Interdisciplinary lessons for contemporary challenges. The zeitgeist leadership practice of excelling at work
| Date | 07 October 2014 |
| Pages | 262-284 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/WJEMSD-07-2013-0035 |
| Published date | 07 October 2014 |
| Author | Vikram Murthy |
| Subject Matter | Strategy,Business ethics,Sustainability |
Interdisciplinary lessons for
contemporary challenges
The zeitgeist leadership practice of
excelling at work
Vikram Murthy
Academy for Collaborative Futures, Sydney, Australia
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop a rich and textured narrative that utilises sc holarly
evidence, empirical research, and practitioner knowledge to shape, inform, and extend understanding
of the leadership practice of “excelling at work” as it is enacted for zeitgeist organisational challenges.
Design/methodology/approach – In order to achieve this, it traverses a temporal timeline from
circa 350 BC to the present millennium, to examine extant theories and concepts and emerging wisdom
at the intersection of domains as seemingly diverse as neuroscience, cognitive and social psychology,
contemplative practice, positive psychology, and organisational behaviour and leadership.
Findings – Complex environments require individual and collective agency for efficacious and
adaptive responses. Extant theories and new insights on effectance, meaningful work, signature
strengths, purposeful attention, self-control, deliberate practice, grit, explanato ry styles, and mindsets
amongst others, interconnect and at times intersect to form an empirically validated narrative on the
augmented leadership practice of excelling at work in challenging times.
Originality/value – Overcoming zeitgeist challenges adaptively, requires organisations and their
people to excel at work. Innovative combinations and connections of key constructs and concepts,
underpinned by empirical evidence from a variety of disciplines, explicate the nature and enactments
of this vital leadership practice of excelling at work.
Keywords Resilience, Cross-disciplinary, Metaphors, Self-control, Deliberate practice and grit,
VUCA context, Zeitgeist leadership
Paper type Conceptual paper
Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. Our fires are damp ed, our drafts
are checked. We are making use of only a small part of our p ossible mental and physical
resources ( J ames, 1907/2010, p. 14).
Introduction
This paper seeks to develop a rich and textured narrative that utilises scholarly
evidence, empirical research and practitioner knowledge to shape, inform, and extend
understanding of the leadership practice of “excelling at work” as it is enacted for
zeitgeist organisational challenges. In order to achieve this, it traverses a temporal
timeline from circa 350 BC to the present millennium, to examine extant theories
and concepts and emerging wisdom at the intersection of domains as seemingly
diverse as neuroscience, cognitive, and social psychology, contemplative practice,
positive psychology, and organisational behaviour and leadership.
Its foundational argument is that a firm’s “organisational metaphor” – its
organisational theory-in-use, is not only correlated to specific environments, but that
particular characteristics can be broadly connected with different eras. More
specifically it argues that an “organisation as cultures” metaphor aligns well with a
volatile and complex environment and in doing so predicates members’ agency as
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/2042-5961.htm
Received 10 July 2013
Revised 10 July 2013
Accepted 31 July 2013
World Journal of Entrepreneurship,
Management and Sustainable
Development
Vol. 10 No. 4, 2014
pp. 262-284
rEmeraldGroup PublishingLimited
2042-5961
DOI 10.1108/W JEMSD-07-2013-00 35
262
WJEMSD
10,4
a prerequisite for organisational flourishing. People’s skilful accomplishments and
enactments take centre-stage in creating and shaping an organisation’s internal
operations and its external environment. Time-honoured concepts connect with more
contemporary constructs that have been continuously honed over the past 50 years to
explicate the nature and characteristics of excelling at work. At the same time new
disciplines with their hybrids and intersections also serve to yield significan t insights
into the practice and its enablers.
Axiomatic assumption: era-based environmental turbulence and a VUCA
world
The assumption that every successive era experiences more environmental turbul ence
than the era that has preceded it was first proposed in Emery and Trist (1965) and
endorsed by Terreberry (1968). Since then this assumption of era-based environmental
turbulence, has many academic and practitioner advocates, most notable amongst
them being Igor Ansoff, the “generally recognised father of the field [of strategic
management]”, (Mintzberg, 1994, p. 145) who has endowed the proposition of endemic
and progressively escalating environmental turbulence with al most axiomatic
credence and longevity (see e.g. Ansoff, 1965, p. 125; Ansoff, 1979, p. 5; Ansoff, 1984,
p. 57; Ansoff and Sullivan, 1993, pp. 13-17). For a working categorisation of Ansoff’s
era-based dimensions of the common strategic environment please refer to Figure 1.
There is merit to the counter argument that era-based environmental holding
patterns, and the allied notion of progressively escalating turbulence in successive
eras, are over-simplistic and possibly erroneous assumptions when describing the
environment (see, e.g. Makridakis, 1990; Mintzberg, 1994, p. 207).
Notwithstanding, there is value in era based, escalating environmental turbulence
as a broad organising framework for a conceptual understanding of the environment
and for correlating an organisation’s strategy and leadership processes to its variations
over time. This is cur rently evidenced by the significant supp ort it receives from
institutions, like, for example the US Army, which after 9/11 has even created the
VUCA nomenclature to facilitate the delineation of an environment characterised by:
volatility – a state of dynamic instability; uncertainty – a lack of clarity; complexity –
interactive threats and opportunities; and Ambiguity – the ne ed for multiple
perspectives (see, e.g. Horney et al., 2010; Kail, 2010; Kinsinger and Walch, 2012).
For an approximate correlation of a business’ environment with its strategy and
leadership processes, refer to Figure 2.
1900-1949 1950-1975 1975-1984 1985-1995 1996-PRESENT
STABLE (REPETITIVE)
No Change
REACTING
(EXPANDING)
Slow incremental
Change
CHANGING (Fast
incremental
Change)
DISCONTINUOUS
Predictable
Change
SURPRISEFUL
Discontinuous,
Unpredictable
Change
Sources: Adapted from Ansoff (1984) and Ansoff and Sullivan (1993, p.15)
Figure 1.
Era descriptions of
common strategic
environment
263
Interdisciplinary
lessons for
contemporary
challenges
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