Executives in Science, Business and Society 3

EXECUTIVES 

IN SCIENCE, 

BUSINESS 

AND SOCIETY 

ON THE EXECUTIVES AS SCIENTISTS 

MOVEMENT 

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT FOR LEADERS 

TO LOOK INTO THEIR COLLECTIVE 

HISTORIES? 

HOW DOES THE UNSAID SHAPE 

DECISION-MAKING IN THE 

BOARDROOM? 

CRACKING THE CODE ON 

WEALTH PRESERVATION 

PAGE 

1 

BUSINESS 

IN SOCIETY

PAGE 

2 

4 INTRODUCTION 

Svetlana Khapova and Niki Konijn 

6 

8 

ON FINDING PURPOSE 

IN A COMPLEX WORLD 

CRACKING THE CODE 

ON WEALTH PRESERVATION: 

It is not about money 

11 LEADERSHIP 

AND BOARDS 

12 

HOW DOES THE UNSAID 

SHAPE DECISION-MAKING 

IN THE BOARDROOM? 

19 

21 

24 

26 

ON SIMPLE RULES 

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT FOR LEADERS TO 

LOOK INTO THEIR COLLECTIVE HISTORIES? 

PAST HEROES, FUTURE LOSERS: 

Critical leader behaviours 

and transformation in 

the banking industry 

ARE ALL LEADERS RISK TAKERS 

BY DEFINITION? 

28 INDIVIDUALS 

31 

THE DIMINISHING 

RETURN 

OF HAPPINESS: 

What if the good life 

doesn’t feel 

that good, anymore? 

EMPOWERING PEOPLE 

IN ORGANZIATIONS 

EMOTIONS 

IN THE BOARDROOM: 

Handling the hot 

and cold of strategic 

decision making 

16 

32 

34 

PERSONAL ENERGY AT WORK, 

A SOURCE FOR SUCCES 

COLO 

PHON 

EDITORIAL STAFF 

Svetlana Khapova 

Niki Konijn 

CONTACT 

Amsterdam Busines Research Institute (ABRI) 

VU School of Business and Economics 

De Boelelaan 1105, 1081HV Amsterdam 

Room HG 4A-91 / 020-5985667 

s.n.khapova@vu.nl 

n.m.konijn@vu.nl 

www.abri.vu.nl 

www.abri.vu.nl/executives 

Amsterdam in Science, 

Business and Society, vol. 3 

©Vrije Universiteit 

Amsterdam 

ISSN: 2405-7878

36 

TRANSFER OF TRAINING: 

The Achilles heel of 

the training process 

41INSIGHTS 

42 

39 

RESEARCH CENTRES 

HOW CAN THE IT FUNCTION ADAPT 

TO THE RISE OF DIGITAL ECOSYSTEMS 

45 THE 

DARK 

SIDE 

OF LEAN 

54 

SHOOTING FOR 

GOALS IN 

COACHING: 

Are we missing 

the goal? 

57 

53 

COACHING 

PROFESSIONAL 

IDENTITY 

DEVELOPMENT 

OF EXECUTIVE 

COACHES 

59 PUBLICATIONS 

60 BOOKS 

48 RECENT 

DISSERTATIONS 

50 

A CONVERSATION: The value 

of corporate partnerships 

52 EMOTIONAL 

LEGITIMACY 

PHOTOGRAPY 

ABRI, contributing authors, 

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 

Shutterstock 

CONCEPT, DESIGN AND LAYOUT 

COPPER DESIGN, Houten 

PRINT 

NPN drukkers, Breda 

ABRI - Amsterdam Business Research Institute

ON 

THE ‘EXECUTIVES AS 

SCIENTISTS’ 

MOVEMENT 

Dear Readers, 

PAGE 

4 

You are holding a very special issue of the journal ‘Executives in 

Science, Business and Society’. It is born in response to countless 

discussions about what academic institutions can do to bridge 

business and science. Various academic institutions have come 

up with their own interpretations of how to go about this. Vrije 

Universiteit Amsterdam’s School of Business and Economics has 

also developed several approaches, including the launch of new 

executive education programmes and in-company leadership 

development projects. Additionally, there are our start-up 

and scale-up initiatives carried out in partnership with Zuidas 

multinationals. One business and science project of which we are 

particularly proud, but received little attention over the past years, 

is VU’s Executive PhD programme in Business and Management 

Studies. This special issue of the journal is fully dedicated to it. 

In 2014, the Amsterdam Business Research Institute (ABRI) at the 

School of Business and Economics launched the Executive PhD 

programme: This is a 4-year, structured PhD training programme 

that equips professionals and executives with the knowledge and 

tools to conduct high-impact academic research. Although the 

programme targets an executive audience, it is not practically 

oriented like a DBA or MBA programme. In other words it shares 

the same rigour and objectives as ABRI’s renowned full-time PhD 

programme, the only differences being that the classroom consists 

of executives and the training offered is on a part-time schedule 

with more structure and guidance. 

The results stemming from the Executive PhD programme have 

been surprising. What started with the simple goal of helping 

executives finalise their PhD projects, has grown into an 

international community of changemakers who bring science 

to practice through their research journeys. Today, our 

community consists of more than 70 participants who live

editorial IN SCIENCE, 

BUSINESS 

AND SOCIETY 

and work in countries such as Armenia, Austria, Germany, Hungary, 

Japan, Latvia, Netherlands, Oman, Romania, Russia, Spain, 

Switzerland, USA, and counting. We are extremely proud of this 

international community of ‘Executives as Scientists’. It is for these 

reasons that we also have chosen to rename our research journal 

‘Executives in Science, Business and Society’ (replacing ‘Amsterdam 

in Science, Business and Society’) and focus on the Executive PhD 

programme in Business and Management Studies in this special 

issue. 

Given the calibre of our ‘Executives as Scientists’ and their research, 

we decided to share some our insights and discoveries about this 

unique research community. One such finding is that executives 

work on highly innovative, novel, and societally relevant topics that 

contribute to the domains of leadership, strategy, management, 

marketing, entrepreneurship, and more. Executives’ many years 

of work experience allows them to identify unique topics that drive 

their scholarly investigations. When compared with our more 

junior PhD candidates, who may initially be more methodological, 

the Executive PhDs seem better positioned to make theoretical 

contributions. Furthermore, our experience shows that experienced 

executives are often already prolific writers, which may be partly 

explained by their passion and commitment to their topics. 

We are also learning that ‘Executives as Scientists’ is becoming 

an important movement within Amsterdam Zuidas. Zuidas not 

only functions as the hub for many multinational headquarters 

based in the Netherlands, but it also serves as a growing learning 

community. Changing how multinationals do business, and how 

they serve society, is not simple. It requires a multidisciplinary 

perspective, complex thinking, and scientific rigour in order to 

consider all relevant evidence and account for all applicable 

stakeholders—all of which is taking place at Zuidas. We are 

very proud of what the ‘Executives as Scientists’ community has 

demonstrated they can accomplish within this context. 

When looking towards the future, we hope that this publication 

marks the beginning of this societally relevant project. The global 

pandemic has only intensified a need for more evidence-based 

leadership. Scientists no longer sit in their ivory towers at the 

university, instead collaborate across institutional boundaries. 

Not only business schools, but also businesses are invited to join 

science-based collaborations. 

It is our sincere hope that you enjoy reading this special issue, and 

that you too will be inspired to join our ‘Executives as Scientists’ 

movement! 

PAGE 

5 

Another discovery is that executives’ scientific research helps 

them professionalise and advance their areas of work while also 

innovating within their organisations. Indeed, some of our Executive 

PhD candidates have become influential speakers in their areas 

of expertise while others have switched careers and become 

academics. What they share is their ability to ask highly relevant 

questions and approach issues from a complex perspective. We 

strongly believe that this enterprising mindset is exactly what 

propels business and society forward. 

Prof. dr. Svetlana Khapova 

Head of the Department of Management & Organisation 

Programme Director ABRI Executive PhD programme 

Niki Konijn 

Head of Operations at the Department of Management & Organisation 

Programme Coordinator ABRI Executive PhD programme 


ON FINDING 

PURPOSE 

Luc Glasbeek is an assistant 

professor in the Department of 

Management & Organization. 

From 1995–2010, he held several 

roles in MNOs in the areas of 

IT system development, project 

management, organisational 

learning, and business operations. 

Between 2010 and 2019, he 

worked as an entrepreneur, 

focusing on professional services 

delivery. In 2015, Luc joined the 

ABRI Executive PhD Program; 

he defended his dissertation 

successfully in May 2020. 

IN A COMPLEX 

WORLD 

DR. LUC GLASBEEK 

VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT AMSTERDAM 

PAGE 

6 

Society cannot function without 

human collaboration. For 

example, producing just a 

classic, yellow pencil requires 

graphite mining , clay mining, 

the transport, mixing and 

heating of graphite and clay; 

wood harvesting, cutting, 

waxing and impregnation; 

pencil assembly, packaging, 

marketing, transportation and 

distribution; all before the 

product is even displayed in a 

shop. By the time a child buys 

the pencil and starts drawing, 

it will have passed through 

the hands of countless people 

collaborating, managing, 

organising, leading, and 

venturing out (Friedman, 

1980). Thus, it is impossible 

for even a simple pencil to 

come into existence without 

management, organisation, 

and entrepreneurship. 

Although these behaviours 

are integral to our existence 

as a human species, they are 

understood quite differently 

(and often poorly) among 

management practitioners and 

researchers. To date, debates 

continue around what kind 

of management is ‘best’ for 

different organisational forms, 

or even whether management is 

necessary altogether. 

Furthermore, our perceived 

understanding decreases 

substantially as the complexity 

of what we aim to accomplish 

proliferates. Envisage, for 

instance, the managerial 

challenges of a human mission 

to Mars - which I hope we will 

witness in the coming decades 

- or, more contemporaneously, 

the development of a COVID-19 

vaccine that is safe, effective, 

affordable and extensively 

deployable. Teasing apart the 

Gordian knot of the necessary 

management, organisation, and 

entrepreneurship - whilst better 

understanding its component 

strands - presents a daunting 

task for scholars. However, 

it must be done, particularly 

for the benefit of subsequent 

generations. 

Young people, more 

than anyone else, face 

unprecedented, compound 

global challenges such as 

poverty, resource scarcity and 

environmental degradation. 

Addressing these issues will 

not only require a supreme 

scientific understanding of the 

workings of nature (i.e., the 

hard sciences) but also demand 

new and sophisticated forms 

of management, organisation, 

and entrepreneurship: business 

studies. 

History has shown that, even in 

the most scientifically advanced 

environments, a lack of effective 

management practices can lead 

to disastrous outcomes. NASA 

is a case in point. In the 1990s, 

its Hubble Space Telescope 

was one of the most advanced 

scientific instruments ever built, 

which has positively and radically 

advanced our understanding 

of the universe. Nonetheless, 

its first production version was 

expensive and a total failure, 

which scholars have attributed 

to a range of managerial issues 

(Capers & Lipton, 1993; Quinn & 

Walsh, 1994).

key perspectives IN SCIENCE, 

BUSINESS 

AND SOCIETY 

Likewise, when Richard 

Feynman, a Nobel Laureate 

in Physics, investigated the 

1986 Space Shuttle Challenger 

disaster, he found that 

“the management of NASA 

exaggerates the reliability 

of its product, to the point of 

fantasy” (Feynman, 1986, p. 

284). Of course, the issue was 

that management was bearing 

enormous responsibilities, 

and thus overlooked the 

necessity to have the checks 

and balances in place to 

develop a comprehensive view 

of the actual risks involved, 

risks which they had so 

dramatically underestimated 

(Vaughan, 1997). Why was that? 

Business researchers should 

methodologically examine such 

tough questions and pass on 

their knowledge to university 

students before they join the 

labour force. 

This basic operating model 

came to life in the last year of 

my doctoral studies when 

I started supervising masters 

students with their final thesis. 

Over the previous four years, 

I had steadily internalised 

an array of academic tools, 

concepts, frameworks, and 

values that I could now draw 

on in my conversations with 

students. However, I only 

realised how valuable my 

academic knowledge and 

skills had become, especially 

when coupled with extensive 

practical experience, when I 

started engaging with students, 

who are typically in their early 

20s. This was a profound 

experience that coincided with 

my formation of a new identity 

as an academic (Conroy & 

O’Leary-Kelly, 2014). Aside 

from my rather intuitive (yet 

admittedly vague) motivation 

that doctoral research is 

“interesting,” I had finally found 

a clear and compelling reason 

REFERENCES 

Capers, R. S. and E. Lipton (1993). 

Hubble error: Time, money and 

millionths of an inch. The Academy 

of Management Executive 7(4): 41. 

Conroy, S. A. and A. M. O’Leary- 

Kelly (2014). Letting go and 

moving on: Work-related identity 

loss and recovery. Academy of 

Management Review 39(1): 67-87. 

Feynman, R. (1986). Report of 

the presidential commission on 

the Space Shuttle Challenger 

accident. (Appendix F). 

for conducting PhD research: 

To use my newfound knowledge, 

skills, and ways of thinking 

to help other people become 

better professionals and 

researchers. And that feels 

pretty awesome! 

Friedman, M. (1980). I, pencil. 

Free to Choose, PBS. 01. 

Quinn, R. E. and J. P. Walsh 

(1994). Understanding 

organizational tragedies: The case 

of the Hubble Space Telescope. 

The Academy of Management 

Executive 8(1): 62. 

Vaughan, D. (1997). The Challenger 

launch decision: Risky technology, 

culture, and deviance at NASA. 

Chicago, University of Chicago 

Press. 

PAGE 

7 


PAGE 

8 

CRACKING THE 

CODE ON 

WEALTH PRESERVATION: 

IT IS NOT ABOUT MONEYDR. MAARTEN DE GROOT 

VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT AMSTERDAM

key perspectives IN SCIENCE, 

BUSINESS 

AND SOCIETY 

The wealthy are 

heavily criticised 

and often find 

themselves the focus 

of discussion, debate, 

and controversy. In recent 

years, the public narrative 

on this topic has become 

deeply polarised. Research 

has shown that wealthy people 

derive most of their wealth 

from active ownership of family 

enterprises and are different 

from the stereotypical rich and 

famous as featured in popular 

lists. In effect, enterprise 

families have a major impact 

on our society, contributing 

significantly to global economic 

growth, employment, 

philanthropic capital, startup 

finance, technological 

innovation and even the 

performance of capital markets. 

Moreover, those families with 

a transgenerational orientation 

are likely to contribute even 

more to society and the 

economy. Given the public 

debate and the importance of 

such families to the economy, 

it seems counterintuitive that, 

in the field of family business 

research, where the family is 

the crucial variable, theoretically 

distinguishing family businesses 

from other firms, the literature 

has so far neglected the 

family itself as a constituent 

determinant, and has instead 

focused overwhelmingly on the 

business system. 

LESS THAN 15% OF 

THE FAMILIES IN THE 

FORBES 400 WERE 

STILL LISTED ONE 

GENERATION LATER. 

In my dissertation, I set out to 

study wealth preservation in 

enterprise families that share 

ownership of multiple assets 

(e.g., investments, real estate) 

and multiple entities (e.g., family 

businesses, family offices and/or 

family philanthropic foundations) 

across generations. I explore 

why so many enterprise families 

fail to secure transgenerational 

monetary prosperity. Several 

theoretical perspectives have 

contributed to our understanding 

of family business and wealth 

creation through business 

venturing. However, very little 

is known about how enterprise 

families preserve wealth, and, in 

particular, what happens at the 

familial level. 

MY RESEARCH LIFTS 

THE VEIL ON A HIGHLY 

SECRETIVE UNIT OF 

ANALYSIS. 

To explore this in more detail, 

I first conducted a conceptual, 

theoretical study from which 

three clear concepts emerged: 

family governance (how families 

make decisions together); family 

social capital (relationships 

and cohesion); and a nascent 

topic, the family office (an 

entity with the goal of wealth 

preservation). I subsequently 

opened a theoretical black 

box by conducting a qualitative 

exploratory study to investigate 

the origins of family social 

capital. My multi-case study 

focused on seven enterprise 

families with legacies going back 

more than 100 years - families 

with up to 300 members and 

assets worth billions of dollars. 

Next, I tested my findings with 

a quantitative empirical study 

and a moderated mediation 

framework. I contacted 1,020 

global enterprise families and 

worked with 175 of them. The 

oldest family enterprise dates 

back to the early 1700s, and the 

largest spans 12 branches and 

has more than 1,000 members. 

Gathering data was difficult 

(access), intrusive (privacy) 

and costly (travel). My 25-year 

experience as a strategist, board 

member, and CEO in the wealth 

management sector and my 

present positions as the CEO of 

a family office and co-chair of a 

global research institute enabled 

me to gain access to these 

families. 

REGARDLESS OF 

COUNTRY, TAX LAWS, 

OR ECONOMIC CYCLE, 

70% OF THE FAMILY 

ENTERPRISES FAIL. 

Regarding the issue of how 

enterprise families can 

preserve their wealth for 

multiple generations, this 

research makes three main 

theoretical contributions. First, 

my dissertation contributes to 

family business research by 

shifting the analysis from the 

family business to the family 

itself. Second, I theorise that 

collective family action towards 

wealth preservation is reinforced 

by effective family governance, 

substantial familial social capital 

and a family-office emphasis on 

non-financial services. Third, 

this research helps to unpack 

the black box of the origins of 

relationships within families and 

the role of family governance in 

social capital. 

WEALTH PRESERVATION 

COMES WITH A 

DIFFERENT SET OF 

CHALLENGES THAN 

GROWING A FAMILY 

BUSINESS. 

Based on these theoretical 

contributions, this dissertation 

also has several practical 

implications. Enterprise family 

wealth preservation requires 

collective action and, therefore, 

breakdowns in trust must be 

avoided. My findings emphasise 

the fact that enterprise families 

should develop strong decisionmaking 

capabilities and establish 

effective mechanisms for 

family governance. In addition, 

these families should develop 

high-quality family learning 

programmes to prepare the 

rising generation for their 

PAGE 

9 


‘I FEEL LIKE I AM 

PUT OVER MY FATHER’S 

KNEE, BEING SPANKED 

WITH ONE HAND 

AND FED CAKE 

WITH THE OTHER.’ 

