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The contemporary business environment steered by forces of globalization, digitization and automation can only be navigated by a resilient workforce. This requires inculcating self-leadership (SL) traits in individuals, which will allow them to exercise self-direction and self-motivation required to survive high-strain situations. The SL characteristics most significantly reflected by Musk are self-goal setting, authenticity and responsibility. Least evidence was found for positive self-talk and self-cueing. This study aims to add to the repertoire of leadership studies, furnishing important implications for academia and practice.

In this paper, the authors explore the dimensionality of SL through a systematic literature review. The authors also take the case of Elon Musk, one of the most resilient technopreneurs in the contemporary business world, and scrutinize his journey as a self-leader.

The SL characteristics most significantly reflected by Musk are self-goal setting, authenticity and responsibility. Least evidence was found for positive self-talk and self-cueing. This study adds to the repertoire of leadership studies, furnishing important implications for academia and practice.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to explore the controversial Elon Musk’s leadership style through the prism of SL.

Seeks to understand how differences in national cultures impact on the understanding and meaning of the concept of self‐leadership and its application.

First, research at the intersection of culture and leadership and Hofstede's culture framework are reviewed. Then the main components of self‐leadership theory are introduced, and how Hofstede's framework can be used to re‐analyze them given differences across cultures is discussed.

While self‐leadership remains, in general, a valid concept, its understanding and application is likely to differ across cultures. Specifically, high power distance raises the importance of the symbolic value of tasks and correspondent covert processes of self‐leadership, high uncertainty avoidance makes more explicit the importance of non‐rational and intuition‐based thought processes, collectivism shows the relevance of social relations, femininity reiterates the importance of social relations and non‐rational processes, and long‐term orientation introduces the importance of making time an explicit element.

There is a need for further research on self‐leadership that investigates the roles of social and cultural relations, communication and language, multilevel interdependencies, and ethics. Empirically there is need for developing a self‐leadership instrument that is relevant and applicable across cultures.

This paper should facilitate appreciation of a contingency perspective of self‐leadership that requires different modes of application across cultures.

This paper helps fill a gap in the self‐leadership literature. In particular, it can facilitate greater understanding of this concept in cultures other than the USA, where it originated.

Based on the limited strength model, the purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship of self-leadership strategies (behavior-focused strategies, constructive thought patterns) and qualitative and quantitative overload with subsequent self-control strength.

The present study is a field study with 142 university affiliates and two measurement occasions during a typical workday (before and after lunch). Self-control strength was measured using a handgrip task.

Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that self-leadership, quantitative overload, and qualitative overload were not directly associated with self-control strength at either of the two measurement occasions. Qualitative overload moderated the relationship between self-leadership and self-control strength, such that self-leadership was associated with lower self-control strength at both measurement occasions when individuals experienced high qualitative overload in the morning.

Employees and employers should be aware of the possibly depleting characteristics of self-leadership in order to be able to create a work environment allowing for the recovery and replenishment of self-control strength.

The present field study theoretically and methodologically contributes to the literature on self-leadership and self-control strength in the work context by investigating the depleting nature of self-leadership and workload.

The self-leadership change project (SLCP) is an ongoing program for senior level students at a regional university designed to provide hands-on experience in building self-management skills, which is considered a pre-requisite by many leaders and scholars (e.g. Drucker, 1996; Schaetti et al., 2008). The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Participants (479 undergraduate business students in 26 different classes with two different professors) had from 10 to 16 weeks to complete their SLCP project. A survey to collect the data for this study were provided as a voluntary option to participants who wished to report their SLCP project results.

A majority of students participating in the projects reported achieving change in targeted behavior, with intentions to continue to utilize the SLCP approach for future “projects.” Additionally, students who successfully completed a SLCP reported that observers noted change in others as a result of the project. Students who received positive feedback from observers reported that they were likely to engage in a self-leadership project in the future.

The data used in the analysis are exclusively self-reported information. The survey and results do not tie to previous studies that measure individuals’ aptitude for self-leadership as an indicator of success and development of self-leadership capabilities. This study offers little in the way of acknowledging or determining the sustainability of changes desired.

The results fully supported the idea that self-leaders influence others.

This study providing support for the concept that external leadership begins with self-leadership. Successful self-leadership change prepares an individual for external leadership roles in organizations and society.

The relationship noted in “Practical implications” above has been suggested in the literature, but there have been few studies covering this relationship.

A proposition offered in this manuscript is that activist musicians use their musical competencies to enhance their social change strategies within the local community. However, it is unclear what strategies are being utilized by local activist musicians in order to reach collective action and achieve social and political change. A self-developed framework, the Framework for Activist Musicians (FAM), portrays how an activist musician utilizes their social experiences, behaviors, and influence to enact social change. The framework delineates how a musician utilizes their music-making involvement and status to enhance their charisma and authenticity as an activist to establish social change. Additionally, the framework outlines the unique qualities of a musician and activist which make them well-prepared to be an influential community leader.

