Canadian Leadership Research Articles

On Canadian leadership in remote sensing

On Canadian leadership in remote sensing

Dealing with aggressive behavior within the health care team: a leadership challenge

During an interdisciplinary Canadian leadership forum [ www.ice-ccm.org (click on the Conferences icon)], participants were challenged to develop an approach to a difficult leadership/management situation. In a scenario involving aggressive behavior among health care providers, participants identified that, before responding, an appropriate leader should collect additional information to identify the core problem(s) causing such behavior. Possibilities include stress; lack of clear roles, responsibilities, and standard operating procedures; and, finally, lack of training on important leadership/management skills. As a result of these core problems, several potential solutions are possible, all with potential obstacles to implementation. Additional education around communication and team interaction was felt to be a priority. In summary, clinical leaders probably have a great deal to gain from augmenting their leadership/management skills.

Strengthening Mentorship for Leadership Development

Given predictions of a looming shortfall in nursing human resources and the need for strong leaders to meet the challenges of sustaining and managing the healthcare of Canadians in the face of this crisis, a focus on leadership development becomes critical. Canada needs a new cohort of leaders in nursing and healthcare, as the current cohort is fast approaching retirement. Today’s cohort of nursing leaders contains significantly fewer people than it did a decade ago owing to healthcare downsizing and cost containment. Those nurses who remain in leadership positions now cope with role expansion and increased competing demands, leaving little or no time to mentor emerging leaders in the profession. These facts, together with the lack of incentives to attract younger nurses into managerial and administrative positions, present a serious challenge for future nursing leadership. Recognizing the detrimental effects of the reduction in nurse leadership positions on the quality and efficiency of healthcare delivery and the retention of staff, several national reports, such as the Romanow (2002) Commission on the Future of Health Care and the First Ministers Health Accord (Government of Canada Privy Council Office 2003), have highlighted the importance of strengthening nursing leadership in Canada. The Canadian Health Services Research Foundation (2004) has identified the “nurturing of professional leaders” as a priority, along with the need to identify key attributes of successful leaders and specific competencies and skills required of leaders in healthcare. The CHSRF’s report, which was based on a national consultation process, also pointed to the need to describe effective approaches to the development of future healthcare leaders. The Academy of Canadian Executive Nurses recognizes its own commitment to the future of nursing leadership in Canada. As part of that commitment, ACEN is working in collaboration with Strengthening Mentorship for Leadership Development

ACAHO/ACEN Comment: Patient Safety Culture and Leadership in Canada's Academic Health Sciences Centres

ACAHO/ACEN Comment: Patient Safety Culture and Leadership in Canada's Academic Health Sciences Centres

Democratic school leadership in Canada's public school systems: professional value and social ethic

Democratic leadership processes are desirable for schools not only because they reflect socially mandated ethical commitments to collective process. They can be professionally justified as a necessary approach to leading schools effectively in the increasingly culturally diverse communities and a world transformed by the effects of technology and the forces of globalization. Rational professional justifications for democratic leadership in schools include the nature of the school leadership role, the social contexts of the communities, as well as an ideological social mandate. A body of existing theory and research is used to illustrate that rational processes prevail as the primary influences on decision‐making by educational leaders. The appropriateness of rationalized democratic processes for schools is demonstrated by discussing the findings of recently completed research on school‐based interactions between school principals and parent advocates engaged in negotiating the educational needs of students with exceptionalities. Parent advocates were found to intentionally use democratic process to promote value confrontations and conflicts as a deliberate strategy aimed at transforming attitudes and practices in school administration specific to special education processes.

The 1939 British and Canadian ‘Empire Air Training Scheme’ negotiations

This article focuses on events surrounding the Ottawa mission led by Lord Riverdale. Between October and December 1939 the mission met the Canadian Prime Minister William Mackenzie King, his Cabinet and a number of Dominion representatives, its goal to agree on arrangements for the British Empire Air Training Scheme (EATS). This plan would ultimately play a vital role in the British and Dominion war effort, training over 100 000 men for air duties in a variety of theatres of conflict. But, although the negotiations were hailed at their conclusion as having been a great success, the reality was that they were dominated by considerable tensions not just among those present but also between elements within Whitehall and the Canadian leadership. On repeated occasions it appeared that the talks might even collapse and at one stage a constitutional crisis loomed. Far from the success that has since been portrayed to have been the case, the negotiations in fact demonstrated that considerable potential problems existed with regard to the wartime Anglo‐Dominion relationship.

