Digital Commons Network^™

Book Review: Inequality In America: Causes And Consequences, Eya Mahouachi

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

Inequality in America: Causes and Consequences is a recent book authored by Rycroft (economics, Univ. of Mary Washington, Fredericksburg, VA) and Kinsley (business law, Univ. of Mary Washington, Fredericksburg, VA) and was written by scholars, advanced graduate students, and expert practitioners. Their book attempts to bridge the gap in scholarship and practice by incorporating the causes and consequences of history, the current state of inequality in the United States, and future consequences if left unresolved. This book is structured according to fundamental topics such as education, healthcare, housing, environmental issues, and the justice system. Using an effective approach to teaching …

"Being On God’S Side": Biblical Leaders On Wokeness, Social Justice, Cancel Culture, White Privilege, And Other Controversial Terms, Hershey H. Friedman, Svetlana Vlady

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

Terms such as “woke,” “social justice,” “cancel culture,” “identity politics,” “politically correct,” “critical race theory,” and “DEI” have been increasingly misused and politicized by both the left and the right in recent years. This paper will examine the Hebrew Bible and explore what it says about social justice, compassion for the indigent, inclusion, and many other terms causing such an uproar. The authors assert that the ancient prophets, the true social justice warriors, would be horrified by the actions of both the left and right.

When Leadership Meets A Vision Of Love And Justice: The Art Of Leading For Social Justice, Aaliyah Baker

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

No abstract provided.

Beyond The Ice, Nikolaus T. Butz, Joshua Hunter, Emma Fisher

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

Leadership is a management tool to direct effective achievement of goals. Historical investigation can provide a valuable lens for the study of leadership styles. To that end, this study examines the disparate approaches of Roald Amundsen and Robert Scott as they raced to be the first explorer to reach the South Pole. The objective of this study is to analyze the leadership techniques used in these expeditions, and to determine how they shaped the outcome of each. The process of tacit knowledge and experience coalesce and foster both leadership and action that is not only communication-oriented and value-driven, but also …

Purpose, Joseph P. Hester

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

No abstract provided.

Book Review: The Courage To Lead Through Values: How Management By Values Supports Transformational Leadership, Culture, And Success, Nidhi Aggarwal, Nana Manu, Eya Mahouachi, Jyoti Aggarwal

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

The Courage to Lead through Values: How Management by Values Supports Transformational Leadership, Culture, and Success is about being fearless and implementing the values in changing or sustaining the organization and its people. Transformational leadership is shown as an influential factor in the individual’s ability to deal with different circumstances and where leaders courageously provide support to maintain the employee confidence level. This book is also about the type of leader an individual can become, who may not have answers or solutions to every problem, but genuinely keep working on and acknowledge their inner sense of courage and values by …

Book Review: Scaling People: Tactics For Management And Company Building, Carl Tolbert

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

No abstract provided.

Headwinds Battering The Navy, Paul Grossgold, Ritch Eich

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

No abstract provided.

Lessons From History: The Remarkable Leadership Of Eleanor Roosevelt And Why It Matters Today (Part 2), Emilio F. Iodice

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

No abstract provided.

Dominant Leadership Themes In The Pauline Epistles, Jaime V. Cortez

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

Abstract

Paul’s writings in the Bible, although primarily intended to serve spiritual ends, were found to also contain practical leadership wisdom long before these concepts were developed and formalized in secular leadership literature. Seven leadership themes emerged out of this conceptual study, namely: concepts of authority, responsibility, and accountability; the need for personal integrity among leaders, the need to build ethical organizations, situational leadership, fostering unity in diversity, the teaching role of leaders, and ensuring organizational continuity and organizational growth. This paper will benefit leadership theory along the line of increasing confidence in the use of the Bible as a …

Self-Centered Vs. Humanity-Centered: The Most Critical Continuum For Choosing Today's Leadership, Hershey H. Friedman, Ngoc Cindy Pham

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

There is a leadership continuum that ranges from extreme self-interest/narcissism to human-centered leadership. During these chaotic times, corporate boards must hire human-centered CEOs and understand that companies must focus on society's needs, not only profit if capitalism is to thrive. People want to work for companies with a soul and desire to purchase products – and even pay more- from firms that seek to improve the world. Maximizing shareholder value is as outdated as Taylor's theory of scientific management. America becomes stronger if corporate leaders work together to help everyone prosper, not just the top 1%. Everyone wins.

"Shaped But Not Fixed" -- The Gift Of Leadership, Joseph P. Hester

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

No abstract provided.

