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Given the important role of change capability for organizational development and competitive advantage, the purpose of this study is to clarify the influences of transformational leadership (TL) on organizational change capability (OCC) via mediating roles of two specific aspects of trust in leadership namely disclosure-based trust and reliance-based trust.

Structural equation modeling is applied to test the degree of influences of TL and employee trust on OCC via empirical data collected from 376 participants in 115 small and medium firms in China.

The results show the positive and significant impacts of TL and aspects of employee trust in leadership on OCC. It indicated that disclosure-based trust in leadership has a greater influence on change capability in comparison with the effect of reliance-based trust in leadership. Especially, the findings have shown the evidence supporting the mediating mechanism of aspects of employee trust in leadership between TL and OCC.

This study provides the practical initiatives that highlight the importance of applying TL style to build and improve the trust of employees in their leadership for fostering OCC.

The paper has significantly advanced and deepened insight of how transformational leaders nurture employee’s specific shades of trust in leadership for fostering OCC. The valuable findings of this study contribute to enriching the theoretical basis of organizational behavior and change management, and can be used to analyze and explain the relationships between TL, employee’s trust in leadership and organizational capability for change.

There is currently a shortage of applications for the role of principal. There are a range of factors contributing to this, one of which may be the considerable levels of stress and burnout reported by principals and deputy principals. Distributed leadership may offer some solutions to this challenge. This study aimed to explore the lived experiences of distributed leadership from a role sustainability perspective of school principals and deputy principals.

This paper follows a qualitative interpretivist approach based upon 15 semi-structured interviews with principals and deputy principals working in Irish post-primary schools. Data were analysed via thematic analysis.

Results indicate challenges to the sustainability of the role of senior school leaders comprising administrative overload, policy proliferation and challenges due to the complexity and breadth of the role of these school leaders. It was reported that engagement with distributed leadership could aid the sustainability of participants in their roles and the importance of focusing on well-being practices was also highlighted.

Recommendations include the need to reconsider policy proliferation and the need to reconceptualise school leadership. Further consideration regarding how distributed leadership can aid the sustainability of the role of senior school leaders, without adversely contributing to the already busy role of schoolteachers is also recommended.

The findings of this study are valuable as they reflect previous findings relating to the current challenges to sustainable school leadership as well as highlight distributed leadership as a potential aid to mitigate against these challenges.

This paper elucidates the role of anger in error management (EM) and organizational learning behaviors. The study explores how anger can catalyze learning, emphasizing its strategic implications.

A double-layered moderated-mediated model was developed and tested using data from 744 Chinese CEOs. The psychometric properties of the survey instrument were rigorously examined through structural equation modeling, and hypotheses were tested using Hayes's PROCESS macros.

The findings reveal that anger is a precursor for recognizing the value of significant errors, leading to a positive association with learning behavior among top management team members. Additionally, the study uncovers a triple interaction effect of anger, EM culture and supply chain disruptions on the value of learning from errors. Extensive experience and positive grieving strengthen the relationship between recognizing value from errors and learning behavior.

This study uniquely integrates affect-cognitive theory and organizational learning theory, examining anger in EM and learning. The authors provide empirical evidence that anger can drive error value recognition and learning. The authors incorporate a more fine-grained approach to leadership when including executive anger as a trigger to learning behavior. Factors like experience and positive grieving are explored, deepening the understanding of emotions in learning. The authors consider both negative and positive emotions to contribute to the complexity of organizational learning.

Performance framework (PF) is a well-established practice to measure innovation performance and identify improvement opportunities. However, whether PFs academic research are applicable to companies remains unclear, as well as their support in the definition of improvement actions. This study aims to present the implementation and assessment of a new and updated PF proposed in previous research in a real industrial context.

The PF was implemented through an in-depth case study carried out in a European machinery manufacturer and further assessed by practitioners.

The results indicate that the PF enabled the creation of a multidimensional view of the innovation performance and the definition of improvement projects in the company. Additionally, the findings also reveal an overall positive assessment of the PF by senior managers who work with the innovation process.

