Neuromanagement

People and Organisations

AA. VV., Michela Balconi

• Publisher: LED Edizioni Universitarie
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9788855130486
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Neuropsychology
• Index: Psychology

Why is there a need today for a new discipline such as neuromanagement? The volume deals with the theme of the applications of neuroscience to organizational contexts evaluating the current impact, the potential for future developments, as well as the critical issues related to neuroscientific paradigms and investigation techniques typical of the neuroscience domain. The first section of the book focuses on the "neuroscientific mindset" for changing, considering, between the other, how leadership can be discovered and empowered by a neuroscientific approach; the neurophysiological components of motivation involved in the pleasure of working and committing for social rewards, positive reinforces, and learning; the practical applications to promote change in the company; how neuromanagement allows us to evaluate and enhance individuals' executive functions through neuroassessment protocols. The second section suggests well-being and safety as economic leverages, dealing with the issues of promoting trust, managing stress, and applying novel neuroscientific techniques for neuroenhancement. The third section is entitled technology and innovative homo sapiens and describes two main themes: big data application in the company and their possible intersection with the neuroscientific field; moral decision-making processes, able to have an impact on the whole organization and its single members. Or, in other words, this book explores how to discover human beings in organizations through their brains.

NEUROSCIENTIFIC MINDSET FOR CHANGING

Leader brains? How to discover them, how to empower them

Michela Balconi ^1,2

¹International Research Center for Cognitive Applied Neuroscience (IrcCAN), Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan, Italy

²Research Unit in Affective and Social Neuroscience, Department of Psychology, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan, Italy

DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.7359/952-2020-bal2

[email protected]

1. LEADERSHIP AND NEUROLEADERSHIP

We can define the overall leadership capacity as a form of social capital that involves the sharedness, distributedness, and connectivity of members of the entity. To begin, Pearce and Conger (2003) defined shared leadership in terms of a dynamic process of mutual influence among peers or individuals at differing hierarchical levels in an organization.

Considering the complexity of organizational dynamics, and the presence of mechanisms related to emotions, goals, intentions, expectations, and cognitive bias, recent research in the field of leadership has increasingly embodied a neuroscientific approach.

Indeed, social and affective neuroscience developed and increasingly perfected its methods to permit a broader and more in depth understanding of the way people interact with each other, including empathic and emotional mechanisms and leadership style (Balconi & Canavesio, 2013a; Balconi & Canavesio, 2013b; Balconi, Cassioli, Fronda, & Vanutelli, 2019; Balconi & Vanutelli, 2017; Balconi, Venturella, Fronda, & Vanutelli, 2019, 2020; Paulus et al., 2009; Vanutelli, Gatti, Angioletti, & Balconi, 2017).

In this research field, during the last years, some different approaches, aimed to identify effective leadership profiles, have outlined the most salient features and development trajectories. In particular, two models have spread widely: the “inspirational” leader model (Waldman, Wang, Hannah, & Balthazard, 2017) and the “generative” leader model (Balconi, Fronda, Natale, & Rimoldi, 2017b; Venturella & Balconi, 2017).

2. THE “INSPIRATIONAL” LEADER

Various theories share the view that outstanding leaders go beyond simple performance-versus-reward transactions and have a deep impact on their followers and their organizations, including the potential to be a major force in realizing new visions and change. Inspirational leadership behavior was defined as a type of behavior that is emphasized in many of today’s contemporary leadership theories, such as transformational, charismatic, and visionary paradigms. Inspirational leaders articulate a vision that is based on strongly held ideological values that cause people to become energized and to identify with the vision (e.g., Conger & Kanungo, 1998). The ability to inspire is considered fundamental to establishing a high degree of follower confidence, intrinsic motivation, and trust and admiration in the leader.

More specifically, vision can be delineated in terms of a socialized versus personalized continuum. Socialized vision is characterized by such elements as altruism and social responsibility, the inclusion of empowered followers as a necessary component to organizational success, and a focus on serving the interests and goals of the group (House & Howell, 1992). Therefore, socialized vision leads to outcomes and processes that benefit followers as well as outside stakeholders such as the larger community or even nation in which a firm resides. In contrast, personalized vision is largely narcissistic and is characterized by self-interest, an over-emphasis on the leader (rather than others) in achieving organizational outcomes, and an obsession with authority and achieving dominance over competition.

In a recent research, functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) was used to examine the neuroscientific substrates of leader followers’ responses as a function of (a) inspirational statements (inspirational collective oriented vs. non-inspirational personal oriented; Howell & Shamir, 2005) and (b) shared group membership between followers and leaders (Haslam, Reicher, & Platow, 2011). This approach provided a more comprehensive picture of the link between leaders and followers with a view to shedding light on the neurological mechanisms that underlie followers’ responses to inspirational leadership. Second, it extends previous research on the neuroscience of leadership that has provided evidence from electroencephalogram (EEG) data of the role of varying degrees of general brain connectivity and leadership effectiveness (Waldman, Balthazard, & Peterson, 2011). Through the application of fMRI, the research was able to examine the role of more detailed and precise brain areas and mechanisms that are involved in the processing of inspirational leader messages.

