Management Practice Insights
DOI: 10.59571/mpi.v2i2.1
Year: 2024, Volume: 2, Issue: 2, Pages: 37-41
Original Article
Arunima Haldar 1, Pragya Gupta 2
1 Associate Professor with the Finance and Economics department at SPJIMR
2 Associate editor, SPJIMR's MPI magazine
Correspondence
[email protected]
[email protected]
Received Date:06 June 2024, Accepted Date:30 August 2024, Published Date:15 October 2024
Innovation is increasing in importance for companies — even more so when times are uncertain. The role of leadership, particularly that of a CXO, is pivotal in shaping an organization's innovation strategy and culture. Innovation, especially in large or multiproduct companies, has two different, and critical forms: exploitative innovation (enhancing existing products or services) and exploratory innovation (developing new products or services). Being able to simultaneously balance both forms of innovation is known as innovation ambidexterity. So what kind of leader is likely to exhibit this ambidexterity? The answer comes to us from a research study conducted by You and team, which explores how the personality traits of a CEO, specifically narcissism, affect a company's ability to manage and balance exploratory and exploitative innovation.1 This finding has critical implications for executive search, depending on the company's context for innovation, search committees and consultants should include a new criterion – the level of narcissism of CEO candidates
1 Moderating Roles of CEO Power and Firm Reputation,” Journal of Product Innovation Management 40, no. 2 (March 2023): 17594, https://doi.org/10.1111/jpim.12653
2 David F Larcker et al., “Are Narcissistic CEOs All That Bad?,” Rock Center for Corporate Governance and Stanford University Working Paper (n.d.), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3937526
3 Rhett Power, “Revolutionizing C-Suite Recruitment: A New Era Of Executive Search,” Forbes, April 14, 2024, https://www.forbes.com/sites/rhettpower/2024/04/14/revolutionizing-csuite-recruitment-a-new-era-of-executive-search/?sh=3a58fad463b4 ; Jenn, “The High Costs of Hiring The Wrong Leader | TRANSEARCH USA,” February 10, 2023, https://transearchusa.com/the-high-costs-of-hiring-thewrong-leader/
4 Michael Maccoby, “Narcissistic Leaders: The Incredible Pros, the Inevitable Cons,” Harvard Business Review, n.d., https://hbr.org/2004/01/narcissisticleaders-the-incredible-pros-the-inevitablecons#:~:text=Charisma%2C%20vision%E2%80%94and%2C%20yes,essential%20during%20times%20of%20transition
5 Eric Jackson, “The Top 25 Most Narcissistic CEOs In Tech,” Forbes, September 19, 2013, https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2013/09/16/the-top-25-mostnarcissistic-ceos-in-tech/
6 Ron Caricci, “Taming Your Triggers: Three Lessons From Steve Jobs For When Your Buttons Get Pushed,” Forbes, October 29, 2015, https://www.forbes.com/sites/roncarucci/2015/10/28/taming-your-triggersthree-lessons-from-steve-jobs-for-when-your-buttons-getpushed/?sh=2c8b0c4642ba
7 Barbara Sheen, Steve Jobs (Gale, Cengage, 2010).
8 Michael Schlossberg, “Why Did Apples Board Fire Steve Jobs in 1985?,” Corporate Governance Institute, n.d., https://www.thecorporategovernanceinstitute.com/insights/casestudies/why-did-apples-board-fire-steve-jobs-in-1985
9 Sheen, Steve Jobs.
10 Michael Maccoby, “Narcissistic Leaders: The Incredible Pros, the Inevitable Cons,” Working Knowledge, Harvard Business School, n.d., https://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/narcissistic-leaders-the-incredible-pros-theinevitable-cons
11 Shlomo Ben-Hur and Brian Bolton, “WILL ELON MUSKS NARCISSISM BE HIS DOWNFALL?,” International Institute for Management Development, October 2018, https://www.imd.org/researchknowledge/leadership/articles/will-elon-musks-narcissism-be-his-downfall/
12 Jackson, “The Top 25 Most Narcissistic CEOs In Tech.”
© 2024 Published by SPJIMR. This is an open-access article under the CC BY license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
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