New paths to knowledge, innovation and development: Canadian leadership in emerging global partnerships

The establishment of various policy experiments such as the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the Canada Research Chairs, Genome Canada, and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, not to mention increased funding for university research and the National Research Council, have succeeded in creating a knowledge renaissance both within the research community and through concomitant partnerships with the private sector, governments, and the higher education sectors. Knowledge is a universal currency, and innovation a global enterprise. Attention needs to be paid to building on Canada's legacy as a knowledge broker, and its future as a global leader in innovation, in order to maintain and improve its status as a leading economy for trade, investment, development and R&D. Discovery, skills and innovation know no boundaries in today's wired and inter‐connected world, and Canada is confronted with challenges from new and emerging knowledge producers. However, Canada has no strategic focus in place to meet these challenges or to tackle new opportunities in the global knowledge market. In short, Canadian decisionmakers and knowledge leaders have to think “intermestically”. Domestic and international decisions are two sides of the same coin.

Putting the Canadian Polar House in Order

Northern Canada is facing unprecedented social, political, economic, environmental, and cultural changes. Unfortunately, attention to northern issues has typically been sustained for only short periods in response to external events usually associated with interests in minerals, oil and natural gas reserves, or pipelines. Public policy needs to be supported by a strong knowledge base: the results of scholarly studies and various research and monitoring programs can help government to identify problems, set priorities, and implement solutions. The cumulative effect of inadequate federal funding has been to marginalize northern research, creating a crisis in capacity and knowledge that can no longer be ignored. ... Several fundamental problems have contributed to the current crisis in northern science and research in Canada. Canada has no accepted northern science and research strategy. ... There is a conspicuous lack of funding for northern research in Canada, at a time when most other polar countries have significantly increased their investment in research capacity, including infrastructure and logistical support. ... Federal northern science and research programs and resources are fragmented across numerous departments and agencies. Conflicting mandates between and within individual departments result in poor planning and a lack of continuity. ... Numerous disincentives in the research community have diminished interest in northern research. Thus a lack of training and replacement of northern researchers has led to a serious reduction in our capacity to address northern issues in many fields. So how do we put our polar house in order? ... Building on the suggestions made by England (2000), we propose a two-part solution to secure Canadian leadership in northern science and research. These proposals both enhance political identity and accountability and improve opportunities for effective planning and action. First, there is a critical need to develop a national strategy for Northern Science, Research, and Knowledge (NSRK). This NSRK Strategy would be tabled in Parliament and would provide direction for national commitments and activities. The Strategy would be developed by an interdepartmental deputy minister committee, in consultation with northern governments (territorial and aboriginal), the northern colleges and research institutes, university-based northern research institutes, northern communities and the private sector. ... Second, we propose that the federal government establish a Canadian Northern Research Service. The Service would support the development of a NSRK Strategy .... The Service would also provide a home for northern training and education initiatives, particularly the University of the Arctic. The Northern Scientific Training Program is already one of the most successful ways of enhancing northern research expertise, but it could be expanded to include northern students and greater community involvement. ...

Reaping what we sow: nursing education and leadership in Canada and the United States.

United States have a tremendous responsibility in relation to leadership and the nursing profession. Nursing schools are charged with ensuring that graduates are competent practitioners. Moreover, graduates must actualize leadership within the profession. Leadership occurs at those relationship intersections where nurses come into contact with the public: patients and families, agencies and institutions, the healthcare system and government at all levels. The seeds of leadership are planted in entry-to-practice programs, taking root and growing strong in supportive practice settings. It is at the master’s and doctoral levels of education that many of our leaders fully blossom in all nursing domains: practice, education, administration and research. When we (Gregory, Russell) reflect on our roles as clinicians, educators, researchers and education administrators over the past two decades, we can make two major observations: • The development of our leadership skills was mostly ad hoc, “on the job” and occasionally “post-hoc.” There was no systematic or integrated leadership immersion within and across the programs we completed. The seeds of leadership were scattered haphazardly. Ongoing and sustained nurturing with respect to leadership was lacking. Leaders most often grew by chance, in spite of what was or was not done to enhance that growth. • Explicit leadership connections among education, practice, administration and research were often Reaping What We Sow: Nursing Education and Leadership in Canada and the United States

A clarion call for Canadian leadership

“If a world without borders is going to bring people, cultures and societies into closer and deeper contact, whether by benign intent or malevolent design, our world needs some assurance that all humans can indeed live together and flourish. If not our example, whose?”

Youth health in Canada.

