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This chapter proposes a conceptualization of joyful leadership as a unique leadership style and identifies a future research agenda to further explore the concept. While the concept of joyful leadership appears repeatedly in the nonacademic literature, including in blogs, vlogs, and podcasts, there is limited reference to joyful leadership in the academic literature highlighting a lack of academic rigor around the concept. Joyful leadership is proposed as a unique leadership style with specific patterns of behavior demonstrated by the leader. This research draws on understandings of emotion, positive affect, and leadership in the academic literature to develop a conceptualization of joyful leadership.

The proposed conceptualization is based on an extensive literature review drawing from both the leadership field and the study of emotions including various theoretical perspectives from these diverse fields.

Based on discrete emotion theory a conceptualization of joyful leadership as a unique leadership style is presented, identifying key patterns of behavior associated with joyful leadership including discrete autonomic patterns, actions, nonverbal signals, and identified feelings.

This research outlines a conceptual model to provide an understanding of the concept of joyful leadership as a unique leadership style. It draws on the current study of emotion, positive affect, and leadership and more specifically examines the concept of joyful leadership aligned to discrete emotion theory. This particular theory of emotion, when examined in relation to leadership, provides a basis for the concept of joyful leadership as a leadership style and the basis for its proposed characteristics and outcomes.

The purpose is to use co-citation analysis of servant leadership (SL) research to investigate the evolution of the field, its subfields, gaps and opportunities for future research in a systematic manner.

A document co-citation technique and three clustering algorithms (latent semantic index (LSI), the log-likelihood ratio (LLR) and the mutual information (MI) index) were employed to analyse 24,030 references from 549 articles spanning a period of 50 years.

Cluster analyses reveal that SL research consists of eight distinct subfields: (1) conceptualisation and measurement of SL; (2) SL and related theories; (3) methodological foundations and empirical expansion of SL research; (4) individual-level cognitive effects of SL and related theories; (5) “Warmth effects” of leadership behaviour; (6) antecedents of effective leadership; (7) SL, marketing, sales management and ethics and (8) SL, job design and work engagement. Important gaps and opportunities for future research are identified.

The analyses do not show a complete picture of research on SL. Interesting works used by subgroups of SL researchers may not have enough citations to be included in the results. Moreover, bibliometric analyses do not explain the impact of books, journals and articles on the practice of SL. The authors welcome future analyses of the most influential sources of SL practice. The authors expect that managerial and practice-oriented books and journals, such as the International Journal of Servant Leadership and the Servant Leadership Theory and Practice, would play a central role in such analyses.

The discussions of the nature of SL, its effects and antecedents are useful to leaders who want to develop a SL style or assist others in developing it. For researchers and doctoral students, the cluster analyses of co-citations give an overview of the subfields of SL research and reveal important knowledge gaps in the literature.

SL has several favourable effects on the motivation and psychological well-being of followers. Also, followers tend to adopt a willingness to serve.

Previous research has categorised SL research into three broad categories or phases. The cluster analyses of the co-citations reported here reveal a meaningful structure of eight distinct subfields. Knowledge gaps within the subfields represent novel opportunities for future research on SL. The authors also suggest a new subfield of SL research: pedagogical approaches to the motivation and development of SL skills.

This paper aims to identify the role of organizational and individual factors in predicting the research performance of academics when job crafting is a mediator variable and organizational culture is a moderating variable.

This study was conducted by collecting responses from academics at five Malaysian research-based universities. The sample size was 273. Standard questionnaires were used to collect the data. The data were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling.

The most significant predictors of research performance were organizational culture, individual effort and professional development, whereby job crafting was most optimally predicted by work engagement and transformational leadership. While organizational culture moderated the relationship between transformational leadership and research performance, the mediating role of job crafting was insignificant between work engagement and research performance.

The findings have important implications for human resource development practitioners (HRD) in terms of improving overall academic research performance. Practical interventions are suggested to assist academics in enhancing their performance. This study highlights how academic performance can be managed more effectively.

The findings extend the HRD literature in higher education and offer a framework that enhances the understanding of the organizational and individual factors that influence academics' research performance within a specific context of research universities in a non-Western context.

This study explores factors that influence the initiation of leadership coaching relationships that include externally employed coaches and school administrators.

This qualitative research study includes semi-structured interviews, observations and documents collected across three academic years within the context of a university-based leadership coaching program. Participants included six leadership coaches and six school administrators who participated in the program.

Qualitative analysis indicates that gender and race, prior professional experience, pre-existing professional relationships and the complexity of the district’s organizational structure influence the initiation of the coaching relationship.

Confidentiality restrictions imposed by the program limit opportunities for member checking and other forms of triangulation. Additional data collection using more expansive research methods would help address this limitation.

This study contributes to the sparse literature about leadership coaching with school administrators by describing how different factors influence initiation coaching relationships.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the views of African higher education scholars about effective leadership and if those views reflect a unique, African meaning of leadership.

The study sought to explore the views of African higher education scholars about leadership in general and if those views reflect a unique, African meaning, that does not necessarily fit the widely accepted western theories. Using a researcher-designed questionnaire, higher education faculty and administrators were asked their understanding and beliefs about leadership. Data from quantitative responses were analyzed using descriptive statistics and t-test. In addition, qualitative answers, from one open ended question, were utilized to possibly triangulate with quantitative responses.

This study found that most research participants believe that the widely used western leadership theories are not fully applicable to Africa's context. However, the list of qualities of effective leadership, these participants suggest to be unique to Africa, included mixed attributes from Western, Non-Western and Culture-Neutral theories.

This study has some limitations. First, the data for this study was collected electronically which might have affected the potential responses from those with limited Internet connection or who have not updated their current email addresses. Second, the participants of the study are higher education professionals whose insight about leadership may not necessarily reflect the views of others from different background.

By examining leadership effectiveness in Africa's context, this study adds to the body of literature on the ongoing discussion on the topic of culture and leadership. It is hoped that the findings of the study provide important insights regarding the debate on “western vs non-western” leadership theories.

The universal understanding of leadership and the application of leadership theories across cultures have been an issue of debate for leadership scholars and practitioners around the globe. Many authors argue that the widely used leadership theories are “too western” in value and character (Bass, 1990; Hofstede, 1993; House and Aditya, 1997). This study adds the perspectives of African scholars to the ongoing debate and expands the understanding about leadership across culture.

Employee burnout is increasingly coming under attention due to its negative impact on employee well-being and organisational effectiveness. This study, a systematic review, aims to evaluate the role of servant leadership and its mediators in preventing and mitigating against burnout experiences in organisations.

A preferred reporting items for systematic review and meta-analyses (PRISMA) was conducted using three databases, Academic search Complete, Embase and Scopus, in addition to bibliography searches. Articles were included if they reported on primary data, in English from inception to 2023. The mixed methods critical appraisal tool was used to assess the quality of articles, and a narrative synthesis was used to report results.

The search strategy yielded 4,045 articles, of which (N = 17), with total sample size of (N = 10,444) are included. Findings suggest that servant leadership is predictive of burnout, and that several mediators impact this relationship. Most studies were conducted in health care (n = 8) and banking (n = 3), and while the quality of the studies was mostly high (64%), the methods used were mainly descriptive and cross-sectional, which limits the extent to which causality can be inferred. A theory of change is provided based on the findings from this review and integrated with the extant literature on servant leadership theory, and can be used by organisations to support the policy, training and practice of servant leadership to reduce burnout.

Servant leadership is predictive of burnout; however, further research needs to be undertaken in this important emerging area.