(RISING-GENERATION ENTERPRISE-FAMILY MEMBER) 

‘I DO NOT KNOW 

IF HE IS GOING 

TO BE PRESIDENT, 

OR IN PRISON.’ 

(FIFTH-GENERATION ENTERPRISE-FAMILY 

COUNCILMEMBER) 

REFERENCES 

1. Habbershon, T. G., & Pistrui, 

J. (2002). Enterprising families 

domain: Family-influenced 

ownership groups in pursuit of 

transgenerational wealth. Family 

Business Review, 15(3), 223–237. 

2. Nason, R. S., Carney, M., Le Breton- 

Miller, I., & Miller, D. (2019). Who cares 

about socioemotional wealth? SEW and 

rentier perspectives on the one percent 

wealthiest business households. Journal of 

Family Business Strategy, 10(2), 144–158. 

3. White, B. (2017). What family firms need to 

ensure longevity. Retrieved October 21, 2019, from 

INSEAD website: https://knowledge.insead.edu/ 

family-business/what-family-firms-need-to-ensurelongevity-7751 

4. Williams, R. O., & Preisser, V. (2003). Preparing heirs: Five 

steps to a successful transition of family wealth and values. San 

Francisco: Robert D. Reed Publishers. 

PAGE 

10 

‘FAMILY TALENT WILL 

SHOW, BUT IDIOTS 

WILL BE IDIOTS.’ 

(FAMILY-OFFICE KEY EXECUTIVE, NON-FAMILY MEMBER) 

roles in the future-enterpriseowner 

group. Bolstering family 

identity and strengthening 

family members’ perceptions 

of belonging to the family social 

group further enhances collective 

family action to preserve wealth. 

The principles, programmes and 

entities associated with those 

structures, procedures, and 

behaviours have an important, 

positive impact on the enterprise 

family’s crucial social capital. The 

role of the single family office is 

instrumental in magnifying these 

effects and also in balancing 

the financial and non-financial 

considerations of the enterprise 

family. 

FROM SHIRTSLEEVES 

TO SHIRTSLEEVES IN 

THREE GENERATIONS. 

Many enterprise families have 

the objective of sustaining 

themselves into the future for 

multiple generations. They 

have to navigate challenges 

and embrace change while 

responding to environments 

full of volatility, uncertainty, 

complexity and ambiguity. While 

multigenerational enterprise 

families like the Rockefeller 

family (now in its seventh 

generation) show that successful 

family governance, substantial 

social capital and effective 

family offices are achievable 

across several generations, 

many others have been much 

less successful at doing this. I 

theorise that the key driver of 

family wealth preservation is 

relational, as opposed to being 

purely financial, and posit that 

wealth preservation is not about 

money. 

These quotes, by three 

enterprise family insiders, 

represent different points of 

view relating to the arduous 

task of preparing younger 

family members for their future 

roles in the family enterprise. 

The preparation of the rising 

generation is one of many 

aspects of wealth preservation. 

How can enterprise families 

with differing and unique 

geographical, historical and 

cultural contexts overcome the 

barriers that prevent family 

wealth from being passed down 

successfully over multiple 

generations?

21 

19 

16 

12 

Marilieke Engbers 

HOW DOES THE UNSAID SHAPE 

DECISION-MAKING IN THE BOARDROOM? 

Marie-Claire Dassen 

EMOTIONS IN THE BOARDROOM 

Radu Atanasiu 

ON SIMPLE RULES 

Lara Tcholakian 

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT FOR LEADERS TO LOOK 

INTO THEIR COLLECTIVE HISTORIES? 

LEADERSHIP 

AND 

26 

24 

Edson Hato 

PAST HEROES, FUTURE LOSERS: 

CRITICAL LEADER BEHAVIOURS 

Julia Vitte 

ARE ALL LEADERS RISK TAKERS BY DEFINTION? 

PAGE 

11 

BOARDS 


PAGE 

12

DR. MARILIEKE ENGBERS 


HOW DOES 

leadership and boards IN SCIENCE, 

BUSINESS 

AND SOCIETY 

THE UNSAID SHAPE 

DECISION-MAKING 

IN THE BOARDROOM? 

Recent corporate 

governance scandals 

have drawn significant 

attention to what happens in 

the boardroom, raising many 

questions with regards to why 

boards of directors, those responsible 

for monitoring firms, were unable to 

prevent the scandals. Why do boards fail 

so often? How come boards of directors 

that are responsible for monitoring and 

safeguarding their firms were unable to 

prevent such scandals? While boards of 

directors are of institutional importance, 

scholars have a limited understanding of 

boardroom processes 1 . How do directors 

(or non-executives) and executives make 

strategic decisions together and, in 

particular, how do directors monitor the 

organisation and its executives? 

To uncover the black box of board decisionmaking 

requires direct observation of what 

goes on in the boardroom, which produces 

many methodological challenges. A first 

methodological challenge concerns the 

gathering of data about the decisionmaking 

process from these boards. Boards 

are considered closed systems, as board 

decision-making involves the exchange 

of highly sensitive information. A second 

methodological barrier relates to the 

analysis of sensemaking and decisionmaking 

processes. How do we measure 

and offer validated theories about the 

ways in which individual board members 

make sense and influence each other’s 

sensemaking before coming to decisions? 

Studying dynamic (sensemaking) processes 

that unfold between people is not easy. How 

does the researcher’s involvement shape 

the data? This is one of the key questions 

that need to be answered when researching 

processes qualitatively. 

APPROACH 

In our recent study on how the unsaid 

shapes decision-making in the boardroom, 

we explore this black box. However, the 

purpose of this study was not to merely 

justify a theory but to develop additional 

theories that explain what happens in the 

boardroom 2 . Moreover, in this study, we 

did not put the ‘said’ front and centre but, 

instead, the ‘unsaid’, focusing on what is 

thought and felt but not expressed 3 . 

During this study, I observed the board 

meetings of 17 boards and interviewed 

119 board members about what happened 

during those meetings. More specifically, I 

explored how board members responded 

‘in action’ and and how they consciously 

or ‘pre’-consciously chose to silence 

their thoughts and feelings. Preconscious 

thoughts and feelings are taken for granted 

at a particular instance but easily become 

conscious upon reflection 4 . Therefore, 

preconscious thoughts and feelings can 

be observed retrospectively. All board 

members (executives and directors or 

non-executives) who were present during 

a meeting were asked after the meeting 

to reflect on four questions: 1) what were 

you thinking and feeling, but not saying, 

and when, 2) what kept you from saying it, 

3) what do you think others were thinking 

and when, and 4) what do you think kept 

them from saying it? During interviews of 

roughly 1 hour in length that took place 

within two weeks from the meeting, board 

members reflected upon these questions. 

Putting the unsaid, instead of the said, 

front and centre meant exploring the 

difference between what is said and what 

is thought, and, therein, how blind spots, 

incongruities, and perceived incongruities 

shape board decision-making. Moreover, I 

also positioned myself as an interpreting, 

knowing actor rather than an objective 

observer 5 , reflecting upon and making notes 

of what I thought was not said during the 

interviews 6 . 

1 

Bainbridge, 2002; Forbes & Milliken, 1999; 

Gabrielsson & Huse, 2005; Garg & Eisenhardt, 

2017; Veltrop, Hermes, Postma, & de Haan, 

2015; Westphal, 1999; Westphal & Bednar, 2005; 

Westphal & Zajac, 2013 

2 

Locke, Golden-Biddle, & Feldman, 2008 

3 

Engbers M., Khapova S., Loo vd E., 2020a. 

4 

Javel,w 1999 

5 

Cunliffe, 2011 

6 

Argyris & Schön, 1974; Argyris, Putnam & McLain 

Smith, 1985; Putnam, 1991; Senge, 1997 

PAGE 

13 


PAGE 

14 

Marilieke Engbers (1969) 

combines her lectures on strategy 

realisation for the VU Finance and 

Control Program with consulting 

work for Reconsulting on board 

effectiveness, self-evaluations, 

strategy and leadership. During 

her PhD, Marilieke was assigned 

by the Housing Associations 

Authority to research how 

boards monitor the risks of 

long-tenured CEOs. She 

published the report 

‘Kracht en Tegenkracht’ 

in 2019. 

Iterating between 

a) what individual board 

members shared in the 

interview, b) a comparison 

of those reflections with the 

tape-recordings of the meetings, 

c) a comparison of accounts per role 

and board, and d) academic theories 

that explained the data, new theories 

emerged. Moreover, by presenting these 

preliminary theories, I also explored to 

what extent these theories resonated with 

the boards that participated in this research 

and with the 120 individual board members 

who were present. 

THEORETICAL IMPLICATIONS 

First, this study offers an emergent 

theory explaining how preconscious, 

taken-for-granted, and automatic sociocognitive 

processes and communicative 

events between board members and their 

stakeholders shape boards’ decisionmaking 

7 . Since the theory conceptualises 

how micro-processes between board 

members shape macro-processes, an 

institutional perspective is warranted. 

Second, this study theorises that board 

members who consider their governance 

to be paradigm-objective and who are 

considered paradigm-attached, cause a 

ripple of unspoken communication, or 

a ‘spiral of the unsaid’ when they try to 

manage silent conflicts through informal 

decision-making 8 . The data reveals that 

the three different roles of CEO, chair and 

non-executive risk eliciting seven types 

of paradigm-attachment conflicts. When 

a heated situation is enacted due to the 

spiral of unsaid, it is managed through 

scapegoating and ostracising the board 

members through the least-dominant 

minority paradigm. Third, this study 

conceptualises how four silence climates 

shape four different levels of cohesiveness 

and cognitive conflict towards board 

effectivenes 9 . A board silence climate is 

characterised by how a board maintains a 

dynamic equilibrium between cohesiveness 

and cognitive conflict through different 

silence strategies. The data suggests that 

since a cognitive conflict always risks 

eliciting a relationship conflict, boards 

constantly adjust through voice and silence 

when encountering conflicts. Four different 

board climates are distinguished, each 

with different silence strategies that shape 

four different levels of board effectiveness 

and show how silence strategies shift 

in response to tension reconciliation. 

Fourth, through reflecting on this research 

approach, the study suggests that being 

aware of different levels of consciousness 

is required for the research of assumptions 

Director 2 Director 3 

Director 1 

Director 4 

Secretary / 

CFO 

Researcher 

CEO 

Chair


BUSINESS 

AND SOCIETY 

that are taken for granted (Engbers, 

2020). Moreover, it also highlighted that 

perspective-taking is key when conducting 

such intersubjective research. 

REFERENCES 

Argyris, C., Putnam, R., & McLain Smith, D. 

(1985). Action Science: Concepts, Methods 

and Skills for Research and Intervention. 

Javel, A. F. (1999). The Freudian antecedents 

of cognitive-behavioral therapy. Journal 

of Psychotherapy Integration. https://doi. 

PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS 

This study offers three practical 

implications for board members, inspectors, 

board consultants and other stakeholders 

that work with or for boards. First, this 

study explores the ambiguity of how to 

manage and decide when and about what 

requires conscious deliberation rather than 

an automated response. Unspoken and 

presupposed, but differing, assumptions 

about governance can negatively impact 

decision-making in the boardroom. This 

suggests that these differences and the 

effects of these assumptions on decisionmaking 

warrant exploration and reflection. 

Second, informal conversations within 

a sub-group should be limited, as they 

influence decision-making and cannot be 

monitored. Thus, although committees are 

often perceived as efficient governing bodies 

and decisions made in these sub-groups 

are not considered informal, what takes 

place in these meetings and how these 

conversations unfold (the tone of voice) 

should be consciously and deliberately 

monitored. Third, role-expectations should 

be reflected upon consciously to limit false 

attribution bias and silent speculation 

emerging between board members. In 

particular the differing expectations of 

chairs, CEOs and new directors should be 

avoided. 

Database Systems for Advanced 

Applications. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3- 

642-14589-6_4 

Bainbridge, S. M. (2002). Why a board? Group 

decision making in corporate governance. 

Vanderbilt Law Review. https://doi. 

org/10.2139/ssrn.266683 

Cunliffe, A. L. (2011). Crafting qualitative 

research: Morgan and Smircich 30 

years on. Organizational Research 

Methods, 14(4), 647–673. https://doi. 

org/10.1177/1094428110373658 

Engbers M., Khapova S., Loo vd E. (2020) The 

spiral of unsaid known and preconscious 

decision-making in the boardroom. Under 

review 

Engbers M., Khapova S. (2020) How 

paradigm-attachement enacts a spiral of 

unsaid in boards. Working paper 

Engbers M., Khapova S. (2020) Silence 

Climates in the boardroom. Working paper 

Engbers M., (2020) Researching the unsaid 

and decision-making. Under review 

Forbes, D. P., & Milliken, F. J. (1999). 

Cognition and corporate governance : 

Understanding boards of directors as str ... 

org/10.1023/A:1023247428670 

Locke, K., Golden-Biddle, K., & Feldman, 

M. S. (2008). Making doubt generative: 

Rethinking the role of doubt in the research 

process. Organization Science. https://doi. 

org/10.1287/orsc.1080.0398 

Putnam, R. (1991). Recipes and Reflective 

Learning:“What Would Prevent You From 

Saying It That Way?” In The Reflective Turn: 

Case Studies in and on Educational Practice. 

Senge, P. m. (1997). The fifth discipline. 

Measuring Business Excellence. https://doi. 

org/10.1108/eb025496 

Veltrop, D. B., Hermes, N., Postma, T. 

J. B. M., & de Haan, J. (2015). A tale of 

two factions: Why and when factional 

demographic faultlines hurt board 

performance. Corporate Governance: 

An International Review. https://doi. 

org/10.1111/corg.12098 

Westphal, J. D. (1999). Collaboration in the 

boardroom: Behavioral and performance 

consequences of ceoboard social ties. 

Academy of Management Journal. https:// 

doi.org/10.2307/256871 

Westphal, J. D., & Bednar, M. K. (2005). 

Pluralistic Ignorance in Corporate Boards 

PAGE 

15 

Management. 

and Firms’ Strategic Persistence in 

Response to Low Firm Performance. 

Gabrielsson, J., & Huse, M. (2005). “Outside” 

Administrative Science Quarterly. https://doi. 

Directors in Sme Boards : a Call for 

org/10.2189/asqu.2005.50.2.262 

Theoretical Reflections. Corporate Board: 

Role, Duties & Composition. https://doi. 

Westphal, J. D., & Zajac, E. J. (2013). A 

org/10.22495/cbv1i1art3 

Behavioral Theory of Corporate Governance: 

Explicating the Mechanisms of Socially 

Garg, S., & Eisenhardt, K. M. (2017). 

Situated and Socially Constituted Agency. 

Unpacking the CEO-Board relationship: How 

The Academy of Management Annals. 

7 

Engbers, Khapova, vd Loo, 2020a 

strategy making happens in entrepreneurial 

https://doi.org/10.1080/19416520.2013.783 

8 

Engbers, Khapova, 2020a 

firms. Academy of Management Journal. 

669 

9 

Engbers, Khapova, 2020b 

https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2014.0599 


EMOTIONS IN THE 

BOARDROOM: 

HANDLING 

THE HOT AND 

COLD OF STRATEGIC 

DECISION MAKING 

PAGE 

16 MARIE-CLAIRE DASSEN 


Strategic decision-making lies at the heart 

of executive boards’ responsibility. To 

make such decisions, these teams need a 

solid rational basis: reliable data, relevant 

experience and in-depth knowledge of the 

topic at hand. 

But that is only part of the story. 

Research shows that individual emotions and 

group dynamics have a substantial impact on 

how decisions are made. For example, too much 

enthusiasm can make teams less open to relevant 

information, whereas, a tense group dynamic can 

detract from the actual decision-making itself. 

This is particularly true in the context of boards, 

where stakes are high, information is ambiguous 

and stakeholder demands are often conflicting. 

Therefore, strategic decision-making is not just 

‘cold’ and rational, but also ‘hot’ and emotional, and 

executive boards need to integrate the strategic 

content of their discussions with the tensions and 

emotions inherent to their context. 

But how does that play out in the day-to-day 

practice of executive boards? How do they navigate 

these two sides of their strategic work? And what 

conditions make it easier or more difficult for them 

to do so?


BUSINESS 

AND SOCIETY 

To engage these questions, we conducted a 

one and half year study in which we closely 

observed the executive board of a notfor-profit 

organisation. To complete our 

research, we conducted formal and informal 

interviews with board members about how 

they experienced their team’s decisionmaking, 

and we attended and audio-recorded 

the board meetings themselves. 

THE SLIPPERY TABLE OF STRATEGIC 

DECISION-MAKING 

In our data, we identified two dynamics in how 

the executive board dealt with issues that 

came to their attention. In the first dynamic, 

the board discussed the content of the issue 

and explicitly integrated team and individual 

emotions into their exchange. After such 

integration, teams came to a conclusion 

and moved their strategic decision-making 

forward. For instance, in a conversation about 

a sizable technological investment, none of 

the available options appeared to guarantee 

an unequivocally sustainable result. The 

board’s discussion began to develop into 

a circular and irritated exchange until 

team members started openly addressing 

their feelings of uncertainty and doubt 

about unpredictable future technological 

developments. Once the board acknowledged 

these feelings and integrated them into their 

reasoning, with expressions such as “We 

want to make a no-regret decision, but we 

really can’t oversee this now, so we have to 

deal with this uncertainty”, their discussion 

moved forward again. Emotions rose, but the 

executive board remained actively in charge 

of its decision-making process. 

We also identified a second, more reactive 

dynamic, which appeared under one or two 

conditions: either when the team’s emotional 

intensity was very low (for example, when 

topics didn’t “get the juices flowing” as 

one team member described it), or when 

the intensity was very high, such as when 

team members became very agitated and 

irritated with each other. In these conditions, 

issues that came to the table seemed to 

slide off the agenda, a phenomenon we 

genially dubbed the “slippery board table”. 

