E. Improvement, Change and Innovation

This theme examines modern development in quality improvement, change and innovation and how this is affecting leadership. Complimenting the earlier theme that examined management of performance and knowledge we can study how such activities are not static. Change, the drive to continuously improve and the importance of innovation all reshape the art of management and leadership.

Organisations are traditionally risk averse. So have the resulting leadership styles and practices. Certainty and stability in large organisations has been achieved through routinised procedures and practices that limit risk within known processes. Mature organisations also develop core or dominant practices that often mask an inability for the organisation to innovate or develop new business activities.

A resistance to quality or change and structural inertia has resulted in both academic literature and real world practices having to propose new models for leadership that embrace change and the development of responsive practices. In this theme we will study how competitiveness is now being interwoven with a continuous search for improvement, responsiveness and agility. Throughout the topics within the theme we will analyse why and explore how organisations are moving towards the paradigm of leadership encouraging generative change, rather than adaptive practices.

Our study will focus how leadership and management is critical where the prevailing paradigm is no longer how we build in continuous improvement, but how we construct organisational visions and systems able to deliver responsiveness at increased speed while at all time satisfying customer needs.