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In a rapidly shifting market, organizations seek more diverse and innovative employee development interventions. Yet, these initiatives may have limited impact without employees’ engagement. This conceptual paper aims to propose self-leadership as a value-added strategy for promoting both individual and organizational development.

The authors conducted a conceptual analysis with three case examples. The cases were purposefully selected, aiming to comprehend how the concept of self-leadership has been applied within organizations and to identify real-life examples where self-leadership has been adopted as an organizational strategy.

This study demonstrates that self-leadership plays a significant role in facilitating human resource development (HRD) initiatives. Specifically, the authors illustrate how self-leadership interventions in companies empower individuals to take charge of their development, aligning personal and organizational goals. When effectively applied, self-leadership strategies positively impact HRD practices in the areas of training and development, organization development and career development, yielding benefits for both employees and employers.

This study addresses knowledge gaps in the emerging field of self-leadership in HRD by providing three companies’ examples of how self-leadership can add value to HRD. The findings offer unique insights into the synergy between self-leadership and HRD, benefiting academics interested in this line of inquiry and HRD practitioners seeking innovative approaches to employee and organizational development.

This study investigates the relationship between self-leadership and the work performance of gig workers as moderated by perceived organizational support and mediated by work engagement.

Linear regression and the Process macro by Hayes were used to examine the hypothesized model, on a data set of 384 gig workers.

The outcomes indicated a positive relationship between the self-leadership strategies of the freelancers and their work performance. The association of self-leadership and work performance was moderated by perceived organizational support and partially mediated by work engagement.

This study responds to the need for exploration of the moderation and mediating mechanisms through which self-leadership influences how gig workers perform at work.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between shared leadership (SL) and decision quality, utilizing shared leadership theory (SLT) and behavioral decision theory (BDT). The authors will explore the mediating role of “decision comprehensiveness” in the SL–decision quality linkage. Additionally, the authors will examine how individual “self-leadership” and “debate” among team members moderate the relationship between SL and decision comprehensiveness.

The authors tested the hypothesized moderated mediation model using a sample of 506 professionals employed in 112 research and development (R&D) teams, along with their direct managers from large Italian firms. To examine the relationships, the authors employed confirmatory factor analyses and path analyses. In order to address endogeneity concerns, the authors incorporated an instrumental variable, namely delegation, into the analysis.

SL positively influences decision quality, mediated by decision comprehensiveness, where teams include comprehensive information in decision-making. The level of debate among team members positively moderates the SL–decision comprehensiveness relationship. High levels of self-leadership can harm SL by reducing decision comprehensiveness, indicating a downside. However, low or moderate levels of self-leadership do not harm decision comprehensiveness and can even benefit SL.

This is the first work to investigate the relationship between SL and decision quality, shedding light on the mechanisms underlying this association. By integrating SLT and BDT, the authors provide insights into how managers can make higher-quality decisions within self-leading teams. Moreover, this research makes a distinct contribution to the field of self-leadership by delineating its boundaries and identifying a potentially negative aspect within the self-influence process.

The purpose of this study is to examine the serial mediating mechanism between self-leadership and employee creativity through organizational commitment and work engagement. Drawing on the self-determination theory and broaden and build theory, this study investigates the indirect effect of self-leadership on employee creativity through organizational commitment and work engagement.

The relationships were investigated using PROCESS macro for SPSS. Data were collected from 324 employees working in the Indian automobile industry. Structural equation modelling was used to evaluate the model fit of the measurement model.

The results of the study revealed that self-leadership impacts employee creativity. Further, the findings showed that both organizational commitment and work engagement individually mediate the relationship between self-leadership and employee creativity. The key finding of this research was the partial serial mediation of organizational commitment and work engagement in the relationship between self-leadership and employee creativity.

This is one of the primary studies that examined the serial mediating effect of organizational commitment and work engagement in the relationship between self-leadership and employee creativity. This study contributes to the existing literature on self-leadership and employee creativity by evincing the mediating mechanism of organizational commitment and work engagement.

While both perceived job autonomy and self-leadership are assumed to be important for optimal functioning of healthcare workers, their mutual relationship remains unclear. This cross-lagged study aims to theorize and test that perceived job autonomy and self-leadership have a reciprocal relationship, which is moderated by need for job autonomy.

Two-wave panel data were used to measure cross-lagged relationships over a time period of three months. Self-leadership is indicated by both self-leadership strategies and self-leadership behavior. The data were analyzed using hierarchical multiple regression (HMR).

Job autonomy was not causally nor reverse related to self-leadership strategies, but did relate to self-leadership behavior in both directions. Need for job autonomy did not influence the causal and reverse relationships between job autonomy and self-leadership (strategies and behavior). Instead, need for job autonomy discarded the influence of job autonomy on self-leadership behavior, and predicted self-leadership behavior over time.