In this respect, categorization of self and others in terms of a relevant shared social identity (e.g., as “us leadership scholars”) is the basis for social influence and the cornerstone of leadership and followership processes. For instance, research has indicated that when followers perceive themselves to share group membership with a given leader, they are more likely (a) to be influenced by the leader’s proposals, (b) to support the leader, (c) to perceive the leader as charismatic, and (d) to respond creatively to what the leader has to say. Similarly, it was suggested that the neural networks involved in controlling semantic processing will be differentially implicated in followers’ responses to collective-oriented inspirational messages as a function of the shared group membership between leader and follower. Research in cognitive psychology has shown that people tend to have a preference to encode information that is in agreement with their existing beliefs, a phenomenon known as confirmation bias (Nickerson, 1998). In particular, people represent information in schemas (cognitive categories that represent prototypical instances of a given stimulus) and use these to selectively encode information to which they are exposed. Relevant to this study, previous research informed by leader categorization theory has shown that followers have schemas about what leaders are like that they then use to selectively encode information received from a particular leader (Shondrick, Dinh, & Lord, 2010).

It was found that when people recalled memories associated with resonant rather than dissonant leaders, they showed greater activation in brain areas such as the bilateral insula, right inferior parietal lobe, and left superior temporal gyrus. Beyond this, however, previous neuroscience research has focused mainly on testing the neurological substrates of leaders’ activities. In particular, research has used power spectral analysis measures based on EEG to differentiate the brain activity of leaders who have a complex representation of their self-concept from that of leaders with a less complex representation.

3. THE “GENERATIVE” LEADER

One of the most important focus of recent research was devoted to leadership and its different features, such as transformational (Ashkanasy, 2013) and generative leadership (Balconi et al., 2017b). For example, it was found that transformational leader behavior, to be effective, has to combine emotional balance and self-control, emotional understanding by the leader of the followers’ needs, foresight and insight, communication skills (Balthazard, Waldman, Thatcher, & Hannah, 2012).

This interest is due to the extent to explore new ways of managing, which consider more supportive and interpersonal exchange. For example, the results of previous research showed how cooperative leadership has positive effects not only within the individual performance, but also within work group and organization (Judge & Piccolo, 2004). In particular, it has been observed that a more cooperative style of leadership encourages interactions between colleagues, thus bringing a greater performance of the individual and its commitment toward the company (Bass & Bass, 2009).

Previous neuroscience studies about cooperative leadership processes tried to detect the markers of a generative style of leadership, finding the activation of some brain areas that seem involved in the interaction processes. For example, the frontal lobes appear to be good predictors of functional leadership behaviors (Balthazard et al., 2012). This area, in fact, appears to be involved in executive functioning and monitoring, such as self-regulation, planning and organization of behaviors. Furthermore, the frontal cortex integrates external and internal sensory information, organizing it temporally and transforming it into complex behavioral response patterns, which are the basis of the leadership processes (Case, 1992; Fuster, 1999). In fact, leaders need a great ability to regulate and monitor others’ and their own behavior. Indeed, prefrontal cortex supports behavioral, affective, social and cognitive components during interpersonal exchange (Levitan, Hasey, & Sloman, 2000). Moreover, the recruitment of such regions was previously identified in cooperative social tasks during significant joint performance (Balconi, Crivelli, & Vanutelli, 2017a; Balconi, Pezard, Nandrino, & Vanutelli, 2017c; Balconi & Pozzoli, 2005). The involvement of these regions in social interactions highlights the use of top-down control mechanisms for particular emotional responses related to social events (Marsh, Blair, Jones, Soliman, & Blair, 2009).

A further level of analysis regards leader’s communication modalities related to different styles of leadership. Specifically, concerning the authoritarian style of leadership, communication appears to be self-centered, leading to good productivity but often to the experimentation of unmotivated and dissatisfied states in employees that depend by the boss. On the contrary, the democratic and participative style of leadership is characterized by the co-participation in decision-making and by the involvement of others in communication, that is considered as a constructive part of the relationship, entail a greater level of motivation and satisfaction within the team.

On another side, several studies demonstrate that leaders’ emotional expression can influence employees, motivating them (Balconi & Venturella, 2015). In particular, the choice of modalities and timing to inspire others through emotions requires a good level of emotional intelligence (Goleman, Boyatzis, & McKee, 2002). Indeed, leaders with high emotional intelligence can empathize better with employees and express their emotions during an interaction in a more appropriate way (Mayer, Salovey, & Caruso, 2008). One of the main advantages offered by the neuroscientific approach, that allows the knowledge of the deep brain processes related to a specific behavior, concern the fact that it is possible to interpret the implicit elements of individuals’ mental processes intervening on them in a manner favorable way for the organizational context (Balconi & Vanutelli, 2016; Balconi, Finocchiaro, & Campanella, 2014). In this regard, the neuroscience tools that have been more frequently used to investigate implicit levels of behavior, such as: the EEG, a technique that allows recording brain electrical activity changes with an excellent temporal resolution; the functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS), a tool based on near-infrared technology providing a measure of cerebral hemodynamic activity with good temporal and spatial resolution; the biofeedback, a system used to measure autonomic indices (skin conductance, heart rate, blood pressure, etc.), which provide information about individuals’ arousal state and emotional engagement, as well as on the contribution of implicit mechanisms and automatic reactions in more complex processes; the Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) which allows explaining in depth the neural correlates of cognitive, emotional and communicative processes (Balconi & Venturella, 2015).

Another approach for neuroscientific applied research was then recently outlined: the hyperscanning paradigm. Recent studies have applied the hyperscanning paradigm to the leadership field, highlighting social neuroscience’s potential for this domain. The best example of what has been called a “second person” social neuroscience (Schilbach, 2010) is the hyperscanning technique, a realistic and ecological paradigm that allows to simultaneously record the cortical activity from two or more participants interacting together. This way, people and their brain activities are no longer considered individually, but part of complex dynamics that continuously adjust and contaminate each other. The hyperscanning paradigms, therefore, consist in the simultaneous recording of two individuals’ br...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Index
• Introductory issues: the milestones of neuromanagement