The Telfer School welcomes Jennifer Ferris, who is studying here on a prestigious Fulbright scholarship. The Canada-U.S. Fulbright scholarships provide a unique opportunity for outstanding students to examine issues that are relevant to Canada, to the U.S., and to the relationship between the two countries. Ferris is one of just 18 American students in the 2013-2014 cohort, and she chose the University of Ottawa!

She's taking courses towards a Master’s in Economics, and researching entrepreneurship with Professor David Doloreux. University Research Chair in Canadian Francophonie, Dr. Doloreux is a prolific researcher on innovation, knowledge transfer and regional development as they relate to a knowledge-based economy. Ferris will be studying how Canada’s entrepreneurship has changed over the past 30 years with respect to globalization as well as its variation among regions. She will also examine how best to encourage entrepreneurship among youth and linguistic minorities (particularly francophone).

An undergrad course piqued Ferris’s interest in entrepreneurship and she went on to pursue a double major in business economics and French, at Grove City College in Pennsylvania. Ferris explains that she decided to study entrepreneurship in Canada for several different reasons, but mainly because of its important trade relationship with the United States and because of previous trips to Canada that she enjoyed.

Her initial reaction to living in Canada? “How different everything is from the United States, from education to politics to temperatures in Celsius to unfamiliar brands at the Rideau Centre,” says Ferris, a native of Vermont. “Although I didn’t realize to what extent it would be different here, I really enjoy learning about new things and my experience so far has been terrific!”

Read Jennifer's interview in the Gazette.

Read more about Entrepreneurship at the Telfer School.

A note on the Fulbright student scholarships. The 2013-14 competition is open for Canadian students and the deadline is November 15. Follow these links for more information:

http://www.international.uottawa.ca/en/index.html

http://www.fulbright.ca/programs/canadian-scholars/traditional-awards-2.html

Employees can influence their managers’ charismatic leadership behaviour through their acts of followership, explains an article published in the Journal of Psychology by uOttawa professor Laurent M. Lapierre from the Telfer School of Management. The article points to a need to invest more time and energy into educating employees about their roles as followers and the impact their performance in these roles has on their leaders and the organization. While previous literature has proposed that followers may influence how a leader behaves, this argument has not been carefully explained in relation to charismatic leadership behaviour. The arguments put forth in Professor Lapierre’s paper shed light on how charismatic leadership can emerge in organizational settings.

Charismatic leadership is the kind of leadership that has a profound impact on followers, the organization and, in some cases, society at large. Successful charismatic leaders inspire followers to identify with them and their mission or vision, to feel better about their work, and to perform beyond expectations.

Charismatic leadership can be positive or negative. The positive side of charismatic leadership is referred to as socialized charismatic leadershipand is displayed by individuals like Martin Luther King, Jr. Socialized charismatic leaders are collectively oriented, egalitarian and non-exploitative. By contrast, personalized charismatic leadership represents the negative side and is characterized by leaders who are self-aggrandizing, non-egalitarian and exploitative. An example of a personalized charismatic leader is Adolf Hitler.

Professor Lapierre explains, “Proactive followership within a manager’s group of employees tends to increase that manager’s socialized charismatic leadership behaviour. Meanwhile, passive followership within the group tends to increase the manager’s personalized charismatic leadership behaviour.” The fundamental logic underlying these predictions is that of “fit.” Specifically, the ideals of socialized charismatic leaders are personified by proactive followers, while those of personalized charismatic leaders are personified by passive followers.

Though people display followership by recognizing and supporting another person as their leader, the way in which they do so varies. Passive followers carefully follow the leader’s instructions and rarely challenge his or her ideas. This type of followership involves substantial deference to the leader. Proactive followers voice ideas and concerns without being asked, and constructively challenge the leader’s decisions if they are not consistent with the group’s mission. Proactive followership is seen as establishing a “partner” role with the leader, but it still requires some degree of deference, without which followership ceases to exist.

The authors emphasize that a manager’s predisposition to display either socialized or personalized charismatic leadership is important. It is unlikely that employees’ acts of followership will enhance a manager’s charismatic leadership behaviour if he or she has a weak predisposition to display such behaviour in the first place. “Proactive followership would drive a manager to display more socialized charismatic leadership when that manager already has a moderate-to-high predisposition toward that type of leadership behaviour. Similarly, passive followership may enhance a manager’s personalized charismatic leadership behaviour if that manager is predisposed toward that type of leadership,” states Professor Lapierre.

Moreover, the article points out that an employee will not necessarily follow his or her manager. Employees are followers (whether passive or proactive) only to the extent that they view their manager as their leader and support him or her in that role. Employees who regularly resist their manager’s requests, rarely see eye-to-eye with their manager or try to sabotage their manager’s efforts to lead the group are clearly not followers.

Mark Freel has recently been appointed as the Telfer School’s RBC Financial Group Professor in the Commercialization of Innovation for a 5-year period.

Mark Freel, M.A. (Glasgow), M.Sc. (Paisley), Ph.D. (Aberdeen) is the Director of the MSc in Management and a full professor at the Telfer School of Management in the area of innovation and entrepreneurship. He is a recognized researcher and has undertaken different projects on behalf of European regional, national and supra-national government bodies. Additionally, he has been awarded several grants from charities and research councils to study different aspects of entrepreneurship, innovation policy and strategy in the context of specific communities in Britain. The professorship is a joint initiative between RBC Financial Group and the Telfer School of Management, and focuses on commercialization of science- and technology-based innovations. This appointment will offer Professor Freel the opportunity to provide support and mentorship to faculty involved in entrepreneurship and commercialization of innovation and to contribute to the Telfer School’s efforts to develop this strategic area of excellence. The inaugural incumbent, Tom Brzustowski, held the position from 2005 to 2012.

The RBC Professor will harness strong business and academic resources to advance research, educational programs and outreach with the community in this area. The RBC Professor also collaborates with the Telfer School’s Entrepreneur-in-residence in the development of courses and other initiatives related to entrepreneurship.

At one time, firms could rely on the internal processes and the talent of individual employees to foster innovation. But that is no longer the case as openness and constant innovation have become the new benchmarks of high performance. Now scholars like Pavel Andreev are delving into the profound implications this trend has in the management sciences.

“Innovation at its core is about knowledge, and the most valuable knowledge frequently lies outside an organization,” says Andreev, who recently became professor of business analytics and performance management after completing a post-doctoral fellowship at the Telfer School. “The global business environment demands that firms focus more on their networks with other organizations, competitors, suppliers, and clients, and on the processes linking these outsiders.”

“Performance management today does not depend exclusively on leveraging employee’ competencies in the context of internal projects. Rather, the focus has turned to the tools and strategies companies can use to deploy inter-organizational processes and make the most of networks of outsiders.”

New information technologies are behind this paradigm shift, enabling work teams to benefit efficiently from external knowledge and resources. “I’m interested not only in the technological changes that flow from that,” Andreev says, “but the structural and behavioural changes, in this relatively new domain of organizational performance analysis.”

Andreev’s projects cross several distinct disciplines and are international in scope. He conducts research on open code, open content and open commerce business models with colleagues at University College Cork, Ireland, a collaboration which dates from his time as a research fellow there, in 2009-2010. In the following year, Andreev examined the use and adoption of smart phones and the realization of mobile payments, as a postdoctoral scholar working with researchers at the Sagy Center for Internet Research at the University of Haifa, Israel; their collaboration is ongoing.

Professor Andreev is driven by an intense curiosity and a straightforward research philosophy. “By collaborating in interdisciplinary teams, involving those who work with new information technologies, we increase the relevance of the research.”