As a case study, this research is inherently limited in the extent to which results can be generalised. Thus, the analyses are reductive and rationalising. Future research is needed to assess the replicability of the PF.

The study's practical contribution is based on the combination of insights and steps that provide a straightforward and actionable approach for the company to improve performance.

This study aims to advance the importance of implementing the new and updated PF after its proposition, which is often overlooked in preceding research. Furthermore, the assessment of the PF also enables to infer its value to the company's employees.

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has challenged leadership in hospitals worldwide. The experiences of leadership during the pandemic changed leadership significantly. This study aims to describe nurse leaders’ perceptions of what future leadership in hospital settings in the post-pandemic era needs to be like.

A qualitative descriptive study was used. A total of 20 nurse leaders from the Finnish central hospital were interviewed from June to October 2021. The data were analysed using inductive content analysis.

The analysis revealed five main categories describing nurse leaders’ perceptions of future leadership in hospital settings in the post-pandemic era: digitalisation and hybrid working culture, development of sustainable working conditions, moving smoothly to the post-pandemic era, dissolution of traditional regimes of organisation and flexibility in leadership.

In the post-pandemic era, the constantly changing demands and challenges currently facing healthcare systems have significantly increased the complexity of hospital organisations. This requires critical evaluation and change to traditional leadership. Enhancing flexibility and authenticity in leadership, strengthening competencies, implementing a wide range of digital resources and increasing the appeal of the nursing profession to build the next generation of nurses – all of these are needed to provide sustainability in future healthcare.

The results identify the critical points of leadership that need to be developed for future challenges and for maintaining a sufficient supply of qualified professionals. Acting on this information will enhance flexibility in organisations and lead to acceleration of changes and the development of new kinds of leadership in the future

Using Schein’s Descriptive Index (SDI), this paper aims to first examine gender role stereotypes and requisite managerial characteristics among Irish business students over a 10-year period. Then, the paper investigates whether there have been changes in gender role stereotypes during this period and subsequently unpack the reasons behind any changes recorded.

In total, 1,124 students from the same business student population rated men, women and managers in general, using SDI. Data was collected first during the academic year 2008–2009 and again in 2018–2019 to determine stability or change in gender role stereotypes and requisite managerial characteristics. Intraclass correlation coefficients scores were computed to determine the relationship between gender and requisite managerial characteristics and identify differences and similarities between the two samples. To explore the content of gender stereotypes, an examination of the specific descriptive items was conducted by performing a factorial analysis using Duncan’s Multiple Range Test. Finally, the authors adapted the scales developed by Duehr and Bono (2006) to determine whether broad gender stereotypic characteristics with respect to communal and agentic, attributed to men, women and managers, differ by sample.

The overall findings indicate changes in the extent of gender role stereotyping of the managerial role among the male cohorts studied. The subsequent analysis of the descriptive items identified that the change among the male cohort is due to the levels of agency they perceive women to now possess.

The authors contribute to the literature on both gendered and managerial stereotypes by showing changes in the pro-male stereotype of the managerial role and contribute to the existing debate on a shift towards a more androgynous view of leadership.

These findings help understand the content of gender role stereotypes that recent graduates bring with them to their first job post-graduation. The observed changes in the level of agency ascribed to women by their male counterparts could prove to be an important step forward for women’s advancement to managerial positions.

The findings indicate that both male and female cohorts in Sample 2 perceived men and women in general to possess the same levels of communal and agentic traits as their managerial counterparts.

With the growing need for employees to be innovative, public-sector organizations are investing in employee training. This study aims to examine the effects of a combined Lean Six Sigma and innovation training, using action learning, on public-sector employees’ creative role identity and innovative work behavior.

The authors studied a public service agency in Singapore in which a five-day Lean Innovation Training was implemented, using a combination of Lean Six Sigma and Creative Problem-Solving tools, with a simulation on day one and subsequent team-based project coaching, spread over six months. The authors administered pre- and postintervention surveys among all the employees, and initiated group interviews and observations before, during and after the intervention.

