Strong leadership is essential for survival in today's competitive business environment. Yet it has been estimated that from 25 to 75 percent of top executives hired today fail. Such failures can cripple the organization and adversely affect its stakeholders. So how can senior-level positions be filled with leaders who fit the bill? 
The Center for Creative Leadership has studied executive selection for years. Its researchers have interviewed hundreds of executives, analyzed the decision-making styles of the people who make selections, and studied the latest management and psychological literature on the subject. Executive Selection draws on this research, and on the extensive experience of the authors in working with top-level management, to offer a series of steps that decision makers can follow to make better hiring decisions. After detailing who should be on the selection team, the book shows how this group of people can develop a systematic way to look at the organization, its environment, the open position, and the candidate requirements. The team thereby develops an image of the ideal candidate that can be used throughout the selection process. Next, advice is given on the best way to develop a good candidate pool and how to gather and use the right information to determine who should be hired. Finally, Executive Selection makes recommendations that will help ensure the new executive's successful transition into the organization and his or her continued development. In all, these steps represent a comprehensive, easy-to-follow system that takes the mystery out of selecting for success. The book's strategies for pinpointing the right person for the job apply to the selection of CEOs, officers, and others in the executive suite. Executives, boards of directors, and HR professionals can use these strategies to improve their selection processes. Investors can use them to assess the executive selections being conducted within companies of interest. And researchers can use them to garner ideas for additional work in the field.

Executive Selection: Strategies for Success

Business & Money

Sessa, Valerie I.

Taylor, Jodi J.

Management & Leadership

Jossey-Bass Inc Pub

Continuous Learning in Organizations: Individual, Group, and Organizational Perspectives

There is already considerable literature on learning at the individual level and a growing body of literature on group and organizational learning. But to date, there has been little attempt to bring these literatures together and link learning at all three levels. Continuous Learning in Organizations targets learning at each of the three levels and demonstrates how processes at one level impacts learning at other levels. At the heart of the work is the idea that individuals, groups, and organizations are living systems with internal learning mechanisms that can be activated and supported or stymied and thwarted. Once activated, systems can learn adaptively by reacting to a change in the environment; they can learn by generating new knowledge and conditions; and/or they can transform by creating and applying frame-breaking ideas and bringing about radically new conditions. Individuals, groups, and organizations are nested within each other forming an increasingly complex hierarchy of intertwined systems. From this point of view, the book describes the interactions between the levels and how developmental processes at one level affect learning at other levels. The text appeals to both the scientist and professionals alike in the fields of human resource development, training, management and executive education, coaching, and organization change and development. It is also for executives who establish directions for learning and need to convince others that continuous learning is the key to on-going success of their enterprise.

Health, Fitness & Dieting

London, Manuel

Mental Health

Psychology Press

Job Hunting & Careers

Lawrence Erlbaum

College Student Leadership Development (Leadership: Research and Practice)

College Student Leadership Development introduces the idea that we all play a part in producing leadership and that learning how to participate in the process of leadership is something that all college students need to learn as part of their college academic experience. Rather than approaching leadership from the traditional model emphasizing specific skill sets, this book acquaints students with how to learn leadership using the ReAChS model of leadership development (Reflection, Assessment, Challenge, Support). It then encourages students to directly engage their own experiences to hone their leader identity and understanding of leadership as well as improve their leadership knowledge and skills. Step-by-step exercises lead students in reflecting on their experiences, assessing themselves, choosing challenges, creating support networks, and finally capturing and communicating to others what they have learned. Throughout, examples of student leaders’ experiences provide readers with powerful examples of others’ successes and struggles in leadership alongside the latest psychological research on learning and development.

Routledge

In this era of rapidly changing organizational environments, the task of executive selection is critical. There are stories in the popular press almost daily about the failure of a CEO or a member of top management, pointing up a need for more and better information for those who make selection decisions. This bibliography speaks to that need. The summaries here direct the reader to morethan 100 carefully chosen books and articles on such issues as how to do selection, how to avoid costly mistakes, and how to predict executive success.

Selection at the Top: An Annotated Bibliography

Campbell, Richard J.

Center for Creative Leadership

Executive Selection: A Research Report on What Works and What Doesn't

Kaiser, Robert

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Books by Sessa, Valerie I.