Decisions were taken half-heartedly or 

were repeatedly postponed. Even though 

emotions were clearly present, they were not 

integrated into discussions, but suppressed, 

cut off or simply ignored. However, these 

emotions did not disappear; they remained 

unresolved and were carried over into 

subsequent discussions, sometimes with 

increased intensity. This steered the team 

toward a vicious cycle in which emotions 

kept resurfacing and affecting their decisionmaking. 

It subsequently became increasingly 

challenging for the board to switch from this 

reactive to a more active dynamic. 

PAGE 

17 


EMOTIONS IN THE BOARDROOM 

REFERENCES 

Ashkanasy, N. M. (2003). Emotions in organizations: A multilevel 

perspective Multi-level issues in organizational behavior 

and strategy (pp. 9-54): Emerald Group Publishing Limited. 

Dassen, M.C., & Khapova, S.N. (2020). ‘Hot’ strategy in TMTs. 

[Unpublished doctoral dissertation chapter]. Vrije Universiteit 

Amsterdam 

Healey, M. P., & Hodgkinson, G. P. (2017). Making strategy hot. 

California Management Review, 59(3), 109-134. 

Hodgkinson, G. P., & Healey, M. P. (2011). Psychological 

foundations of dynamic capabilities: reflexion and reflection in 

strategic management. Strategic Management Journal, 32(13), 

1500-1516. 

Kisfalvi, V., & Pitcher, P. (2003). Doing what feels right - The 

influence of CEO character and emotions on top management 

team dynamics. Journal of Management Inquiry, 12(1), 42-66. 

Sanchez-Burks, J., & Huy, Q. N. (2009). Emotional aperture 

and strategic change: The accurate recognition of collective 

emotions. Organization Science, 20(1), 22-34. 

Vuori, T. O., & Huy, Q. N. (2018). Shaping Top Managers’ Moods: 

Board Emotion Regulation in the Strategy-Formulation Process. 

Academy of Management Proceedings, 2018, 12389. 

PAGE 

18 

TEAM EMOTIONAL BANDWIDTH: HOW CAN 

YOUR BOARD HANDLE THE HEAT? 

How can we explain these different dynamics? 

How can executive boards increase their 

chance of remaining actively in charge of their 

decision-making? And how can they avoid 

becoming caught in a vicious reactive cycle 

where emotions are too hot to handle or too 

cold for care? 

For this, we need to look at what we labelled 

the team’s emotional bandwidth, the team’s 

capacity to integrate rational and emotional 

aspects into their strategic decision-making. 

We propose that the broader a team’s 

emotional bandwidth is, the more likely 

the board can remain actively in charge of 

integrated decision-making. Based on our 

findings and earlier research, we suggest that 

three factors shape the emotional bandwidth 

of a team. 

- Emotional susceptibility, or how individual 

board members and the board as a whole 

respond emotionally to the tensions 

inherent to their strategic decision-making 

situations; 

- Emotional awareness, or how skilled the 

board is at recognising emotions and their 

impact; and 

- Emotional ability, or how skilled the board is 

at discussing and managing emotions. 

Executive boards seeking to broaden their 

team’s emotional bandwidth could work on 

these three factors. Assessing the team’s 

emotional susceptibility can give a better 

idea of how much emotion comes to the 

table in the first place. When evaluating 

this, it is important to keep in mind that 

different members might respond differently 

to the same situation and that emotions 

are contagious. Strong emotional reactions 

from one or two team members can raise 

the emotional intensity of the whole board. 

Similarly, when several team members are 

uninspired or too much at ease, the entire 

board may be drawn into that mood and 

become overly complacent. 

Emotional awareness and emotional ability 

are skills that can be trained, for example, by 

actively and collectively reflecting on questions 

like: How are we doing as a team? What 

is happening underneath the surface of our 

discussion? How does that affect our decision 

making? This way, emotions are brought into 

conscious awareness, where the board can 

actively deal with them instead of letting them 

unconsciously dictate discussions. 

Such reflection can be difficult, and can evoke 

uncomfortable emotions in and of itself. Yet, 

developing these skills can help executive 

boards navigate the full spectrum of their 

strategic decision-making, from the ‘cold’ 

rational to the ‘hot’ emotional.

RADU ATANASIU 


ON 

SIMPLE 

RULES 

“THE ROLE OF THE 

CEO IS TO CREATE 

SYSTEMS THAT WORK 

AND TO COMMUNICATE 

THEM IN WAYS THAT 

MAKE PEOPLE VIBRATE, 

UNDERSTAND, AND APPLY 

THEM DAILY.” 

INTERVIEWEE 

“EVERY INTERNAL TEAM 

SHOULD BE SMALL ENOUGH 

THAT IT CAN BE FED WITH 

TWO PIZZAS.” 

PAGE 

19 

JEFF BEZOS, FOUNDER OF AMAZON 

Managers learn mainly from 

failure (Bingham and Haleblian, 

2012) and often they distil their 

learning into simple rules that are 

easy to remember and share. These 

simple rules (Eisenhardt and Sull, 2001; 

Bingham and Eisenhardt, 2011) often take 

the form of catchy managerial proverbs. 

Jeff Bezos, for example, uses his famous 

two-pizza-rule for organising Amazon’s 

workforce. Financial investors approach market 

uncertainty with simple rules such as “sell in May and go 

away” that sometimes prove more accurate than complex 

algorithms. In his best-seller, Principles, billionaire-hedgefund-manager-and-philanthropist-turned-managementguru 

Ray Dalio reveals the many simple rules (principles) he 

devised for life and work. 

“I don’t have such simple rules. I always envied leaders who 

have them. For me, reality was always too complex to be 

simplified in clear rules, but I appreciated their value when 

I saw them in others.” (interviewee who discovered during the 



BUSINESS 

AND SOCIETY 

PAGE 

20 

interview that, in fact, she did have 

a clear set of simple rules) 

While the uses and outcomes of 

simple rules have been well studied, 

little attention has been paid to how 

managers distil them, urging me to 

research this process. After interviewing 

a few dozen CEOs, the first interesting 

thing we discovered is that despite initial 

doubt (see the quote above), all CEOs realised 

that they actually have a personal set of lessons 

learned that they have distilled into simple rules. 

Not only this, but they consider these rules crucial 

to their role, their growth, and the growth of their 

organisations. We have compiled a list of 126 such rules, 

some guiding the relationship with clients, others dealing 

with strategy, but most of them related to managing people 

and teams. 

“If you come to me with a problem, you must also bring three 

alternative solutions.” 

”A good expert with a big salary is worth more than three 

average employees with half that salary.” 

“For a good relationship with the team, the ratio between 

praise and criticism must be 3 to 1.” 

These three examples (which all make use of the number 

three) make for a short guide of distilled managerial 

wisdom. We found that simple rules are born out of an 

unexpected problem which induces tension, giving the 

manager cause to search continuously for a solution. 

Eventually, an external cue (a later observation, a 

conversation, something read in a book) acts as a clarifier 

and catalyses the finding of a solution in an insight 

accompanied by a feeling of relief, like an epiphany. This 

constitutes a triple insight, consisting of identifying and 

unlearning a flawed assumption, learning a new lesson, and 

then generalising a simple rule to be applied in all similar 

situations, as illustrated in the example below: 

The CEO of a marketing company was confronted with 

a puzzling problem: strategic projects, agreed and 

communicated at the beginning of the year, were lagging 

behind (unexpected problem). She investigated the matter 

and observed (clarifier) that the team was only working 

on these projects at the end of the day, and only if current 

daily tasks were completed. This led to her triple insight: 

first, she identified and unlearned the flawed assumption that 

just labelling projects as “strategic” does not make people 

prioritise them; then, after reflecting on a solution, the 

CEO learned the lesson that strategic projects need daily 

attention; she then distilled it into a simple rule to be applied 

in the future - “Strategic projects need to be integrated into 

processes so that everybody can contribute daily.” 

“When I share a rule, I also share its story, especially the 

mistakes I made. If shared without its story, the rule would be 

ignored, but when the team finds out how I discovered it and 

how I bumped my head, they pay more attention and remember 

it better.” 

While the process described so far has an important 

intuitive component, the next, more analytical phase 

involves testing, articulating, and refining the simple rules. 

When appropriate, personal rules are shared within the 

organisation. Many studies have positively linked simple 

rules shared at the organisational level with various aspects 

of management, such as strategy (Bingham and Eisenhardt, 

2011), innovation (Manimala, 1992), organisational learning 

(Bingham and Haleblian, 2012), monitoring and even the 

survival of family firms (Pieper et al., 2015). However, in the 

words of another interviewee, the problem with sharing is 

that “such rules are easy to hear and hard to implement”. A 

way to bypass this problem is to share the simple rule along 

with its whole narrative, making it easier to remember and 

to adopt. This principle was discovered (and even turned 

into a simple rule for sharing simple rules) by another 

respondent, quoted in the vignette above. 

So, how can managers use our research? First, by 

acknowledging that there is value in clearly articulating 

the simple rules they learned from experience. Managers 

can start identifying and writing down their portfolios of 

managerial proverbs. One way they can approach this is 

to imagine that they have been promoted and are telling 

their competent but less-experienced successor, “Listen, 

my years on this job taught me a few rules that you can never 

find in any book. They are:” and end the sentence. Secondly, 

managers can use these simple rules as coordination 

tools in their teams and organisations by sharing the rules, 

always accompanied by their determinant stories.

WHY IS IT 

IMPORTANT FOR 

LEADERS TO LOOK 

INTO THEIR 

DR. LARA A. TCHOLAKIAN 


COLLECTIVE 

HISTORIES? 

PAGE 

21 

Can a leader’s collective trauma shape their leadership 

values and behaviour? Numerous studies indicate how 

an individual’s formative upbringing can shape leadership 

qualities, but there is little focus on the role of historical 

legacy or historical collective traumas in leaders and 

leadership. 

Our research sought to investigate what shapes leaders, and, more 

specifically, if there could be a transgenerational inheritance of values 

from historical legacies, such as collective traumas. We conducted 

two studies. The first study consisted of 40 board members, CEOs and 

executives who were third and fourth generational descendants of the 

Armenian genocide, but raised in different geographic backgrounds 

and upbringings. The second study concerned a group of 60 leaders 

and executives who are descendants of an amalgam of collective 

traumas such as the Greek genocide, WWII, the Holocaust, the 

Singapore racial riots, Apartheid and the Sikh riots. 

By studying these samples of leaders and executives, we learned how 

individuals with similar and different collective histories identify 


values and behaviours associated with their historical narratives. 

For leaders, the use of history was a pertinent way for them 

to connect, interpret and build expectations in relation to their 

professional actions and decisions. This learning process 

allowed them to critically engage in self-reflexive processes 

that cultivated and sensitised them to human practices of 

management, encouraging them to make better use of their values 

and assumptions in the development of teams, strategies, and 

organisational processes. 

At a time when there is an increasing existential crisis and a call 

for a human turn in leadership (Petriglieri, 2020), our research 

identified three key questions that were raised throughout the study: 

What is awakened in leaders when they take a historical turn? How 

can a historical turn help leaders become more conscious? What is 

the relevance and practical implication of historical consciousness 

in leader development? 

WHAT IS AWAKENED IN LEADERS 

WHEN THEY TAKE A ‘HISTORICAL TURN’? 

There are claims that despite the immense research conducted 

in leadership studies, it is still unclear what leaders are, do and 

need (Alvesson & Einola, 2019). The reason for these challenges 

is that leaders, like all of us, are unique individuals that cannot be 

generalised or categorised. Assuming that leaders are individuals 

in positions of influence (but not necessarily positions of power), 

they are then also in positions to inspire and motivate change and 

innovation. To inspire requires self-inspiration and self-awareness, 

and this demands reflective and reflexive practices. 

for the future and to draw the course of action that 

will guide their corporations and organisations in 

directions that will lead to improved operational 

results, competitive edge and innovation in the 

market. Despite numerous popular articles 

and years of scientific research that identify 

what constitutes good or bad leadership, 

we have yet to understand the role and 

importance of conscious leaders, and 

its relevance in today’s market and 

society as a whole. 

The behaviours of leaders 

and executives are shaped 

by internal and external 

forces; the former 

touching upon 

conscious and 

unconscious life 

experiences, 

and the latter 

PAGE 

22 

Taking a historical turn does not constitute a merely cognitive 

process (i.e., having historical literacy or knowing historical facts), 

but rather helps to initiate a process of making sense of one’s 

own historical narratives, which in turns allows the development 

of personal and professional narratives (Ahonen, 2005). The 

participants in our study, regardless of their own historical 

collective traumas, made use of new or unused lenses and 

senses that helped them identify leadership values that 

were inherited or developed through the transmission 

process of narratives from their ancestors. Many 

of our participants did not identify negative 

repercussions of remembering collective traumas 

of their forefathers, but rather, felt that there 

was meaning and purpose for the values 

that they had developed in their own social 

contexts. 

CAN TAKING A ‘HISTORICAL TURN’ 

HELP LEADERS BECOME MORE 

CONSCIOUS? 

Leaders are generally encouraged 

to look ahead, to have a vision

WHAT IS THE RELEVANCE OF HISTORICAL 

CONSCIOUSNESS IN LEADER DEVELOPMENT? 

The process of historical consciousness lays the 

groundwork for a self-reflexive discourse, to better 

understand how the past may have shaped the present and 

make sense of one’s role and behaviours in the future. 

Collective traumas and historical narratives are not just forgotten 

or placed in the past but involve a symbiotic process that allows 

leaders to develop critical questions of their own conditioning their 

realities and their worldview. This, in turn, allows them to interpret 

and humanise their roles as organisational actors and decisionmakers. 

As such, leader development not only undertakes tangible 

formative elements (such as family, education, environment, 

and socio-economic upbringing) but also the taken-for-granted 

relational elements that may have been passed on from former 

generations, through stories, events, rituals, and traditions. 

pertaining to 

elements of one’s 

social systems such 

as family, community, 

environment, culture 

and education (Tcholakian, 

Khapova, van de Loo, & 

Lehman, 2019). But one thing 

that is overlooked is the role of 

the transgenerational inheritance 

of historical and collective events. 

Historical consciousness offers a critical outlook on the ethical 

dimensions of management life because it allows leaders and 

executives to understand how their assumptions and realities are 

shaped by their collective past, to consciously interpret the choices 

and actions they take, and to question how their inherited values 

affect organisational processes and stakeholder management. 

Thus, historical consciousness, historical narratives and memory 

become complementary means to advance our understanding, not 

only of leaders and executives but also the underlying motivations 

that are associated with their behaviours and actions. 

PAGE 

23 

Taking a historical turn opens access 

for leaders and executives to question the 

assumptions related to their historical and 

collective memory (or cultural memory as 

some define) and be receptive to questioning 

their identities. In our study, this process, defined 

as critical historical consciousness, stimulated 

gateways for leader participants to critically consider 

and interpret their inherited histories and traumas, 

and to bridge the narratives of their histories into their 

present. Leaders became aware of their sensitivities 

and awareness not only related to their lived experiences, 

but the experiences of their ancestors transferred through 

said and unsaid narratives, thought and unthought emotions 

and beliefs. This process of historical consciousness allowed 

our leader participants to develop their own narratives about 

their leadership values for the present (such as equity, justice, and 

empathy) (van de Loo, Tcholakian, & Lehman, 2020) and their visions 

of what they hope to achieve and develop in the future – both for 

their personal and for their professional lives. 

REFERENCES 

Ahonen, S. (2005). Historical consciousness: A viable paradigm for 

history education? Journal of Curriculum Studies, 37(6), 697-707. 

Alvesson, M., & Einola, K. (2019). Warning for excessive positivity: 

Authentic leadership and other traps in leadership studies. The 

Leadership Quarterly, Article in press. 

Petriglieri, G. (2020). Are our management theories outdated? 

Harvard Business Review. 

Tcholakian, L. A., Khapova, S. N., van de Loo, E., & Lehman, R. 

(2019). Collective traumas and the development of leader values: 

A currently omitted, but increasingly urgent, research area. 

Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 1-13. 

van de Loo, E., Tcholakian, L. A., & Lehman, R. (2020). How 

leadership can emerge from the trauma of history. Retrieved from 

https://knowledge.insead.edu/leadership-organisations/howleadership-can-emerge-from-the-trauma-of-history-13031 


PAST HEROES, 


BUSINESS 

AND SOCIETY 

PAGE 

24 

FUTURE LOSERS: 

CRITICAL LEADER 

BEHAVIOURS AND 

TRANSFORMATION 

IN THE BANKING 

INDUSTRY 

EDSON HATO 


Leaders affect the environments in which they 

operate. Wells Fargo’s drive for cross-selling led 

to the creation of millions of fraudulent savings 

and checking accounts on behalf of their clients. 

Their purpose was to charge fees and provide 

unrequested credits. The manipulation of Libor 

and Euribor interest rates at Rabobank culminated 

in a €774 million fine and the departure of its 

CEO, Piet Moerland. The Dutch banking giant 

ING was fined €775 million for failing to spot 

money laundering activities; compounded by the 

embarrassing discourse around its CEO’s proposed 

salary increase, vehemently opposed by the Dutch 

political establishment and society. These and 

other examples from the banking industry illustrate 

the individual and collective inability of leaders to 

adapt quickly to changing business and societal 

contexts. These ‘malpractices’ are symptoms of a 

bigger ‘disease,’ begging the question: 

‘How can banking-industry-leader behaviours 

change to drive real transformation?’ 

For the past 20 years, leader-behaviour research 

in financial institutions has been focused on a 

narrative with the leader as the heroic ‘star’ in the 

movie called ‘leadership’, an attribution based on 

hierarchy, status, years of tenure and the leader’s 

ability to socialise, manage politics and network. 

Leaders were fashioned as ‘stars’ because of 

their ability to achieve economic efficiency and 

maximise shareholder value. A contrasting 

perspective to this view of leadership is the view 

that leader behaviours part of the context and the 

intended, needed results to be achieved (Osborn 

et al., 2002). The elements of this contrasting 

perspective, namely the context and the intended 

results, are complicated by the somewhat 

diverging and competing technological, legislative, 

institutional and community demands placed on 

the banking industry. Thus, we need to move the 

focus of leadership and leader behaviours from 

the individual—the hero—to a focus on leadership 

and leader behaviours that is distributed across a 

system that has influence both inside and outside 

organisational boundaries. We must integrate the 

idea that this system is in a state of constant flux, 

demanding the critical leader behaviours needed 

for transformation. 