For optimizing healthcare jobs, human resource management (HRM) policy makers need to consider other interventions such as training self-leadership, or developing an autonomy supportive work environment, since job autonomy does not lead to more use of self-leadership strategies.

This study used a cross-lagged study design which gives the opportunity to investigate causal relationships between job autonomy and self-leadership. Both self-leadership strategies and self-leadership behavior are included.

As the work context is dynamically changing, enhancing employee engagement through personal and organizational means is still capturing the attention of organizations as well as human resources researchers and practitioners. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships between self-leadership, employee engagement, and perceived organizational support and to test the moderating effect of perceived organizational support.

Data were collected through an online self-reporting questionnaire, with a total of 225 employees from Lebanon and 251 employees from the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Moderating analysis was conducted using Process v3.3 on both samples.

Results have shown that self-leadership and perceived organizational support were positively related to employee engagement in both countries. However, perceived organizational support served to enhance self-leadership and employee engagement in the UAE, but not in Lebanon.

The findings of this study can be used to help organizations as well as human resources and regional managers operating in the Middle East in giving insights about investing in self-leadership strategies and positively influence employee perception of organizational support to strengthen employee engagement.

This study is unique in exploring the moderating role of perceived organizational support on the relationship between self-leadership and engagement, and original in theoretically proposing and empirically examining the interaction between perceived organizational support and self-leadership. The context of the study in which the proposed relationships were tested for the first time in Lebanon and the UAE, is also novel as both countries are distinguished from other Middle Eastern countries.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of online self-leadership training (OSLT) in promoting leaders’ self-leadership skills and recovery experiences.

A non-randomized controlled trial was conducted under two conditions: a standardized seven-week OSLT (N = 43) and a control without any intervention (N = 42). All participants (N = 85) completed standardized questionnaires measuring self-reported self-leadership skills and recovery experiences. Additionally, participants in the intervention group were assigned to invite one team member each (N = 26) to assess their leaders’ pre-post self-leadership skills and pre-post leader–member exchange.

Significant interaction effects of time and group and increases in the OSLT group (t1 vs t2) in self-leadership skills (cognitive and natural reward strategies) and recovery experiences (detachment and relaxation) indicated the effectiveness of OSLT training. Significant improvements in self-leadership skills and leader–member exchange were reported by team members of leaders in the OSLT group.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study was the first to examine the effectiveness of OSLT for leaders in business contexts in a controlled before-after intervention design. The findings of this study revealed improvements in self-leadership skills and recovery experience because of OSLT.

This paper seeks to address the question: what is the relationship of culture to self‐leadership?

In an exploratory study, 74 US and 44 Chinese undergraduates rated their cultural beliefs and self‐leadership strategies. After four‐weeks in which a self‐leadership intervention was utilized, respondents contrasted positive aspects of their professional objectives with obstacles that impeded the realization of their goals.

The intervention did not influence participants' self‐leadership strategies, as measured two weeks after the intervention (p > 0.11). Repeated MANOVA measures revealed that the US group expressed higher levels of self‐leadership than the Chinese group during the three phases of the study (p < 0.001). Surprisingly, Chinese students held higher individualistic characteristics than the US group (p=0.009).

This research provides some insight into the similarities and differences between people from different cultures as to their use of self‐leadership strategies. Further research using more robust validation methodology is warranted to confirm the measurements of the study at issue here.

Managers will benefit from becoming aware that individuals' cultural characteristics influence their use and development of self‐leadership strategies.

This study makes a significant contribution to the body of research on self‐leadership. The study provides what may be the first glimpse of the volitional and self‐awareness components of self‐leadership strategies within the native Chinese population, and provides a backdrop with a US population for contrast.

The purpose of this paper is to propose that self‐leadership has a complementary relationship with charismatic leadership, thus not substituting for the influence of charismatic leadership in the contexts of internalization and identification.

Data were collected from 991 employees of 20 organizations. The research hypotheses were tested using regression analysis.

The results demonstrated that many self‐leadership skills acted as supplement/enhancer of charismatic leadership behaviors, except for self‐talk. The authors' interpretation was that self‐talk had a very different functional quality from the other self‐leadership skills, such as visualizing successful performance and evaluating beliefs and assumptions.

The authors recommend that the self‐talk scale should be modified by specifying a constructive content to make it compatible with the other self‐leadership subscales. Finally, more research should be devoted to determining whether leaders' unconventional behavior becomes dysfunctional in the presence of employees' self‐leadership, especially in Confucian countries that place emphasis on tradition and harmony.

The neutralizing effects of self‐talk point to the fact that past bad experience counts. Thus, the authors suggest that management takes responsibility for explaining change failure and seeking employees' feedback to prevent employees from developing negative self‐talk.

Based on self‐concept theory, the paper parallels self‐leadership to charismatic leadership in terms of their influence on the individual's value and identity and proposes and tests for a complementary relationship between both leadership capabilities.

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.