Youth Health in Canada is at a favorable level and adolescents have access to a reasonable standard of health care services. The framework is evolving in response to changing concepts and to the participation of youth themselves. The role of the academic and research leadership in Canada is described. The youth population is healthy and contributes in a positive way to the national fabric and the needs of the majority are adequately met. However, there are sub-populations of youth, who continue to warrant a special focus and are deserving of the attention of youth health professionals. Youth health in Canada is emerging as an adaptation of the American Adolescent Medicine model of the early 1960s. It is a challenging multidisciplinary field in which should play a significant role in shaping its future. Its mandate will be to exercise leadership in addressing the changing needs of the general adolescent population and bringing renewed focus to the special needs of identifiable sub-populations.

International System Stability and American Decline

In the World of International Affairs Punditry, it is both fashionable and profitable to take extreme positions about the future of international relations. What is happening and what will happen in the world, however, is more complex and almost always less extreme than the predictions that catch the attention of the popular press and even the front-line scholarly journals. Such is the case for discussions of American decline and the prospects for stability in the international system: pessimists predict increasing system-wide conflict while optimists foresee a world of growing interdependence and transnational co-operation. But when the empirical record is examined in three policy areas that are important to the maintenance of international system stability -- foreign aid, debt relief, and international peacekeeping such extreme judgments are more eye-catching than valid.Put simply, the relative decline of American power has not led to a prolonged, across-the-board decrease in international efforts to maintain the stability of the international system. If anything, such efforts increased in the late 1980s and early 1990s, only to turn downward after the 1994 American elections swept the Republicans into control of both houses of Congress for the first time since the 1950s. Thereafter, the level and intensity of efforts did not return to the modest pre-1980 policy approaches. The growth of international commitments to maintaining stability and the partial retrenchment that followed make a case for muted optimism about the future of a stable world system and demonstrate the contributions of non-Americans to that goal. The developments in the Canadian-led landmines negotiations in 1997 provide one example in which non-Americans led the way toward resolving an issue that is important to international stability and peace. Given the obvious reluctance of the United States, Russia, and China to move decisively on that issue, one can argue that progress would not have occurred without Canadian leadership. When taken in tandem with the aid, debt, and peacekeeping data presented below, events such as these demonstrate the crucial role of non-hegemons to the success of international initiatives and point toward an evolving, more specialized, and narrowly focussed United States activism in the world.PerspectivesOne fashionable extreme argues pessimistically that the stability of the international system has and will further become a casualty of the apparent withdrawal of the United States from a dominant, activist role in world affairs. In this view, contributions which focus on maintaining and enhancing the stability of the global system will decline without an American hegemon to serve as underwriter and disproportionately large contributor to the goals and policy tools of stability. The assumption is that a United States faced with domestic preoccupations, superpower fatigue, diminishing relative resources, and no overarching adversary will do less for global welfare. Moreover, others have not, will not, and possibly cannot do more. This selfish, neo-isolationist behaviour will harm the general welfare of the nations and populations of the world. The result: apres les Etats Unis, le deluge.(f.1)The other fashionable extreme is optimism. Socio-economic globalists see a world unified not by any political entity, but by the new information and communications technology, economic and cultural globalization, and the prevalence of widely shared beliefs about a common human fate, about moral obligations, and about international status. In this view, distant foreign developments acquire immediate relevance within domestic society. Failure to address foreign concerns clashes with notions of proper and rewarding behaviour and may be dangerous to interests back home. As new political and social communities rise, national governments and the international organizations they control are pushed to counter threats to system stability. …

Leaders and leadership in Canada

Leaders and leadership in Canada

Human neuropsychology in Canada: The 1980s.

