Transforming Leadership for Service Business

Doctoral Thesis / Dissertation from the year 2014 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: A, Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, language: English, abstract: Customers are increasingly becoming active participants and co-creators of value in the mobile Internet era. With this trend, employees are encouraged to engage in active dialogue with customers, effectively manage customer diversity and co-create personalized experiences. Such changes challenge the leadership. The relevant literature reveals that the significance to leadership of shared vision has attracted attention and become widely acceptable. However, there is a large gap in the literature regarding how to model the building of shared vision in service business. Our study represents a first attempt to shed light on how vision co- creation between leaders and employees can affect the leadership in corporate transformation. Based on comparisons of the leadership literature regarding product-oriented and service-oriented companies, we hypothesised about vision co-creation with employees. Then, we conducted an in-depth case study in a leading software company in China and interviews in four multinational IT companies in Japan. This study suggests that vision co-creation with employees is imperative for leaders in todays service-dominant business. In the co-creation process, six relevant working states of employees are defined: non-engagement, expectation, satisfaction, engagement, loyalty and creativity. As a firm creates a new vision, or makes the existing corporate vision into a shared vision, it goes through these phases. We propose specific implications of the issues and focus on each phase to address the concerns. This research makes a contribution by addressing concerns that many companies are over-managed and under-led. Traditional management systems, such as management rules, PDCA, performance appraisals and incentive systems, are still