Search results

The purpose of this paper is to analyze if the sport trajectory could be an impact factor in leadership development.

A qualitative research method has been adopted by conducting 17 in-depth, semi-structured interviews. The data were analyzed with the program Open Code (4.03).

The findings of this study revealed that the interviewed managers perceived that their sport trajectory has had an important influence in the development of their leadership. This influence is determined by four factors: (1) sport profile, (2) sport referents, (3) competences, values and abilities and (4) experiences from different sport roles played during their lifespan.

The research is based on interviews with a small sample of managers. In order to develop the research further, a more extensive sample is required.

The paper is unique as it examines the impact of the sport trajectory as an impact factor in leadership development.

This paper aims to describe the design and evaluation of a pilot leadership development programme for infection prevention and control (IPAC) professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic. The programme’s aim was to improve IPAC knowledge and capacity in the health-care system by developing the leadership skills and capacities of novice and advanced Infection Control Professionals (ICPs), to respond flexibly, and competently, in their expanding and ever-changing roles.

The leadership programme was piloted with seven nurses, who were part of a clinical nursing team in New South Wales, Australia, over a 12-month period between 2021 and 2022. The programme was designed using a leadership development framework underpinned by transformational leadership theory, practice development approaches and collaborative and experiential learning. These principles were applied during programme design, with components adapted to learners’ interests and regular opportunities provided for collaboration in active learning and critical reflection on workplace experiences.

The authors’ evaluation suggests that the programme was feasible, acceptable and considered to be effective by this cohort. Moreover, participants valued the opportunities to engage in active and experience-based learning with peers, and with the support of senior and experienced ICPs. The action learning sets were well-received and allowed participants to critically reflect on and learn from one another’s experiences. The mentoring programme allowed them to apply their developing leadership skills to real workplace challenges that they face.

Despite a small sample size, the authors’ results provide empirical evidence about the effectiveness of using a practice development approach for strengthening ICP leadership capacity. The success of this pilot study has paved the way for a bigger second cohort of participants in the programme, for which further evaluation will be conducted.

The success of this leadership programme reflects both the need for leadership development in the IPAC professions and the applicability of this approach, with appropriate facilitation, for other professions and organizations.

ICP leadership programmes have not been previously reported in the literature. This pilot study builds on the growing interest in IPAC leadership to foster health system responsiveness and change.

Hoping to increase the productivity of their employees, firms provide and expect their employees to use approved mobile apps. However, despite an intuitive appeal, the relationship between information technology usage and productivity is still seen as paradoxical. This study examines the relationship between employees' experience and engagement with business mobile apps provided by employers and its effects on employee work productivity.

Data from respondents who use employer-provided business apps were used to test the hypotheses. Measurement-corrected latent scores extracted from the PLS measurement evaluation were used in regression-centric assessment using PROCESS.

Results indicate that employee-users’ experience-based attributions of the business app, i.e. customization, performance quality and compatibility, have positive effects on productivity mediated by participation intensity. Further, work type (retail vs non-retail) and the depth of the employee user’s experience moderate experience-based attributions' indirect effects on productivity.

Unlike previous studies delving into this topic, this study focuses solely on the mediation and moderation effects for hypothesis testing. Specifically, this study investigates effects conditional on work type (retail vs non-retail), which the authors believe has significant implications for retailing. These findings have interesting implications for both future research and managers.

The workforce management model conceptualised for the effective management of the construction workforce was subjected to expert scrutiny to determine the suitability and applicability of the identified practices and their attributed variables to the construction industry. In achieving this, a Delphi approach was adopted using experts from construction organisations in South Africa. These experts comprised workforce management personnel and construction professionals in senior management positions. The data were analysed using appropriate statistical tools such as interquartile deviation, Kendell’s coefficient of concordance, and chi square to determine consensus among these experts. After a two-round Delphi, the seven constructs proposed in the conceptualised workforce management model were adjudged to be important and worthy of adoption by construction organisations seeking to improve workforce management in the current fourth industrial revolution era.

