Robert E. Quinn

University of Michigan | U-M · Department of Management & Organizations

https://hbr.org/2019/12/how-one-person-can-change-the-conscience-of-an-organization

How can organizational researchers and practitioners creatively work with and reconcile core paradoxes facing organizations in the 21st century? Within the writings of the world’s spiritual traditions there are varying ways of using the creative imagination to: 1) work with the inner worlds of possibility which are present, though often latent, in...

This symposium will explore the research and conceptual terrain that defines exceptional positive deviance: what it means to be “extraordinary” – and how it is achieved. Specifically, we will consider how to characterize extraordinary performances and behaviors, and what factors help account for them. A substantial diversity exists in the way “extr...

This paper is about extraordinary performance in organizations. Our specific focus is unusual. We examine a context with which many readers are deeply familiar, the public school classroom. We consider the work of highly effective teachers and generate a framework of hypotheses about how they get extraordinary results. These hypotheses may contrast...

Capitalism is at a crossroads and the challenges for management in the 21st century are manifold. From climate change, to increasing inequity, social exclusion, poverty and decreasing social trust in business, many agree that managers are witnessing a perfect storm. While many scholars posit that business needs to be rethought and reenacted, in thi...

We develop a theory of how the intersection of business goals and the pursuit of "higher purpose" — something that produces a non-pecuniary social benefit valued by the principal and the agent — affects economic outcomes. Two types of principals — those pursuing only wealth maximization and those pursuing both wealth and a higher purpose — are cons...

The chapters in this book have introduced a wealth of insights and developments born of the new and emerging discipline called Positive Organizational Scholarship (POS). Collectively the chapters chart exciting and relatively unmapped territory in the study of behavior, processes, structures, and dynamics in organizations. The objective of this fin...

Most organizations strive for improved performance, yet often these efforts fail to generate the expected results. Rather than focusing on specific tools and techniques for increasing efficiency, this research presents three studies that examine patterns in the way that employees perceive and enact change. Each study highlights a different pattern...

Research in managerial and executive leadership recognizes the importance of behavioral complexity, particularly for addressing the competing demands and roles expected of managerial leaders. Though some empirical research on behavioral complexity exists, further progress requires a more rigorous instrument to measure behavioral repertoire. We desi...

Moneyball (Lewis, 2003) is a book about baseball. The book describes how a small-market Major League Baseball team, the Oakland Athletics, has been able to compete with large-market teams by being innovative in a tradition-laden industry. However, when read through a business management lens, one discerns that this baseball book, in fact, has gener...

Moneyball (Lewis, 2003) is a book about baseball. The book describes how a small-market Major League Baseball team, the Oakland Athletics, has been able to compete with large-market teams by being innovative in a tradition-laden industry. However, when read through a business management lens, one discerns that this baseball book, in fact, has gener...

'I recommend this book to anyone wishing to understand and practice leadership. Leadership is often treated in mutually-exclusive categories, such as Theory X vs. Theory Y, managers vs. leaders, transactional vs. transformative, initiation vs. consideration, etc. The Competing Values Framework presented in this book transcends these dualities. It f...

The article interviews Robert E. Quinn, M.E. Tracy Collegiate Professor in Organization Behavior and Human Resource Management at the University of Michigan, on his thoughts about the relationship between teaching and the notion of entering the fundamental state of leadership. Quinn states that if people want to make the world a better place, they...

We present a theory of how individuals compose their reflected best-self portrait, which we define as a changing self-knowledge structure about who one is at one's best. We posit that people compose their reflected best-self portrait through social experiences that draw on intrapsychic and interpersonal resources. By weaving to- gether microlevel t...

When we do our best work as leaders, we don't imitate others. Rather, we draw on our own values and capabilities. We enter what author Robert Quinn calls the fundamental state of leadership. This is a frame of mind we tend to adopt when facing a significant challenge: a promotion opportunity, the risk of professional failure, a serious illness, a d...

Most feedback accentuates the negative. During formal employee evaluations, discussions invariably focus on "opportunities for improvement," even if the overall evaluation is laudatory. No wonder most executives--and their direct reports--dread them. Traditional, corrective feedback has its place, of course; every organization must filter out faili...

Excellent leadership means doing things that are not normal. Peer Reviewed http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/35210/1/97_ftp.pdf

The concept of paradox has received increasing attention in the study of leadership, but these new ideas have not yet had much influence on empirical leadership research. This paper examines the development of these ideas in the literature and attempts to clarify what influence they might have on empirical research. One general implication of the p...

This study examines the relationship between psychological empowerment and leadership. Empowered supervisors are hypothesized to be innovative, upward influencing, and inspirational and less focused on monitoring to maintain the status quo. Tested on a sample of mid-level supervisors from a Fortune 500 organization, the hypotheses were largely supp...

