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This paper's purpose centres on advancing the current financialisation strategies within digital transformation (DT) through a rebalanced synthesis of both financialisation and people/centric, non-financialisation strategies of the DT field. Based on empirical data from Bahrain's energy sector, a new framework on People-centric, Sustaining Network Leadership is developed, capturing DT's human values deficit and proposing a new model on financialisation and non-financialisation strategies showing ‘how’ and ‘why’ DT is implemented in contemporary organisations.

This study conducted a mixed methodology of narrative interviews, case studies and reviewed significant contributions from the DT, leadership and change management debates. A total of 26 operational and high-level leaders from Bahrain, 8 top energy companies and Braun and Clarke's 6-phase analysis were combined to form four empirical thematic bundles on ‘how’ and ‘why’ leaders adopted financialisation and non-financialisation strategies to resolve organisational sustainability issues in an Arabic context.

Four sets of findings (bundles 1–4) highlight participants' financial and structural understanding when implementing DT initiatives, the different leadership styles ranging from authoritarian to network leadership, the socio-economic, political and cultural ramifications of their practices and the urgency of staff reskilling for organisational resilience and strategic sustainability. Based on the eight energy cases and interviews, a new values-driven, People-centric Sustaining Network Leadership Model is developed to show a more effective and efficient use of financial and non-financial resources when organisations implement DT initiatives in efforts to resolve global energy sustainability problems.

Leadership, change management, DT, energy and environmental sustainability is a huge area of scholarship. While new studies emerge and contribute to this growing body of knowledge, this investigation has focused on those that significantly highlight how to make effective use of financialisation and non-financialisation resources. Therefore, all the literature on the topic has not been included. Although this study has filled the non-financialisation gap in current DT studies, a further rebalancing of the financialisation versus non-financialisation debates will be needed for theoreticians, practitioners and policy makers to continue addressing emerging and more complex socio-economic, political and cultural issues within and beyond organisations. Limitations are the study's focus on the Bahrain energy sector and the limited sample of 26 leaders.

The study provides practitioners and policy makers with an approach for the successful implementation of DT initiatives in the oil and gas sector. For academics, this study provides empirically unique and interesting thematic bundles, insightful analyses into leadership, organisational change, digital transformation and network leadership theories to develop an innovative and creative People-centric, Sustaining Network Leadership Approach/Model on the practical barriers, implications/impacts of various leadership styles and potential solutions via a socio-cultural values-based alternative to the current financialisation discourse of DT.

While there is a growing body of literature on DT, Leadership and Organisational Transformation and Change, there is a dearth of scholarship on the human-orientated strategies of DT implementation outside of western contexts. A contemporary and comprehensive, empirically evidenced analysis of the field has led to the development of this study's People-centric, Sustaining Network Leadership model which frames, captures, synthesises and extends the dominant cost-minimisation rhetoric of DT discourse to include a shared set of leadership practices, behaviours, intentions, perceptions and values. This helped to reveal the previously missing ‘how’ and ‘why’ of DT’s operational and strategic implementation.

For many of the current leadership theories, models, and approaches, the answer to the question posed in the title, “Is leadership more than ‘I like my boss’?,” is “no,” as there appears to be a hierarchy of leadership concepts with Liking of the leader as the primary dimension or general factor foundation. There are then secondary dimensions or specific sub-factors of liking of Relationship Leadership and Task Leadership; and subsequently, tertiary dimensions or actual sub-sub-factors that comprise the numerous leadership views as well as their operationalizations (e.g., via surveys). There are, however, some leadership views that go beyond simply liking of the leader and liking of relationship leadership and task leadership. For these, which involve explicit levels of analysis formulations, often beyond the leader, or are multi-level in nature, the answer to the title question is “yes.” We clarify and discuss these various “no” and “yes” leadership views and implications of our work for future research and personnel and human resources management practice.

The purpose of this paper is to explore leadership in the context of the hub and spoke network in oral and maxillofacial surgery (OMFS) in the English National Health Service (NHS).