Unsurprisingly, leader behaviour research has 

mainly focused on causal mechanisms of leader 

behaviours: the leader as a hero, the perception of 

their leadership, and leadership effectiveness in 

a stable context. The results of a literature review 

of 99 articles on leader behaviours in financial 

institutions from 2000 until 2020 shows that: 

82 articles are focused on ‘heroic’ leader 

behaviours in financial institutions; 

72 articles implicitly or explicitly assume a stable 

organisational context for research; 

64 articles are focused on leader behaviour 

research through the lens of bureaucracy; and 

64 articles are based on the Leader-Member- 

Exchange theory; 

Moreover, research has proven that measuring 

what it is to have a successful career vs having 

an effective team are totally unrelated. (Luthans 

et al., 1988). Currently, this reality is persistent 

in the banking sector and directly linked to 

the behavioural ability of the leader and a 

cohort of leaders to incorporate contemporary

contextual sentiments into their daily responsibilities. This 

demonstrates the need for a more contemporary leader 

behaviour research agenda in the banking industry. 

In an era of technological progress, sustainability demands, 

and hyper-interconnectedness, leaders need to reinvent 

themselves as hierarchy, status and outdated management 

practices become insufficient. Our economic reality is 

changing rapidly; individuals, customers and employees 

are not at the receiving end of information and decisions 

anymore. Leaders are being held accountable not only for 

what happens within the confines of their business, but also 

for what happens in the value chain and the societal context 

in which they operate. Leader behaviours increasingly 

need to enact the paradigm shifts from shareholder-value 

maximisation to stakeholder-value maximisation; from 

individualism, hierarchy and control to community building, 

continuous creation and knowledge capturing; from short 

term financial gains to focus on long term sustainability. 

This would add a level of complexity to business unequal to 

the industrial era and Fordism. 

Our literature review indicates that only about 9 per cent of 

the articles have been designed to: 

expansion ‘complex adaptive systems’ (Uhl-bien et al., 2007), 

or the ‘ecosystem economy’. The attribution of leadership to 

a specific individual in a suggestion of heroism (bureaucratic 

leadership) needs to expand to include leader behaviours 

and leadership qualified as: 

1. distributed leadership: referring to the aggregate 

leadership of an organisation dispersed among some, many 

or all of the members; 

2. adaptive leadership: referring to adaptive, creative 

and learning actions that emerge from the interaction of 

complex adaptive systems as they strive to adjust tensions; 

and 

3. enabling leadership: working to catalyse the conditions 

in which adaptive leadership can thrive and managing 

the entanglement between bureaucratic and emergent 

functions of the organisation (Gronn, 2002). 

To conclude, companies solely pursuing shareholder value 

maximisation are in danger of becoming socio-economic 

pariahs. Leader behaviours need to be distributed, adaptive, 

and enabling to the emerging ecosystem economy. When 

adopted, past heroes might remain future winners. 

PAGE 

25 

show that leader behaviour research in financial 

institutions needs to shift from a perspective based on the 

industrial economic era to the age of connectivism; 

show that research based on causal mechanisms needs 

to be changed to research driven by the notion of complex 

dynamic systems; 

show that research done under the assumption of a stable 

organisational context needs to be changed to research 

conducted in a dynamic and ever-changing context; 

show that research based on the notion of leadership 

attributed to the individual needs to be changed to 

research based on the notion of leadership as part of a 

collective. 

Based on the findings of the review, we propose that leaders 

will play a much broader role in a more expanded context 

than before. Prominent systems scholars will call this 

REFERENCES 

1. Luthans, F. Successful vs. effective real managers. 

Academy of Management Executive. 1988, 2, 127 – 132. 

2. Osborn, Richard; Hunt, James G.; Jauch, Lawrence R. 

Toward a contextual theory of leadership. The Leadership 

Quarterly. 2002, 13, 797n- 837. 

3. Gronn, Peter. Distributed leadership as a unit of analysis. 

The Leadership Quarterly. 2002, 13, 423 – 451. 

4. Uhl-Bien, Mary; Marion, Russ; McKelvey, Bill. Complexity 

Leadership Theory: Shifting Leadership form the 

industrial age to the knowledge era. The Leadership 

Quarterly. 2007, 18, 298 – 318. 

5. Kaiser, Robert B.; Hogan, Robert; Craig, Bartholomew 

C. Leadership and the Fate of Organizations. American 

Psychologist. 2008, 63 (2), 96 – 110. 



BUSINESS 

AND SOCIETY 

ARE ALL LEADERS, 

BY DEFINITION, 

RISK-TAKERS? 

Think about taking a risk. What is the first thought that comes to your mind? 

Your friend, an entrepreneur, who took a risk and has been praised for their 

success? Or, an action movie hero who risks their life to save the world? 

Within business environments, as well as outside of them, risk-taking is 

celebrated. It is possible that risk-taking is becoming culturally valuable, 

and it has already become synonymous with status. 

PAGE 

26 JULIA VITTE 

In everyday life, risk-taking is everywhere. I am 

VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT AMSTERDAM fascinated by how people take risks. I am especially 

interested in how groups make risky decisions and 

how group leaders affect those decisions. Since 

the 1960s, researchers studying group dynamics 

have agreed that if a group doesn’t have a clearly 

appointed leader, then the individual who actively 

talks and expresses their opinion is perceived as more 

influential and has a higher status among the other 

group members. Later, in the 1980s, research found 

that groups expect high-status individuals to make 

more valuable contributions to the discussion than 

lower-status members. To put it simply, if an individual 

expresses their opinion more, the rest of the group 

perceives them to be of a higher status and expects 

them to contribute more. In terms of risk-taking, the 

willingness to take risks is associated with higher 

professional ability. So, the more risk one is willing 

to take, the more capable they are perceived of being 

and they become more valuable to the group. In other 

words, the higher one’s risk preference, the higher 

their status within a group. 

If individuals who take more risks are perceived as 

more valuable, then are those who are willing to take 

the lead, risk-takers by definition? Research indicates 

this to be true; making decisions, in and of itself, 

is risky because the outcome of those decisions is 

uncertain. In other words, success is never guaranteed 

and some decisions may result in failure. In the face of 

such uncertainty, determining which direction a group 

should take is risky, and will inevitably lead to both 

influence and vulnerability. 

Considering the above, the next question to explore 

is: “When working in groups, are leaders being 

unreasonably risky only to ensure our own status?” 

While studies must explore this question further, 

looking at industry examples indicates that this might 

well be the case. 

Amba Zeggen, Lead Risk Culture and Behavior at 

Probability & Partners, has 20 years of experience 

working with teams on various aspects of risk culture.

PAGE 

27 

When asked whether or not leaders inherently seek 

out risks, and if so, do groups resultingly take too many 

risks, she says: 

“I have used the risk type compass assessment for 

assessing risk behaviour and, the bottom line is, 

we see different patterns for different professions, 

gender, age and position within in an organisation. For 

instance, air traffic controllers have a very distinct risk 

profile—perhaps not surprisingly—they have a more 

coolheaded and organised way of thinking. 

Leaders often exhibit elevated [levels of] risk-taking, 

scoring high on “open to new things”, “big picture 

instead of details” and “high-level view”. While we 

should not pass judgement on these behaviours as 

“good” or “bad”, what is important is to be aware of 

possible blind spots. Of course, not all leaders are the 

same. For example, pension fund boards, including 

chairmen, are, in general, more risk-averse—after 

all, the board has a significant responsibility for the) 

financial future of many households.” 

Overall, while there are trends observed in practice, 

and there is a partial consensus in the scientific 

community that leaders, indeed, tend to take more 

risks, the question still demands further research. 

This topic is one of our interests at Amsterdam 

Business Research Institute (ABRI), which we are 

planning to explore in the coming years. 


INDIVIDUALS 

PAGE 

28 

DR. CHRISTOPHER WICKERT 

/ CHRISTOPHER.WICKERT@VU.NL 

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR IN ETHICS & SUSTAINABILITY; 

ASSOCIATE EDITOR JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES 

Christopher Wickert has been Associate Professor of Ethics 

& Sustainability in the Department of Management & Organization 

at VU Amsterdam since 2013. His passion is investigating corporate social 

responsibility (CSR) and sustainability and, overarchingly, the broader relationship 

between business and society by drawing on various organisation and 

management theories. 

In his research, Christopher explores different patterns of globally integrated 

companies’ CSR implementation. Beyond this, Christopher has studied: the 

evolution and diffusion of CSR standards; the influence of ‘organisational identity 

orientation’ on the implementation of CSR practices; the prevalent mismatch 

between CSR ‘talk’ and CSR ‘walk’ in small and large firms; and how business 

firms might address pressing, societal challenges, such as climate change and the 

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Christopher is also interested in Critical 

Management Studies (CMS), philosophy of science, business ethics, and social 

entrepreneurship. In 2019, he published a book with Cambridge University Press, 

‘Corporate Social Responsibility (Elements in Business Strategy)’, which provides a 

practitioner-oriented critical introduction to contemporary CSR approaches. 

Christopher’s research has appeared in various leading international journals. 

He is currently an associate editor of the Journal of Management Studies, 

promoting impactful research with practical, societal relevance. 

Also, Chris is the co-coordinator of the third year of ABRI’s Part-time PhD 

programme. 

DR. SAEED KHANAGHA 

/ S.KHANAGHA@VU.NL 

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF STRATEGY 

Saeed Khanagha is an Associate Professor of Strategy in the 

Department of Management and Organisation at VU Amsterdam. 

He obtained his PhD in 2015 at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. 

His research focuses on understanding the factors determining an 

organisation’s success in adopting emerging digital technologies at the 

individual, team, organisational, and ecosystems levels. This focus demands 

various qualitative and quantitative data methods, including single case study, 

multiple cases studies, survey, and experimental design. His ongoing research 

mostly explores the different dimensions of strategising for digital technologies, 

particularly digital platforms and ecosystems. He has a particular interest in the 

social implications of emerging technologies. 

Saeed’s research has been published in outlets such as the Journal of 

Management Studies, Long Range Planning, and R&D Management. He currently 

serves as an organiser and guest editor of a Long Range Planning special issue, 

entitled ‘Strategizing in a Digital Era’. 

Alongside his research, Saeed also supervises several PhD candidates in topics 

within his specialisation. 

PROF. DR. IR. HANS BERENDS 

/ J.J.BERENDS@VU.NL 

PROFESSOR OF INNOVATION AND ORGANIZATION; VICE-DEAN 

OF RESEARCH OF THE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS & ECONOMICS 

With his colleagues in the KIN Center for Digital Innovation, Hans 

studies the development of collaborative digital innovations, 

both within and across organisations. Digital transformation brings new 

types of products and services, from simple apps to digital platforms, from 

connected products to self-learning robots, each connected in a network of 

digital products and services. The development of digital products demands the 

constant advancement of innovation processes. This might mean open-ended 

experimentation, platform-centred distribution across actors, or industrial 

collaboration, and, sometimes, disruption. 

Hans and his colleagues’ research includes collaborative innovation across 

technology platforms and innovation ecosystems; digital technology-enabled 

collaboration, such as in crowdsourcing or 3D printing communities; and the 

changing nature of innovation processes for digital products and services, 

thriving on experimentation, learning, and generativity. 

In most of his research, Hans takes a process research approach, exploring 

how innovation and collaboration develop over time. This differs from merely 

identifying the conditions that help or hinder innovation. Instead, Hans and his 

colleagues aim to understand how innovators make progress despite initially 

unfavourable conditions and ultimately lever the conditions they face. 

Together Hans and his colleagues contribute to organisations that collaborate 

effectively, creating value through digital technologies. If you are interested in 

working with them, they invite you to reach out and get in contact! 

DR. JOST SIEWEKE 

/ J.SIEWEKE@VU.NL 

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, PROGRAMME DIRECTOR OF THE EXECUTIVE 

MBA: LEADING WITH PURPOSE 

Jost’s research interests lie at the intersection between 

organisation, management, and leadership. He has a broad 

research portfolio, ranging from research on the legitimacy of inequality to 

errors in organisations and the influence of culture on the use of consulting 

services. Recently, he has developed an interest in the effects of leaders. In his

PRESENTING 

ABRI 

RESEARCHERS 

work, he found that team leaders have a considerable influence on the number 

of errors committed by their employees and how their followers learn from 

mistakes. He is also interested in the effect of leaders and leadership teams on 

organisational and individual performance. For instance, he analyses the impact 

of diversity within the top management team on organisational performance, 

focusing on gender diversity. Additionally, Jost is also interested in exploring 

differences in the ability of leaders to improve follower performance. Whenever 

possible, Jost tries to combine his hobby (sports) with his research, sometimes 

using sports data to answer research questions. 

Jost’s research is mainly quantitative. Recently, he has developed a special interest 

in how to infer causal relationships from observational data. He exploits natural 

experiments, such as the 2008/2009 financial crisis, to estimate causal effects. 

Jost is also the co-coordinator of the third year of the Part-time PhD programme. 

DR. EVGENIA I. LYSOVA 

/ E.LYSOVA@VU.NL 

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR, 

DIRECTOR OF THE VU CENTER FOR MEANINGFUL WORK 

Dr. Evgenia Lysova’s research primarily concerns career calling, 

meaningful work, corporate social responsibility (CSR), and 

sustainability. She is especially interested in understanding how to create 

conditions that enable individuals to experience greater meaningfulness in 

their careers and organisations. In turn, these individuals can make meaningful 

contributions to their organisations and society as a whole. She focuses 

specifically on how individuals healthily sustain their experiences of meaningful 

work in the long-term. 

Dr. Lysova’s research has been published in several prestigious peer-reviewed 

journals, including Human Relations, the Journal of Vocational Behavior, Personnel 

Psychology, and the Journal of Business and Psychology. She currently serves 

on the Journal of Vocational Behavior and the Journal of Career Assessment’s 

editorial review boards. For her academic work, she has been awarded the 

Emerald Literati Network Award for Excellence (CDI, 2016) and the Best 

Reviewer Award (2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, & 2018). 

Additionally, she is the coordinator of the Qualitative Learning Line in ABRI’s 

Part-Time PhD programme. 

DR. MARIA TIMS 

/ M.TIMS@VU.NL 

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT AND 

ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOUR; ABRI DIRECTOR OF DOCTORAL EDUCATION 

Maria Tims is an Associate Professor of Human Resource 

Management (HRM) and Organizational Behaviour (OB) with a 

Work and Organizational Psychology background. She obtained 

her PhD from Erasmus University Rotterdam. 

Maria’s research focuses on the proactive behaviours that allow employees 

to optimise their work environment, which, in turn, enables them to work and 

perform well in a healthy and motivating way. Extending this research topic 

from the individual perspective to the team perspective has generated strong 

business interest as working in teams can be inspiring and efficient, but 

sometimes daunting. By taking into account how individuals proactively craft 

their jobs within teams, Maria’s research illustrates how to achieve a strong 

individual-team fit. 

As ABRI’s Director of Doctoral Education, Maria’s mission is to use this 

knowledge to guide PhD candidates in their trajectories, creating an inspiring 

and supportive research community. Maria also teaches second-year Executive 

PhD students how to conduct their (first) quantitative study during five 

intensive 2-or-3-day modules spread across the year. In both her research and 

teaching, Maria hopes to contribute insights into how to create healthy work 

environments to maintain happy, motivated workers. 

PAGE 

29 


Executive MBA: 

Leading with 

Purpose 

Join a community of 

purpose-driven 

change-makers 

Welcome to the Executive MBA: Leading with Purpose 

People, businesses, and society are looking for change and answers in an uncertain world. At VU, we help 

pioneering leaders dig deep to uncover their purpose, their ambitions, and use that energy to transform the 

world for the better. Because, like you, we stand on the side of progress and are committed to helping you 

take the next step. 

PAGE 

30 

Breaking free from conventional approaches, our 

Executive MBA: Leading with Purpose is all about 

collaborative knowledge creation and working 

together to ask the big, challenging questions and 

going deeper into the issues of today and tomorrow. 

In doing so, the programme will help to accelerate 

your development into a more forward-thinking and 

purpose-driven leader. Here, you will gain the skills, 

knowledge, and the confidence needed to tackle 

some of the biggest challenges facing us today. 

You will develop the mindset to prepare you for what 

is to come tomorrow and become a forward-thinking, 

purpose-driven leader. 

We hope you join us! 

Key characteristics 

Duration 

18 months (part-time) 

Degree 

MBA 

Start 

Each year in September 

Tuition fee 

€43,500 (scholarships available) 

ee.sbe@vu.nl 

vu.nl/mba-leadingwithpurpose

36 

34 

32 

Sue der Kinderen 

THE DIMINISHING RETURN 

OF HAPPINESS: WHAT IF 

THE GOOD LIFE DOESN’T FEEL 

THAT GOOD, ANYMORE? 

Sandra Klijn 

PERSONAL ENERGY AT WORK 

Jolanda Botke 

TRANSFER OF TRAINING: 

THE ACHILLES HEEL OF 

THE TRAINING PROCESS 

EMPOWERING 

PEOPLE IN 

PAGE 

31 

ORGANIZATIONS

SUE DER KINDEREN 

THE DIMINISHING 

RETURN OF HAPPINESS: 

WHAT IF THE GOOD LIFE 

DOESN’T FEEL THAT GOOD, 

ANYMORE? 


On many levels, the COVID-19 pandemic has encouraged 

a critical look at what we do and why we do it. The 

pursuit of immediate gratification, or ‘happiness’ in 

our modern world, appears unsustainable - hedonism is 

going out of fashion and eudaimonia is making its entrance. 

Eudaimonic well-being, happiness that encompasses 

meaning, positive relationships and personal growth, may 

not provide instant gratification, but it ultimately contributes 

to our health and the experience of a ‘full life’ [1]. 

