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Although the epistemology of researcher reflexivity has been championed as crucial to research for some 30 years, it remains controversial and often ill-defined. In the 1980s, “reflexivity” was championed by the hermeneutically and epistemologically savvy to try and break the strangle hold of naïve positivism. Nowadays, reflexivity most often refers to the turn-to-affect and to the researcher’s ability and willingness to radically sensitivize “self” to others and circumstances. The purpose of this paper is to specify what non-representational research has brought to the reflexivity debate and then focus on Brosseau’s particular rendition of reflexivity, which is seen as far more demanding, problematic and valuable.

The approach followed in this paper is a hermeneutic reflection based on Thrift’s and Brosseau’s oeuvres. The perspective is historical, qua research methods’ take on reflexivity and qua Brosseau textual production.

Five differences between Thrift’s and Brosseau’s reflexivities are highlighted. Brosseau brings us much further in applying affective reflexivity to research writing than does Thrift.

A polemic calling for and warnings about the complexities of affective reflexivity, presented as demanding, dangerous and complex.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the generally positive impact of transformational leadership on organizational commitment in large organizations can be extended to small- and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) in the manufacturing and service industry. The authors investigate the possible moderator effects of a participative and directive leadership style.

The collected data from 588 employees who rated 93 supervisors within 35 Dutch SMEs in both manufacturing and service industry. The authors analyse the nested data by means of multilevel modelling.

Transformational leadership, defined as visionary leadership and development stimulation, was positively related to organizational commitment for service SMEs, but not for manufacturing SMEs. While a participative leadership style did not moderate the relationship between transformational leadership and organizational commitment in either industry, a directive leadership style strengthened the relationship between transformational leadership and organizational commitment in manufacturing SMEs.

Leaders in the service industry SMEs should engage in transformational leadership, whereas leaders in manufacturing industry SMEs should engage in other types of leadership. Future research should examine effective leadership in manufacturing.

As the results of this study suggest, a distinction should be made between manufacturing and service industry. The advice therefore needs to be twofold. Supervisors in manufacturing SMEs can best improve employees’ organizational commitment by intensifying transformational leader behaviour combined with a directive decision style. Supervisors in service SMEs do not have to combine transformational leader behaviour with a particular leader decision style, if they wish to be more effective.

Demonstrating transformational leader behaviour can be successful in both manufacturing and service SMEs. However, in manufacturing companies this will only be effective when combined with a directive leader decision style.

Although SMEs most of the time are considered as one similar group in comparison to large organizations, the authors follow Hughes and Wood (1999; see also Stonehouse and Pemberton, 2002) who argue that because of their different products, customers, and labour it is important to disaggregate research on SMEs and differentiate between manufacturing and service SMEs.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mechanism between transformational leadership (TL) and organizational commitment (OC) using job characteristics as a mediator and participative and directive leadership (DL) as moderator.

The authors used a questionnaire-based survey to collect data from 563 employees working in the banking industry.

The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The findings confirmed the mediating role of job characteristics and moderating role of both participative and DL styles between TL and OC.

The data for this study were collected at one point of time and it has implications for the policymakers and bankers.

The study is novel as it highlights the importance of job characteristics, participative and DL styles in understanding the relationship between TL and OC.

Relying on the theories of substitutes for leadership and psychological empowerment, this study aims to explore how perceptions of customer positive feedback can substitute for managers’ transformational leadership in driving frontline employees’ psychological empowerment and, in turn, task performance.

The authors tested the research hypotheses with frontline employees working in 17 equipment rental stores. Employees completed a questionnaire about customer positive feedback, transformational leadership and psychological empowerment, and supervisors completed a separate questionnaire about employees’ task performance. A total of 178 employee-supervisor dyads formed the final sample of the study.

The results provided support for our hypotheses. Psychological empowerment fully mediated the relationship between transformational leadership and task performance. Moreover, customer positive feedback moderated the indirect relationship between transformational leadership and task performance such that it was significant and positive only when customer feedback was low.

This paper contributes to the service marketing literature by showing that customer positive feedback can substitute for managers’ leadership in helping frontline employees feeling more in control of their work and psychologically empowered. Another useful contribution for practitioners is that customers may have a positive impact on frontline employees’ motivation state, which past research has little explored.