This research aims to examine the influence of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) dark triad traits, follower COVID-19 anxiety and self-leadership on follower evaluations of the effectiveness of organizations’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic crisis.

In this paper data were collected over two time periods. At time 1, mid-October 2021, 650 participants responded to questions on their CEO’s leadership traits and self-leadership. At time 2, (3-week lag) 275 matched individual responses provided followers’ evaluations of the effectiveness of the organization’s COVID-19 response and follower self-leadership.

CEO dark triad traits had direct and indirect negative effects on followers’ evaluations of the organization’s COVID-19 response (through COVID-19 anxiety). Follower self-leadership mitigated the negative effects.

By examining the moderating role of self-leadership, we can offer organizations evidence-based strategies to mitigate some harmful effects of leaders exhibiting dark triad traits.

Given that organizations are still dealing with the ongoing ramifications of COVID-19 and planning for future crises, our findings emphasize the negative effects of dark traits on COVID-19 anxiety, and in turn, on follower’s evaluation of effective organization response to a crisis, highlighting the importance of top-level leader selection.

Our results bolster Manz’s (1986) argument that self-leadership might be key to achieving peak performance in organizations and important for follower well-being.

This study of dark traits is especially important in a crisis context to understand how leaders affect followers’ perceptions about organizational outcomes and factors that might mediate or moderate the negative impact. Despite interest in understanding leadership during a crisis, the majority of research is focused on positive traits of leaders (Palmer et al., 2020).

Attempts to conceptualize a framework for understanding and implementing self‐management in school from a multi‐level perspective. Proposes that there are three levels of self‐management in school; namely, the school level, the group level and the individual level. Each level of self‐management follows a self‐propelling and cyclic process comprising five stages. By following these self‐management cycles, the school, the groups and its individual staff members are sensitive to environmental changes and capable of self‐learning and development. In order to implement self‐management successfully, various conditions at the three levels are to be fulfilled. Also discusses the importance of school leadership and mission. It is hoped that this framework could provide a comprehensive view of self‐management in school and consequently contribute to the worldwide ongoing school management reforms and school development research.

Although the measurement of self‐leadership (RSLQ) has been developed and validated with samples from the USA with promising reliability and construct validity, its generalizability to the Chinese context is problematic. The purpose of this study is to modify the existing self‐leadership scale (RSLQ) in order to make the application of self‐leadership theory and measurement more relevant to the Chinese culture. This modification includes: enhancing the generalization of self‐leadership measurement to the Chinese context by refining the items of four existing dimensions (self‐observation, evaluations of beliefs and assumptions, natural rewards, and self‐punishment) found to have low‐reliabilities in one previous validation study; and extending the breadth of some self‐leadership components based on the cross‐cultural theory about self‐concept differences between individualism and collectivism. Three self‐leadership subscales are newly developed through extending three self‐leadership components (natural rewards, self‐observation, and evaluating beliefs and assumptions) with the incorporation of social/relation‐based features associated with collectivism.

The modified RSLQ was administered to 569 Chinese students. The reliability and construct validity of this modified self‐leadership scale was explored using exploratory (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Test of association with self‐efficacy was also examined.

Results from the EFA demonstrated good reliability and stable factor structure for the modified scale and CFA demonstrated acceptable model fit for 11 factors of the modified self‐leadership scale. Most notably, the refinement of four existing dimensions (self‐observation, evaluations of beliefs and assumptions, natural rewards, and self‐punishment), which had failed to reach acceptable levels of reliability in Neubert and Wu's Chinese sample, showed increases above the commonly recommended level of 0.7. Two new extended dimensions, relation‐based natural rewards and social‐oriented evaluation of beliefs and assumptions, consistently emerged in two independent student samples. More interestingly, the items of another extended dimensions, relation‐based self‐observation consistently merged with the task‐based self‐observation (the original subscale) to form one factor, suggesting that, in Chinese culture, task‐based self‐observation cannot be separated from relation‐based self‐observation. The modified RSLQ was also positively and strongly associated with self‐efficacy.

Further validation work is required to examine whether the refined RSLQ could be generalized to another collectivistic country such as Korea or Japan.

Managers will benefit from understanding how culture shapes an individual's use of self‐leadership strategies.

The study makes a significant contribution to the universal application and generalizability of self‐leadership measurement to the Chinese population. The validation works to support the belief that the modified 38‐item RSLQ is a superior measure with higher internal consistency and more stable factor structure than that of the existing instrument, which could be generalized to a Chinese context.