PAGE 

32 

Whether we ‘live to work’ 

or ‘work to live’, we have an 

opportunity to examine employee 

well-being as ‘an end in itself’ 

instead of ‘a means to an end’, 

which regularly translates 

into achieving organisational 

profit or success at the cost of 

employee well-being. Power is 

shifting from the organisation 

to the individual, and it is the 

individual who increasingly 

determines the quality and 

quantity of both his/her work 

and private time [2]. Sustainable 

well-being is being shaped by 

these individual behaviours 

and attitudes and gaining more 

relevance in the field. At the same 

time, organisations and leaders 

are seeking new strategies to 

shape employee behaviours that 

contribute to both performance 

and functioning in the workplace. 

Eight hundred peer-reviewed, 

empirical studies show that the 

‘hedonic well-being’ framework is 

primarily used to explore positive 

well-being at work. This means 

that the majority of research on 

well-being at work that has been 

conducted so far has focused on 

the experience of being happy 

and/or satisfied with one’s job. 

These hedonic elements of 

well-being have proven difficult 

to influence and shape over time. 

We appear to have a ‘set point’ at 

which we’re hardwired to return 

to while the resulting hedonic 

treadmill requires increasingly 

more input in order to sustain 

our feelings of happiness [3]. 

Eudaimonic well-being has only 

been examined in 5% of the 

studies. Through the eudaimonic 

well-being lens, we can move 

beyond feeling good and, instead, 

learn to capture and influence 

well-being reflected in our 

behaviours and thoughts, such as 

having a purposeful life, fostering 

positive relationships, striving for 

personal growth and achieving 

mastery over our environment 

[4,5]. These elements have not 

only proven to be more pervasive 

over time and to contribute to 

long-term well-being [6]yet each 

may contribute to wellbeing in 

different ways. We conducted 

four studies (two correlational, 

one experiencesampling, and one 

intervention study, but they are 

also more likely to be influenced 

by an individual’s environment. 

The question remains whether 

we have the courage to walk the 

lesser-known path of eudaimonic 

well-being—to integrate these 

elements of meaning, personal 

growth, relationships and striving 

into our understanding of, as well 

as our shaping of, employee wellbeing 

at work. 

Our first study, conducted with 

employees in a large mental 

health care organisation in the 

Netherlands, provides evidence 

for the role of the organisational 

context in shaping and eliciting 

the ‘mutual gain’ of individual 

well-being and work performance 

[7]. Findings show that servant 

leadership practices, which 

encourage the empowerment of 

employees, support subordinates 

in using skills to succeed and 

emphasise ethical behaviour 

and the value of relationships, 

is related to eudaimonic 

well-being, as well as to work 

engagement and performance. 

However, this positive influence 

is conditional on a positively 

perceived psychosocial work 

climate. This implies that efforts 

of organisations to invest in 

leaders, as a means of eliciting 

the mutual gain of well-being 

and performance, is wasted if the 

same effort is not made to attend 

to the wider work climate in which 

the investment in leaders takes 

place. 

The next phase of our research 

will focus on better understanding 

the actual behaviours that elicit 

psychological well-being and 

whether these behaviours can

e encouraged, supported and 

facilitated within a work context. 

We define behaviours that are 

true to eudaimonic well-being as 

behaviours that are aligned with 

our values, that encourage us 

to do things we find worthwhile 

and that allow us to experience 

our true self. Three categories 

of eudaimonic well-being 

behaviours at work are being 

proposed: 

1. The Pursuit of Purpose – 

Behaviours that align with 

values, meaningful goals and 

beliefs in such a way that they 

involve active, purposeful 

striving for what is viewed as 

inherently worthwhile and 

meaningful to oneself and 

society as a whole. These 

range from more passive 

behaviours, such as reflecting 

on values, goals and strengths, 

to more agential actions in 

which we engage in worthwhile 

activities. 

These eudaimonic well-being 

behaviours make explicit our 

efforts to become our true 

selves and pursue worthy 

goals. On an individual level, 

we expect these behaviours to 

foster flourishing, individual 

experiences of meaning, and 

to enhance self-worth. Also, 

we expect these behaviours to 

result in positive work-related 

outcomes such as employability, 

proactive behaviours and work 

engagement. As behaviours can 

be encouraged or discouraged, 

increased or decreased, observed 

and monitored, we bring wellbeing 

out of abstraction into 

an objective light where both 

individuals and organisations can 

utilise a tangible measure and 

framework to shape long-term 

psychological well-being and not 

just temporary happiness. 

REFERENCES 

1. Peterson, C.; Park, N.; Seligman, 

M. E. P. Orientations to Happiness 

org/10.1177/1523422318756954. 

3. Sheldon, K. M.; Lyubomirsky, 

S. Revisiting the Sustainable 

Happiness Model and Pie Chart: 

Can Happiness Be Successfully 

Pursued? J. Posit. Psychol. 2019, 

00 (00), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.10 

80/17439760.2019.1689421. 

4. der Kinderen, S.; Khapova, 

S. N. Positive Psychological 

Well-Being at Work: The Role 

of Eudaimonia. In The Palgrave 

Handbook of Workplace Well- 

Being; Dhiman, S., Ed.; Springer 

International Publishing: Springer 

Nature Switzerland. https://doi. 

org/10.1007/978-3-030-02470- 

3_79-1. 

5. Ryff, C. D. Happiness Is 

Everything, or Is It? Explorations 

on the Meaning of Psychological 

Well-Being. J. Pers. Soc. 

Psychol. 1989, 57 (6), 1069–1081. 

https://doi.org/10.1037/0022- 

3514.57.6.1069. 

6. Huta, V.; Ryan, R. M. Pursuing 

Pleasure or Virtue: The 

Differential and Overlapping Well- 

Being Benefits of Hedonic and 

Eudaimonic Motives. J. Happiness 

Stud. 2010, 11 (6), 735–762. 

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902- 

009-9171-4. 

7. der Kinderen, S.; Valk, A.; 

Khapova, S. N.; Tims, M. 

Facilitating Eudaimonic 

Well-Being in Mental Health 

Care Organizations: The Role 

of Servant Leadership and 

Workplace Civility Climate. Int. J. 

Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 

17 (4). https://doi.org/10.3390/ 

ijerph17041173. 

and Life Satisfaction: The Full 

2. Positive Relationship 

Behaviours – Interpersonal, 

trusting, empathic behaviours 

that go beyond instrumental 

support to show intrinsic 

interest and concern for 

connecting with others through 

actions such as engaging in 

meaningful conversations, 

giving and receiving support or 

acting as a relational catalyst 

for thriving. 

Life versus the Empty Life. J. 

Happiness Stud. 2005, 6 (1), 25–41. 

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902- 

004-1278-z. 

2. Rigby, C. S.; Ryan, R. M. 

Self-Determination Theory 

in Human Resource 

Development: New 

Directions and Practical 

Considerations. Adv. 

Dev. Hum. Resour. 

2018, 20 (2), 133– 

PAGE 

33 

147. https://doi. 

3. Personal Growth Behaviours 

– Behaviours that exhibit selfrealisation 

of potentials and an 

openness to new knowledge 

and experiences. These range 

from one’s awareness of their 

own strengths and gaining 

perspective and wisdom to 

intentionally seeking out 

challenges or opportunities to 

grow. 


SANDRA KLIJN 


PAGE 

34 

PERSONAL 

ENERGY AT 

WORK, 

A SOURCE 

FOR SUCCESS 

In this constantly changing, 

competitive world, work demands 

can be high and fluctuating. 

Therefore, employees who are able 

to adapt and learn at work, as well as 

feel energised, have become valuable 

resources for organisations. In addition, the 

literature shows that energised employees 

are more productive. Personal energy at work 

is like the fuel that keeps organisations running 

successfully and is, consequently, a significant 

resource. 

Having personal energy at work is highly valuable 

to employees and employers, especially since 

an absence of personal energy leads to fatigue 

and stress among employees. An increase 

in occupational stress and burnout is related 

to an insufficient level of individual employee 

resources—such as feeling energised—that do not 

match the demands of the organisation. 

Given how much feeling energised at work impacts 

employee performance, Human Resources (HR) 

scholars and practitioners could benefit from 

knowledge on how to increase the personal energy 

of employees. To achieve this, there needs to be an 

understanding of why some people feel energised 

under specific conditions while others burn out. 

To begin, there needs to be a common 

understanding of the meaning of personal energy 

at work. Personal energy at work has been studied 

using different terminologies and concepts, 

resulting in a lack of construct clarity. Without a 

clear understanding of the construct of personal 

energy at work, including its antecedents and 

boundaries, HR researchers and practitioners will

Eempowering people IN SCIENCE, 

BUSINESS 

AND SOCIETY 

be limited in developing adequate interventions to 

improve employee energy and, with this, will also 

lack the ability to improve company success. 

In order to advance our knowledge of the personal 

energy of employees, we brought together 

evidence on this topic derived from different fields 

by conducting a systematic literature review. We 

analysed 193 papers to create an overarching 

definition of personal energy and developed a 

theoretical model of personal energy at work 

that highlights its dimensions, antecedents and 

boundary conditions. 

Findings on personal energy at work 

We propose a new definition of personal energy at 

work, based on the four dimensions of personal 

energy found in the literature review: physical, 

emotional, mental and spiritual energy. Integrating 

the four energy dimensions with Quinn and 

Dutton’s (2005) definition brings us to the following 

proposed definition: personal energy at work is 

described as the feeling that a person is physically and 

mentally capable of and emotionally and spiritually 

eager to engage in a particular behaviour or to 

undertake a task (Klijn, 2020). 

We have identified six antecedent themes and three 

moderator themes that are associated with the way 

individuals experience personal energy at work. 

Overall, this allowed us to develop a theoretical 

model of personal energy at work. This theoretical 

model of personal energy at work is currently 

under review to be published and will be presented 

during the EURAM conference. In addition, we 

are currently validating the construct of personal 

energy at work, including its health and productivity 

outcomes, based on a survey of 256 participants. 

The first round of results shows an adequate 

model fit, indicating that personal energy at work 

is indeed a construct consisting of the four distinct 

dimensions of physical, emotional, mental and 

spiritual energy. 

In sum, personal energy at work is a state that 

grows by enhancing the four energy dimensions, 

whereas personal and contextual factors influence 

feeling energised in each of the dimensions. 

Contextual factors and the processes of stress 

and recovery, moderate the relationship between 

an individual’s personal antecedents and personal 

energy at work. 

The implications for business and 

management practices 

The theoretical implication of the model is that 

it allows Human Resource Management (HRM) 

scholars to explain why— when given similar 

work—some employees feel energised, and 

others do not. The difference depends on the work 

context that the employer offers, the personal 

characteristics of the employees and each 

employee’s use of stress and recovery processes 

to enhance their personal resources. 

The model of personal energy at work can serve as 

a foundation for researchers interested in further 

exploring personal energy at work in a consistent 

way and, further, it can be applied by professionals 

when developing people management practices 

so that they stimulate personal energy at work. 

Ultimately, this model could support HRM in 

achieving sustainable performance by maintaining 

and stimulating the personal resources of 

employees, even during critical times when work 

demands are high. 

References 

Quinn, R. W., & Dutton, J. E. (2005). Coordination as 

Energy-in-Conversation. Academy of Management 

Review, 30(1), 36–57. https://doi.org/10.5465/ 

amr.2005.15281422 

Klijn, A.F.J., Tims, M., Lysova, E.I. & Khapova, S.N. 

(2020). Personal energy at work: a systematic review. 

Under review 

PAGE 

35 


PAGE 

36 

Transfer of training refers to the 

effective application and use of skills 

acquired from training during work. 

Research has shown that more than 80 

per cent of the training outcomes in terms 

of knowledge, skills and abilities are not 

applied in the real workplace (Patterson et al., 

2012). The transfer of soft skills, in particular, 

is found to be problematic (Botke et al., 2018). 

The limited transfer of soft skills training results 

from a lack of clarity around how and when to use 

those skills, leaving trainees unsure of how to apply 

what they have learnt in training (Laker & Powell, 2011). 

Noticeably, when trainees fail to use these new skills, training 

resources have effectively been wasted, and business results 

are unrealised (Ford et al., 2018). Therefore, to optimise the 

results of soft skills training, we unravelled the (so-called) transfer 

process. Our study focused on a self-leadership training programme 

at the Dutch Police Academy. In this article, we would like to share our 

findings and lessons learnt.

TRANSFER 

OF TRAINING 

Eempowering people IN SCIENCE, 

BUSINESS 

AND SOCIETY 

THE ACHILLES HEEL OF 

THE TRAINING PROCESS 

JOLANDA BOTKE IS LECTURER 

AT TILBURG UNIVERSITY AND 

EDUCATIONAL ADVISOR AT PE- 

LIKAAN PERFORMANCE ADVIES. 

SHE IS WORKING ON HER PHD 

AT THE VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT 

AMSTERDAM. 

MIRANDA LUTTIK IS HEAD 

OF SECTOR AT THE POLICE 

ACADEMY. 

Not every situation allows the equal use of skills 

Transfer studies usually focus on either what happens 

when trainees return to the workplace after having 

completed a training (steps in the transfer process) 

or focus on increased performance resulting from a 

training (Botke et al., 2018). In our current research, we 

utilised both approaches to gain a complete overview 

of the transfer of soft skills. In our first study (Botke et 

al., 2019), we collected quantitative data of 155 crime 

scene investigators who participated in training on 

self-leadership skills. To investigate how and when 

a transfer occurs, we included two performance 

measures in our study and we measured transfer 

results in two different work situations. We found that 

the trainees started using the self-leadership skills at 

work after the training. However, participants reported 

using the new skills more often in individual work 

situations compared to team situations. This indicates 

that employees may feel less confident using new 

skills in a team situation. Additionally, we only found 

a relationship between the use of new skills and the 

performance measure ‘keeping detached concern’ (i.e. 

the participants indicated that using the skills from the 

training helped them to gain a better balance between 

emotional involvement and professional distance in 

critical work situations). The use of self-leadership 

skills did not seem to impact our other performance 

measure, ‘dealing with large workloads’. Thus, a 

transfer may vary depending on work situation and 

performance measures. Therefore, if organisations 

are not specific about where and how to use skills 

from training, transfer of these skills may take place 

in a different situation than expected and their use in 

situations where they are crucial may lag behind. 

FACTORS THAT ENHANCE OR DISABLE TRANSFER 

To find out why the transfer of skills may be delayed, 

we included two important requisites for transfer 

in our study: motivation to transfer and supervisor 

support behaviour. We found that motivation to transfer 

is crucial to start using new skills after training. If 

trainees are not motivated to transfer the skills from 

the training, they will not use the skills during work. 

Earlier research shows that motivation to transfer is 

highly related to the content validity of the training 

(e.g. Van der Locht et al., 2013). If participants feel 

the content of the training does not reflect their 

job, they will not start using the skills. Since the 

motivation to transfer was relatively low in our study, 

we explored the content validity and found that the 

trainers sometimes used work situations that were not 

applicable to the trainees. For example, the trainers, in 

illustrating a significantly challenging situation in which 

police professionals may use self-leadership skills, 

focused on using their gun. However, not all crime 

scene investigators carry a gun, and those trainees 

will need other examples to see how they may benefit 

from using self-leadership skills during work. The 

motivation to transfer increased when trainers were 

made more aware of the importance of content validity. 

Additionally, we found that if supervisors reward 

trainees when they use new skills after training, the 

rate of transfer increases. 

Training increases the level of detached concern 

In a second study (Botke & Van Woerkom, 2020), we 

compared the performance of a trained group to a 

non-trained group. This non-trained group included 

professionals who would participate in the self-leader- 

PAGE 

37 


PAGE 

38 

ship training at a later date. For this study, we collected 

quantitative data of 233 staff professionals working for 

the Dutch Police. The trained group reported higher 

levels of detached concern compared to the nontrained 

group, indicating that a short self-leadership 

intervention can help increase the detached concern of 

police professionals. We also found that the lower the 

self-efficacy was of the participants before their training, 

the more effect the training had on improving the 

performance of the participants following training. This 

indicates that individual performance results following 

training may differ based on an individual’s feelings of 

competence beforehand. Organisations could make 

use of such knowledge to spend their training budgets 

more effectively. 

TAKEAWAYS FOR THE POLICE ACADEMY 

The Police Academy implemented the results of the 

research in several ways. First, the specific selfleadership 

training in this study was redesigned 

with a focus on the work context of each specific 

target group, which increased the rate of transfer. 

Additionally, other courses will be redesigned to use 

a more transfer-focused design. The new policy of 

using a behaviour-focused approach, rather than a 

learning-focused outcomes approach, will support 

this movement towards performance-based learning. 

Second, although most training at the Police Academy 

combines learning at school with on-the-job-training, 

which helps avoid significant content validity issues, 

the results of this study were fuel for the discussion 

on whether training prepares professionals for their 

current jobs or their future jobs. In other words, 

research should address what training needs to 

include to ensure that the transfer of skills is also 

focused on tomorrow’s work. 

REFERENCES 

Botke, J., Jansen, P. G. W., 

Khapova, S. N., & Tims, M. (2019). 

Transfer of Soft Skills in Mission- 

Critical Work Situations. Academy of 

Management Proceedings, 2019(1), 

15022. 

Botke, J., Jansen, P., Khapova, S., 

& Tims, M. (2018). Work factors 

influencing the transfer stages of 

soft skills training: A literature review. 

Educational Research Review, 

24(March), 130–147. https://doi. 

org/10.1016/j.edurev.2018.04.001 

Botke, J., & Van Woerkom, M. 

(2020). The Effect of a Self-Leadership 

Training on Detached Concern 

and Proactivity of Human Service 

Professionals. Article in Preparation. 

Ford, J. K., Baldwin, T., & Prasad, 

J. (2018). Transfer of Training: The 

Known and the Unknown. Annual 

Review of Organizational Psychology 

and Organizational Behavior, 

5, 201–225. https://doi.org/10.1146/ 

annurev-orgpsych 

Laker, D. R., & Powell, J. L. (2011). 

The Differences Between Hard 

and Soft Skills and Their Relative 

Impact on Training Transfer. 

Human Resource Development 

Quarterly, 22(1), 111–122. https:// 

doi.org/10.1002/hrdq.20063 

Patterson, G. T., Chung, I. W., & 

Swan, P. G. (2012). The effects of 

stress management interventions 

among police officers and recruits. 

