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The field of global leadership has flourished and advanced in the preceding decade. However, in contrast to the term global leadership, which enjoys conceptual clarity enabling accumulative progress, the construct of global leadership effectiveness is comparatively undertheorized, with instances of definitional ambiguity and disjointed methodological operationalizations across studies. The purpose of this chapter is, thus, to provide a systematic review of the global leadership effectiveness literature. In doing so, our contributions are fourfold. First, we offer an inclusive, comprehensive definition of global leadership effectiveness. Second, we map its construct domain. Third, we review research findings at the individual, group, and organizational levels. Finally, we integrate extant insights and offer suggestions for future research, organized within the typology of the content domain along the identified dimensions of global leadership effectiveness. Together, our goal is to build a foundation for future research examining the roles of leadership and the global context as antecedents of global leadership effectiveness.

This paper aims to reveal gendered leadership constructs that hinder a competency-based view of leadership in Swedish-based global companies and the implications for leadership recruitment and development to top management positions.

The paper is based on qualitative semi-structured interviews, which have been analyzed using a gender analytic framework to identify how senior management, Human resource management and leadership trainees are discussing leadership and career development.

Three themes were identified as clouding the issue of gender-equal leadership practices thereby creating an opaque gendered lens of who is defined as eligible for leadership positions. The three themes were: symbols as gendered images, counting heads – preserving the existing system and illusive gender inclusion.

Recruitment practices were identified as contributors to homosocial practices that perpetuate male-dominated leadership representation. However, specific recruitment practices were not fully explored.

The potential use of gender equality as a sustainable management practice for competitive organizations to recruit and develop talented people.

To create resilient and gender-equal recruitment and leadership development practices.

This research offers an original perspective on gender representation at the senior management level in global companies by revealing gendered leadership constructs in the leadership recruitment and development process as antecedents to unequal gender representation in senior management positions.

Organisational responses to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals depend on the competency and mindset of business leaders to lead responsibly. This study is informed and underpinned by the Principles of Responsible Management Education. This study aims to examine how embedding the “sustainability mindset principles” within a university programme can contribute to responsible management education and, by extension, leadership development.

An illustrative case study using 84 students was applied, including undergraduate, postgraduate and executive Master of Business Administration students. An exploratory, qualitative design was followed, primarily adopting focus groups.

Evidenced learning gains in connecting sustainability knowledge with personal beliefs and behaviours, provide a compelling basis for educational and business practitioners to focus on the sustainability mindset principles (SMPs). Mapping of mindset against leading global competency frameworks provides important theoretical insight. Learning is illustrated through multiple dimensions (i.e. cognitive, behavioural and affective) to inform leadership development approaches.

The mapping of sustainability competency frameworks against the SMP, alongside qualitative research insights, provides a compelling basis for further research into the learning gains from embedding the mindset principles. The situated nature of the study and the lack of longitudinal measurement of what students take forward into their lives and workplaces is a limiting factor to be considered.

This study evidences the value of “whole-person” learning for responsible management, which can helpfully inform the design of both educational and workplace leadership development programmes.

This study is original in the pedagogic examination of the learning dimensions of the SMPs in a Business and Management programme. It also offers new insights in terms of the implications for leadership development.

This paper investigates the integration of leadership training into IT curricula to develop current and future skills needed by the IT job market. The technical and non-technical skills required for IT professionals are presented and a conceptual model for including leadership training in technical courses is outlined. To implement this model, we adopted the Problem-Based Learning approach to teach an IT course. Qualitative and quantitative data were gathered, through a survey, from 52 undergraduate students in the College of Information Technology at Zayed University. Our results show that our adopted approach was successful in teaching IT skills as well as developing leadership skills. Given these findings, we highlight the importance and feasibility of integrating leadership development on a daily basis within technical courses to develop both the technical and non technical skills required by the job market.

Even with the recognized impact organizational leaders have on the outcome of digital transformation (DT), a comprehensive scholarly understanding of the competencies that leaders must possess to lead a DT to success is lacking.

To derive and list the competencies considered by experts as necessary for managing DT, the authors recruited 18 international senior managers with relevant experience and applied the Delphi method to survey the managers. Upon the completion of three survey rounds and the authors modifying the response list until consensus was reached, 39 items were shortlisted as constituting key competencies for managing DT. Furthermore, the authors engaged in inductive theorizing to derive propositional statements using these findings.

The practitioners agreed on visionary thinking, agility, understanding the value of data, data-driven decision-making, knowledge of strategy and accepting change as the most important requirements for managing DT. Through inductive theorizing, the authors further derived that the seven discovered clusters fell into two broader competencies – behavioral and strategic – and that each behavioral competency would have varying importance depending on the country and industry that the organization operates in.

As is typical for Delphi studies that involve multiple survey rounds, the study participant response rate was moderate. The implications of this study, in finding that a variety of leadership competencies are needed to ensure successful DT, validate prior research that people, not technology, drive DT.

This study helps mitigate assumptions that successful DT processes are only possible by hiring technological experts, as doing so highlights the importance of behavioral leadership competencies.

The study is one of the first to interlink digital leadership with DT by inductively theorizing behavioral and strategic competencies. The authors also establish that contexts are vital in determining which aspects of leadership competencies are deemed most important in driving DT.