This study aims to examine how couplepreneurs foster an entrepreneurial mindset in their kids.

A qualitative research approach with semi-structured interviews was used as the data collection technique. Narrative analysis was conducted on a sample of 20 couplepreneurs in Mthatha, South Africa.

Narratives of how couplepreneurs foster an entrepreneurial mindset in their kids included purchasing toys and games for kids that encourage entrepreneurship; competition and team activities among kids that are related to entrepreneurship; the piggy bank; encouraging kids to read entrepreneurial books; and kid entrepreneur showcases.

Sample size challenges are a notable limitation, including research being conducted in only one province of South Africa. Caution is advised when attempting to generalise the results to other contexts.

Understanding the strategies used by couplepreneurs to instil an entrepreneurial mindset in children can help parents to influence and encourage their children's entrepreneurial growth, resulting in more creative and innovative people who make a positive contribution to society, economy and the community.

While there is a body of literature on couple entrepreneurship, there are shortcomings in studies examining how coupleprenuers in African countries instil an entrepreneurial mindset in their children. As a result, this study aims to complement the current corpus of African literature on entrepreneurship, particularly in the context of South Africa.

Leadership is an essential contributor to employee creative self-efficacy, and past research suggests a positive relationship between servant leadership and creative self-efficacy. However, the relationship is complex and contingent upon moderating variables, and this research examines the moderating effect of role clarity by drawing on social exchange theory and social cognitive theory.

Data collected from a survey among 116 emergency room employees is used to test the research model using moderated ordinary least squares regression.

The results confirm a positive relationship between servant leadership and creative self-efficacy and suggest a U-shaped relationship between role clarity and creative self-efficacy. Furthermore, role clarity positively moderates the relationship between servant leadership and creative self-efficacy.

The sample used for this research mainly consisted of highly educated employees within a specific setting. Future research is needed to study if the relationships found in this research can be generalized to other organizational settings.

This research suggests that leaders can support employees' creative self-efficacy through servant leadership, particularly when coupled with high role clarity.

Rapidly changing work environments are characterized by decreased role clarity, so attention is needed to its moderating role on the relationship between servant leadership and creative self-efficacy.

In this chapter, we discuss talent development in the context of higher education. After discussing the advantages and disadvantages of inclusive and exclusive approaches to talent development, we present empirical data that detail how the participants of a focus group study perceive talent development in higher education. Our data show the importance of a contextualized reading of talent development as the competitive context in academia hinders an inclusive focus on talent development. This context results in a performance-centred, instead of a development-centred approach to talent management, where outperforming others in narrowly defined areas (e.g. publication record) is the main goal. We show that in such a context the development of competitive talent is rewarded, and the development of communal talent is not. The focus on performance instead of (inclusive) development becomes more pronounced when employees move through their career and is believed to have several negative consequences. Mostly women perceived that such a non-inclusive approach to talent development hinders the development and deployment of their talents and obstructs their career progression.

The study’s aim was to design and test a leadership development approach using blended learning, to equip leaders for strengthening their own resilience and that of their teams.

A contextualised leadership development intervention was produced and evaluated following the principles of design-based research. Participants were from three organisations that work internationally to address the impact of economic disadvantage. Initial research used the behavioural event interview technique. Online assessment incorporated measures of situational judgement, emotion recognition and attributional style. Validity measures were multi-rater feedback (criterion), and NEO-PI 3 (construct). Individual feedback and a simulation-based peer workshop were followed by a four-to-six month period of experience-driven development and a final peer workshop for consolidating and evaluating learning outcomes.

The online assessment was a valid measure of leaders’ personal resilience resources and their resilience-building capability. Overall, the intervention improved participants’ understanding of, and engagement with, the processes of strengthening individual and collective (team) resilience.

The target sample size for the study was relatively small, to ensure it would be practical to replicate the approach when designing similar interventions for a senior leadership population in other contexts. Significant results provided robust evidence for the validity of the assessment approach. Findings for the workshops and experience-driven development phase were more tentative, but the value of the design iterations was clearly demonstrated.