The Campbell Collaboration, 8(1), 

1–53. https://doi.org/10.4073/ 

csr.2012.7 

Van der Locht, M., Van Dam, K., 

& Chiaburu, D. S. (2013). Getting 

the most of management training: 

the role of identical elements 

for training transfer. Personnel 

Review, 42(4), 422–439. https://doi. 

org/10.1108/PR-05-2011-0072 

BUILDING A LEARNING CULTURE 

Findings on the role of supervisors raise important 

questions on how to facilitate learning among 

Dutch Police professionals. Of course, leadership 

programmes should train supervisors to support 

learning and transfer; however, the Police Academy 

is experimenting with new ways to increase learning 

and transfer by using coaches on the work floor. 

These coaches aim to help professionals apply 

what they were taught in training, or otherwise, 

on the job. Finally, the results make us 

aware of the importance of a safe learning 

environment— a work environment where 

professionals feel free to use their skills 

and increase their self-efficacy. Such 

a safe environment does not come 

naturally within the context of the Police.

RESEARCH 

CENTRES 

Management & Organization (M&O) 

The Deparment of Management and 

Organization (M&O) is the biggest academic 

department of the School of Business and 

Economics. M&O draws on scientific evidence to 

challenge contemporary management thinking to 

help organisations build superior competences, 

attain their objectives and successfully transform. 

Building on expertise centres, including Board 

Dynamics, Feedback & Learning, Leadership and 

Change Management, M&O members, guided by 

the values of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam to be 

responsible, open and personally engaged, work 

to support the delivery of our common mission: 

to make knowledge on leadership, change 

management, and cross-cultural management 

relevant and accessible for business and society. 

https://sbe.vu.nl/management 

KIN Center for Digital Innovation 

KIN Center for Digital Innovation studies the 

development of digital innovations and the 

intended and unintended consequences of using 

digital technologies in organizations. 

LOOK BEYOND THE HYPE 

Our mission is to help organizations navigate 

the multiple challenges they face in our rapidly 

changing digital world. We deliver services for 

companies in close interaction on topics like; 

smart technologies in ecosystems, changing work 

practices under the influence of AI, crowdsourcing 

through online platforms, and the changing role 

of the IT organization. Are you looking for a way 

to broaden your perspective on digital innovation? 

Please contact us at kincenter.sbe@vu.nl. 

PAGE 

39 

VU Centre for Boards and 

Executive Leadership Development 

The VU Centre for Boards and Executive 

Leadership Development aims to contribute to 

a deeper understanding of factors influencing 

the decision-making of boards. Some of 

these factors include board member and CEO 

characteristics, behavioural patterns, governance 

structures and regulatory requirements. With 

a mission to create knowledge that can help 

top-management teams more effectively develop 

and lead contemporary organisations, we explore 

the interplay of multiple factors that shape the 

performance of boards and top executives within 

boards, looking at leadership effectiveness, sociocognitive 

and communicative behaviours and 

leadership teams in general. 

VU Centre for Feedback Culture 

The VU Centre for Feedback Culture is a 

centre of expertise that aims to be a platform 

for research to examine how feedback 

culture can be cultivated in organisations in 

different fields and across different countries. 

As a research platform, the centre offers 

opportunities for research and executive 

education collaborations among scholars and 

practitioners who are interested in the topic. 

Specifically, the Center aims to bring researchers 

and practitioners together by organising sessions 

where practices and insights can be shared to 

further enhance our understanding of this topic. 

The VU Centre for Feedback is led by experienced 

researchers and practitioners in the field. 


MBA in 

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Become the international 

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Welcome to our MBA in International Business 

Progressive, collaborative, and future-focused, our MBA in International Business takes a different 

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PAGE 

40 

In today’s world, realities change fast and conventional 

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We hope you join us! 

Key characteristics 

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42 

Joaquim Ribeiro 

HOW CAN THE IT FUNCTION ADAPT 

TO THE RISE OF THE DIGITAL ECOSYSTEMS 

Willem Salentijn 

THE DARK SIDE OF LEAN 

Brian Tjemkes and Edson Hato 

A CONVERSATION: 

THE VALUE OF COPRORATE PARTNERSHIPS 

Yves Marien 

EMOTIONALISATION AS 

A LEGITIMATION STRATEGY 

IN CROWDFUNDING 

IGHTS 

PAGE 

41 


HOW CAN 

THE IT FUNCTION 

ADAPT 

JOAQUIM CARVALHO RIBEIRO PROF. DR. BART VAN DEN HOOFF 

VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT AMSTERDAM VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT AMSTERDAM 

TO THE RISE OF 

DIGITAL ECOSYSTEMS 

PAGE 

42 

As digital ecosystems increasingly drive 

innovation across the economy, CIOs are 

facing a new challenge of transforming 

the IT function into an innovation engine 

by becoming a technological leader or 

innovation partner. If they don’t, they risk 

irrelevance. 

This IT function evolution can assume different 

forms, which are not mutually exclusive and 

include: becoming a technological leader or 

innovation partner. As a technological leader, 

the IT function’s role could be to identify new 

innovative business opportunities and to 

develop completely new business strategies 

based on emergent technologies that can 

be exploited within the IT function. As an 

innovation partner, the IT function could work 

with line managers to understand business 

opportunities, co-design new offers, and 

choose the best innovative solutions from the 

available technological options. 

The choice of which role to pursue will depend 

on the industry in which the organisation 

operates, the type of innovation it wishes 

to pursue and the ecosystems it wants to 

engage with. However, IT functions across 

organisations need to evolve to support 

product and service digital innovation, or 

they will simply act as a support function that 

could find themselves outsourced to external 

parties. 

Conversely, organisations are also likely to 

suffer if their IT functions cannot take on a 

digital innovation role. IT has become a key 

Digital innovation process in the context of digital ecosystems 

Choosing 

Technology 

Matching 

Technology 

Executing & 

Co-creating Innovation 

(with Digital Ecosystems) 

Realising Customer 

Value 


Digital Innovation Governance 


Inside the Firm 

External Market 

& Digital Ecosystems 

[Wheeler 2002] 

[Tarafdar and Gordon 2007] 

[Svahn, Mathiassen, Lindgren 2017] 

[Gregory, Kaganer, Henfridsson and Ruch 2018]

insights IN SCIENCE, 

BUSINESS 

AND SOCIETY 

PAGE 

43 

driver of digital 

innovation—a 

phenomenon that 

is apparent in the 

proliferation of the 

API business, cloud 

technologies, software-asa-service, 

and the demand 

for seamless interoperability 

of products, services and 

information flows, all of which 

are increasingly central to business 

strategy and its operations. 

In parallel, digital ecosystems (defined 

as a collective of firms that is interlinked 

by a common interest in digital technology) 

are also proliferating. O-RAN is an example 

of a digital ecosystem where members and 


PAGE 

44 

contributors have committed to evolving 

telecommunication radio access networks 

around the world, based on a foundation 

of software base/virtualised network 

elements, white-box hardware and open 

and standardised interfaces. In such 

ecosystems, value will be, by definition, 

co-created. To elaborate, the value created 

by these ecosystems will often arise through 

‘generativity’, a process through which 

digital infrastructures bring about change 

by connecting diverse constituencies and 

supporting open exchanges among 

these groups. The result is innovative 

activity that would have been difficult 

to predict beforehand. At the same 

time, the re-programmability of 

digital devices, which breaks the 

tight coupling between form 

and function, further fuels 

this unpredictability. Visa 

acquired Plaid, a financial 

service API’s developing 

firm, in January 

2020 for 5,3 billion 

dollars precisely 

because of Plaid’s digital infrastructure and 

the capability it provides in expanding VISA’s 

services by connecting to a rich array of 

Fintech API’s and information. 

NEW ROLE, NEW CAPABILITIES 

In this new ecosystem-orientated era, IT 

innovation governance is one of four IT 

capabilities that are particularly important. 

The others are external relationship 

management (working with suppliers, 

outsourcers and customers), scanning and 

sensing (detecting promising technological 

opportunities and potential threats) and 

the search and acquisition of ecosystem 

resources (locating and harnessing external 

capabilities from digital ecosystems that 

are valuable for the pursuit of the desired 

innovation). 

In reinventing the IT function, CIOs will need 

to build/develop their teams to create these 

additional capabilities. The next step will be to 

actually deploy these capabilities. That can be 

achieved through five basic steps: 

1) choosing technology, 2) matching 

technology, 3) executing & co-creating 

innovation, 4) digital innovation governance 

and 5) realising customer value. As shown 

in the diagram below, the latter three steps 

typically involve interaction with digital 

ecosystems. 

DIGITAL GOVERNANCE AS A KEY ACTIVITY 

As the custodian of digital infrastructures, 

the IT function is a crucial factor in this 

digital innovation process. Yet, to contribute 

and capture customer value, the IT function 

must strengthen its digital innovation 

governance activities. Digital innovation in 

the context of digital ecosystems leads 

to a fundamental transformation in 

IT governance, from functional IT 

governance to platform-based, 

digital governance. 

fully controlled by the firm. With this focus, 

the scope of IT governance was solely 

within a firm, relying on formal processes 

and relational mechanisms to achieve 

coordination among multiple internal 

stakeholders supported, usually, by a complex 

IT organisation. 

In light of digital innovations, it is necessary 

to expand the focus of IT governance beyond 

the current emphasis on proprietary and 

sourced IT assets to include the use, reuse 

and combination of diverse digital services 

from digital ecosystems. A secondary need is 

the replacement of the increasingly outdated 

goal of achieving coordination among multiple 

internal stakeholders with the alternative goal 

of achieving automated coordination among 

internal and external stakeholders through 

the use of digital infrastructure. 

In summary, the participation of the IT 

function in the digital innovation process 

needs to be carefully planned and executed. 

When IT becomes involved, it can support 

firms in leveraging loosely coupled, dynamic 

digital ecosystems to enrich digital innovation. 

Evaluating the health and fit of ecosystems 

is generally a tougher challenge than simply 

choosing a partner or an alliance based on 

their expertise. CIOs will have to rise to this 

challenge, as ecosystems look set to drive 

digital innovation for the foreseeable future. 

Based on our research, ‘Technology Leader 

or Innovation Partner: How can the IT function 

participate in digital innovation leveraging 

digital ecosystems’. 

Traditionally, the primary 

focus of functional 

IT governance was 

proprietary and 

sourced IT assets 

FOR FURTHER INQUIRIES ABOUT THE 

LITERATURE REVIEW PAPER, PLEASE 

CONTACT JOAQUIM CARVALHO RIBEIRO 

OR PROF. DR. BART VAN DEN HOOFF


BUSINESS 

AND SOCIETY 

WILLEM SALENTIJN 


JIJU ANTONY 

HERIOT WATT UNIVERSITY 

THE DARK SIDE 

OF LEAN 

PAGE 

45 

Lean—you either like it or you don’t. For whoever missed it, Lean 

is concerned with reducing all types of waste and originated with 

Toyota around the time of the Second World War and further 

developed in the years afterwards. In the West, we learned 

about Lean after the bestseller ´The Machine that Changed 

the World´ was published in 1990. Since the introduction of 

Lean, there have been proponents and opponents amongst 

both scholars and practitioners. The proponents focus on 

how Lean results in shorter delivery times, less waste, 

lower operational costs and satisfied customers and 

employers. The opponents are concerned with the 

dark side of Lean, including stress, burnout and 

the diminishing creativity of workers. 

Research has provided evidence supporting 

both sides. There are cases of engaged 

workers and more efficient and effective 

processes after the implementation 

of Lean, as well as cases of 

worker stress and a decrease 

in productivity. So, what is 

true? From a practitioner’s 

perspective, it is important 

to understand how Lean 

contributes to achieving 

the goals of a business. 

PAGE 

45

LEAN REQUIRES 

PROCESSES 

TO BE 

ORGANISED 

IN A 

DIFFERENT WAY 

PAGE 

46 

From a scientific perspective, it is imperative to understand which 

factors in Lean mediate business outcomes. 

After the introduction of Lean in the popular literature by the 

bestsellers ‘The Machine that Changed the World’ (1990) and ‘Lean 

Thinking’ (1996), research has focused on performance outputs 

primarily defined by the cost of production and quality of goods. The 

reason companies choose to implement Lean is primarily from the 

perspective of reducing costs. Still, even today, most Lean projects 

are financially-driven. The distrust of Lean often arises when, after 

its implementation, more work has to be completed and often by 

fewer people. However, at Toyota, which is the gold standard for 

Lean, no one has been fired as a result of more effective and efficient 

processes. 

themselves and on social outcomes, including workers’ engagement. 

The dark side of Lean concerns negative influences on social 

outcomes, and, currently, there is a gap in our understanding of the 

human factors involved in the existing literature. Therefore, research 

on this dark side of Lean, in particular these human factors and how 

they cohere with social outcomes, are subject of the study. 

In our literature review, 59 factors were found, of which 24 are 

considered ‘hard factors’ and 35 are considered ‘soft factors’. The 

literature defines soft Lean factors as those concerning people 

and relationships, such as small group problem-solving, employee 

training in multiple tasks, supplier partnerships, customer 

involvement and continuous improvement. In contrast, hard Lean 

factors are the tools and practices that seek to structure work using 

technical and analytical methods. 

So, it seems there are two versions of Lean. In the Japanese version, 

there is a focus on the long-term, while, in the Western version, 

the primary focus is often on the current and sometimes next 

accounting year. In the short term, it is easy to get results when 

implementing Lean as there are points of waste such as waiting time, 

overprocessing and extra inventories in any non-Lean organisation. 

In the long term, it is about at least maintaining the results after 

implementation and even improving them. This is known as Kaizen or 

continuous improvement. 

Lean requires processes to be organised in a different way. Principles 

such as Just-in-Time, visual management, mistake-proofing 

processes are some of the hard factors applied to facilitate a Lean 

workplace. Yet, little is known about the effects of Lean on workers 

The five most mentioned Lean factors mediating business outcomes 

are: 

1. Just-in-Time: Having the right material and information in the right 

place at the right time. The material and information are neither 

too early nor too late and are neither more nor less than what is 

needed. 

2. Eliminating Waste: Eliminating common points of waste such as 

Transport, Inventory, Motion, Waiting times, Overprocessing, 

Overproducing and Defects. 

3. Training. Training workers (continuously) in their work. 

4. Kaizen/Continuous Improvement. Actively participating in 

improvement activities. 

5. Empowerment. Involving employees in participation and decision 

making for being in control of the work.


BUSINESS 

AND SOCIETY 

PAGE 

47 

Of these factors, the first two are typical ‘hard factors’, involving 

the structure of work, while the last two are typical ‘soft factors’ 

concerning people. The third, training, can be organised in a ‘hard 

way’, such as collecting certificates and it can also be organised in a 

‘soft way’, such as developing competences. 

Both the empirical and theoretical groundings for soft factors and 

how they relate to business outcomes is thin. There seems to be a 

general understanding that Lean is about job characteristics and 

job design, including visual management, the close involvement of 

employees in work practices and worker autonomy in their tasks and 

jobs. However, the question remains as to why, when implementing 

Lean, the soft factors have either positive or negative results. 

Over the years, the interest in soft factors has increased, enabled 

by research into Lean failures and case studies describing the ‘dark 

side’ of Lean. While previous research on Lean has predominantly 

focused on the hard factors, this study demonstrates that the social 

outcomes of Lean are also mediated by soft factors. This not only has 

implications for professional practice but also for our understanding 

of how social outcomes are influenced by various factors. Future 

research is needed to build upon this. 


RECENT PHD DISSERTATIONS 

PAGE 

48 

LUC GLASBEEK 

Department of 

Management & Organisation 

SOCIAL ENTERPRISES 

WITH EXCEEDINGLY 

TIGHT RESOURCES: 

IMPLICATIONS FOR 

WORK AND LEADERSHIP 

This dissertation examines how 

social enterprises and their 

leaders function when they have 

extremely limited resources and 

the contextual circumstances 

are changing rapidly and radically. 

Greece was selected as the 

source of empirical data because 

this country was in a protracted 

economic recession during this 

research and, therefore, offered 

meaningful opportunities for 

studying social entrepreneurship 

under resource constraints. 

This study first investigates the 

academic foundations of social 

entrepreneurship and subsequently 

considers how social 

enterprises function with scarce 

resources. Next, it examines the 

way in which social entrepreneurs, 

i.e., individuals, manage 

their businesses. It subsequently 

investigates the theme 

of uncertainty, focusing on tacit 

unknowns. Finally, this study 

produces practical advice for social 

entrepreneurs on such topics 

as building symbiotic relationships 

with regular businesses. 

MARILIEKE ENGBERS 

Department of 


HOW THE UNSAID 

SHAPES DECISION- 

MAKING IN BOARDS: 

A REFLEXIVE EXPLO- 

RATION OF PARADIGMS 

IN THE BOARDROOM 

Despite board of directors are of 

institutional importance, scholars 

still have a limited understanding 

of boardroom processes. Uncovering 

the black box of board 

decision-making requires direct 

observation of what goes on in 

the boardroom and overcoming 

many methodological challenges. 

This abductive subjective account 

reflexively explored board’s 

decision-making, not through 

what is said, but through the 

unsaid. The author observed 37 

board meetings of 17 boards and 

interviewed 119 board members 

about what happened during 

those meetings. The author more 

specifically explored how board 

members responded ‘in action’, 

what they had not said and why 

and when they consciously or 

‘preconsciously’ chose to silence 

their thoughts and feelings. 

Putting the unsaid, instead of 

the said, front and center, meant 

exploring the difference between 

what is said and thought, and 

thus how blind spots, incongruities 

and perceived incongruities, 

shape board decision-making. 

This dissertation offers an emerging 

explanation of 1) how taken 

for granted and automatic, sociocognitive 

processes between 

board members shape board 

decision-making; 2) how board 

members who consider their 

governance paradigm objective 

- and therefore, are considered 

paradigm-attached - enact a 

spiral of unsaid when they try to 

manage silent conflicts through 

informal decision-making 3) how 

four silence climates shape four 

different levels of cohesiveness 

and cognitive conflict towards 

board effectiveness and 4) how 

being aware of different levels of 

consciousness and perspective is 

required to investigate ‘taken for 

granted assumptions’ as well as 

automatic behavior in boards. 

