Search results

The service-profit chain model (Heskett, Jones, Loverman, Sasser, & Schlesinger, 1994) highlights the well-documented relationship between employee and customer attitudes suggesting that employees who are satisfied and engaged with their work provide better customer service resulting in higher levels of customer satisfaction and, ultimately, driving firm revenue. The authors propose an expansion of the service-profit margin identifying the leadership behaviors that create positive employee attitudes and engagement. Specifically, the authors suggest that leaders who focus on recognition, involvement, growth and development, health and safety, and teamwork (Kelloway, Nielsen, & Dimoff, 2017) create a psychologically healthy workplace for customer service providers and, ultimately, an enhanced customer experience.

Research has overwhelmingly focused on the positive side of leadership in the past. However, research into negative aspects of leadership is picking up pace. This chapter will provide an overview of two prominent aspects of negative leadership, namely, abusive supervision and laissez-faire leadership. Research has shown that both types of leadership have significant negative consequences both for organisations as a whole as well as individual followers. Examples include lower job satisfaction, stress, as well as lowered performances and a higher likelihood of counter-productive work behaviour. Both abusive supervision and laissez-faire researchers acknowledge that these leadership styles take effect through the perception of followers. That is, they consider that the same behaviour can be interpreted differently by different followers and will, hence, lead to different follower-related outcomes. Abusive supervision and laissez-faire are, however, very different in terms of the actual leader behaviours described. While abusive supervision is a style that is actively destructive, laissez-faire is destructive via lack of support for followers' goal achievement. We end the chapter with an outlook for future research, notably an attempt to systematise future research into destructive leadership with respect to the different forms it can take.

There are several permutations of destructive leadership types. Most involve active leadership actions, but some involve passive actions (or lack of leadership). A review of the literature reveals a relative dearth of root causes of destructive leadership type, but a reasonable sampling of causal factors and predictors of destructive leadership results. The author focuses on three relevant and representative destructive leadership types: Pseudotransformational, Laissez-Faire, and Unethical, and scoured the literature for root causes, causal factors, and predictors related to each. He further compared and contrasted these leadership types to differentiate their similarities and differences and discussed the causal factors and predictors associated with the operationalization of these leadership styles.

The common notion that leaders should be ethical, good, responsible and trustworthy has been strongly challenged in the fields of business and politics worldwide. Due to the high prevalence of unethical leadership by immediate supervisors and decline in trust in leaders (Cowart, Gilley, Avery, Barber, & Gilley, 2014), scholars started to pay closer attention to the dark sides and destructive aspects of leadership. Many different concepts are suggested to define the dark side of leadership, and each of them captures similar but distinct dimensions. In this vein, Einarsen and colleagues' (2007) constructive and destructive leadership model serves as an umbrella concept for different types of dark sides of leadership, covering concepts which have been studied separately such as abusive supervision, tyrannical leadership, petty tyranny, toxic leadership and leader derailment. The present chapter aims to provide a summary of the definitions of these interrelated constructs to acknowledge some other leadership (e.g., paternalistic leadership, pseudo-transformational leadership) and personality styles (e.g., Machiavellianism, narcissism) that have not been considered in this framework and to provide suggestions for future research.

The purpose of this paper is to report findings from two studies that compare the nature (construct validity) and relative effects (incremental predictive validity) of environmentally specific transformational leadership (ETFL) to general transformational leadership.

The nature of ETFL was investigated in an empirical study based on a sample of 185 employees. The relative effects of ETFL were examined in an experimental study based on a sample of 155 university students.

A confirmatory factor analysis showed that environmentally specific and general transformational leadership are empirically distinct but related. Findings from the experimental study revealed that compared to general transformational leadership and a control condition, participants exposed to ETFL he confederate leader’s environmental values and priorities more highly and engaged in higher levels of pro-environmental behaviors.

Questions concerning ecological and external validity arise out of the experimental study. Future research should contrast the relative effects of environmentally specific and general transformational leadership across various organizational and cultural conditions. Limitations associated with demand characteristics are also of concern in the experimental study. Future research should include an environmental focus in the control condition to exclude any possible threats related to demand characteristics.

Results from these two studies provide useful information regarding within-organization environmental leadership training by suggesting that maximal individual and organizational environmental change may best be achieved by training leaders to be as specific as possible regarding their values, priorities and goals.

This research suggests that leaders should engage in ETFL behaviors to have the greatest positive impact on corporate environmental sustainability, and by extension, climate change.

In two separate studies, the construct and incremental predictive validity of ETFL were assessed.

We introduce the construct of loving one's job as an overlooked, but potentially informative, construct for organizational research. Following both empirical findings and theoretical developments in other domains we suggest that love of the job comprises a passion for the work itself, commitment to the employing organization, and high-quality intimate relationships with coworkers. We also suggest that love of the job is a taxonic rather than a dimensional construct – one either loves their job or does not. In addition, we propose that loving your job is on the whole beneficial to individual well-being. Within this broad context, however, we suggest that loving one's job may buffer the effect of some stressors while at the same time increase vulnerability to others. These suggestions provide some initial direction for research focused on the love of one's job.

TEXTBOOKS SAY that training has to begin at the top and then work through the organisation. When I took over the production unit of a medium‐sized factory engaged in batch production, I resolved to put this into practice. Training is only a part of a production manager's job, but my experience as detailed in this article showed me what a valuable part it is.

Followership has been recognized as an essential component of leadership studies as evidenced by growth of research within this area. To keep pace with the growth of this research, it is time to bring followership into the leadership classroom. This paper proposes a case-based exercise with two main learning objectives: (1) to help students broaden their perceptions about followership, and (2) to promote followership behaviors that actively contribute to organizations. This exercise includes large group discussion, peer coaching, and individual work to facilitate these endeavors. The paper concludes with suggested methods for assessment that include both self- and peer- ratings, as well as open-ended reflection.