Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to examine the ways that the largest private sector organizations in Sweden and Turkey communicate the intent of their codes of ethics to their employees. Design/methodology/approach – Primary data were obtained via a self-administered mail questionnaire distributed to a census of the top 500 private sector organizations based on revenue in each country. Findings – The research identified some interesting findings that showed that the small group of companies in Turkey that have a code may appear to be more “advanced” in ethics artifacts usage than Sweden. Such a conclusion is counter-intuitive as one would have expected a developed nation like Sweden to be more advanced in these measures than a developing nation such as Turkey. Culture may play a large role in the implementation of ethics artifacts in corporations and could be a major reason for this difference. Research limitations/implications – As this is such a new area of investigation in Turkey, the responses amount to only 32 companies that have a code. The small sample is indicative of the formative evolution toward having codes of ethics within companies operating within Turkey. Practical implications – This study enables those organizations that comprise corporate Turkey to view the current state of codes of ethics in Turkish companies and to compare these with the responses of a developed country of the European Union. Originality and value – A review of the literature indicates that this is the first time that such an international study specifically focused upon codes of ethics and the artifacts to inculcate the ethos of the code into every day corporate affairs has included Turkey as one of the participating countries.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and visualize alternative ways – how and by whom – that academic research can come into commercial use. This study in the Swedish context investigates one entrepreneurial university, Chalmers University of Technology. In total, 18 interviews were conducted about researchers' views on commercialization and on how research comes into commercial use.Five propositions are advocated in relation to researchers’ role as enablers of others' commercialization. The concept of “need for utilization” is introduced as the critical explanation for researchers'  readiness to transfer knowledge mainly via alumni to established companies. This study suggests that both universities and policy should acknowledge alternative ways of commercialization of academic research instead of putting all efforts on trying to transform unwilling academic researchers into entrepreneurs. One alternative is to foster ongoing contacts between researchers and alumni, who make commercial use of academic research in established firms. This study furthers the knowledge about researchers’ individual motivation for commercialization, as driven by a “need for utilization.” By showing how researchers enable others commercialization, this study broadens the prevailing focus on researchers' formation of university spin-offs as the essential output from entrepreneurial universities. The results also contribute to understanding the role of alumni in knowledge transfer to existing industry. © 2017 © Emerald Publishing Limited

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the leadership tasks at the different hierarchical levels in the organisation in terms of the teleological approaches to complexity science. Design/methodology/approach: It is based upon a theoretical discussion linked to conceptual and managerial frameworks in conjunction with a conceptual analysis. Findings: The introduced conceptual and managerial frameworks provide a foundation to the understanding of organisational performance. They also strive to offer a foundation of understanding to management and leadership and how they complement each other. Research limitations/implications: It is not easy to empirically substantiate complexity in conceptual and managerial frameworks. The authors use teleological approaches of complexity science in an unorthodox way that need validation in a broader context offering opportunities for further research. Practical implications: We need to think differently about organisational performance and how we present and reflect on information that appears to be "linear" although it is not necessarily the case. Originality/value: The paper contributes to an alternative assessment organisational performance. It endeavours to reflect on the complexity of organisations and taking into account a pluralistic approach that synthesises a variety of perspectives, including a bottom-up approach to problem solving. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Purpose

– The objective is to describe a selection of sustainability components of leadership effectiveness in organizational performance.

Design/methodology/approach

– The paper is based on a conceptual discussion.

Findings

– The paper contributes to descriptive models that address sustainability components of leadership effectiveness in organizational performance. The study highlights some common views that exist in the management literature and in prosperous management practice related to the direct impact of the relationship in organizational performance between leadership and effectiveness. In fact, it also highlights the critical or sceptical views of leadership effectiveness in organizational performance raised in the literature.

