Gender and leadership: A criterion-focused review and research agenda

There is a large and growing body of work on gender on leadership, but this literature remains fragmented and incomplete, due in part to insufficient attention paid to nuances of the criterion variable of leadership. To provide a broader perspective on this literature, we draw upon Campbell, McCloy, Oppler, and Sager's (1993) theory of job performance as a framework to organize our review. First, we position gender as an indirect determinant of leadership and summarize prior work on (a) gender differences in leadership outcomes (i.e., emergence and effectiveness), (b) gender differences in leader behaviors, (c) gender differences in direct determinants of leader behaviors (i.e., declarative knowledge, skill, and motivation), and (d) potential mediated or indirect relationships between gender and these leadership criteria. Second, we explore gender as a moderator of both interpersonal (i.e., leader behaviors → leadership outcomes) and intrapersonal (i.e., direct determinants → leader behaviors) leadership processes. Throughout our review, we highlight new directions for future research to advance the study of gender and leadership.     

Enhancing leader inclusion while preventing social exclusion in the work group

Research on inclusion and exclusion at work has grown in recent years, but for the most part has been treated as separate domains. In this paper, we integrate these literatures to build greater understanding of leader inclusion and leader exclusion. Leaders play a critical role in determining group member experiences of inclusion and exclusion through direct treatment of employees, and by serving as a role model (Bandura, 1977). According to social identity theory, when the leader is rewarded by the organization, this signifies that the leader is a prototypical organizational member who exemplifies the set of norms and behaviors most consistent with the organizational ideal (Hogg & van Knippenberg, 2003). We argue that through both social learning and social identity mechanisms, the leader can encourage inclusionary and exclusionary behavior in their work group. We first examine leader inclusion and present the types of behaviors that will aid in creating inclusive team member experiences. By exhibiting these behaviors, a leader can be a role model, an advocate and an ally for building work group inclusion. Next, we present the negative roles of ostracizer and bystander adopted by leaders that indicate support for behaving in an exclusionary manner, which can lead to exclusion among coworkers. We then describe leader remedies for social exclusion. Finally, we discuss the implications of our model and directions for future research.     

About and beyond leading uniqueness and belongingness: A systematic review of inclusive leadership research

The purpose of this systematic review of 107 papers is to address the conceptual confusion about what inclusive leadership (IL) behavior entails and understand the theoretical development of IL. Synthesizing the divergent conceptualizations of inclusive leader behaviors, we propose a multi-level (i.e., employee, team, organizational) model of IL behavior consisting of four dimensions namely, fostering employee's uniqueness (e.g., promoting diversity); strengthening belongingness within a team (e.g., building relationships); showing appreciation (e.g., recognizing efforts and contributions); and supporting organizational efforts (e.g., promoting organizational mission on inclusion). Further, we provide a summary of studied variables as a nomological network in relation to inclusive leadership and an overview of the different theories (e.g., social exchange, intrinsic motivation) supporting the respective relationships and explaining the underlying mechanisms (e.g., reciprocity, motivation). We propose future research to empirically test the multi-level model of IL and examine the predictive value in terms of employee and organizational outcomes.     

Toward an overarching multi-level conceptualization of emergent leadership: Perspectives from social identity,and implicit leadership theories

Organizational leadership research has typically focused on hierarchal top-down leadership where the leader has legitimate authority over organizational tasks and roles. However, rather recently, research has emphasized the emergence of leaders within teams and groups, which is referred to as emergent or horizontal leadership. Due to its infancy, the concept has limited theoretical development and coherence. To further extend our understanding of the topic, we draw on social identity, and implicit leadership theories and offer a multi-level conceptualization of emergent leadership. We first compare emergent leadership to various leadership concepts and through a detailed review, identify mechanisms through which emergent leadership can be identified. Following that, we design an organizing framework based on existing research and then offer propositions presenting a multi-level conceptual model highlighting how different factors at different levels relate to informal leader emergence. We hope that by reforming the research of leadership emergence with a multi-level approach, we renovate the idea considering contextual factors and process mechanisms.     