EMILIA BUNEA 

Department of 


LEADING AND LEISURE: 

HOW SERIOUS LEISURE 

INFLUENCES LEADERS’ 

DEVELOPMENT AND 

EFFECTIVENESS 

Being a leader can be central to 

one’s sense of self. Yet one is never 

only a leader, but also maybe 

a parent, a spouse, a friend. 

These nonwork selves, especially 

when one identifies with them 

strongly, influence the leader 

one. But what happens when one 

of the leader’s strongest nonwork 

identities is moonlighting as 

a DJ, volunteering as a running 

guide, being an amateur but passionate 

painter? This dissertation 

explores how such “serious 

leisure” pursuits can influence 

leaders’ development and their 

effectiveness in the leader role. 

Its findings reveal that serious 

leisure can not only provide important 

resources to the leader 

role, such as stress management 

and valuable skills, but is also a 

source of “diversification” from 

the overpowering leader identity 

that threatens to engulf how 

one defines oneself. Moreover, 

leaders with serious leisure 

create numerous connections 

between the values, qualities 

and “philosophy” expressed by 

their nonwork passion and those 

desirable in their leadership role, 

making their leader identity not 

just richer, but also more layered 

and interesting. This thesis 

also examines when serious 

leisure can negatively impact the 

leader identity, such as when it 

is practiced at obsessive levels. 

For leaders and HR departments, 

this is a message that passion

ent employer changes, self-employment, or gig 

fessional impression – personal branding – has 

dge about what it is and what career outcomes 

question may be puzzling, yet, today, the answer 

of this thesis is to provide greater clarity around 

ine its predictors and outcomes. It is the first 

g conceptual clarity of the personal branding, 

structs. Furthermore, this thesis reports on the 

ding and personal brand equity, which, hopefully, 

ults firmly establish personal branding in the field 

s to a wide array of positive career outcomes. 

perience, Sergey Gorbatov delivered results in 

like AbbVie, PMI, and Shell. Sergey earned his 

nd Intercultural Communication at Orel State 

nted with an MBA from IE Business School in 

peaks and writes about the complex science 

le keeping it simple. His most recent book is 

owerful Feedback”. 

AMSTERDAM ABRI 

IN AMSTERDAM SCIENCE, BUSINESS RESEARCH INSTITUTE 

BUSINESS WWW.ABRI.VU.NL 

AND SOCIETY 

42 

SERGEY GORBATOV 

The role of directors’ multi-level frames in the governance 

decision-making process in the boardroom 

This doctoral dissertation studies the adoption of governance practices on not-for-profit hospital boards as 

perceived by the individual board members. A series of qualitative studies were performed to investigate how 

these hospital directors use multi-level frames to legitimize their decision-making process of implementing 

governance practices to their respective organizations. By drawing on the board governance and practice 

implementation literature, the empirical chapters investigate how cultural, organizational and individuallevel 

frames influence the implementation process of governance practices in the perspective of the 

board members. At the country-level, with cultural frames this study investigates the taken-forgranted 

realities and the definition of good governance in a certain culture. At organizational-level, 

frames are shared systems of meanings about what good governance entails within a given 

organization and how these frames can manifest in internal bylaws and governance practices. 

At the individual–level, frames reflect on the mind set and tautology of the individual board 

members and their influence on the individuals’ decision-making process. As decisionmaking 

on governance implementation happens in the boardroom, decisions could not 

be made solely by individual directors. Besides looking at the frames of the individual 

directors, this dissertation also sheds light on the influence of group dynamics in the 

overall decision-making process on practice implementation. 

ISBN 978 90 3610 578 1 

About the author 

Agota Szabo is a University Lecturer in board governance and organizational 

behaviour at The Hague University of Applied Sciences. Next to this position, 

Agota was a Ph.D. candidate at the Faculty of Economics and Business 

Administration, VU University Amsterdam. She holds a Master’s degree 

in International Business Administration from Rotterdam School 

of Management, Erasmus University and a Bachelor’s degree in 

European Studies. Her research interests lie in board behaviour 

and good governance practices of the boardroom. 

AMSTERDAM ABRI 

IN AMSTERDAM SCIENCE, BUSINESS RESEARCH INSTITUTE 

BUSINESS WWW.ABRI.VU.NL 

AND SOCIETY 

38 

AGOTA SZABO 


PERSONAL BRANDING 

outside of work can encourage 

and enrich passion for one’s 

leadership work. 


Department of 


PERSONAL BRANDING: 

SELF-PRESENTATION IN 

CONTEMPORARY CAREERS 

ADOPTION OF GOVERNANCE 

PRACTICES IN HOSPITALS 

PERSONAL BRANDING: 

SELF-PRESENTATION 

IN CONTEMPORARY 

CAREERS 

In the modern labor environment, 

more people opt for 

frequent employer changes, 

self-employment, or gig work. 

Creating, positioning, and maintaining 

a desired professional 

impression – personal branding – 

has become an essential career 

competence, but our knowledge 

about what it is and what career 

outcomes it leads to is limited. 

What is your personal brand? 

This question may be puzzling, 

yet, today, the answer is vastly 

consequential for your career. 

The objective of this thesis is to 

provide greater clarity around 

the concept of personal branding, 

as well as examine its predictors 

and outcomes. It is the first comprehensive 

attempt in science at 

establishing conceptual clarity of 

the personal branding, personal 

brand, and personal brand equity 

constructs. Furthermore, this 

thesis reports on the development 

of the measures of personal 

branding and personal brand 

equity, which, hopefully, will spur 

AGOTA SZABO 

ADOPTION OF GOVERNANCE PRACTICES IN HOSPITALS 

further research in the area. The 

results firmly establish personal 

branding in the field of career 

studies, demonstrating how it 

leads to a wide array of positive 

career outcomes. 

AGOTA SZABO 

Department of 


ADOPTION OF GOVERNANCE 

PRACTICES IN HOSPITALS: 

THE ROLE OF DIRECTORS’ MULTI-LEVEL FRAMES 

IN THE GOVERNANCE DECISION-MAKING 

PROCESS IN THE BOARDROOM 

ADOPTION OF GOVER- 

NANCE PRACTICES IN 

HOSPITALS: THE ROLE 

OF DIRECTORS’ MULTI- 

LEVEL FRAMES IN THE 

GOVERNANCE DECISI- 

ON-MAKING PROCESS IN 

THE BOARDROOM 

This doctoral dissertation 

studies the adoption of governance 

practices on not-for-profit 

hospital boards as perceived by 

the individual board members. 

A series of qualitative studies 

were performed to investigate 

how these hospital directors use 

multi-level frames to legitimize 

their decision-making process 

of implementing governance 

practices to their respective 

organizations. By drawing on the 

board governance and practice 

implementation literature, the 

empirical chapters investigate 

how cultural, organizational and 

individuallevel frames influence 

the implementation process of 

governance practices in the perspective 

of the board members. 

At the country-level, with cultural 

recently published IN SCIENCE, 

frames this study investigates 

the taken-for-granted realities 

and the definition of good 

governance in a certain culture. 

At organizational-level, frames 

are shared systems of meanings 

about what good governance 

entails within a given organization 

and how these frames can 

manifest in internal bylaws and 

governance practices. At the individual–level, 

frames reflect on 

the mind set and tautology of the 

individual board members and 

their influence on the individuals’ 

decision-making process. As 

decision-making on governance 

implementation happens in the 

boardroom, decisions could not 

be made solely by individual 

directors. Besides looking at the 

frames of the individual directors, 

this dissertation also sheds 

light on the influence of group 

dynamics in the overall decisionmaking 

process on practice 

implementation. 

LARA A. TCHOLAKIAN 

Department of 


ON BECOMING HISTO- 

RICALLY CONSCIOUS 

LEADERS: EXPLORING 

THE UNDERLYING 

EFFECTS OF TRANS- 

GENERATIONAL 

TRANSMISSION OF 

COLLECTIVE TRAUMAS 

BUSINESS 

AND SOCIETY 

This doctoral thesis investigates 

how leader identity and values 

are shaped by historical collective 

traumas. Drawing on the 

phenomenon of transgenerational 

transmission of trauma, we 

analyze the role of historical narratives 

and historical consciousness 

in leader development. The 

study sheds light on three areas 

related to leader development 

from a historical perspective. 

First, the study explores the role 

that historical narratives and 

collective memories play for 

leaders, and how the process of 

historical consciousness becomes 

a basis for their sense of 

self, their motivations, and identities. 

Second, the study explores 

how historical inheritances offer 

a lens on ethnicity and ethnic 

inheritances, whereby leader 

participants identify their ethnic 

and historical inheritances as 

components of their way of seeing 

the world. Finally, the study 

examines how management and 

leadership executive learning 

programs can help incite historical 

consciousness by introducing 

the topic of transgenerational 

transmission of collective traumas 

as a pertinent instrument 

for participants to critically engage 

in self-reflexive processes. 

Overall, this thesis contributes 

to extending the study of leaders 

and leadership and the role that 

historical collective traumas 

and historical narratives play in 

the general make-up of leaders, 

their identities and their values, 

consequently attaining a deeper 

understanding of leadership in 

organizational ecosystems. 

Section intro Coaching 

PAGE 

49 


BRIAN TJEMKES 

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR STRATEGY & ORGANIZATION 

B.V.TJEMKES@VU.NL 

EDSON HATO 

CORPORATE LIAISON 

E.A.HATO@VU.NL 

A CONVERSATION: 

Leadership is transitioning from simply commanding the 

internal organisation to orchestrating the broader ecosystem. 

Moreover, leadership entails directing transformation, requiring 

a developed understanding of know-what and know-how. 

VU School of Business & Economics (SBE) collaborates with 

organisations to enact science with purpose, and together, 

build a thriving community of change-makers. Below, read a 

conversation with Dr. Brian Tjemkes and Edson Hato, who both 

advance corporate partnerships at the SBE’s Management & 

Organization Department. 

PAGE 

50 

Q1: WHAT IS THE VALUE OF A CORPORATE 

PARTNERSHIP WITH SBE? 

For us, the value we deliver for our corporate partners lies in the 

alignment of our joint ambition to contribute to innovative leadership 

development. And specifically innovative leadership development that 

connects company strategy to real business challenges and creates 

symbiotic connections between the organisation’s inner world with 

the needs and wants of the external world, facilitating the continuous 

development of contemporary (leader) behaviours and organisational 

culture. 

Our unique selling point is the alignment of ambitions between 

SBE and our partners, and to jointly deliver leader development 

interventions with impact. Our programmes are embedded in 

companies’ real-time wants and needs, incorporating market 

expectations, and catering to society’s demands and challenges. 

Through our programme, these connections and learnings are built 

with ‘spot on’ delivery, grounded in science. 

Q2: WHAT DOES ‘SPOT ON’ DELIVERY MEAN, AND 

HOW DO YOU GROUND THIS IN SCIENCE? IS IT 

NOT THE GENERAL BELIEF THAT SCIENTIFIC 

RESEARCH ALWAYS LAGS BEHIND REAL-LIFE 

DEVELOPMENTS? 

There is value in interrogating a development, crisis, or shift’s before, 

during, and after. We are active in all three arenas. However, when 

offering interventions, we pride ourselves in our real-life behavioural 

approach to leader development. Human beings learn by building 

awareness, experimenting, and experiencing a ‘new’ prototyped 

reality. Through this process, we innovate new capabilities. With 

our partners, we practice collaborative knowledge creation to build 

innovative learning realities, supporting their change processes, and 

the need to shift organisational perspectives and acknowledge biases. 

In this process, we use state of the art research, either historic or 

current, to experiment with transformation, innovation, and inclusion. 

We deliver new capacities, related to the business challenges, 

that are immediately practised through real-life, business-driven 

experimentation. Together with our corporate partners, we create 

real, practical change instead of merely advising change.

THE VALUE OF 

CORPORATE 

PARTNERSHIPS 

PAGE 

51 

Q3: WHAT WILL THE FUTURE LANDSCAPE OF 

CORPORATE-ACADEMIC PARTNERSHIPS 

LOOK LIKE? 

At SBE, we believe in collaborative knowledge creation, 

contextualisation, life-long development, and a focus on everevolving 

career paths and choices. As change and transformation are 

increasingly prevalent, we need to connect and exchange ideas. We 

believe that organisations that ‘go it alone’ will eventually miss out on 

an academic-corporate partnership’s competitive advantage. Alone, 

organisations will be less equipped to ride the wave of transformation 

with such speed and determination. Our present reality demands 

life-long, continuous development. The only way to guarantee this is 

by establishing strong industry relations and collaborative knowledge 

creation, building in-company educational programmes, conducting 

joint research projects, and including practitioners in teaching. 

Q4: WHAT ARE SOME OF THE EXCITING PROJECTS 

YOU ARE WORKING ON? 

SBE currently offers multiple in-company leadership projects. Clients 

include large organisations, such as ABN AMRO bank, mid-size 

public and private organisations, and start-ups. In our projects, 

we frequently collaborate with our network partners to ensure we 

have a constant influx of innovative ideas and a sustained impact 

on leadership development interventions. For example, for ABN 

AMRO we deliver a leadership development programme to the top 

450 executives aimed at sustainable transformation and strategy 

execution. 

Would you like to learn more about how we support organisations 

and society? Stay tuned, as we are currently busy preparing a series 

of webinars and podcasts on leadership development with C-Suite 

executives in order to build a community of change-makers. 



BUSINESS 

AND SOCIETY 

PAGE 

52 

EMOTIONAL 

LEGITIMACY 

Crowdfunding focuses on collecting small investments over the Internet from a wide variety 

of supporters. What initially began as a novel way of acquiring resources, is gradually 

gaining acceptance as a valid fundraising method within mainstream entrepreneurship. 

However, with every successful crowdfunding campaign, questions arise about how the 

project garnered support from its backers. In a sense, while crowdfunding has become more 

popular, so has the gap in research about the methods behind crowdfunding. In particular, 

the role of the campaign pitch in legitimising new ventures remains underexplored. This 

need for legitimacy is critical because crowdfunding projects have to justify the intake 

of financial resources that investors could otherwise allocate to other (more deserving) 

ventures. Although research acknowledges that a personal appeal contributes to the success 

of crowdfunding campaigns, deliberate emotional legitimation strategies have never been 

examined. In contrast to the literature on organisational legitimacy, our study argues 

that creating an emotional connection is an essential part of the legitimation process of 

crowdfunding campaigns. 

YVES MARIËN 


We studied the campaign text and videos of 180 

successful reward-based, crowdfunding campaign 

pitches. Unlike other types, such as lending- or 

equity-based, reward-based crowdfunding provides no 

financial or other ‘hard information’. Entrepreneurs 

can only present themselves as legitimate by sharing 

information through their campaign narratives. 

We collected data from one of Europe’s largest 

crowdfunding platforms and compiled a data set 

that includes projects from six different categories: 

innovation, charity, community, environment, business 

and social enterprise. 

Our study has several consequences. First, in 

crowdfunding campaign pitches, legitimacy is conveyed 

through multiple ‘modes’. Legitimation is no longer 

limited to textual project descriptions. Campaign 

pitches, instead, use multimodality or a combination of 

modes such as written language, still pictures, moving 

images and sound. In business communications, 

writing has traditionally been the primary mode. 

However, with computer and phone screens being 

the dominant medium, the written word has become 

less effective than images and video. Consequently, 

in today’s digital society, solely using textual project 

descriptions is no longer an option. Secondly, videos 

humanise the campaign pitch through the emotive 

C 

practice. Videos show campaigners telling their stories 

power of the human voice and facial expressions,, 

making videos an exceedingly useful communicative 

in an impassioned and personal way. Overall, textual 

rhetoric is less effective, shows less enthusiasm and 

is most likely less crucial to pitches than the emotive 

and human message of videos. Finally, we argue that 

emotions are an undeniable part of the legitimation 

process in the context of a multimodal environment 

characterised by both text and video. Our study 

identifies three distinct emotionalisation strategies. 

The first form is Connecting, which describes how the 

pitches focus on creating relationships with others, 

making people want to help each other. The second 

form is Creating, through which the pitch is framed 

around how the product(s) or service(s) is making 

a breakthrough or is uniquely solving a problem. 

Creative solutions make funders want to do something 

different and try new approaches to solve problems. A 

final form of emotionalisation is Challenging. A pitch 

utilizing this form describes a protagonist succeeding 

against an ‘enemy’. In the pitch, obstacles initially seem 

impossible to deal with; however, funders are inspired 

by the appeal to their appreciation for perseverance 

and courage. 

In conclusion, we are witnessing the growing impact 

of emotionality in investor decision making. This 

legitimisation of emotions is a fundamental shift in the 

expectations of funding pitches. Essentially, traditional 

offline resource acquisition occurs in the past tense. 

An entrepreneur has a business idea, writes the 

funding application and presents it to a small number 

of professional investors. Online (crowd)funding has 

moved this to the present tense. Entrepreneurs show, 

in real-time, what is happening while it is happening. 

There is no longer a middle-person between 

entrepreneurs and the crowd, just a powerfully 

emotional story.

OACHING 

57 

54 

Tuende Erdoes 

SHOOTING FOR GOALS 

IN COACHING: 

ARE WE MISSING THE GOAL? 

Charlotte Goedmakers 

PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY 

DEVELOPMENT OF 

EXECUTIVE COACHES 

PAGE 

53 


PAGE 

54 

SHOOTING 

TO SCORE 

IN COACHING: 

ARE WE MISSING 

THE GOAL? 

At its core, coaching is a goal-directed 

change intervention. The over-arching 

goal is to narrow the gap between clients’ 

current situations and their desired end 

states. Therefore, we know coaching has 

been successful when clients have reached 

their goals. This global understanding is 

based primarily on outcome research that 

focuses on linear explorations, as well as 

explanations of goal attainment with only 

two measurement points: one at the outset 

of coaching and one upon completion of the 

coaching engagement. 

What we would like to further understand is: 

a) To what extent are goals self-directed 

rather than ‘should’ goals. Or in other 

words, are the goals self-concordant and 

in alignment with clients’ true personality. 

b) The mechanisms by which clients attain 

self-directed goals during the coaching 

process. 

