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Researchers have adopted a somewhat narrow conceptualization of organizational culture, founded on specific assumptions about the impact of founders or top leadership. The purpose of this paper is to address this research gap.

Based on 356 Chinese employees, this paper examines the relationships between organizational culture, leadership and employee outcomes. Specifically, the paper focuses on a mediation model by looking at how different leadership processes impact the relationship between culture and outcomes.

Supportive and task leadership styles and a persuasive influence strategy are correlated with team, detail and innovation cultures, respectively, and are significantly stronger than that of other leadership styles/strategies. Partial support is found for the mediating effect of task and change leadership styles, and assertive and persuasive influence strategies. Contrary to the authors’ second assumption regarding the social learning effect on outcomes, the study provides a tentative conclusion that different culture types may have different levels of strength in molding middle management and consequently influencing subordinate outcomes. The model of “culture-leadership-outcome” generally shows a similar pattern with the reverse effect of “leadership-culture-outcome.”

This study was the first to examine the impact of organizational culture on leadership and their effect on organizational outcomes, and to compare the reverse relationship. It suggests a new model that combines social cognitive theory with concepts drawn from the social learning perspective. Both the significant and non-significant results enhance our understanding on the mediating effects of leadership and culture. The findings also enrich leadership theory because no empirical studies systematically examined the similarities and differences between style approaches and influence strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to reveal the mediating role of leadership style on the relationship between strategy and company performance.

The study uses empirical data gathered from top managers in a stratified sample of 476 Danish private businesses.

The results show the mediating effects of leadership styles on strategic performance. In particular, both supportive and directive leadership styles partially mediate the effect of the differentiation strategy, while the supportive leadership style displays a stronger mediating effect than the directive one. The multi-group analysis shows the moderating impact of the manager’s tenure, managerial level, strategy clarity, industry and business environment risk.

The study is limited by its nature and the specificity of the national context in which it was conducted. In this vein, the evidence collected here can be enlarged and complemented by having access to panel data or the generalization of some results to neighboring or other developed countries.

Several implications of the findings for managerial practices are discussed.

There are very few discussions of the mediating effect of leadership style between strategy and performance. The paper fills the gap by examining the role of leadership style planning on the relationship between those two variables in Denmark.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how male and female leaders define effective leadership in an extreme context.

The authors conducted in-depth interviews with leaders working in an extreme context (a matched sample of female and male Majors and Colonels in the Canadian Armed Forces) and analysed military training materials.

In the military, male and female leadership looks much more similar than might be expected. Further, surprisingly this is not occurring because women are leading in more masculine ways, but rather the opposite; men are leading in more feminine ways.

There is a need for organizations to recognize and acknowledge the role of feminine leadership behaviours. This may also give women a better opportunity to succeed in these types of leadership roles.

This study contributes to the leadership literature by furthering our understanding of the boundary conditions for transformational leadership in relation to gender stereotypes, situational strength, and social identity.

The study from which this article is derived was carried out in eight diversely located primary schools in the United States of America. Each had implemented the system of Individually Guided Education (IGE) several years previously; and each was chosen from among 42 schools that had already been randomly selected and studied by researchers from the Wisconsin Research and Development (R & D) Centre because they met several predetermined operational criteria. One of the several questions investigated in the study concerned the impact of the principal's leader behaviour on the decision‐making processes used in the schools, each of which was typified by the principal sharing leadership responsibilities with a representative cabinet type leadership committee, called the Instructional Improvement Committee (IIC). Field methodology incorporating interviews, observations and questionnaires was used to collect the data. In this article the background to the study is presented, the theoretical considerations of educational leadership relevant to the question explored are outlined, the research methodology is described, the pertinent collected data are tabulated and analysed, the major findings concerning the leader behaviour of the principal are reported, and the implications for practice set down. The conclusion is drawn that the leadership of the principal is a crucial factor in the functioning of the IIC.

The purpose of this paper is to propose and to test three models in order to examine the mechanisms through which dimensions of transformational leadership influence different forms of organizational commitment by testing the possible mediating role of leader-member exchange (LMX) dimensions.

The participants in this study are represented by 427 senior executive French employees having a university degree and minimum two years of work experience in their current organization. The relationships between different variables were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The results indicate that the dimensions of LMX mediated the relationships between the dimensions of transformational leadership and organizational commitment dimensions. The contribution dimension of LMX acts as a consequence, rather than an antecedent of commitment. These findings are important since they may serve as a bind between leadership dimensions and the kind of organizational commitment that each of these dimensions can generate in followers.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first empirical study that tests the interaction of transformational leadership and LMX on organizational commitment in a French context. The originality of this work leads on investigating these three concepts as multidimensional constructs and focusing on the mediating role of LMX in the relationship between dimensions of transformational leadership and different forms of organizational commitment which can be considered as a novelty in the field of research in this area. As a result, this study addresses concerns about that lack of academic research on the mechanisms by which transformational leaders influence the organizational commitment of their followers.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the styles that are desirable in a leader in the perspective of youth in Asia, particularly Brunei Darussalam and South Korea. Thus, by investigating it using the Path Goal Theory as its approach, this study provides leaders with the desirable leadership style to motivate and influence the youth.