From personal wellbeing to relationships: A systematic review on the impact of mindfulness interventions and practices on leaders

This study provides a systematic review of prior empirical research on the impact of mindfulness interventions and practices on leaders. The aim is to integrate existing knowledge and identify future research needs. Mindfulness as a leader-specific practice is defined and discussed to provide conceptual clarity and to highlight the importance of understanding the phenomenon and its value in the context of leadership and individual leader development. A conceptual framework is presented which synthesizes findings from prior works and shows that leaders' mindfulness practices affect various developmental outcomes viewed as important for leaders and leadership. A comprehensive future research agenda for theoretical and empirical advancement is proposed that recommends looking beyond the essential wellbeing and work productivity outcomes and exploring the transformative outcomes of mindfulness interventions and practices related to leaders' relationships and inner growth that involve enhanced self-awareness and social/contextual awareness.     

Leadership behaviors and human agency in the valley of despair: A meta-framework for organizational change implementation

For organizational leaders, implementing change in a workplace means influencing employees to do something new or behave differently. For employees, implementing a change at work requires detaching from familiar routines and social systems, learning and practicing the change, and imagining a future in which the change is valued by the organization. As they apply their agency to implement change, employees may experience loss, uncertainty, and frustration that manifests as despair, which can jeopardize the change process and its outcomes. We assemble a meta-theoretical framework using human agency theory, the Valley of Despair model of organizational change, and Full-Range Leadership Theory to explore ways that leaders' behaviors relate to employees' agentic orientations and behaviors during the implementation phase of the organizational change process. Taking both organizational change leaders' and employees' perspectives into account, the theory derived from our meta-framework argues that leaders' behaviors can shape employees' agency and their behaviors during the implementation stage of change in two important ways: 1) certain leader behaviors are likely to prime agentic orientations that facilitate changing, and 2) certain leader behaviors may help to mitigate employees' despair, enabling the firm to derive value from employees' change implementation behaviors.     

Can leadership compensate for deficient inclusiveness in global virtual teams?

Although the number of global virtual teams has been growing rapidly, it is still a great challenge to achieve internal collaboration across geographic, cultural, and linguistic barriers. Two factors that have been identified to improve productivity are inclusive group attitudes in the team and the right leadership from the team leader. Although there are strong indications that each of these concepts would have a favourable effect on team member performance, we set out to explore how they function in combination. More specifically, we hypothesise that inspirational motivation from a team leader can compensate for a lack of inclusive group attitudes in the form of team openness to language diversity. We also predict the positive effects of “inspirational motivation” leadership to be stronger than those of the “management by exception” style of leadership. Using responses from 174 team members and their 23 team leaders in the research and development department of a Danish manufacturing organisation, we confirm our hypotheses. This provides clear guidelines for HRM interventions in organisations using global virtual teams.     

The influence of leadership behavior on employee work-family outcomes: A review and research agenda

Scholarly inquiries into the prominent role that leaders play in influencing their followers' work-family experiences have flourished in recent decades. Despite this encouraging progress, researchers have criticized the current state of the literature, lamenting that the study of leader behaviors in the work-family literature is either incomplete or oversimplified. To move the field forward, we conducted a systematic review of the literature to take stock of what we know, identify what is still unknown, and chart a path forward for future research. We organize the literature linking leadership to employees' work-family experience based on a four-category framework of leader behavior (task, relationship, change, and ethical/unethical). We summarize what effects leader behaviors may have on their followers, how such effects occur, and the boundary conditions of these effects. We conclude our review by identifying both theoretical and methodological gaps that can inform future leadership research in the work-family domain.     

The Comparative Influences of Transformational Leadership and Leader–Member Exchange on Follower Engagement

Scholars of transformational leadership and leader–member exchange (LMX) have argued that leaders are able to positively influence the job attitudes and behaviors of followers by different means. Whereas transformational leadership focuses on the leaders’ ability to transform followers through a global inspiring vision that encourages positive change among all employees, LMX highlights the importance of the leaders’ unique relationships with followers as the driver of positive attitudes and behaviors. Using field data gathered from 280 full‐time employees, the current research compared the influence of these two leadership styles on follower engagement. The results suggested that rather than the influence derived from inspirational leadership behaviors, it is employees’ unique relationship with their leader that creates follower engagement. Additionally, the results indicated that follower engagement mediates the relationship between leadership and key employee outcomes (i.e., organizational citizenship behavior [OCB] and employee turnover intentions). Implications to theory and practice are discussed.     

