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The global pandemic has required organisational leaders to respond rapidly in a time of uncertainty. A specific challenge for leaders during the global pandemic is the salient and immediate threat to worker health and well-being. Unfortunately, the consequences of different leadership actions in this context are not well understood. By exploring the path from leader behaviour to employee well-being via experienced work characteristics, this study aims to provide a framework for better understanding pandemic threat and corresponding leadership impact.

Two prevention-focused leadership strategies were explored: defend and adapt strategy. Two important work characteristics role clarity and workload were used to help explain the links between leadership strategies and well-being. Potential mediating pathways were tested in path analysis with Mplus (v7.4) based on 515 online survey responses.

Different mediating pathways demonstrated complex associations between the constructs. Increases in the both prevention-focused leadership strategies were found associated with positive well-being by increasing employees' perceptions of leadership and by improving role clarity in the workplace. Notably, evidence also supported that increase in defend strategy was linked to reduced worker well-being through intensified workload.

In times of uncertainty amidst the global COVID-19 pandemic, prevention-focused leadership is vital to engage the workforce and ensure compliance with safety procedures to avoid associated risks to worker health and organisational performance. This research focused on the rarely studied topic of prevention-focused leadership, and how prevention strategies were related to employee well-being. Based on the findings for prevention-focused defend and adapt strategies, this study suggested leadership practices that might shape employee well-being in a time of turbulence.

This paper aims to investigate whether leaders whose transformational leadership behavior improves after training exhibit different psychological reactions compared to leaders whose leadership behavior does not improve.

The authors followed 56 leaders taking part in a transformational leadership training program. Questionnaire measures of leaders’ self-efficacy, positive affect, perspective taking, and transformational leadership behavior were obtained pre- and post-training.

Leaders whose self-efficacy, perspective taking and positive affect increased over the training period also reported improvements in their transformational leadership behavior. In addition, leaders whose positive affect increased were more likely to receive improved transformational leadership behavior ratings from their supervisors, team members and peers.

The study supports the proposition, derived from social cognitive theory that change in transformational leadership behavior is related to change in leaders’ psychological attributes. Further research is required to establish the direction of this relationship and whether leaders’ psychological reactions represent a means through which the effectiveness of leadership interventions can be improved.

Leaders’ psychological reactions should be monitored and supported during developmental interventions. Effective leadership training interventions are important not only to achieve change in behavior, but to avoid negative psychological outcomes for leaders.

The study is unusual because it explores the relationship between leader attributes and leadership behavior longitudinally, in a training context. The longitudinal analysis, focussing on change in leaders’ psychological attributes, allowed us to explain more variance in leaders’ reactions to training.

Transformational, charismatic, and related leadership theories play an important role in understanding how leaders motivate better performance. However, these approaches have paid surprisingly little attention to the management of error in organizations. In fact, current studies in transformational leadership tend to define the management of error as one of the negative features of leadership. Preventing error and learning from error is a high profile leadership role in a wide variety of global industries, and therefore, it is important that leadership theories encompass this critical task. We draw on different streams of research to provide a more integrated and positive approach to leadership and the management error. Studies of error management culture provide insights into the organizational systems that are important for responding and learning from error. We discuss how error learning culture can inform the leadership behaviors that will enhance learning from error. We also draw on regulatory focus theory to show how managing error can be differentiated from other leadership activities. The integration of these ideas with current leadership theory provides a more comprehensive framework for understanding the role of leadership when error management is critical. We present this integrated framework and discuss how cultural factors are likely to shape the role of error management in a variety of global contexts.

This paper proposes to investigate the influence of executive coaching on managerial flexibility in order to build a stronger theoretical and empirical basis for executive coaching research.

A repeated measures design was adopted. About 11 leaders participated in a leadership development program and received executive coaching over a three‐month period. Leaders were surveyed prior to coaching, during coaching, and post coaching.

Repeated measures analysis revealed that self‐reported managerial flexibility increased throughout the duration of executive coaching.

This exploratory study provides initial support for the argument that executive coaching positively impacts on managerial flexibility. Several areas for future research are discussed including examining the influence of executive coaching on the dimensions of managerial flexibility.

This study provides a detailed overview of how to develop an executive coaching program and empirically tested the effects of executive coaching on executives' flexibility. A number of areas for future research were identified.

Soon Ang (Ph.D. Minnesota) is Goh Tjoei Kok Distinguished Chair of Management and Head, Division of Strategy, Management & Organization at the Nanyang Business School, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Her research interests are in cultural intelligence, global leadership, and outsourcing. She has published extensively in Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Information Systems Research, Organization Science, Management Science, MIS Quarterly, and Social Forces, and serves on editorial boards including Management Science, Organization Science, Applied Psychology, Decision Science, Information System Research, MIS Quarterly, etc. She has pioneered and coauthored two books on cultural intelligence (Stanford University Press) and coedited the Handbook of Cultural Intelligence (ME Sharpe). She was recently awarded the prestigious Distinguished International Alumni Award by the University of Minnesota for her academic leadership and scholarship record.

Rob Griffin, senior vice president and U.S. director of search for Media Contacts, a communications consulting firm, is faced with the task of optimizing search engine marketing (SEM) for Air France. At the time of the case, SEM had become an advertising phenomenon, with North American advertisers spending $9.4 billion in the SEM channel, up 62% from 2005. Moving forward, Griffin wants to ensure that the team keeps its leading edge and delivers the results Air France requires for optimal Internet sales growth. The case centers upon Air France's and Media Contacts' efforts to find the ideal SEM campaign to provide an optimal amount of ticket sales in response to advertising dollars spent. This optimal search marketing campaign is based on choosing effective allocation of ad dollars across the various search engines, as well as selecting appropriate keywords and bid strategies for placement on the search result page for Internet users.

In determining the optimal strategy, the case presents background information on the airline industry as well as the Internet search options available at the time, including Google, Microsoft MSN, Yahoo!, and Kayak. Additionally, background information is provided on SEM and its associated costs and means of measuring the successfulness of each marketing effort. The case illustrates how one must first determine the key performance indicators for the project to guide analysis and enable comparison of various SEM campaigns. Cost per click and probability to produce a sale differ among publishers. Therefore, using a portfolio application model's quadrant positions can be used to determine optimal publisher strategies. Additionally, pivot tables help illustrate campaigns and strategies that have historically been most successful in meeting Air France's target Internet sales. Multiple recommendations on how Media Contacts can assist Air France in improving its SEM strategy can be derived from the data provided.

Students learn how to optimally leverage the Internet in generating customer sales in a cost-effective manner. Students will analyze and manipulate a variety of data using pivot tables to determine optimal strategies for obtaining maximum total online bookings through the various online channels available. Using a portfolio application model, students can determine an optimal publisher strategy and complete copy improvement analysis.