The Virtues of Leadership ─ Contemporary Challenges for Global Managers

In a globalized world, where multinational companies have extensive power over a huge number of other organizations and millions of people, building positive organizational performance requires global leaders with virtues. Organizations, especially multinational ones, may be crucial engines of social and economic progress; global leaders' virtues and character strengths may be strong drivers of such an endeavour. One cannot demand of them that they be morally pure or that they assume responsibility for solving the most pressing public problems in the world. However, this book argues that they may be part of the solution, help in making the world a better place, and contribute to the realistic desiderata of a values-based capitalism.

Drawing on the Positive Organizational Scholarship movement, this book aims to provide a holistic approach to the virtues of leaders. It explores how virtues and character strengths may be put at the service of positive organizational performance, stressing that virtues represent the 'golden mean' between the extremes of excess and deficiency, and discussing the perverse consequences of 'excessive virtuousness'. The book shares theoretical, anecdotal, and empirical evidence on the convergence between good virtues and good results, aiming to disseminate the idea that managers can be competent and competitive, whilst doing 'good things right'.

Armenio Rego, Assistant Professor,, The Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal,Miguel Pina e Cunha, Professor, Nova School of Business and Economics,Stewart R. Clegg, Professor and Research Director; Visiting Professor, Centre for Management and Organization Studies, University of Technology Sydney Business School; Universidade Nova, Portugal

Armenio Rego is Assistant Professor at the University of Aveiro, Portugal. He has a PhD from ISCTE-Lisbon University Institute, Portugal. He is author or co-author of more than forty papers in international journals, such as such as Applied Psychology: An International Review, European Management Journal, International Journal of Human Resources Management, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Happiness Studies, Journal of Organizational Change Management, and Journal of Occupational Health Psychology. He is also author or co-author of more than thirty books on topics such as leadership, organizational behaviour, organizational justice, human resource management, coaching, and corporate social responsibility.


Miguel Pina e Cunha is Professor of Organizational Theory and Behavior at Nova School of Business and Economics, Lisbon. He has a PhD from Tilburg University and is mainly conducting research in the area of emergent change, namely on how processes such as improvisation, serendipity and bricolage influence the way organizations function. He served as a member of the board of journals such as European Management Review, M@n@gement, Management Research, Management Learning, and Organization Studies. He has published more than 80 papers in journals such as the Academy of Management Review, Human Relations, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Management Studies, Organization, and Organization Studies. He chaired the 2010 annual colloquium of EGOS (the European Group for Organization Studies), is academic co-director of The Lisbon MBA and taught in various programmes in Europe, Africa, and South America.

Stewart R. Clegg is Professor of Management and Research Director of the Centre for Organization and Management Studies at the University of Technology, Sydney Business School. For over forty years he has been extremely active in teaching and researching organizations and management from a sociological perspective. He is the author of Power, Rule and Domination (1975), The Theory of Power and Organization (1979), Organization, Class and Control (1980), Class, Politics and the Economy (1983), Frameworks of Power (1989), Modern Organizations (1990), Power and Organizations (2006), and Strategy: Theory and Practice (2011), as well as the editor of many volumes, including the award-winning Handbook of Organization Studies (2006). In addition he is Editor of the series Advances in Organization Studies.