Leadership and organizational transformation

Following a discussion of recent literature concerned with leadership, the authors note that there is a tendency for many writers to marginalize contextual issues when examining the impact of leaders on organizations. Taking a study of three community transport organizations in the UK, the authors seek to apply some of the currently popular themes in the leadership literature to the coordinators of these organizations. It is shown that one can usefully be described as a transactional leader, another as a transformational leader, while the third is characterized as a ‘frustrated transformational leader’. The application of the adjective ‘frustrated’ serves as a focus for the consideration of contextual factors that inhibited this leader, who can legitimately be described as transformational, and which thwarted his capacity to see through his vision. A number of different contextual features are noted and it is shown how these severely constrained and in the end frustrated the aspirations of this coordinator. Some implications of these findings for the literature on leadership and on organizational transformation are spelled out.     

Jack,Judy, Sam,Bobby, Johnny,Frank...: An investigation into the alternate history of the CIA‐Mafia collaboration to assassinate Fidel Castro, 1960–1997

The CIA‐Mafia plots to assassinate Fidel Castro in the early 1960s serve, by themselves, as comically horrifying tales, some of the many littered throughout American Cold War history. Yet these events have lived an extraordinary life outside of the textbooks and classrooms; the danger and intrigue of the organized crime underworld mixed with a national fascination with the Kennedy family have kept this story alive through all of its mutations. J. Alan Wolske analyzes the various histories of the assassination plots that have sprung from the government's own attempts to face up to its past deeds, and attempts to reconcile them with the ‘official’ history.