Research limitations/implications

– The paper contends that the actual leadership effectiveness in organizational performance varies over time and across contexts. At times, the achievement in organizational performance is the outcome of prosperous and conscious leadership, while it at other times may be the outcome of poor and deficient leadership. The topic at hand is positioned and limited to the interface that may describe and explain the connection between these two views. Furthermore, it is limited to corporate decision making and business behaviour in relation to leadership effectiveness and organizational performance.

Practical implications

– The leadership of an organization need not only to be successful today, but they also need to be successful tomorrow to stay in control and to flourish. Quality control and quality assurance are no longer enough for most organizations. They need to build an awareness of the sustainability components into processes of their management and business practices (i.e. internal and external ones) in order to be judged as successful in corporate decision‐making and business behaviour in organizational performance in the long term.

Originality/value

– The principal contributions of the study are a model of timely leadership effectiveness, a model of contextual leadership effectiveness, and a typology of leadership effectiveness in corporate decision‐making and business behaviour. These contributions provide theoretical and managerial ideas and insights into the sustainability components of leadership effectiveness in organizational performance. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Purpose – This paper intends to shed some light on the relationship between leadership performance and corporate accomplishment through the aid of complexity sciences. The objective is to describe leadership performance in corporate accomplishment using different teleological approaches. Design/methodology/approach – The paper discusses the underlying criteria of the relationship between leadership performance and corporate accomplishment. Case illustration and narrative analogy are also provided. Findings – The authors believe that the discussion highlights a potential downside of leadership performance in corporate accomplishment and its precision rarely highlighted in practice and literature. Research limitations/implications – There is a reigning assumption in management practice that is based on the belief that a top-down approach of leadership performance in management and business practices is superior to the bottom-up approach. It proffers the assumed importance of strategic management issues, but neglects the knowledge, experience, competence and awareness inherent among employees at tactical and operational levels of business practices. It also proffers a mechanical view of employee performance and ignores the worth of the generation of ideas from subordinates in management and business practices that contribute to corporate achievements. Furthermore, it neglects the fact that it is not possible to know the future nor it is predictable. Practical implications – The paper contends that the importance of top management tends to be inflated in respect to corporate achievements in the management/leadership literature. It also contends that it should be questioned as to whether the top management of corporations are largely responsible for the corporate results on which they attempt to justify their salaries and other benefits. Furthermore, the paper contends that it also should be questioned as to what extent corporate accomplishment may be derived from the performance of the top management in organizations. Originality/value – The paper strives to contribute to the ongoing discussion of leadership performance in corporate accomplishment in various ways. The principal contributions are: a set of teleological sub-processes of leadership performance and a case illustration and narrative analogies of teleological leadership performance patterns, in respect to corporate accomplishment in management and business practices. These contributions provide theoretical and managerial ideas and insights to anticipate and avoid deficient or erroneous grounds of leadership performance evaluation in corporate accomplishment.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to create a better understanding of the strategic management behavior of top managers in small, fast-growing manufacturing firms.

Design/methodology/approach: Empirical data have been collected in Sweden through both a survey of the 100 fastest growing small firms during 2000 and the development five years after (2001-2006), as well as through structured observations of the working days of top managers in six fast-growing manufacturing small firms.

Findings: Managers in small, fast-growing manufacturing firms are engaged in many different activities. However, a few activities tend to take the majority of their time. These activities are either operational (for instance, activities related to production, marketing and sales) or administrative (for instance, activities related to the firms’ personnel and to financial issues). Looking at the managers’ activities from a strategy management point of view, they spend very little time on strategic activities. This finding may explain why firm growth in many cases declines or even ceases.

Originality/value: The paper contributes to the theoretical and empirical literature on strategic processes in small, fast-growing manufacturing firms by showing that the majority of their managers use a “simplistic strategy”. Such a strategy may imply that these managers find it difficult to alter their originally successful operational and administrative behavior in order to develop their firms. Such managers are “stuck” in a path dependency mindset, even though the growth of their firms requires that they adopt a more flexible management strategy.