The impact of implicit collective leadership theories on the emergence and effectiveness of leadership networks in teams

Leadership in today's high-performing teams is a relational process best understood from a multilevel emergent perspective. Implicit theories of leadership and followership play an important role in predicting leader emergence in more traditional hierarchical structures, but are inadequate for understanding and predicting leadership as networks in teams, as they do not consider the complex dynamics of leading and following activities inherent in such structures. To address this theoretical gap, we propose the concept of Implicit Leadership Network Theories (ILNTs) that integrates implicit leadership and followership theories with contemporary social network perspectives of leadership in teams to predict the shape and structure of leadership network emergence and subsequent team outcomes. More specifically, we propose that the combination of team member self-ILNTs (i.e., expectations regarding one's own role within a leadership network) and network-ILNTs (i.e., expectations regarding the prototypical team leadership structure) will shape the emergence and effectiveness of leadership in teams. We describe several prototypical team configurations of ILNTs and discuss implications for future research and human resource management.     

The influence of authentic leadership behaviors on trust and work outcomes of health care staff

A key element of a healthy work environment is trust: trust between staff and their leaders. Authentic leadership is proposed as the core of effective leadership needed to build trust because of its clear focus on the positive role modeling of honesty, integrity, and high ethical standards in the development of leader‐follower relationships. A model linking authentic leadership behaviors with trust in management, perceptions of supportive groups and work outcomes (including voice or speaking‐up behavior, self‐rated job performance, and burnout) using secondary analysis procedures was examined. The hypothesized model was tested using structural equation modeling in two samples of health care employees from a western Canadian cancer care agency: clinical care providers including nurses, pharmacists, physicians, and other professionals (N = 147) and nonclinical employees including administrative, support, and research staff (N = 188). Findings suggest that supportive leader behavior and trust in management are necessary for staff to be willing to voice concerns and offer suggestions to improve the workplace and patient care.     

The Internal Conflicts of Undergraduate Students Regarding Effective Leadership Practices

The current study explored the internal conflicts of a diverse group of undergraduate students as leadership development experiences challenge students’ pre‐existing attitudes and beliefs of what comprises effective leadership. Interviews with 23 undergraduate students uncovered two consistent conflicts within the minds of emerging leaders, often experienced unconsciously: (a) the recognition of the need to serve the group while also exhibiting command over followers and (b) the desire to adapt to changing circumstances while also remaining resolute in personal chosen courses of action. The particular internal contradictions, common to students in the study across gender and racial lines, imply a structure of predictable cognitive transition as emerging leaders work toward internalizing group‐inclusive concepts associated with contemporary leadership practices. The study's findings possess several implications for leadership educators—in higher education and external organizations—in the ways these professionals create both formal and informal developmental experiences for undergraduate students.     

Growing Followers: Exploring the Effects of Leader Humility on Follower Self‐Expansion,Self‐Efficacy,and Performance

Although the effectiveness of leader humility has been well documented, our understanding of how leader humility influences followers psychologically is limited. Surpassing a mere leader‐centric understanding of the leader influence process by more fully understanding how leadership behavior shapes followers psychologically has been identified as a critical need by leadership scholars. Drawing on self‐expansion theory, we argue that leader humility triggers followers’ self‐expansion and that this psychological change enhances followers’ self‐efficacy, which in turn contributes to followers’ task performance. We also argue that the relationship between leader humility and followers’ self‐expansion is strengthened when leaders and followers are similar in age and gender. Using a time‐lagged research design with responses from 256 leader–follower dyads, we found support for our proposed model. We discuss the theoretical implications for our findings and suggest areas for future research.     

Leadership in virtual teams: A multilevel perspective

Understanding leadership functioning in virtual teams becomes critical as organizations increasingly use dispersed teams for talent acquisition. In the current article I present a preliminary model that explicates how task- and relationship-oriented leader behaviors influence team and individual processes and outcomes in virtual teams. Further, I discuss cross-level relationships between virtual team and individual processes, as well as the boundary effects of contextual factors (i.e., task complexity, task interdependence, and virtuality) in virtual leadership functioning.     

