Leadership Commons^™

Gender And Entrepreneurial Success: Examining The Relationships Among Risk Aversion, Loss Aversion, Risk Propensity, And Venture Performance, Kara Mcalister

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Gender disparities in entrepreneurship persist despite increased participation by women entrepreneurs. Traditional research has attributed these disparities to gender differences in risk-taking behavior, with women entrepreneurs typically characterized as more risk-averse. However, recent evidence suggests this oversimplifies a complex phenomenon and may reinforce harmful stereotypes. This study examined the relationships among risk aversion, loss aversion, risk propensity, and venture performance for male and female entrepreneurs, while considering moderating effects of industry gender-type and previous experience.

A quantitative cross-sectional design was employed with 157 entrepreneurs (93 female, 64 male) recruited from entrepreneurial organizations. Risk aversion was measured using the Domain-Specific Risk-Taking …

From Pencil To Pixel: How Leadership Shapes Organizational Responses To Competence-Destroying Technological Change, Jennifer Underwood

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This dissertation examines how managerial leadership enables organizations to overcome inertia during competence-destroying technological change through a historical comparative case analysis of the animation industry's transition from hand-drawn to computer-generated imagery (CGI) between 1980-2000. Drawing on archival data from Disney, Pixar, and Don Bluth Studios, I identify three distinct leadership approaches—pioneering, bridging, and preserving—that differently influenced how workforces adjusted their views of identity, process, and change. These adjustments led to three different outcomes: transformative integration, constrained adoption, and entrenched resistance. This research makes three theoretical contributions and develops a novel framework that explains how leadership can constrain or enable transformation, …

Like Footprints In The Sand: How Founders Imprint Organizational Culture Through Nonverbal Cue Signaling, Dirk M. Roskam

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Despite growing recognition of the significance of founders’ behaviors in shaping organizational culture, limited research has explored how founders’ non-verbal cues (NVCs) imprint culture during a venture’s formative stages. This qualitative case study examines how a founder’s NVCs, ranging from physical environment design to gestures and demeanor, are interpreted by employees and contribute to the imprinting of organizational culture. Drawing on imprinting theory, signaling theory, and the Organizational Culture Profile (OCP), the study triangulates data from semi-structured interviews, a focus group, and a literature review. Findings reveal that employees interpret 24 salient NVCs, grouped into themes of environmental values, people-centric …

Transforming Childhood Adversity Into Executive Excellence: Impact On Firm Performance, Kimberly Byars

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Many successful business leaders have overcome difficult childhoods, yet little research has examined how early hardships might actually contribute to leadership effectiveness. This study investigated whether CEOs who experienced childhood adversity can transform these difficult experiences into strengths that improve their companies' performance.

The research surveyed 165 business owners across two groups: general business owners and automotive dealership owners. Participants answered questions about their childhood experiences, their ability to grow from trauma, and various psychological traits like grit, mental toughness, resilience, and growth mindset. Company performance data was also collected.

The findings challenge conventional wisdom that difficult childhoods necessarily harm …

Organizational Metamorphosis: When Artificial Intelligence Transforms Companies Into New Economic Life Forms, Allan M. Glass

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Traditional theories of organizational change fall short in explaining how artificial intelligence (AI) transforms organizations. This grounded theory study, based on interviews with 34 organizational leaders, identifies a novel phenomenon: organizational metamorphosis - the irreversible transformation of organizations into fundamentally new entities through deep integration with AI as a cognitive partner.

The metamorphosis process unfolds in three phases. Individual Awakening occurs when leaders experience powerful interactions with AI, prompting a rapid shift from skepticism to advocacy. Once a critical mass of leaders undergo this shift, it initiates Organizational Restructuring, characterized by reimagined work design, boundary dissolution, and altered temporal rhythms. …

The Dark Side Of Great Lmx Relationships: Why Your Best Employees Might Be Burning Out, Ryan Toole

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While workplace relationships are widely considered beneficial for employee well-being, a paradox emerges when employees with the strongest leader relationships experience burnout despite receiving excellent support. This contradiction suggests that these very same relationships may create psychological pressure to reciprocate support and result in employee burnout. Drawing on Social Exchange Theory and Conservation of Resources theory, I examine whether felt obligation resulting from Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) relationships contributes to employee burnout across the full spectrum of LMX quality relationships. I argue that LMX quality creates felt obligation to reciprocate leader support. This obligation, in turn, depletes emotional resources and leads …

Ceo Career Variety And Corporate Entrepreneurship, Shuang Liu

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Corporate entrepreneurship enables more nimble, responsive, effective and efficient corporate response to increasingly demanding competitive conditions. To fill the gap in the literature concerning the role of CEO experiences on CE, this study, based on upper echelons and ambidexterity theory, examines the influence of CEO career variety on CE by classifying CEO industry and function experiences into four categories: Functional Orchestrators, Focused Experts, Industry Navigators, and Holistic Polymaths. Utilizing a dataset with 22,544 observations from the S&P 1500 index, spanning from 1992 to 2024, ANCOVA analyses are used to assess the impact of each CEO type on CE. The findings …