Attitude Is The Foundation Of Your Success: Write Your Own Case Study, M. S. Rao

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

The purpose of this research paper is to outline lessons on life, learning, and leadership to become a successful professional, entrepreneur, and leader. It unveils that attitude is the foundation of your success and elaborates with examples and illustrations. It explains employability, entrepreneurship, networking, soft skills, and hard skills. It explains the companies including Kodak, Nokia, and Blockbuster that failed to reinvent with changing times and technologies. It unveils the importance of technology and advises to learn, unlearn, and relearn. It illustrates the examples of companies including Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple. It implores you to achieve success with integrity. …

Acting On The Pivot Point, Susan Vroman, Tiffany Danko

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

When facing opportunities, effective leaders trod a path that effectively incorporates ethical and empathetic leadership considerations and characteristics to drive change. The actions and impacts of two very different women facing challenges as change moments each tie back to Kouzes and Posner’s traits of exemplary leaders such as model the way and inspire a shared vision (Kouzes & Posner, 2017). Rear Admiral Meredith Austin, United States Coast Guard (retired), and Patricia (Trish) Foster, Executive Director Emeritus of Bentley University’s Center for Women in Business have led transformative changes. Admiral Austin was crucial in coordinating the early-pandemic smooth return of the …

Ethical Pluralism: The Decision-Making System Of A Complex World, Clinton P. Unger

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

Today's leaders are faced with many different ethical decisions that are further highlighted by social media and a rapid news cycle. It has been established that there is no universal ethical code, nor is there one unified global culture. Leaders must continually educate themselves and their employees in proper leadership techniques, education, decision-making, and cultural understanding. Pluralism is engrained in ethics, where there are different interpretations of the same information, different ways to analyze the situation and different ethical frameworks. Pluralism can lead to different outputs and decisions across the same situation, but pluralism is not a blight on ethics …

Subtle Leadership: When Referent Power Is Subtly Powerful, Luz E. Quiñones-González

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

The following research presents the construct of “subtle leadership” in a conceptual discussion as a new way of perceiving and studying leaders of the twenty-first century. Its core objective points toward the conceptualization of “subtle leadership,” sharing a basic definition to provoke discussion and emerging theoretical framework in order to better understand the current organizational reality. Some leadership styles such as servant leadership, shared leadership, and authentic leadership are discussed to compare and contrast them with “subtle leadership,” emphasizing that leadership is viewed as a process and not only as styles or personal traits. Subtle leadership is primarily based on …

Optimistic Leadership For The 21st Century And Beyond, Vincent P. Techo

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

This paper proposes a future-driven leadership theory—the optimistic leadership theory—suitable for leading global organizations in the 21^st century and beyond. The author argues that a new leadership approach is needed for these organizations due to the complexities that come with globalization, including the high need for knowledge and experience, distance decay, and cultural amalgamation. Five leadership approaches (Visionary Leadership, Differentiated Leadership, Servant Leadership, Flexible Leadership, and Reflective Leadership) are identified as the components of optimistic leadership. Following a review of the rare literature on these five leadership approaches, they are found to constitute the best determinants of successful future-driven …

Moral Identity, Self-Improvement, And The Quest For Greatness: A Leadership Responsibility, Cam Caldwell, Verl Anderson

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

The focus of this paper is on explaining how leaders can follow the path of self-improvement by more fully understanding their moral identity. We begin by briefly reviewing excerpts from the literature about personal development and self-awareness to lay a foundation for the importance of leaders seeking to achieve their optimal effectiveness. Following that introduction, we introduce a new definition of moral identity that builds upon identity theory as developed by Peter Burke and Jan Stets (2009). We then identify nine traits that link moral identity and leadership. Integrating moral identity with the pursuit of personal excellence, we identify twelve …

University Professors As “Transformative Leaders”, Cam Caldwell, Verl Anderson

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

University professors have a moral obligation to be ethical leaders in guiding their stewards. Transformative Leadership, a concept identified in both the educational and business leadership literature, provides a valuable model for university professors to consider as they interact with students and help them to learn and to prepare for the challenges of the modern world. This paper integrates the education and business leadership perspectives of Transformative Leadership and identifies the contributions that this leadership model can contribute to the effectiveness of university professors who adopt its principles.

Building Relationships And Resolving Conflicts: Infusing Critical Thinking Into Workplace Practices, Joseph P. Hester

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

As we are now living in a world characterized as a “new normal,” nothing is more important than leaders who are adept at critical thinking enabling them to enhance their businesses by making judicious decisions while remaining sensitive to the needs of their employees. When talking about critical thinking, often neglected is the descriptor “critical.” Among other things, “critical” means significant, vital, essential, and analytical, and involving skillful judgment as to truth and merit. From the point of view of commonsense, “critical” may also imply an effort to see a problem or situation clearly and truthfully in order to make …

Academic Leadership: Gatekeeping Or Groundskeeping?, Beronda L. Montgomery

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

Common approaches to academic leadership include serving as assessors of the progress of individuals towards organizationally determined milestones and markers of success. Likewise, leadership development often focuses on leadership skills and tactics, rather than on cultivation and enactment of leadership philosophies and progressive vision. Here, I discuss the importance of cultivating leadership for progressive faculty and academic staff development through strategically tending the cultures and systems that one leads, in addition to tactical supervision of people. I describe this as systems-engaged leadership manifested as groundskeeping, or as attending to the individuals in an organization while simultaneously actively tending the ecosystems …

Leaving Your Mark: Seven Strategies For Indelible Leadership, James S. Welch Jr

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

One of the major concerns within contemporary leadership consists in the myopic view many leaders and followers have regarding leadership success. In the modern context, there are countless firms engaging in some variation of myopic management simply to drive short-term results. To counteract the short term view of leadership, this article presents a leadership construct focusing on seven strategies designed to help facilitate long term leadership impact and organizational sustainability. The seven strategies examined in this article consist of the following: embracing organizational diversity, encouraging positive change, displaying emotional intelligence, possessing a long term orientation, casting a strategic vision, developing …

Summer/Fall 2020

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

No abstract provided.

