Leadership, organizational culture, knowledge productivity and value creation in four successful Korean companies: toward guidelines for people-oriented business leaders

This study explores the relationships between leadership characteristics, organizational culture, knowledge productivity and value creation in leading Korean corporations. The empirical part of this study is based on the selection of four highly successful and leading companies, namely LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics, Woong-Jin Group and the Shinhan Bank. In knowledge-intensive organizations, it is important to understand what kind of leadership is needed to build knowledge productivity, achieve continuous improvement and radical innovation and ensure high value creation. However, investigating these critical elements in successful companies is a delicate matter. For the first time, leaders of the four companies included in this study agreed to participate in empirical research on these issues. From a literature search related to the main topics, a conceptual framework was developed. This was followed by a survey among 387 leaders and senior managers and additional interviews with senior-level executives and managers of these companies. The results indicate that a strongly people-oriented, highly challenging and entrepreneurial style of leadership with open, boundary-less communication and knowledge sharing is strongly related to value creation, sustainability and future growth engine development in these four companies. In collaboration with business leaders, the research findings have been translated into guidelines for leadership promoting value creation.