Leadership, Change and Responsibility

This book is written from the authors's teaching experience within MBA programs, where the focus has been on the realities of the students and their striving to be better able to succeed in those realities. This has lead to the combining of certain issues, which present themselves to the manager as dimensions of complex problems. Those issues are traditionally discussed within separate academic disciplines, in which the authors are well-versed, which are addressed once the starting-point has been found in managerial reality.

There is a reason why these topics present themselves to the manager in unison: they do interact, in theory as well as in practical reality. Those issues are not just interesting to ponder over, but they require solutions and it is especially in the solutions that they have to connect. Leadership is an increasingly important subject because of the challenges which require leadership of some sort. Those challenges are more often than not characterized by change or the need for change. Change can be something that happens to someone, or something which is conducted and benefited from; the later case is where people show leadership in being on top of the change. On top of the change, one has to benefit from what is not in change, such as the capabilities and competencies that form the building blocks of a new strategy.

Strategy and operations are increasingly expected, both by forces outside of the organisation as well as by forces from within it, to act from a sense of responsibility. Increasingly, various elements in society call for such responsibility, while also issues have arisen which involve management in far reaching challenges, even to life itself on this planet. This closes the circle for this book, as those challenges require leadership of a type not common in the past.