AbstractThis article presents an overview of research activity in the field of human neuropsychology that has been carried out in Canada during the 1980s. Included are brief descriptions of investigations of many facets of the neuropsychology of both children and adults conducted by prominent researchers at major institutions across the country. The work reviewed herein serves to illustrate the rather extensive commitment to research in human neuropsychology that has been made by investigators in Canada. It is clear that Canadian leadership in this important area of scientific endeavour can be expected to continue.Human neuropsychology in Canada in the 1980s rests on a long legacy of eminent contributions made by several investigators who were instrumental in developing and defining the nature of brain-behaviour relationships. Of principal importance was the publication of Donald Hebb's Organization of Behaviour (1949), which described in detail his theory of biological psychology that emphasized the role of behaviour. Setting the tone for future research, Hebb also published numerous articles dealing with perception, learning, and memory in both animals and humans.Canadian researchers over the past four decades have been in the forefront of research investigating the effects of brain lesions on higher cortical functions. Some have been pioneering localizationists; others have contributed much to our knowledge regarding laterization of functions, the specification of functional cerebral asymmetries, and memory. Developmental neuropsychology and the neuropsychology of learning disabilities have also been major areas of investigation. Canadian research in these and many other subspecialties of neuropsychology is, more than ever before, in the vanguard of the field. In proportion to respective populations, Canada harbours more eminent researchers in the field than any other country, including the United States.Before proceeding with our review, some points regarding its scope and limitations should be mentioned. The purpose of this article is to review the research activity in Canada in the field of human neuropsychology during the 1980s. This proved to be a mammoth undertaking, particularly in comparison to a similar review conducted on this topic for the decade of the 1970s (Rourke, Fisk, Strang, & Gates, 1981). We estimate that the volume of work has easily quadrupled from one decade to the next. Thus, we adopted an organizational framework very different from that used in the Rourke et al. (1981) study.In order to collect the information required to conduct this review, a list of approximately 100 Canadian neuropsychologists was compiled from the membership rosters of the Canadian Psychological Association, Division 1 (Brain and Behaviour) and Division 23 (Clinical Neuropsychology), and the International Neuropsychological Society. A letter describing the scope of the project and requesting reprints of research conducted during the 1980s was mailed to each investigator. The response rate was approximately 50%. Additional efforts were made to acquire the work of those who did not respond.It would have been impossible to review all of the work done in all facets of neuropsychology across a 10-year time span. Therefore, we opted for a review of the research that has been conducted in the major centres across the country, by a selection of the most prominent researchers in the field. This results in a review that is, by necessity, representative rather than inclusive. Although it is a tribute to neuropsychology in Canada that such a massive corpus of excellent research has been conducted in this country in a relatively short period of time, an unfortunate aspect of this state of affairs is that we could not include much research deserving of mention. Moreover, we were unable to provide references for all of the work done by each of the investigators mentioned. In some instances, this would have required literally hundreds of citations. …

Leaders and Leadership in Canada

Is there a crisis in leadership in Canada? How are leaders chosen? What do they do? What are their relationships to the institutions of political life? These are among the questions discussed in this accessible account.

Ideology and Institutions in North America

AbstractThe orthodox view that Canada's ideological tradition is more supportive of an active state cannot explain earlier innovations in social and labour policy in the United States. A neo-pluralist and neo-institutionalist synthesis is used to contrast these nations. Organic ideologies of labour, agrarian, business and professional groups reveal no consistent national differences in support for state action. Initial state interventions were similar and limited. But institutional development occurred in different contexts, producing more effective executive leadership in Canada. American policy was constrained by the Congress, with its opportunities for blocking, and by inadequate executive power. Frustration with inaction plus greater social well-being reduced demands in the US for state action. Canada's institutions allowed more creative policy and fostered greater support for state action, especially where the weak economy exacted costs on social groups. But constitutional change could replicate American gridlock, and reduce the capacity for new state action.

Debates that Mattered: Voters' Reaction to the 1984 Canadian Leadership Debates

AbstractStudents of political debating in both Canada and the United States have generally concluded that national debates do little more than reinforce viewers' prior preferences. This article considers the Canadian leadership debates of 1984, and asks two major questions. First, would the presence of relatively unknown party leaders make these debates more influential than expected? Second, would the French-language debate have special effects on francophone Canadians? The author finds that the debates, unlike their 1979 counterpart, had a significant effect on voting behaviour. Moreover, that effect was especially strong among people for whom French was the first language, and worked in favour of the candidate most fluent in that language. The author concludes by considering the importance of these findings.

Posture and Policy: Leadership in Canada's External Affairs

Posture and Policy: Leadership in Canada's External Affairs

Posture and Policy: Leadership in Canada's External Affairs

Posture and Policy: Leadership in Canada's External Affairs

Prime Ministerial Character: An Examination of Mackenzie King's Political Leadership

Mackenzie King est généralement perçu comme ayant été un leader passif, en ce sens qu'il laissait les événements dicter le cours de ses actions. A l'aide de la théorie de James David Barber sur la personnalité des leaders politiques, l'auteur tente d'évaluer le bien-fondé de ce jugement. Cette théorie fait appel à trois facteurs: l'image que le politicien se fait de lui-même (laquelle remonte à son enfance), sa vision du monde (mise au point lors de son adolescence) et son style (établi en début d'âge adulte). Il serait alors possible de prédire le comportement d'un politicien à partir des tendances qu'il a développées au tout début de sa carrière. On peut ainsi prévoir, de façon generate, ce que fera un politicien dans des situations critiques si l'on est informé avec précision sur la méthode qu'il emploie pour prendre des décisions, c'est-à-dire sur les considérations qu'il a tendance à retenir et sur le type de conseil qu'il a tendance à accepter au cours de la prise de décision. Les données analysées par l'auteur, qui proviennent essentiellement des mémoires de Mackenzie King, l'amènent à suggérer qu'il serait plus adéquat de considérer ce dernier plutôt comme un politicien actif que comme un politicien passif.