Decisiveness

Junichiro Ishida

No 08E002, OSIPP Discussion Paper from Osaka School of International Public Policy, Osaka University

Abstract: This paper investigates how the presence of strong leadership influences an organization's ability to acquire and process information. The key concept is the leader's decisiveness. A decisive leader can make a bold move in response to a large change in the underlying landscape, whereas an indecisive leader biases her position excessively towards the status quo. An organization led by an indecisive leader needs to accumulate unrealistically strong evidence before it changes the course of action, thereby hindering the organization's ability to adapt to a changing environment. The analysis identifies several attributes and environmental factors that impair one's decisiveness and illuminates how leadership emerges or fades in organizations. The paper also sheds light on a classical issue of whether leaders can be made, rather than are born: our answer is partially `yes' in that mutual trust among members of the organization is a critical ingredient of effective leadership.

Keywords: Decisiveness; Transformational leadership; Charismatic leadership; Information acquisition; Career concerns. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D23 D82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2008-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe and nep-cdm
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osp:wpaper:08e002

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