Time has become an integral part of our understanding of the context of organizations, particularly as the pace of change in business models continues to mirror the relatively fast evolution of technology. The importance of time is particularly magnified in the social context of organizational creativity, as innovation has become the key strategic orientation of organizations attempting to achieve a sustained competitive advantage in today's knowledge-rich and hypercompetitive global environment. This paper integrates research on social aspects of time, leadership, and innovation into a competency-based model. We suggest that awareness of temporal complexity dimensions has a significant impact on the leader competency set that is critical to lead people effectively in innovation-focused projects.
Today there is no First World, Second World, or Third World…just the Fast World…and the Slow World…and you are losing if you are a member of the latter…(Friedman, 2000)
The increased pace and complexity of global business competition accentuates the need for innovative, flexible, and responsive solutions to emerging, novel needs of organizations Birkinshaw & Hood, 1999, Hitt et al., 1998 and Zander, 1999. Organizations, especially those competing on a global scale, must be concerned with innovation to create a sustainable competitive advantage against a growing roster of new, efficient, and focused competitors (Devanna & Tichy, 1990). To develop innovative solutions, organizations have recognized the importance of an organizational work context that facilitates creativity as the primary impetus of innovation (Kanter, 1988). Therefore, a key catalyst in the facilitation of innovation is the capacity of an organization to attract, develop, motivate, and retain an adequate pool of leaders with appropriate characteristics to influence the context of creativity in the workplace.
Studies researching the challenges of leadership in the face of globalization-driven and increasing social, cognitive, and behavioral complexity have examined leader characteristics and skills. The characteristics of leaders of creative people have been discussed comprehensively in numerous research contributions, with a focus on how leaders of creative people foster innovation by initiating structure to ill-defined and complex tasks Mumford et al., 2002, Redmond et al., 1993 and Stoker et al., 2001. Other models and empirical findings have emphasized that supervisor support is a critical component in the creative process Amabile, 1988, Oldham & Cummings, 1996 and Woodman et al., 1993. One key issue that has not been adequately explored in the leadership literature, but which is significant for their integration, is the critical role of an understanding of temporal complexity as it relates to competence in leading innovative undertakings.
While, ideally, creative work/projects/ventures should not be bound by the complexity of time (Amabile, Hadley, & Kramer, 2002), they often are time influenced to balance organizational needs with the competitive benefits of such undertakings. With the increased focus of work toward task and not the time to carry it out, an effective leader of creative people should have a keen awareness of the objective and subjective dimensions of temporal complexity. The dynamic competence to plan and lead under the conditions of temporal complexity may become a core competency that can generate competitive advantage in the hypercompetitive global marketplace. In particular, the competencies both to conceptualize and manage the temporal context and to initiate the appropriate temporal structure of innovative undertakings are becoming critical as innovation centers and creative work in organizations become increasingly globally distributed and as virtual domain overtakes traditional media (i.e., face-to-face communication) as the medium/context of cross-border teamwork among creative people Bluedorn, 2002 and Thoms & Pinto, 1999. In other words, the awareness of the complex and multidimensional nature of time and the variations on the concept of time by culture and individuals may contribute to the dynamic competencies of the leader in attempts to initiate structure to the temporal realities of tasks while considering individual time-related differences when fostering innovation.
The purpose of this paper is to argue that effective differentiation and integration of the temporal complexity dimensions embedded in innovative undertakings is an essential competency of leaders of creative people. The paper's theoretical frame is a competency-based view of leadership accentuating the importance of understanding time as a crucial variable in leading innovation initiatives. Within the competency-based theoretical frame, we take a multilevel perspective that considers both leader interactions with creative employees and innovation considerations at the organizational level. Understanding the dimensions of temporal complexity serves as the bridge between the levels.
In the forthcoming pages, we will develop a model of leadership of innovation under the conditions of temporal complexity. We argue for the complexity of time and how understanding temporal complexity serves as a key competency in the cognitive, social, and behavioral complexity of leaders. We conclude by linking leaders' awareness of temporal complexity to the leadership of innovation through its ties to standard leadership competencies including initiating structure to ill-defined and complex situations.