Cultures Of Servant Leadership And Their Impact, Robert Giambatista, Robert Mckeage, Jeremy Brees

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

Servant Leadership has primarily been studied at the level of individual leaders and their impact, yet Greenleaf, who first formally proposed the idea in 1970, also considered the construct as an important institutional element. Further, because it is values-based, and culture is the organizational mechanism for developing and transmitting shared values, an organizational lens for studying servant leadership is also needed. The current study of three firms examines organizational differences in servant leadership. We found organizational differences in levels of servant leadership, suggesting a cultural explanation. We also found that individual (i.e., supervisor) and organizational (i.e., cultural) servant leadership have …

The Salience And Substance Of Spiritual Leadership, Joseph P. Hester

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

The binary construct “spiritual-leadership” is a challenge to explain and a conundrum to unravel. Its inscrutability lies within our intrinsic nature and is, as we know, malleable, succumbing to cultural as well as value relativity. The spiritual lies deeply within our mental environment swaying perception, memory, judgment, reasoning, and volition. Few doubt the importance of the spiritual, but its substance is often ill-defined yielding more to religious belief and emotion than rational validation. Its entwinement with monotheistic belief appears to limit its more widespread application. Practically, the question is how the spiritual functions to expand and clarify our knowledge of …

Helping Leaders Grow Up: Vertical Leadership Development In Practice, Hannah E. Jones, Julie A. Chesley, Terri Egan

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

This research reinforces arguments for the use of adult vertical development theory to transform traditional leadership development practices to prepare leaders for the volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world. Vertical leadership development strategies and practices were assessed in fifteen large organizations. Multiple factors impacted implementation of vertical development practices. The primary factor was the overall leadership development mindset (the organization’s learning strategy and its theory of individual change). Secondary factors include senior leader engagement, space for openness and vulnerability, capability and experience of practitioners, alignment in business processes, and expanded understanding of risk-taking. Our results illustrate that accelerating leadership …

What Do We Really Mean By Good Leadership?, Tom Karp

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

The article discusses the concept of good leadership. According to classical philosophy, good leadership requires voluntary followership towards good goals. It is argued that leaders in any case are rarely able to independently practice good leadership because of all the barriers and restrictions, such as environmental, organizational and personal obstacles. People are fallible; so are leaders. Also, many people and leaders themselves have too high expectations of what leadership can achieve. The answer to the question of what constitutes good leadership is that leadership should be “good enough”, without leaders lowering the requirements of how they treat other people or …

The Passion To Fly And To The Courage To Lead: The Saga Of Amelia Earhart – Leading Women Into Flight, Emilio F. Iodice

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

Truly a 20th Century leader, Amelia Earhart’s success was not only in breaking aviation records, but overcoming barriers for women. She set an example of courage, achievement, and not being afraid of envy, criticism, ignorance and indifference. Author Iodice explores this iconic figure in depth as a profound example of determination, commitment, and courage at a time where all societal expectations pointed to defeat and resignation.

Meaning Management: A Framework For Leadership Ontology, Muhittin Oral

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

Leadership is a multifaceted and complex subject of research and demands a sound ontological stance that guides studies for the development of more integrative leadership theories. In this paper, I propose the leadership ontology PVA (perception formation – value creation – achievement realization) and associate it with the two existing leadership ontologies: TRIPOD (leader – member – shared goals) and DAC (direction – alignment – commitment). The leadership ontology PVA, based on a new theory called “meaning management,” consists of three circularly supporting functions: cognitive function to form perception, creative function to generate value, and communicative function to …

Rebuilding Of The Temple And Renewal Of Hope: Leadership Lessons From Zerubbabel, Ezra, And Nehemiah, Hershey H. Friedman, Paul J. Herskovitz

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

The past three decades have been witness to a nascent but compelling body of literature on lessons in leadership for business derived from biblical narratives. The aim of this paper is to advance that effort. Specifically, this study considers the leadership of Zerubbabel, the governor of Judah, who built the Second Temple on the ruins of the First. When he arrived in Judah from Babylonia, the walls of Jerusalem were breached and the entire country was filled with people hostile to constructing the Temple. One of the mysteries of the Bible is the disappearance of Zerubbabel from the biblical record. …