Purpose The paper offers a dynamic theory of leadership development. Design/methodology/approach – The paper examines selected leadership literature through the lens of theory building blocks. It identifies the role of the ideal goal in leadership and its importance in developing the psychological aspect of leadership. Findings – The paper posits that leadership is a developmental process, whic...

It is not the intention of this paper to outline my research project per se, as this has been discussed in past papers (see Hawkins, 2007a, 2007b, 2007c). This paper highlights the argument for the importance of making explicit and connecting one’s own personal beliefs and understandings (theories) with one’s research. The intention of this paper is to address Patti Lather’s concerns and examin...

Business Intelligence (BI) project failure rates are high and expected benefits are not always achieved when implementing a BI solution in an organization. Failure is characterized by recurring challenges that remain largely unresolved. Could a better understanding of BI and its challenges emerge by taking a step back to examine how BI is understood? To answer this overarching research question...

Individuals subtly reminded of death, coalitional challenges, or feelings of uncertainty display exaggerated preferences for affirmations and against criticisms of their cultural in-groups. Terror management, coalitional psychology, and uncertainty management theories postulate this "worldview defense" effect as the output of mechanisms evolved either to allay the fear of death, foster social s...

The first part of this paper proposes a precise definition of what a worldview is, and why there is a necessity to have one. The second part suggests how to construct integrated scientific worldviews. For this attempts, three general scientific approaches are proposed: the general systems theory as the endeavor for a universal language for science, a general problem-solving approach and the ide...

tend to get nervous when i hear talk of paradigm shifts. The term itself has been debased through inaccurate popular use—even turning into a joke on The Simpsons—but its original role in Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions [1] is worth revisiting as we examine the idea of a Fourth Paradigm and its impact on scholarly communication [2]. Kuhn's model describes a world of science in ...

Individuals who have been subtly reminded of death display heightened in-group favouritism, or “worldview defense.” Terror management theory argues (i) that death cues engender worldview defense via psychological mechanisms specifically evolved to suppress death anxiety, and (ii) that the core function of religiosity is to suppress death anxiety. Thus, terror management theory predicts that ext...

This study examines the differences between two types of close relationships (friends and romantic partners) in moderating responses to mortality salience. Prior research has shown that mortality salience increases worldview defense as a mechanism for managing the terror of death. It was predicted that social support from romantic partners (but not friends) would alleviate the need to defend on...