You are not logged in You are not logged in to this journal. Log In

Leadership and Management in Engineering / Volume 11 / Issue 1 / FEATURES

LOG IN or SELECT A PURCHASE OPTION:

Impact of Aspirations and Legacies of Leaders in the Construction Industry in Singapore

Leadership Manage. Eng. 11, 29 (2011); http://dx.doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)LM.1943-5630.0000098 (11 pages)

Shamas-ur-Rehman Toor, Ph.D. and George Ofori, Ph.D.

(Submitted 23 December 2008; accepted 9 July 2010; published online 15 December 2010)

Leadership has been looked at through various lenses, such as behaviors, styles, and skills. More recently, leadership has been viewed from the lens of the legacies leaders want to leave behind. Leaders’ desired legacies not only reflect the impact they want to have on the people and organizations they work with, but also portray the future they hope for. This paper discusses findings from interviews with 49 leaders of professional organizations and architectural, engineering, and construction firms in Singapore. These leaders showed their desire to develop their followers into leaders and to leave successful organizations behind. They also revealed their anxiety about issues in the industry such as lack of professionalism and adversarialism. In line with the results of the interviews, this paper proposes that rather than waiting to think about their legacy in the last stages of their careers, leaders in engineering should try from the start to be clear about what they want to achieve through their leadership and the impact they want to have on their followers and organizations. This awareness can help leaders understand and then live the legacies they want to leave behind.

© 2011 ASCE

Article Outline

  1. What Is Leadership Legacy?
  2. Methodology
  3. Purpose and Legacy: Interview Responses
    1. Developing Followers and Finding a Successor
    2. Bringing about Changes in the Organization
    3. Bringing about Change in the Construction Industry
    4. Creating a Long-Term Impact on Others
  4. Discussion
  5. Implications for Leaders
  6. Theoretical Model for Legacy Leadership
  7. Impact of Leadership Legacy
  8. Research Implications
  9. Conclusions

KEYWORDS

ARTICLE DATA

Digital Object Identifier
http://dx.doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)LM.1943-5630.0000098

PUBLICATION DATA

ISSN

1532-6748 (print)  
1943-5630 (online)

Publisher

ASCE

For access to fully linked references, you need to log in.

Figures (2) Tables (1)

Access to article objects (figures, tables, multimedia) requires a subscription; log in to view available files.
(Access to supplementary files, where available, is free for this journal.)

Access to article objects (figures, tables, multimedia) requires a subscription; log in to view available files.
(Access to supplementary files, where available, is free for this journal.)


Close

Your Recent History Recent History Help

Recently Viewed

  1. Impact of Aspirations and Legacies of Leaders in the Construction Industry in Singapore
  2. Automated Electric Transportation: A Way to Meet America’s Critical Issues
  3. Nonintrusive Method for Detecting Particle Movement Characteristics near Threshold Flow Conditions
  4. Generalized Approach for Clear-Water Scour at Bridge Foundation Elements
  5. Approximation of Turbulent Wall Shear Stresses in Highly Transient Pipe Flows
close