approach is hard to reconcile with the extensive autonomy and contingent authority which determines the distinctive power dynamics of professional organizations. The chapter examines a global law firm’s partner restructuring programme during the global financial crisis and asks: how, when authority is ambiguous, are leaders able to respond effectively in a crisis? The answer is that, under the cloak of ambiguity, leaders may be able to exercise considerable informal power by mobilizing and exploiting the organization’s hidden hierarchy. In the process, they move from an intuitive to a more deliberate form of mutual adjustment. This chapter explains exactly how it is done.

Leadership Constellation

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Empson
Keyword(s):  
Deep Level ◽  
Organizational Characteristics ◽  
Professional Organizations ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Collective Phenomenon ◽  
Plural Leadership ◽  
Conceptual Foundations ◽  
Implicit Power ◽  
Insight Into

This chapter presents the book’s conceptual foundations. It identifies key concepts developed from the research and explains how they relate to each other. The peculiar challenges of leading professionals arise from two interrelated organizational characteristics, which coexist in constant dynamic tension within professional organizations: extensive autonomy and contingent authority. To manage this tension, leaders need to develop a deep level of insight into the implicit power dynamics and covert political processes that permeate professional organizations, and strike an appropriate balance between challenging and propitiating powerful prima donna professionals. Plural leadership is a relatively new and rapidly developing leadership theory which is particularly relevant to professional organizations. This approach examines leadership as a collective phenomenon that is distributed among multiple individuals. Building on research in this area, this chapter introduces the concept of the ‘leadership constellation’, developed to represent the informal power dynamics among leaders of professional organizations.

Distributed Leadership and Its Applications in Health Care Settings

2016 ◽  
pp. 821-841
Author(s):  
Vida Farzipour
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Distributed Leadership ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Health Care Context ◽  
Distribution Of Power ◽  
Plural Leadership

In this chapter, I go through distributed leadership which is one of the mainstreams of plural leadership from social media perspective. In addition, the attributes and variants of distributed leadership are covered in this chapter. The role of social media to help the distribution of power and increasing engagement to enhance the quality of care and patient safety is also addressed in the health care context. It is concluded that Understanding distributed leadership and its application in the health care setting is largely related to the appreciation of the political and social power that currently exists.

Distributed Leadership and Its Applications in Health Care Settings

2015 ◽  
pp. 303-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vida Farzipour
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Distributed Leadership ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Health Care Context ◽  
Distribution Of Power ◽  
Plural Leadership

In this chapter, I go through distributed leadership which is one of the mainstreams of plural leadership from social media perspective. In addition, the attributes and variants of distributed leadership are covered in this chapter. The role of social media to help the distribution of power and increasing engagement to enhance the quality of care and patient safety is also addressed in the health care context. It is concluded that Understanding distributed leadership and its application in the health care setting is largely related to the appreciation of the political and social power that currently exists.

scholarly journals Understanding social exclusion in elite professional service firms: field level dynamics and the ‘professional project’

2016 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-229 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise Ashley ◽  
Laura Empson
Keyword(s):  
Social Exclusion ◽  
Social Stratification ◽  
Social Inclusion ◽  
Professional Service ◽  
Professional Organizations ◽  
Service Firms ◽  
Professional Service Firms ◽  
Consulting Firms ◽  
Professional Project

This article explores social exclusion in elite professional service firms (PSFs) through a qualitative study of six legal, accounting, investment banking and consulting firms. Employing a Bourdieusian perspective we find that all six firms privilege candidates with the same narrow forms of cultural capital, while acknowledging that this contradicts their professed commitment to social inclusion and recruiting the best ‘talent’. We find that this behaviour is enshrined within the habitus of elite firms. We argue that it represents an organizational strategy generated by a compulsion to achieve legitimacy in a specific field of London-based elite PSFs. We identify a ‘professional project’ of sorts, but argue that this can no longer be mapped on to the interests of a discrete occupational group. As such, we contribute to studies of elite reproduction and social stratification by focusing specifically on the role of elite professional organizations in the reproduction of inequality.

Russia’s Market of Mergers and Acquisitions: Stages, Features and Prospects

2009 ◽  
pp. 23-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Radygin
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Mergers And Acquisitions ◽  
Corporate Control ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Data Bases ◽  
2008 Financial Crisis ◽  
Legal Norms ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
Access Data

The article deals with key tendencies in the development of Russia’s market of mergers and acquisitions in the first decade of the 21st century. Quantitative parameters are analyzed by using available in the open access data bases for the years 2003-2008 taking into consideration new tendencies relating to 2008 financial crisis. An active role of the state played in the market of corporate control represents an important factor. Special attention is given to issues of development of Russia’s system of legal norms regulating the market of mergers and acquisitions.

The SEC’s Impact on the Federalization of Corporate Governance—A Traditional Perspective

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc I. Steinberg
Keyword(s):  
Corporate Governance ◽  
Mergers And Acquisitions ◽  
Insider Trading ◽  
Securities And Exchange Commission ◽  
Outside Directors ◽  
Tender Offers ◽  
Going Private ◽  
Rule Making

This chapter examines, from a traditional perspective, several areas where the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has impacted corporate governance in a meaningful way. By way of example, these subjects include insider trading, qualitative materiality, the role of gatekeepers (such as outside directors, attorneys, and accountants), the Commission’s use of disclosure to influence conduct, the implementation by subject companies of undertakings pursuant to SEC enforcement proceedings, and mergers and acquisitions (including tender offers and going-private transactions). This chapter’s focus is on the manner in which the SEC for well over 50 years has impacted corporate governance by means of exercising its rule-making and oversight authority.

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