Van 9-11 december organiseren Nick Bloom (Stanford), John van Reenen (LSE) en Raffaella Sadun (Harvard) de Stanford Empirical Management conference. Deze auteurs zijn onder meer bekend van hun studies gebaseerd op de World Management survey naar de kwaliteit van het management en de relatie met economische prestaties.

In the LEAD presenteert op deze conferentie een paper over de effecten van de financiële crisis op leiderschapsgedrag, op basis van het samenwerkingsproject met de Hay Group. De samenvatting van de onderzoeksresultaten:

THE FINANCIAL CRISIS AND DIRECTIVE LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOR: A MULTI-LEVEL PERSPECTIVE ON MANAGEMENT PRACTICES

Harry Garretsen, Janka I. Stoker & Dimitrios Soudis, University of Groningen, Faculty of Economics and Business

Abstract

Using a unique data set on management practices, we analyze the impact of the 2008 financial crisis on management practices for over 20,000 managers in 980 organizations across 36 countries. Based on the threat-rigidity literature from organizational theory, we test for 2 main hypotheses. First, we expect that across firms and countries and controlling for managerial variation, the 2008 financial crisis led to an increase of directive leadership. The second hypothesis is that the strength of the impact of the 2008 financial crisis on directive leadership is expected to depend on organizational and country characteristics, and thus to be context specific. We find confirmation that the crisis went along with a significant increase of directive leadership. We also show that the effect of the crisis on directive leadership is context specific. In particular, organizations in the manufacturing sector and/or organizations in countries with a high degree of power distance show a clear cut increase in directive leadership.