11/05/2024
By Mary Lou Kelly

The Department of Management at the Robert J. Manning School of Business invites you to attend a Dissertation Proposal Defense by Joshua Goodrich on: “How Do You Lead People Who Don’t Work for You: A Stakeholder Approach to Ecosystem Leadership.”

Doctoral Concentration: Leadership and Organization Studies (Department of Management)
Date: Nov. 20, 2024
Time: 2 to 3:30 p.m.
Location: Saab Emerging Technologies & Innovation Center, Acquarulo Family Conference Room 445

Dissertation Chair: Dr. Elizabeth J. Altman, Associate Professor of Management, Manning School of Business, UMass Lowell

Committee Members:
Dr. Kimberly Merriman, Professor, Department of Management, Manning School of Business, UMass Lowell
Colonel Archie Bates, Academy Professor, and Deputy Department Head, Department of Behavioral Science and Leadership, United States Military Academy at West Point

Abstract:
Ecosystems are organizational forms built on interconnected relationships with interdependencies and complementarities among various stakeholders. Ecosystem members jointly contribute to an organization’s and ecosystem members’ shared and independent successes and failures. Today, ecosystems play an increasingly outsized role as organizational governance structures. A stakeholder theoretical approach to leadership in ecosystems considers all the actors involved in the ecosystem, encompasses power and dependence relationships, and addresses complex and nuanced relationships between participants. Applying a stakeholder approach to ecosystem leadership enables strategic leaders to achieve organizational objectives by creating, capturing, and distributing value within interconnected ecosystem structures. This proposed research aims to better understand how strategic leaders identify and engage stakeholders in ecosystems, how value is defined and distributed in these contexts, and how leaders unite efforts among stakeholders to achieve objectives. Data for the main study will be gathered using an inductive, grounded theory methodology consisting of semi-structured interviews with a sample of strategic leaders engaged in national security, an enterprise that displays ecosystem characteristics.