Case study

While current management theory is largely based on economic assumptions. The changing market space along with increased competition has created a new business paradigm in which competitive advantage does not last for too long. To describe the prevailing business environment characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, a new term volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous $($VUCA$)$ has been introduced. VUCA is a game changer as it has pushed market leaders from their lead position to a peripheral status. With such a destabilizing ability of VUCA, the firms are hard$-$pressed to adjust themselves to ensure their survival and growth in the $21$st century. Successful adjustments appear in the form of innovative products and services that in turn give a competitive advantage to the organization.

Though the cure in the shape of adjustment and the wholesome result in the form of ensured survival and growth appears to be in a simple relation, the path to this adjustment is not so simple. Unlike the manufacturing economy where the top$-$led strategy ensured performance, the knowledge economy arguably abhors the idea of top$-$led performance. In the knowledge economy, employees play a pivotal role. Equipped with knowledge and experience, they work as the source of ideas. With this enhanced status of employees, leaders need to adjust themselves. Instead of command and control, the leaders require to play a facilitating role. The ideas of transformational and charismatic leader, well$-$suited for the manufacturing economy, do not hold much effect in the knowledge economy.

The VUCA environment, because of its chaos, does not permit the use of a strategy driven by an individual or a group at the top. The VUCA environment, instead, compels an enterprise to harness all its cognitive resources to come up with innovative ideas fast. So$,$ instead of idealized influence and charisma, the need of the hour is authenticity and, as in VUCA, it is not the pursuit of innovation driven through the idealized influence or charism of the leader, but the fast pursuit of innovation, managed through authenticity.

Based on the provided case study, what potential conflicts might arise between fostering authenticity and the need for quick decision$-$making in a VUCA environment?