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Based on the high-involvement management model and the Substitutes for Leadership theory, the purpose of this paper is to evaluate the moderating role of high-involvement management practices on the relation between managers’ transformational leadership and employees’ affective organizational commitment.

Data were collected from employees of a large Canadian financial firm. Questionnaires were sent out and 219 received, representing a response rate of 63.3 percent. The hypotheses were tested using multiple regressions analysis with moderation effects.

The results show three statistically significant interactions between transformational leadership and high-involvement management practices. More specifically, information sharing and power sharing practices acted as leadership enhancers, while skill development practices served as a leadership substitute.

The results of this research could help immediate supervisors adjust their leadership strategies to their organizations’ HRM practices, and also guide top managers in choosing practices that can support these supervisors.

This study contributes to the literature on leadership by considering how contextual factors may affect the influence of transformational leadership and by integrating HRM practices within the substitutes for leadership framework.

The purpose of this paper is to present findings from a mixed methods study investigating leadership development of allied health practitioners within a large public healthcare organization in Australia.

The South Eastern Sydney Local Health District Allied Health Leadership Development Program was undertaken with an allied health cohort (n=16) between May 2014 and March 2015 and comprised all-day workshops, action learning sets and individual coaching. Using experiential learning, the program tested whether practice development methods and action learning approaches developed the leadership skills of participants compared with a control group (n=17). Descriptive statistics were collected to evaluate participant and program outcomes. Leadership, workplace culture and engagement measures were analyzed as part of the study.

The Allied Health Leadership Development Program received high ratings by participants. They reported enhanced skills in leading self and others through mechanisms such as critical reflection and facilitation, and greater confidence managing change and with engaging staff, colleagues and patients in decision making, affecting the quality and safety of healthcare. Statistically significant differences were found with transformational leadership elements, leadership outcomes, and measures of workplace culture and engagement after program completion for intervention group participants, compared with the control group.

Results provide new empirical evidence about the effectiveness of using practice development for allied health leadership development.

This low-cost leadership program can be replicated by other organizations.

Outcomes from an Allied Health Leadership Development Program have not been previously reported in the literature.

This paper aims to share the findings of a realist evaluation study that set out to identify how to strengthen nursing, midwifery and allied health professions (NMAHP) leadership across all health-care contexts in the UK conducted between 2018 and 2019. The collaborative research team were from the Universities of Bangor, Ulster, the University of the West of Scotland and Canterbury Christ Church University.

Realist evaluation and appreciative inquiry were used across three phases of the study. Phase 1 analysed the literature to generate tentative programme theories about what works, tested out in Phase 2 through a national social media Twitter chat and sense-making workshops to help refine the theories in Phase 3. Cross-cutting themes were synthesised into a leadership framework identifying the strategies that work for practitioners in a range of settings and professions based on the context, mechanism and output configuration of realist evaluation. Stakeholders contributed to the ongoing interrogation, analysis and synthesis of project outcomes.

Five guiding lights of leadership, a metaphor for principles, were generated that enable and strengthen leadership across a range of contexts. – “The Light Between Us as interactions in our relationships”, “Seeing People’s Inner Light”, “Kindling the Spark of light and keeping it glowing”, “Lighting up the known and the yet to be known” and “Constellations of connected stars”.

This study has illuminated the a-theoretical nature of the relationships between contexts, mechanisms and outcomes in the existing leadership literature. There is more scope to develop the tentative programme theories developed in this study with NMAHP leaders in a variety of different contexts. The outcomes of leadership research mostly focussed on staff outcomes and intermediate outcomes that are then linked to ultimate outcomes in both staff and patients (supplemental). More consideration needs to be given to the impact of leadership on patients, carers and their families.

The study has developed additional important resources to enable NMAHP leaders to demonstrate their leadership impact in a range of contexts through the leadership impact self-assessment framework which can be used for 360 feedback in the workplace using the appreciative assessment and reflection tool.

Whilst policymakers note the increasing importance of leadership in facilitating the culture change needed to support health and care systems to adopt sustainable change at pace, there is still a prevailing focus on traditional approaches to individual leadership development as opposed to collective leadership across teams, services and systems. If this paper fails to understand how to transform leadership policy and education, then it will be impossible to support the workforce to adapt and flex to the increasingly complex contexts they are working in. This will serve to undermine system integration for health and social care if the capacity and capability for transformation are not attended to. Whilst there are ambitious global plans (WHO, 2015) to enable integrated services to be driven by citizen needs, there is still a considerable void in understanding how to authentically engage with people to ensure the transformation is driven by their needs as opposed to what the authors think they need. There is, therefore, a need for systems leaders with the full skillset required to enable integrated services across place-based systems, particularly clinicians who are able to break down barriers and silo working across boundaries through the credibility, leadership and facilitation expertise they provide.

The realist evaluation with additional synthesis from key stakeholders has provided new knowledge about the principles of effective NMAHP leadership in health and social care, presented in such a way that facilitates the use of the five guiding lights to inform further practice, education, research and policy development.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of a practice development program, “Essentials of Care” (EOC), on patient and staff outcomes, workplace culture and service delivery.

A descriptive study design was used to explore the impact of EOC in a district hospital rehabilitation ward. EOC focuses on embedding a person-centered culture within clinical areas and is structured from practice development methodologies. EOC was implemented in a metropolitan district hospital rehabilitation, older person 20-bed, ward.

Two projects were implemented during EOC. These projects led to nine significant patient and staff outcomes for medication and continence care practices. Outcomes included a reduction in older person complaints by 80 percent, pressure injuries by 62 percent, ward multi resistant staphylococcus aureus infection rates by 50 percent, clinical incidents by 22 percent, older person falls by 14 percent (per 1,000 bed days) and nursing sick leave by 10 percent. There was also a 13 percent improvement in the post nursing workplace satisfaction survey.