This study examines the relationship between psychological empowerment and leadership. Empowered supervisors are hypothesized to be innovative, upward influencing, and inspirational and less focused on monitoring to maintain the status quo. Tested on a sample of mid-level supervisors from a Fortune 500 organization, the hypotheses were largely supp...

Recent analyses of organizational change suggest a growing concern with the tempo of change, understood as the characteristic rate, rhythm, or pattern of work or activity. Episodic change is contrasted with continuous change on the basis of implied metaphors of organizing, analytic frameworks, ideal organizations, intervention theories, and roles f...

Recent analyses of organizational change suggest a growing concern with the tempo of change, understood as the characteristic rate, rhythm, or pattern of work or activity. Episodic change is contrasted with continuous change on the basis of implied metaphors of organizing, analytic frameworks, ideal organizations, intervention theories, and roles f...

Explores the reasons that implementation of empowerment programs for employees often proves difficult in large organizations. The authors present 7 critical questions aimed at helping executives confront the challenges of implementing employee empowerment. These questions are: (1) What do we mean when we say we want to empower people? (2) What are...

This reprinted article originally appeared in Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 1997, Vol 49(1), 25-34. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 1997-30041-003.) Offers a framework of the characteristics of the responsive organization. A responsive organization is one in which structures and procedure...

Offers a framework of the characteristics of the responsive organization. A responsive organization is one in which structures and procedures enhance the organization's ability to take advantage of the changes in the environment. Responsiveness, in this case, is more than just being reactive; it means that an organization is able to anticipate chan...

Reports an error in the original article by R. E. Quinn and L. St. Clair ( Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice & Research , 1997 [Win], 49 [1], 25–34). Corrections to the text on pages 25 and 31, to Figure 2 on page 32, to Figure 3 on page 33, and to a reference on page 34 are provided. The corrected article is reprinted in full in this issue....

Reports an error in the original article by R. E. Quinn and L. St. Clair ( Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice & Research , 1997 [Win], 49 [1], 25–34). Corrections to the text on pages 25 and 31, to Figure 2 on page 32, to Figure 3 on page 33, and to a reference on page 34 are provided. The corrected article is reprinted in full in this issue....

Offers a framework of the characteristics of the responsive organization. A responsive organization is one in which structures and procedures enhance the organization's ability to take advantage of the changes in the environment. Responsiveness, in this case, is more than just being reactive; it means that an organization is able to anticipate chan...

The article describes a field study of a large-scale management development program designed to stimulate middle managerial change. The development of a change typology suggests that middle managers are capable of making both transformational and transactional change targeted at themselves, their work unit, and their organization. Those with low le...

This paper explores the paradoxes and competing values inherent in leadership behavior. Scales for eight leadership roles are developed, providing empirical data about 176 executives. The article contributes to the theoretical understanding of the paradoxes of leadership and introduces the concept of behavioral complexity to understand leader behav...

Although myths have been comprehensively examined at a cultural or macro level in organizational studies, they have received little attention at an individual level of analysis. This article uses Campbell's "hero's journey" as an analogy for understanding managerial performance myths. The article begins with a review of the literature on individual...

50 responses from members of a national professional training and development association were examined for common themes concerning nonsexual love relationships at work; questionnaire items were developed from these responses and sent to 1,709 US residents who had participated in the executive education program at a university business school. 569...

Problems with evaluating management information systems' (MIS) effectiveness are due to the lack of an MIS effectiveness theory. This article draws on the Competing Values Framework to develop a framework of MIS effectiveness which links MIS characteristics to organizational effectiveness via management activity support. This framework is based in...

This paper develops a model of executive leadership consisting of four competing roles: Vision Setter, Motivator, Analyzer, and Task Master. These four roles are operationalized and hypotheses are then tested concerning their relationships to three dimensions of firm performance using data collected from a sample of 916 top managers. Results sugges...

Communication specialists have long been interested in analyzing messages. More recently, they have stressed the need for evaluative tools that account for situational ex pectations and constraints. Drawing from the literature on organizational and managerial effectiveness, we constructed an empirical model applicable to presenta tional communicati...

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/35994/2/b2034888.0001.001.pdf http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/35994/1/b2034888.0001.001.txt

The book offers a full range of practical guidelines, charts, and self-assessment exercises designed to help business leaders overcome blocks to high performance and develop the skills needed to prosper in today's business environment. These tools will help managers understand and balance the polarities that are part of every organization; develop...

Practice and theory are seldom integrated in systematic and productive ways. Management education is one area that suffers from this problem, and it seems that much progress could be made by attending to this issue. This article describes the development and implementation of a theoretically organized, skill-based curriculum developed for practicin...