Creative role identity and innovative work behavior had significantly improved six months after the intervention, enabled through senior management’s transformational leadership. The training induced managers to role-model innovative work behaviors while cocreating, with their employees, a renewal of their agency’s core processes. The three completed improvement projects contributed to an innovative work culture and reduced service turnaround time.

Starting with a role-playing simulation on the first day, during which leaders and followers swapped roles, the action-learning type training taught all the organizational members to use various Lean Six Sigma and Creative Problem-Solving tools. This nimble Lean Innovation Training, and subsequent team-based project coaching, exemplifies how advancing the staff’s creative role identity can have a positive impact.

Taking the dialogic organizational development perspective, this study aims to investigate the framing processes when engaging in dialogue for strategy implementation and how these enable the evolution of implementation opportunities.

Through a qualitative exploratory study conducted in a large multinational, the authors analyse the dialogue and interactions among 25 dyads when identifying opportunities to contribute to strategy implementation. The data analysis relies on a process-coding approach and linkography, a valuable protocol analysis for identifying recursive interaction schemas in conversations.

The authors identify four main framing processes – shaping, unveiling, scattering and shifting – and provide a framework of how these processes affect individuals’ mental models through increasing the tangibility of opportunities or elevating them to new value hierarchies.

From a theoretical perspective, this study contributes to the strategy implementation and organizational development literature, providing a micro-perspective of how dialogue allows early knowledge structures to emerge and shape the development of opportunities for strategy implementation.

From a managerial perspective, the authors offer insights to trigger action and change in individuals to contribute to strategy when moving from formulation to implementation.

Rather than focusing on the structural control view of strategy implementation and the role of the top management team, this study considers strategy implementation as a practice and what it takes for organizational actors who do not take part in strategy formulation to enact and shape opportunities for strategy implementation through constructive dialogue.

Drawing on the conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study aims to examine the effects of servant leadership and despotic leadership on employees’ happiness at work (HAW) through job crafting.

To test the hypothesized relationships, the data were collected from 309 Pakistani employees. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data.

The findings showed that servant leadership is an optimal leadership style for creating employees’ HAW. In addition, job crafting was found to mediate the effects of servant leadership on employees’ broad-based positive attitudinal outcome (HAW). Moreover, results showed that despotic leadership negatively influences employees’ HAW through job crafting.

This study is novel as it investigates how newer forms of positive (servant) and negative (despotic) leadership styles influence employees’ multidimensional attitudinal outcome (HAW) via job crafting. By doing so, this research extends the nomological network of servant leadership, despotic leadership, job crafting and HAW.

Drawing on COR theory and based on a person-centered approach, this study aims to explore profiles of both leadership behavior (transformational leadership, abusive supervision) and well-being indicators (cognitive irritation, emotional exhaustion). Additionally, we consider whether certain resource-draining (work intensification) and resource-creating factors (leader autonomy, psychological contract fulfillment) from the leaders' work context are related to profile membership.

The profiles are built using LPA on data from 153 leaders and their 1,077 followers. The relationship between profile membership and correlates from the leaders' work context is examined using multinomial logistic regression analyses.

LPA results in an interpretable four-profile solution with the profiles named (1) Good health – constructive leading, (2) Average health – inconsistent leading, (3) Impaired health – constructive leading and (4) Impaired health – destructive leading. The two groups with the highest sample share – Profiles 1 and 3 – both show highly constructive leadership behavior but differ significantly in their well-being indicators. The regression analyses show that work intensification and psychological contract fulfillment are significantly related to profile membership.

The person-centered approach provides a more nuanced view of the leadership behavior – leader well-being relationship, which can address inconsistencies in previous research. In terms of practical relevance, the person-centered approach allows for the identification of risk groups among leaders for whom organizations can provide additional resources and health-promoting interventions.