Thomas Schwegel

• The Impact of Systemic Leadership on Error Culture and the Fear of Failure An empirical analysis in the context of the automotive supplier industry in Saarland (ASI) The county Saarland (research field) has been highly influenced by transformations and change (e.g. from coal to steel production and from steel to automotive supply). Another transformation in this region is just around the corner due to the transition from combustion engines to electric mobility, putting currently more than 20,000 jobs at risk. The pos- itive handling of change implies actively shaping transformations, and in the context of manufacturing, constructively dealing with errors and learning quickly in order to remain sustainably productive and competitive. This research work analysed whether such historically shown transformation ability has established a particularly positive dealing with errors within a productive error culture and if such culture can be strengthened by elements of systemic leadership. The theoretical introduction demonstrates which specific characteristics determine a productive error culture within an organisational culture. These characteristics were then compared with the elements of systemic leadership. From these theoretical findings, a quantitative web- based survey was developed and distributed to ten ASI organisations within the research field in order to get an understanding of the lived reality (theory-practice-comparison). The results indicate a significant congruence of systemic leadership elements and the requirements of a productive error culture. The most important commonalities are indi- cated in the umbrella terms of sense-making, self-reflection, enabling personal responsibility, holistic thinking and consideration approaches, creating change motivation, building trust, and within the substantial dimension of communication. Through the survey used for this research, the reciprocal relationships between handling errors (i.e. openness towards errors) and specific communicative situations as well as current learning and qualification positions were confirmed theoretically and empirically. Moreover, participating leaders tended to view some parts of the survey significantly more positive than their employees. Due to the low number in participants of ASI and scant research cases for analysis, it was not possible to draw statistically valid conclusions of this research work.