The research used a quantitative method with a proportionate stratified sampling method using the criteria of age of youth defined by UNESCO. The data then collected using a face-to-face method of a questionnaire from February 2016 till June 2016.

The evidence depicts that Bruneian youth prefers directive leadership while South Korean youth prefers supportive leadership. This finding is based on the selected styles that are desirable by the youth and their choice is also influenced by culture. This may imply that culture has a large impact which can determine the leadership styles best suited to the environment.

Since the research has limited sample sizes and geographical location, this can lead to future research by considering more regions of different continents to determine whether different leadership preference still persists. This study can also be used as a basis to consider other factors in investigating leadership preference in Asian countries.

This paper identifies and encourages the need to study leadership style that is desirable among youth.

The aim of this study is to investigate and examine the impact of strategic purchasing practices (SPP) on strategic-fit (SF) by analyzing the influence of SPP on purchasing involvement in business strategy formulation with path-goal theory leadership styles as moderators.

Using survey data from 320 respondents representing 64 manufacturing firms in the Middle East, the authors measure SPP, purchasing involvement, leadership styles and SF of the purchasing function with business strategy.

Building on the path-goal approach to leadership, results suggest that participative, supportive and achievement-oriented leadership (AOL) styles are pure moderators, while directive leadership style (DLS) is a quasi-moderator in boosting the relationship between SPP and strategic purchasing involvement (SPI).

Limitations of the sampling methodology and sample size restricts the scope for generalizing the hypotheses. Further, data were collected only from manufacturing companies. The paper provides managerial implications on purchasing involvement in business strategy formulation and the different roles of leadership styles.

This is the first scholarly work to examine the different leadership styles as a moderator that affects the strategic involvement and status of strategic purchasing.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between behaviors associated with transformational leadership (TL) and the sub-processes of organizational learning (OL) and to explain these relationships based on the ability-motivation-opportunity (AMO) framework.

Questionnaires assessing leadership behaviors and unit learning processes were filled in by 520 employees from 30 units within 9 organizations.

Each sub-process of OL was found to be related to different leadership behaviors. For example, distribution was related to TL components directed toward developing followers’ ability (i.e. vision and intellectual stimulation) and created the opportunity to share knowledge (i.e. supportive leadership). On the other hand, the TL components found to be related to interpretation were those that enhance followers’ motivation to work well in a group (i.e. inspirational communication and personal recognition).

Showing that specific TL behaviors are related to different OL sub-processes emphasizes the importance of each OL sub-process as a distinct outcome. In addition, this study begins to address the possible mechanisms that may explain why specific factors enhance some OL sub-processes, but not others.

The study’s findings will assist managers and HR practitioners in recognizing which leadership behaviors are to be enhanced to help address particular sub-processes of OL that need improvement.

This paper is the first to examine the fine-tuned relationships between TL and OL and thus adds another explanation regarding why organizations differ in their learning processes and in their eventual outcomes, such as performance and innovation.

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.

Psychological resilience, defined here as the capacity to bounce back from adversity and failure, has been studied in various leadership contexts. However, the literature demonstrates less consensus concerning how psychological resilience manifests in, and interacts within, the leadership role and, equally, the focus on resilience development is underdeveloped. This paper addresses these issues by focusing on the interactions between psychological resilience and leadership and presents practical development strategies.

A systematic review employing 46 empirical studies followed a thematic synthesis within an associated model encapsulated as building-up resilience and being effective.

First, resilience is identified as essential and can benefit individuals and organizations' work outcomes across leadership contexts, including work performance, job engagement, well-being, and enhanced leadership capability. Secondly, leaders may build up their resilience by obtaining coping skills and improved attitudes toward challenges. Resilient attitudes, which are presented as paradoxical perspectives towards challenges, may help leaders adapt to challenges and adversities leading to beneficial outcomes.

Even though this study provides a deeper understanding of the essential function of psychological resilience in leadership, the findings are limited to the workplace contexts investigated, e.g. exploring small sample sizes (13,019) or country contexts (22). Future research could expand the rhetoric around interactions between psychological resilience and leadership. Furthermore, the underlining mechanism between the paradoxical perspective and resilient attitudes is still largely unclear. Thus, more research is needed to disclose the interaction of paradoxical perceptions and leadership resilience. Further research can investigate how resilient attitudes demonstrate in actions in dealing with challenges and adversities.

The authors further an argument that leaders may enhance their resilience through embracing a paradoxical perspective towards challenges (resilient attitude), e.g. being adaptive to adversities, and the attitude of learning from failures. These enhanced resilient attitudes could help leaders deeper understand and examine their reality and persist under high pressures and develop an innate ability to utilise resources more effectively to help them survive and thrive in challenging circumstances, instead of becoming overwhelmed by the burden of complexity or giving up. This will offer a practical contribution to resilience development.

Importantly, this study found that resilience is an essential leadership trait and can benefit individuals and organizations' work outcomes across leadership contexts. These positive effects of resilience may encourage organizations or society to promote psychological resilience, including a resilient attitude, to deal with adversities and uncertainties.

Fundamentally, the synthesized model applied may encourage further studies to focus on how to build up resilience and practically apply it in workplaces across leadership contexts. In particular, this study found that adopting paradoxical perspectives and ambidextrous leadership approaches toward adversities is an original resilience development strategy, which serves to contribute to the gap in the literature.