The leadership development approach is suitable for application in other organisations, if similar principles are followed to produce and evaluate materials relevant to each broad sector context. Roll-out is cost-effective, with relatively few hours of blended or virtual delivery supporting experience-driven learning.

The impact leaders have on the wellbeing of those who report to them is well established, but less has been done to develop and formally evaluate practical, cost-effective interventions to improve this impact. The approach validated in this study can be applied more widely to benefit employee wellbeing as well as performance.

The study developed and evaluated a new approach to preparing leaders for the challenge of building team resilience, an aspect of leadership capability that has been given relatively little attention to date.

Due to the extremely complicated and unpredictable outside world, using and unlocking the potential of learning agility (LA) has become a key part of making businesses more competitive, and there is a lot of new research being produced on this topic very quickly. Thus, this study aims to carry out a bibliometric analysis to systematically analyse the existing literature on LA and propose an integrated framework depicting various predictors, mediators and outcome variables covered in the LA research. Moreover, this study lays out a rich and detailed agenda for future research and enhances understanding of LA by suggesting future research questions.

This study applied bibliometric analysis using the Scopus database. This study applied bibliometric analysis and cluster analysis to examine the contributions of research constituents (authors, institutions, countries and journals) and their structural and thematic relationships (co-citation network and thematic trends). The most important insights were used to propose an integrated conceptual model.

Based on the results of the performance analysis, this study discovered that the USA is the most productive country in this research field, followed by Belgium, Australia, Korea and India. In addition, the findings highlight the most prominent journals, authors and countries contributing to LA, document citations and theories contributing to the field of LA. This study identifies four emerging future research themes (clarity of construct, identification of variables to be studied with LA, strategies enhancing LA and context of study) and proposes subsequent research questions using science mapping analysis.

A review of existing literature on LA provides a clear understanding of the current and future state of research on this topic. And, from a practical standpoint, this study highlights emergent clusters that will help practitioners build LA as a tactical reaction to the current volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous environment.

This study is relevant as it aims to systematically review articles on LA and proposes an integrated conceptual framework based on existing literature that will serve as a guide for existing and future research in this area.

Although researchers have long recognized the importance of participating organizations’ (POs) relational behavior for mega construction projects (MCPs) performance, relational behavior may not be executed by POs without effective leadership from project owners. However, little is known about the mechanisms linking owners’ leadership styles to POs’ relational behavior. This study draws on full range leadership theory and role theory to examine the relationships between owners’ leadership styles (i.e. transformational and transactional) and relational behavior. POs’ role orientations (i.e. normative and economic) are considered as potential mediators.

Data were collected from 175 managers deeply involved in MCPs. Hierarchical regression model and bootstrapping methods were performed on the data to examine the direct effects of owners’ leadership on POs’ relational behavior and the mediating effects of POs’ role orientations.

The results revealed that both owners’ transformational and transactional leadership positively affect POs’ relational behavior, despite the former being higher than the latter, and indirectly influence relational behavior via POs’ normative and economic role orientation, respectively.

This study provides a clear picture of how owners’ leadership can motivate POs’ relational behavior to achieve high-quality inter-organizational relationships in MCPs. The findings can guide owners’ top manager selection by prioritizing those with transformational leadership, which is beneficial to achieving high-level relational behavior of POs. The results also imply that owners should pay greater attention to cultivating POs’ normative role orientation by encouraging teamwork and open communication to enhance their implementation of relational behavior.

Unlike previous research focusing more on intra-organizational leader–follower relationship within one PO, this study is one of the first to empirically confirm owners’ leadership as a critical antecedent of POs’ relational behavior, thus enhancing the theoretical understanding of inter-organizational relationship management in MCPs. Based on role theory, this study considers a novel organizational psychology mechanism, i.e. POs’ role orientations, as the mediator to unravel how owners’ leadership affects POs’ relational behavior, which was rarely invoked in MCP leadership literature.