Existential–Experiential View of Self‐Sourced (In)Authentic Healthcare Identity

In the healthcare context, both nurses and doctors derive their professional identities from diverse backgrounds, thus resulting in two distinct professions. Becoming a leader and forming a leader identity that is separate from a strong professional identity is a difficult task. However, assuming a leader identity is considered an important aspect of actually being a leader, not just a professional with a leader position. The current article explores authenticity in generic healthcare leader identity formation by utilizing the concept of professional identity. Instead of committing to the humanistic ontological roots of the authentic leadership construct, the research analyzes the concepts of self and authenticity from an existential–experiential perspective. A conceptual framework of self‐sourced healthcare identity formation, including leader identity and professional identity, is presented. The framework shows how leader identity originates in the leader's experiencing self‐in‐situation, which is understood as the source of authenticity. The experiencing self, or the self as a subject, is differentiated from the experienced self, or the self as an object, by which professional identities are formed. The conceptualization provides a way of understanding and developing leadership in fields consisting of strong professional identities. The applications of the framework are also discussed.     

Climate control? The relationship between leadership,climate for change,and work outcomes

Transformational leadership is seen as one of the most effective leadership styles from which the dynamic context of temporary work agencies may benefit. The current paper presents a theoretical framework that introduces participative leadership as an additional appropriate leadership style. The prediction is that transformational leadership and participative leadership both impact work outcomes via a climate for change. Data from 258 employees working for a large Dutch employment agency support these hypotheses. Results show that transformational leadership and participative leadership are both independently related to work outcomes. Moreover, results support an indirect process from participative leadership to work outcomes, via a climate for change.     

Toward a Framework of Leader Character in Organizations

While the construct of character is well grounded in philosophy, ethics, and more recently psychology, it lags in acceptance and legitimacy within management research and mainstream practice. Our research seeks to remedy this through four contributions. First, we offer a framework of leader character that provides rigor through a three‐phase, multi‐method approach involving 1817 leaders, and relevance by using an engaged scholarship epistemology to validate the framework with practicing leaders. This framework highlights the theoretical underpinnings of the leader character model and articulates the character dimensions and elements that operate in concert to promote effective leadership. Second, we bring leader character into mainstream management research, extending the traditional competency and interpersonal focus on leadership to embrace the foundational component of leader character. In doing this, we articulate how leader character complements and strengthens several existing theories of leadership. Third, we extend the virtues‐based approach to ethical decision making to the broader domain of judgement and decision making in support of pursuing individual and organization effectiveness. Finally, we offer promising directions for future research on leader character that will also serve the larger domain of leadership research.     

Leveraging the employee voice: a multi-level social learning perspective of ethical leadership

Extending social learning theory to a multi-level perspective, this study proposes a theoretical model that investigates both individual and team-level mechanisms that mediate the effect of ethical leadership on employee voice. Specifically, in terms of an individual-level social learning perspective, we suggest that an ethical leader acts as a prototype of a moral person (i.e. an ethical role model). From a team-level social learning perspective, we propose that, as a moral manager, team ethical leadership will foster an ethical climate within the team which will create a moral context that impacts employees’ behaviors. In both instances, employee voice behaviors will be enhanced through these mechanisms. Evidencing the importance of the interaction between leader behaviors and context for leader effectiveness, we also show that employees are more likely to regard their ethical leaders as ethical role models in a team that highly values ethical conduct (i.e. high in ethical climate). Results obtained from 47 managers and 211 subordinates in China support our theoretical model. The theoretical and practical implications of our findings are also discussed.     

Facilitating skills: the art of helping teams succeed

Empowering and guiding the team has become crucial to the long-term success of any business. Today, an important measurement for leaders is their ability to facilitate a group of people to work together as a team and successfully accomplish their task. What will separate a good leader from a great leader will be the understanding and development of his or her facilitation skills.     

Empowering leadership: leading people to be present through affective organizational commitment?*

Abstract

This study tested a mediation model in which empowering leadership was negatively related to three withdrawal behaviors: lateness, absenteeism, and turnover intention, with affective organizational commitment as a mediator. With 294 full‐time US employees, results from structural equation modeling indicated that empowering leader behaviors at one time were positively related to estimates of affective organizational commitment at a second time, which in turn was negatively related to absenteeism and turnover intention at a final time. Additionally, no significant direct effect was found between empowering leadership and withdrawal behaviors, further supporting the mediation model. However, neither empowering leadership nor affective commitment influenced followers' lateness. Empowering leadership, which provides employees with autonomy and developmental support, may have a favorable effect on employees' decisions to attend and stay in the organization, as well as their affective reaction to the organization in the form of psychological commitment. This study extended prior research models by examining a full range of withdrawal behaviors in relation to empowering leadership and showed that commitment may explain why empowering leader behaviors can affect employees' retention decisions.