Adaptive leadership of doctors during COVID-19

Purpose This study aims to examine the adaptive leadership of doctors during COVID-19 to understand the leadership competencies required for adaptive events. Design/methodology/approach Phenomenology-based qualitative design was used. Data were collected from six doctors from the state of Kerala, India using semi-structured interviews. Findings Five themes were identified. The first theme, core leadership shows that doctors perceive leaders as educators, learners and social beings. The second theme, adaptive challenges, describes the ambiguous pandemic-related challenges that doctors are facing including, unusual occupational demands, information overload, sociocultural issues and personal intricacies. The third theme reflects that for doctors, adaptive work during the pandemic included – new learning to address unique issues, changing perspectives and establishing and maintaining a safe and engaging workplace environment. The fourth theme describes the adaptive leadership competencies such as regulating distress, providing direction, maintaining disciplined action, fostering collaboration, empowering, understanding organizational linkages, strategic vision and communication skills. The fifth theme elucidates the lacunae in leadership training as perceived by the doctors. Research limitations/implications The findings can help in developing and enhancing competency frameworks for doctors’ adaptive leadership. Originality/value This is one of the earliest studies to systematically examine components of adaptive leadership for doctors during COVID-19 and identify associated competencies.

Looking for Ariadne’s thread: A systematic review on party-group relations in the last 20 years

All too often, research on the relationship between political parties and interest groups has followed different paths. In a research field dominated by multiple and disconnected approaches, an overview of where we stand and what we know is pertinent. This study reviews and assesses the empirical evidence brought forward through a systematic analysis of 182 studies on the topic. We address three key questions. What are the analytical and theoretical perspectives employed in this scholarship? What is the focus of the research? What are the research strategies used to assess party-group relations? We answer these questions by analyzing an original, built-for-purpose dataset providing information on the analytical frameworks, research designs, and focus employed in recent studies. The analysis shows that this field of research has grown significantly over the last decade and that multiple research strategies have been employed, with a predominance of qualitative and case study approaches. The findings also suggest that different conceptualizations of party-group relations have been adopted, while the American literature tends to adopt a distinct theoretical perspective from European studies. Finally, the analytical focus has privileged economic organizations, but it has moved progressively away from the study of organizational linkages.

Inter-Agency Delivery System

This paper examines the effect of inter-agency delivery systems on the agility of public sector organizations and ease of doing business. The empirical focus is the Nigerian public sector, in relation to the implications of the recent Executive Order regarding how Ministries, Agencies and Departments (MDAs) should operate towards improving the ease of doing business .The study finds that poor inter-organizational linkages in terms of Information and Communication Technology, ICT, and poor interagency collaborative structures constitute serious challenges to the realization of organizational agility and ease of doing business. The paper suggests further investment in establishing a comprehensive government database accessible by various government agencies and enhancing social networking among public agencies through strong ICT and e-governance infrastructure development. By implication, the study reveals that the use of Executive Orders to address fundamental economic and administrative challenges appears perfunctory and superficial without strong ICT support.

Inter-Agency Delivery System

This paper examines the effect of inter-agency delivery systems on the agility of public sector organizations and ease of doing business. The empirical focus is the Nigerian public sector, in relation to the implications of the recent Executive Order regarding how Ministries, Agencies and Departments (MDAs) should operate towards improving the ease of doing business .The study finds that poor inter-organizational linkages in terms of Information and Communication Technology, ICT, and poor interagency collaborative structures constitute serious challenges to the realization of organizational agility and ease of doing business. The paper suggests further investment in establishing a comprehensive government database accessible by various government agencies and enhancing social networking among public agencies through strong ICT and e-governance infrastructure development. By implication, the study reveals that the use of Executive Orders to address fundamental economic and administrative challenges appears perfunctory and superficial without strong ICT support.

Party Organizational Linkage

The literature argues that vertically integrated parties are important for generating or encouraging stability in multi-level systems. This chapter differentiates between party organizational linkages at the level of resources and services, cooperation, and attitudinal dimensions. Drawing on data from a survey of over 250 subnational party organizations in seven multi-level systems, this chapter shows that the institutional design of a federation does not necessarily predict the way in which parties share resources and services through vertical linkages, but it does help us predict other important aspects of multi-level organization. This includes the degree of shared values and the ideological distance between subnational and federal parties.

Unbundling dynamic capabilities for inter-organizational collaboration

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore two distinct subsets of dynamic capabilities that need to be deployed when pursuing innovation through inter-organizational activities, respectively, in the contexts of broad networks and specific alliances. The authors draw distinctions and explore potential interdependencies between these two dynamic capability reservoirs, by integrating concepts from the theoretical perspectives they are derived from, but which have until now largely ignored each other – the social network perspective and the dynamic capabilities view. Design/methodology/approach The authors investigate nanotechnology-driven R&D activities in the 1995–2005 period for 76 publicly traded firms in the electronics and electrical equipment industry and in the chemicals and pharmaceuticals industry, that applied for 580 nanotechnology-related patents and engaged in 2,459 alliances during the observation period. The authors used zero-truncated Poisson regression as the estimation method. Findings The findings support conceptualizing dynamic capabilities as four distinct subsets, deployed for sensing or seizing purposes, and across the two different inter-organizational contexts. The findings also suggest potential synergies between these subsets of dynamic capabilities, with two subsets being more macro-oriented (i.e. sensing and seizing opportunities within networks) and the two other ones more micro-oriented (i.e. sensing and seizing opportunities within specific alliances). Practical implications The authors show that firms differ in their subsets of dynamic capabilities for pursuing different types of inter-organizational, boundary-spanning relationships (such as alliances vs broader network relationships), which ultimately affects their innovation performance. Originality/value The authors contribute to the growing body of work on dynamic capabilities and firm-specific advantages by unbundling the dynamic capability subsets, and investigating their complex interdependencies for managing different types of inter-organizational linkages. The main new insight is that the “linear model” of generating more innovations through higher inter-firm collaboration in an emerging field paints an erroneous picture of how high innovation performance is actually achieved.

Innovative Management of Community Territories and Inter-Organizational Communication for Regional Development

The chapter addresses engagement, facilitation processes, governance, decentralized decision-making process, and inter-organizational relationships in rural communities in Portugal involving the community lands in mountainous areas. These lands are multifunctional in that they are used for forestry, grazing of ruminants, honey production, mushroom and dry nut gathering, water and wind rights, as well as plant protection and preservation of ecosystems. The management of these lands is the responsibility of the common land associations. These local institutions and their leaders represent the local users of these community lands. The chapter presents empirical data from an exploratory research study of inter-organizational linkages with these common land institutions and other governmental organizations and civil society entities. The entities include ministry and regional level organizations, municipal governments, and local development associations.

Getting a Sharper View of the Humanitarian Marketplace: Introducing Conduit Engagement Theory

There are differing views on the strengths and weaknesses of faith-based organizations relative to secular international nongovernmental organizations. This article argues that the theory of comparative advantage and the theory of organizational alignment are inadequate in helping to assess these strengths and weaknesses. The article offers a different perspective, called conduit engagement theory. It holds that humanitarian organizations naturally have specific relationships, organizational linkages, affiliations, or shared philosophies (referred to in the article as conduits) that enable certain programmatic interventions. Maximum effectiveness within the humanitarian marketplace is a function of the robustness of engagement of conduits with high-priority initiatives that have adequate funding over the necessary length of time. A new kind of tool for strategic planning within specific countries and for auditing at an organizational level are proposed.