Developing a Management System to Support Leadership Practices
Lind, Lasse (2022)
Lind, Lasse
2022
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Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2022121931001
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2022121931001
Tiivistelmä
Leadership is a valued commodity in today’s world as evidenced by the large body of literature on what good leadership is and how it can be developed. Many theories have been proposed on how to develop leadership skills. One such theory is the Five exemplary leadership practices. This theory deposits that there are five key aspects to focus on in order to be a great leader. The practices are Model the way, enable others to act, inspire a shared vision, challenge the process and encourage the heart. However, even though these practices have been proven to help in developing leadership, there is no concrete way of measuring the development. One possible way of enabling this could be by using a management system. A management system is a tool comprising of guidelines on how to conduct different process and how to measure them. The commissioning company of the current study had implemented a management system six years ago. The aim of the current study was to explore how this management system could be improved upon by exploring what elements could be added to it in order to support the Five exemplary leadership practices and how to quantify them. An exploratory qualitative research design was adopted to explore this. Three experts on management systems and three managers from the company were interviewed using semi-structured interviews. Thematic analysis was applied to analyse the interviews and three main themes were identified, these being “vision”, “understanding the current situation” and “concrete actions”. The main findings indicated that having a clear vision of the company was crucial before the relevant ideas could be incorporated. Concrete actions on how the Five practices could be incorporated and measured were generated.