This is a single site study and findings may not be suitable for generalizing across ward settings and broader population groups.

The EOC program led to significant improvements for and in clinical practices, staff satisfaction and ward culture. Specifically, the EOC program also identified significant cost savings and brought together the healthcare team in a cohesive and integrated way not previously experienced by staff. Practice development strategies can champion service quality improvement, optimal patient outcomes and consistency within healthcare.

This paper aims to demonstrate the value of physical experimentation in coaching to raise client awareness and enhance transformational potential.

This action research case study involved working with an individual coaching client using an experimental Gestalt‐oriented approach.

This study finds that physical experimentation during coaching can raise awareness for both client and coach and create powerful dynamics in and between them to catalyse change.

This case study will help other coaching professionals to understand and apply a Gestalt‐oriented approach to their own thinking and practice.

This paper aims to identify and categorise the values expressed in women-led social entrepreneurship based on a typology of universal values. It explores the influence of gender and religious faith on the values that inspire social entrepreneurial organisations to engage in positive social change.

Inductive multiple case study research investigates the values manifest in five social entrepreneurial organisations founded and led by women in three Southeast Asian countries.

Organisations and their women-leaders express values related to benevolence, universalism, self-direction and security. Gender and religious faith are found to be mediators that influence approaches to social transformation.

Purposive sampling and interpretive research design favour rich description but limit the generalisability of the findings. Further enquiry is needed into the gender-values-religion nexus in social entrepreneurship.

Social entrepreneurship is shown to be a process embedded in and motivated by prosocial values of benevolence and social justice and other values of self-direction and security. Findings provide evidence for the critical but often overlooked influence of gender and religious faith on the values foundation of social entrepreneurship.

Social entrepreneurial organisations led by women contribute to positive social change through the values they incorporate and express.

Research on the link between gender, values and religious faith in social entrepreneurship is virtually non-existent.

This paper describes World Vision ' s motivation, context, experience, and learning in improving processes in East Africa. It demonstrates that Lean and Six Sigma TQM approaches apply to an international non-governmental organisation (INGO) operating in East Africa, and that they can deliver significant process improvements.

The findings come from initiating process improvement in World Vision in East Africa, observing and reflecting on this experience, and measuring improvements achieved through process improvement projects conducted by World Vision East African staff.

The INGO and East African contexts provide unique challenges to and demonstrate a strong need for process excellence. However, a standard process improvement approach can be used. A key segment of World Vision staff in East Africa has caught the vision of process excellence, understood and applied TQM concepts and tools, and significantly improved key processes, for example, reduced by 40-80 per cent the average time to procure items and recruit new staff. We have reduced annual expenses by nearly $1,000,000. Such improvements help World Vision to achieve better outcomes with existing funding, people, and other resources.

This paper demonstrates that Lean and Six Sigma apply to and are vital for both NGOs and the East African context. It describes World Vision Process Excellence and improvements achieved. It presents challenges faced and lessons learned along the way. Finally, it calls on others to join the Lean Six Sigma TQM journey in NGOs and East Africa.

This issue is a selected bibliography covering the subject of leadership.

The pursuit of knowledge should be the objective of managers in the workplace, both for the purpose of empowerment and to achieve financial objectives. It is important that retail managers have a need to solidify their transformational leadership knowledge, which ultimately could increase their capacity to excel. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

A structured management development programme (MDP), consisting of a comprehensive spectrum of retail management and leadership theory and practices, was designed to develop transformational leadership by using transformational teaching and learning strategies. The sample for this study consisted of seven retail managers from a group of 20 managers, employed by Retek, the largest independent retail pharmacy group in South Africa. A focus group interview identified the dominant themes and produced a landscape to understand the retail managers’ environment, their preferred teaching methodology and benefits experienced from attending the MDP.

By transforming themselves, these managers have become more empathetic leaders, armed with self-awareness and a deeper awareness of team issues. The MDP created in a shift in their attitude towards attending training programmes and subsequently, has created a more accommodating philosophy towards workplace learning. The study added to the understanding of how transformational teaching and learning lead to more effective transformational leadership and the integration of theory into practice by retail managers. The conclusion was that by embracing and practising a transformational teaching and learning ideology, the managers would be better equipped with managerial and transformational leadership abilities.

This research provided a landscape for future management development training in terms of selection of managers to attend, relevant curriculum, teaching and learning methodology as well as benefits of this type of professional development. This initiative was the first project in which such a programme has been designed, developed and instructed in this particular organisation and encompassed a unique experience in terms of training, professional development and the change in the willingness to engage in training and acknowledgement of the value of learning.

Green product development is a pivotal way to achieve environmental sustainability. The purpose of this paper is to theorize and empirically test how environmentally specific leadership enhances the green product development performance from the perspective of the HRM system. In this regard, the authors investigate the mediating role of the strength of the HRM system to change with regard to the relationship between environmentally specific leadership and green product development performance. For a substantial explanation of the boundary condition, the authors investigate the moderating role of the green HRM on the relationship between environmentally specific transformational leadership and the strength of the HRM system.

Based on climate strength theory, the authors use the three-wave survey data from 362 top or middle managers in the new energy industry of China. This study uses hierarchical linear regression and bootstrapping method to analyze the mediated moderation effect.

Results confirm a positive effect of environmentally specific leadership and the strength of the HRM system on green product development performance. The authors also found the mediation effect of the strength of the HRM system and the moderation effect of green HRM are all significant.

This study integrates the perspectives of both content-focused HRM and process-focused HRM and demonstrates why leadership and the HRM system could jointly enhance green product development performance in Asia.