So, we chose to explore clients’ authentic 

self-development as the over-arching 

goal of the coaching enterprise. Authentic 

self-development is important, as it 

expresses how well we actualise our sense 

of self, without which we fail to meet our 

three basic human needs: autonomy, 

competence and relatedness as expressed 

forms of self-determination (Deci & 

Ryan, 1985). In coaching, the result is 

that clients experience a relapse once the 

coaching engagement is over. We see this

coaching IN SCIENCE, 

BUSINESS 

AND SOCIETY 

phenomenon unfold in other areas of life as 

well—earning multiple academic degrees 

or top salaries or finding fame and fortune 

through significant achievements often leave 

individuals with a sense of yearning for more 

or a sense of void. 

Therefore, our study explored how clients’ 

personalities (based on the Big Five 

personality model) predicted their capacity 

to attain goals that are aligned with their 

intrinsic interests, needs, values and 

motivations. We also explored how clients’ 

capacity to regulate positive and negative 

affect (i.e., mood) influenced the relationship 

between personality and authentic selfdevelopment 

from session to session and 

beyond the full coaching engagement. 

The longitudinal quantitative process study 

was conducted from November 2018 to 

August 2019. The research population was 

176 pairs of professional coaches and real 

clients who engaged in up to 10 coaching 

sessions. Sessions lasted a minimum of 

60 minutes, as is standard in coaching. 

Coaches were recruited from 31 countries, 

which reflects participants’ culturally 

diverse backgrounds, from which we can 

draw solid generalisable conclusions. 

Clients completed one pre-coaching 

questionnaire, post-session questionnaires 

after each session, and one post-coaching 

questionnaire three months after completing 

the coaching engagement. 

The study revealed the following: 

a) The Big Five trait levels of Agreeableness, 

Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability, 

Extraversion, and Openness, as well as 

the psychological components of these 

traits (i.e., ABCDs: Affect, Behaviour, 

Cognition and Desire), both predicted 

three out of four aspects of authentic selfdevelopment: 

higher levels of perceived 

competence, goal commitment and goal 

self-concordance. They did not predict the 

fourth, goal stability; 

b) The overall affect balance over sessions 

rather than the change in affect balance 

explained the direct relationship between 

personality and two aspects of authentic 

self-development: perceived competence 

and goal commitment, but not selfconcordance 

and goal stability. 

These findings imply that: 

a) While clients’ affect balance increases 

across sessions over time, coaching as 

a change intervention in and of itself has 

a self-regulatory influence on clients. 

Each coaching session forms more 

than the sum of its individual parts. 

What seems to be important for clients’ 

authentic self-development is ‘how well’ 

rather than ‘how much more or less’ 

they arrive at regulating their emotions 

across sessions and over time. This may 

explain why a change in affect balance 

is not found to explain the relationship 

between personality and authentic selfdevelopment. 

PAGE 

55 


TUENDE ERDOES 


PAGE 

56 

For instance, if you have a conscientious 

personality, your change in mood does not 

explain why you stay committed to a goal. 

Instead, your average increased capacity 

to balance your moods may determine 

how well you can stay committed to goals 

over time. 

b) From a humanistic perspective, goal 

stability is a X) way of developing 

continuity and coherence across 

potentially contradictory behaviours 

and the Y) capacity to integrate our 

inconsistent behaviours into a coherent 

self-concept. Contradictory behaviours 

may imply that goals are malleable 

depending on complex situational factors 

(i.e., clients feel safe in the coach-client 

relationship). They may also depend 

on the extent to which our aspirations, 

motivations and intentions evolve over 

the course time. So, clients’ capacity 

to develop authentically may be about 

maintaining their stability of goal-directed 

functioning rather than the stability of a 

goal per se. 

c) Coaching functions as a complex selfregulatory 

engagement. It serves as the 

key contextual factor in which clients 

show up as self-determined individuals 

to adjust goals in concordance with their 

true selves. Repeated goal-orientation and 

task-setting are likely to foster clients’ 

‘continued adjustability’ in how they 

pursue their goals. Therefore, clients’ 

continued adjustability rather than goalstability 

will support their ‘becoming one’ 

in line with their personality during a 

coaching engagement. 

d) Clients experience coaching as a learning 

process in which they can attain goals 

with minimal pressure and compulsion 

(i.e., they feel more ‘self-concordant’ in 

their goal pursuits) when coaching is in 

line with their personalities. For instance, 

clients whose goals match their implicit 

personalities will feel a strong conviction 

and will be interested in pursuing their 

goals in line with their true self, which 

implies that self-concordance does not 

require any self-regulatory resources 

through affect balance in coaching. 

Based on these findings, authentic selfdevelopment 

is formulated during the 

process of becoming a continuously 

congruent self with contradictory 

behaviours, most probably against someone 

else’s taste in a social context. Coaching, as 

a social context, illustrates a unique selfregulatory 

intervention that supports clients 

in their process of ‘becoming one’. 

For leadership, which requires key coaching 

competencies, the findings imply that 

leaders need to: 

a) foster authentic self-development among 

their staff as the ultimate means to 

sustained outcomes, 

b) engage with their staff’s self-perception 

of competence, goal commitment and 

goal self-concordance towards ‘becoming 

one’ at work, 

c) adopt a leadership style that sustains 

their staff’s balanced affective, cognitive, 

behavioural and motivational aspects of 

their personalities while on their paths to 

goal attainment, 

d) integrate coaching competencies that 

support staff’s self-regulatory resources 

(i.e., affect balance) to support their 

attainment of self-congruent goals, 

e) apply leadership as a contextual factor 

that has the potential to influence staff’s 

capacity to self-regulate beyond their own 

self-regulatory resources. 

Ultimately, leadership as a coaching 

capability is a contextual factor that 

influences how staff can attain goals in 

congruence with their true self, which 

ultimately impacts how organisations reach 

their own goal of sustained success and 

organisational development.

coaching IN SCIENCE, 

BUSINESS 

AND SOCIETY 

CHARLOTTE GOEDMAKERS 


YVONNE BURGER 


MANON RUIJTERS 


PROFESSIONAL 

IDENTITY 

DEVELOPMENT 

OF EXECUTIVE 

COACHES 

We know, from practice and academic research, that executive 

coaches are highly successful in helping their clients grow into 

their role at work and to develop in demanding, complex and 

changing work contexts [1]. In a conversation based, one-on-one, 

dyadic relationship, developing trust and achieving a deep level of 

psychological reflection and understanding between a coach and 

their client are the criteria for success. The effectiveness of coaching 

is strongly related to the strength of the working alliance between a 

coach and their client. It is also related to the personality of the coach 

and common factors such as honesty, authenticity, empathy, warmth, 

respect, and trustworthiness [2]. 

To make coaching work, executive coaches have, on the one hand, 

the freedom and autonomy to do their complex work in their own 

way. On the other hand, similar to other professionals, they want 

to do good work and deliver quality to systems of clients and their 

organisations. Further, they want to also contribute to other systems 

by being critical to the development of their professional communities 

and society in general. In other words, ‘noblesse oblige’ or choosing 

to contribute to all those systems with different relationships and 

interests at stake, brings forth the responsibility of remaining 

professional by continuously reflecting on one’s own being in one’s 

specific role [3]. 

The concept of professional identity can provide guidance [4]. 

Although the coaching industry is professionalising [5], the concept of 

professional identity is not very explicit in the research on executive 

coaching and the coaching profession is absent in the research on 

professional identity. Little is known about the journeys of executive 

coaches in terms of their professional identity development. 

Reviewing the existing literature on professional identity in other 

‘helping professions’ shows an agreement that identity in the context 

of work, can be seen in (at least) three dimensions: the personal, 

the relational in interaction with others and the collective in terms 

of sharing a common purpose, meaning, joint action and belonging 

to the same group. Professional identity development has been 

researched in, for instance, medical and teaching professions that 

are characterised by uniform schooling, training and career paths; 

however, the coaching profession is characterised by more diversity. 

We discovered four different, but connected, perspectives related to 

professional identity development that will be helpful in introducing 

systematic research to the field of executive coaching. 

Occupational or vocational identity refers to the question of what it 

means to be an executive coach. This relates to the aforementioned 

collective dimension of identity, in which reflection on the profession 

in general—its background, origin and history, the dos and don’ts, the 

shared beliefs and values and the common body of knowledge are 

central. Informed by this collective identity, an individual executive 

coach might ask themself, ‘What does it mean for me to be a coach 

and what stance do I take?’ This brings the second perspective, 

Professional identity, to the fore. This perspective is used to refer to a 

set of attributes, beliefs, values, motives and experiences, or a mental 

PAGE 

57 


‘mini-theory’ based on the 

knowledge and practical 

experiences that affect the 

attitudes, affect and behaviour 

in work that makes an individual 

coach recognisable, despite changes 

in circumstances and time. Instead of 

a state of being, the third perspective, 

Identity Work, represents a dynamic or 

process view by referring to the cognitive, 

discursive, physical and behavioural activities 

that professionals undertake with the goal of 

forming, repairing, maintaining, strengthening, 

revising, or rejecting collective, role and personal 

self-meanings within boundaries of their social 

contexts [6]. An interesting question in this respect is, 

‘What is at stake for me as a person in my role and how 

do I (re-)act?’. The fourth perspective, Identity Workspaces, 

can best be illuminated by asking the question, ‘What do 

I need, as an executive coach, to ensure a safe setting for 

identity work?’[7]. A holding environment for identity work 

might be offered through either the form of trusted supervision 

or safe spaces provided during training programs; however, other 

possibilities remain to be explored [8]. Since the coach-client 

relationship is the main contributor of success in their work, the 

question of how executive coaches make use of this relationship as a 

workspace for their professional identity development is a challenge 

to explore. 

As a test, we analysed the recent work of Burger [9], reflecting on 

her practice of coaching and concluded that these four perspectives 

are notably different, but related ways to continuously develop her 

professional identity. Those four perspectives will guide empirical 

research on how executive coaches develop their professional 

identity. Apart from contributing to academic research in the field 

of professional identity development and executive coaching, this 

research is helpful for practitioners to gain more insight in how to 

engage and develop professional identity, in how to continuously 

develop as a professional and in how to maintain quality of service 

in an ever-changing world. Educational institutions and professional 

bodies will gain more insight in how to further facilitate executive 

coaches in their continuous growth and professional development, as 

well as how to further profile the profession of executive coaching to 

their clients. 

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Coaching: An International 

Uitgeverij Kloosterhof B.V. 

Vol. 71, No 4, pp. 227-248. 

icf ; https://www.emccglobal.org/ 

Journal of Theory, Research and 

Cavicchia, S., Gilbert, M. (2019). 

about_emcc/# ; https://www. 

Practice, Vol. 3, No.1, pp. 60-72.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS BY EXECUTIVES 

RECENT 

PUBLICATIONS 

BY EXECUTIVES 

Gorbatov, 

S., Khapova, S. N., Oostrom, J. K., & Lysova, 

E. I. (Accepted/In press). Personal brand equity: Scale 

development and validation. Personnel Psychology. 

https://doi.org/10.1111/peps.12412 

Botke, J. A., Jansen, P., Khapova, S. N., & Tims, M. (2018). 

Work factors influencing the transfer stages of soft skills 

training: A literature review. Educational Research Review, 

24, 130-147. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2018.04.001 

der Kinderen, S., Valk, A., Khapova, S. N., & Tims, M. (2020). 

Facilitating eudaimonic well-being in mental health care 

organizations: The role of servant leadership and workplace 

civility climate. International Journal of Environmental 

Research and Public Health, 17(4), 1-17. [1173]. 

https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17041173 

Ghaempanah, B., & Khapova, S. N. (Accepted/In press). 

Identity play and the stories we live by. Journal of 

Organizational Change Management. 

https://doi.org/10.1108/JOCM-07-2019-0238 

PAGE 

59 

Schinagl, S., & Shahim, A. (2020). What do we know about 

information security governance? “From the basement to 

the boardroom”: towards digital security governance. 

Information and Computer Security, 28(2), 261-292. 

https://doi.org/10.1108/ICS-02-2019-0033 

Gorbatov, S., Khapova, S. N., & Lysova, E. I. (2019). Get 

Noticed to Get Ahead: The Impact of Personal Branding on 

Career Success. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, [2662]. 

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02662 

Bouland-van Dam, S. I. M., Oostrom, J. K., De Kock, F. S., 

Schlechter, A. F., & Jansen, P. G. W. (2020). Unravelling 

leadership potential: conceptual and measurement issues. 

European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 

1-19. https://doi.org/10.1080/1359432X.2020.1787503 


MANAGEMENT 

BOOKS 

PAGE 

60 

DOET MARKETING ERTOE? 

Ruud Frambach 

Is marketing misleading and a 

waste of money? This impression 

can certainly arise if marketing 

is used incorrectly. A price is 

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term also by marketing itself. 

This undermines confidence 

in the profession and limits 

the important and especially 

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can play. When used properly, 

marketing can create value 

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same time realize value for 

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Dutch | EAN: 9789024418725 

HOW TO SURVIVE THE 

ORGANIZATIONAL REVOLUTION: 

A GUIDE TO AGILE CONTEM- 

PORARY OPERATING MODELS, 

PLATFORMS AND ECOSYSTEMS 

Ard-Pieter de Man, 

Pieter Koene, 

Martijn Ars 

Today companies face a bewildering 

choice of new organizational 

design options. Information technology 

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may use them and when to avoid 

them. In addition it discusses 

implementation strategies, 

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side of new organizational forms. 

Many practical cases illustrate 

the ideas. 

English | ISBN13: 9789063695217 

RIDING THE WAVES OF 

CULTURE, FOURTH EDITION: 

UNDERSTANDING DIVERSITY IN 

GLOBAL BUSINESS 

4TH EDITION 

Fons Trompenaars, 

Charles Hampden-Turner 

Riding the Waves of Culture, 

Fourth Edition retains its 

in-depth exploration of the 

underlying cultural frameworks

that affect leadership, 

effectiveness and innovation 

across cultures. With new 

information and evidence-based 

insights on critical business 

matters, it offers insight on 

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development of multi-cultural 

societies, and more. Also new in 

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of its kind, Riding the Waves of 

Culture does more than help 

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work environment; it provides 

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English | EAN: 9781260468649 

Researchers confirmed that the 

less facetime employees have 

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impact seeking and receiving 

feedback will have on their 

performance. Gorbatov and Lane 

propose a simple, systematic 

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honest feedback, in ways that 

improve performance and prove 

that, if done properly, feedback 

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English | ISBN13: 978- 

1912555093 

and use, and changes in work. 

Using a combination of existing 

literature and thorough practical 

examples they make four 

recommendations for WISE 

management of AI. This means 

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Ethical awareness. These 

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AI provide the reader a unique 

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Dutch | EAN 9789490463809 

success. 

If you are 

a manager, 

consultant, or 

counselor the 

authors show how 

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The book unfolds in two parts, 

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English | EAN: 9780190866310 

PAGE 

61 

S.L.I.M. MANAGEN VAN 

AI IN DE PRAKTIJK: 

HOE ORGANISATIES 

SLIMME TECHNOLOGIE 

IMPLEMENTEREN 

AN INTELLIGENT CAREER: 

TAKING OWNERSHIP OF 

YOUR WORK AND YOUR LIFE 

FAIR TALK: THREE STEPS TO 

POWERFUL FEEDBACK 

Sergey Gorbatov, 

Angela Lane 

Employees around the world 

are deprived of honest objective 

feedback, and the higher you 

go in the organisation, the less 

feedback you are going to get. 

Lauren Waardenburg, 

Marleen Huysman, 

Marlous Agterberg 

The authors describe how 

eight organizations deal with 

the implementation and use of 

artificial intelligence (AI). They 

identify the following four key 

challenges of implementing 

AI: organizing for data, testing 

and validating AI, creating 

bridges between AI design 

Michael Arthur, 

Svetlana Khapova, 

Julia Richardson 

Using examples and insights 

from around the globe, the 

authors explain how you can 

take stock of your career; 

combine assets such as your 

commitment, experience and 

relationships; determine future 

action; and earn greater career 


EXECUTIVES 

IN SCIENCE, 

BUSINESS 

AND SOCIETY 

For more information visit 

www.abri.vu.nl 

Application deadline 

December 1 

Start 

January 

(each year) 

PAGE 

62 

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PAGE 

63 

CONTACT 

Do you have a question for the editorial 

team, do you want to learn more about 

collaborating with VU, or would you 

like to get in contact with one of the 

contributing authors? 

We invite you to contact the editors: 

Prof. dr. Svetlana Khapova 

Professor of Organisational Behaviour 

Head of the Department 

of Management & Organisation 


s.n.khapova@vu.nl 

Niki Konijn 

Head of Operations, 

Department of Management 

& Organisation 


n.m.konijn@vu.nl 


AMSTERDAM 

IN SCIENCE, 

BUSINESS 

AND SOCIETY 

AMSTERDAM 

BUSINESS 

RESEARCH 

INSTITUTE 

The Amsterdam Business Research Institute (ABRI), established in 2009 by Vrije Universiteit 

Amsterdam, is one of the largest institutes of business and management research in Europe. 

Located in the midst of the business and financial district of Amsterdam – the Amsterdam 

Zuidas – the distinct expertise of ABRI lays in the business performance and management of 

professional and financial services. With a specific focus on this sector, ABRI’s researchers 

conduct research and offer doctoral (PhD) education in six areas: 

1. Accounting & Financial Management 

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3. Logistics & Operations Research 

4. Marketing 

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6. Strategy & Organisation 

Dozens of public and private organisations, among which are ABN AMRO, 

Deloitte, and KPMG, collaborate with ABRI in research and business 

intelligence and in addressing today’s business and management 

challenges. These business-science partnerships are aimed at 

delivering rigorous and relevant contributions not only to better 

business practices and processes within organisations in the 

Netherlands, but also to contribute to a stronger European 

economy. 

Visit our web-site www.abri.vu.nl to learn about recent research 

findings concerned with business and management, and 

to initiate a new collaboration to benefit your organisation!

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