The main question that guided the thinking behind this book can be stated as follows: What kind of leadership behavior must executives of technology-driven organizations display to spur performance excellence? To address this question the authors conducted videotaped interviews of executives from 65 organizations- including General Electric, Qualcomm, The Vanguard Group, and Barclays Global Investors - to identify common behaviors and traits that lead to organizational success. In addition to the interviews, they surveyed the executives' followers to evaluate the leadership and organizational culture to examine successful executive leadership from multiple reference points necessarily require a commanding presence, a genius-level IQ, expertise, or even a strong command and control system. At the heart of outstanding strategic leadership was an ability to envision a strategy for taking the raw inputs provided by their environments (e.g., people, technology, ideas, opportunities) and then to weave them into an integrated pattern or system of social, technical and intellectual resources that ultimately produce dramatically higher levels of organizational success factors. The book includes dozens of stories and narratives from the executive leaders to offer readers an in-depth look at what constitutes effective strategy-focused leadership in technology-driven organizations.

The late Boas Shamir made a significant contribution to the development of novel theories and frameworks in the leadership field. He became one of the most influential figures in leadership research, and left behind him an outstanding body of work. Leadership Now: Reflections on the Legacy of Boas Shamir incorporates some of Boas Shamir's most classic and significant works, and includes contributions from a group that represent the most influential leaders in the field, up and coming scholars, as well as students of Boas Shamir. The first part of the book focuses on Shamir's most influential work on the motivational effects of charismatic leaders. The second part follows with work on the charismatic relationship; reflecting the shift of Boas Shamir's work in the later parts of his career from a leader-centric focus to a closer examination of the relational aspects of leadership and the major effects followers have on the leadership process. The third part includes samples of this work on the role of the contextual factors in leadership. This volume aims to preserve Boas Shamir's legacy and inspire further generations of leadership scholars.

Research into leadership often focuses on standard business organizations. We know little about these proposed models apply to leadership in other contexts, such as the military, sports, film and television industries or religious organizations. Here, we deliberately reverse the idea of investigating how standard models fit into non-standard contexts; we want to know what leadership lessons can be drawn from compelling yet understudied contexts. Research and theory from four types of contexts are presented: Those characterized by high levels of competition, such as sport, those in which the generation of innovation and creativity is crucial e.g. film and television, high-risk contexts such as the military and aviation, and those where fostering the well-being of others is at the core. To summarize, as much as we can learn about leadership from standard business organizations and apply it to unusual contexts, the same applies the other way round: Idiosyncrasies of compelling contexts teach us fundamental lessons about leadership which are also applicable to other settings.

The main question that guided the thinking behind this book can be stated as follows: What kind of leadership behavior must executives of technology-driven organizations display to spur performance excellence? To address this question the authors conducted videotaped interviews of executives from 65 organizations- including General Electric, Qualcomm, The Vanguard Group, and Barclays Global Investors - to identify common behaviors and traits that lead to organizational success. In addition to the interviews, they surveyed the executives' followers to evaluate the leadership and organizational culture to examine successful executive leadership from multiple reference points. necessarily require a commanding presence, a genius-level IQ, expertise, or even a strong command and control system. At the heart of outstanding strategic leadership was an ability to envision a strategy for taking the raw inputs provided by their environments (e.g., people, technology, ideas, opportunities) and then to weave them into an integrated pattern or system of social, technical and intellectual resources that ultimately produce dramatically higher levels of organizational success factors. The book includes dozens of stories and narratives from the executive leaders to offer readers an in-depth look at what constitutes effective strategy-focused leadership in technology-driven organizations.