This paper is a conceptual paper using literature relating to the antecedents of shared leadership and relevant policy documents pertaining to both NHS policy and the development of OMFS. The paper is informed, theoretically by the conceptual lens of shared leadership.

The paper identifies the challenges that may be faced by policymakers and those involved in the hub and spoke network in developing shared leadership. It also reveals the implications for policymakers in developing shared leadership.

The paper is conceptual. It is acknowledged that this is a preliminary study and further work will be required to test the conceptual framework empirically. The paper discusses the policy implications of developing leadership in the hub and spoke network. As networks are of interest internationally this has wider relevance to other countries.

There is limited research on the antecedents of shared leadership. In addition, the conceptual framework is applied to a new policy context.

The aim of the study was to assess the effectiveness of network leadership in meeting the requirements for regional development networks imposed by the network society.

A new framework of three different archetypes of regional development networks was devised. The characteristics of the different networks and the requirements they set for network leadership were assessed as a case study in the Lahti Region, Finland. A special panel of experts of three highly experienced network leaders was organized as part of the present study. Their task was to assess the differences concerning network leadership in different regional development networks. The session was conducted in the (niin sanottu means it was not an inspiration) Inspiration Center in the Lahti Region. Inspiration Center is a platform for brainstorming and stimulation, designed especially to arrive at ideas and form opinions through teamwork. The method used was a half‐structured group discussion, planned especially for the purpose of the present study. The method was used to form a convergent expert assessment among the participants.

The essential differences of the types of regional development networks make it insufficient to talk about network leadership as a general concept. It is important to identify and understand the differences in network leadership required by the different archetypes of regional development networks.

The paper combines leadership, network leadership, and regional development in a novel way.

This paper aims to serve as an introduction to a rather under-researched field. It aims to provide a conceptual definition of destination management organisations (DMOs) serving as leadership networks in destinations drawing on what is to be called the DMO Leadership Cycle – a guiding framework integrating the perspectives of management, governance and leadership to influence destination development trajectories.

A synthesis of the extant literature on destination management and governance, coupled with the latest academic contributions in destination leadership serves to uncover the existence of a gap in the way leadership is seen in the underpinned domain. DMOs are conceptualised and their role in serving as leadership networks in destinations is then critically discussed.

Perspectives of destination management, governance and leadership and their interaction with one another is fundamental to DMOs serving as leadership networks. The paper provides justification for and indicative definition of contemporary DMOs serving as leadership networks in destinations.

The conceptual nature of this paper calls for empirical evidence where DMOs serving as leadership networks are further investigated in practice and across diverse political and economic contexts.

This paper aims to shape destination leadership practice by introducing an alternative, yet inclusive approach to leadership focussing on collective orchestration in destinations undertaken by DMO networks.

The paper aims to trigger a discussion on the importance of all-encompassing and integrative leadership as a means for widening participation across diverse destination groups; to serve as an input into and ultimately – shape policy development.

This discussion provides an alternative perspective to the way we see leadership in destinations. The paper argues that “impactful” leadership is rather embedded in a formal structure and distributed in nature.

The purpose of this paper is to inquire about the characteristics of effective school leadership networks and the contribution of such networks to the development of individual leaders’ professional capacities.

The study used path-analytic techniques with survey data provided by 450 school and district leaders in Ontario to test a path model of effective network characteristics. Variables in the model included network leadership, structure, health, connectivity, outcomes and unintended challenges.

Results confirmed that the model was a very good fit with the data, and as a whole, explained 51 percent of the variation in network outcomes. Network leadership had the largest total effect on network outcomes (R2=0.56), followed closely by the effects of network health (R2=0.49) and network connectivity (R2=0.46).

The study was limited to leadership networks intentionally organized within districts, not networks organized by school leaders themselves or networks arising spontaneously by their members. Results cannot be generalized to other types of networks.

In addition to a focus on single unit leadership development in districts, systematic initiatives should be designed to help prepare network leaders to foster the forms of collaboration that are so central to professional capacity development.

Results of the study offer explicit guidance to network leaders about how to improve the contribution of network participation to their colleagues’ capacities; it is one of a very small number studies in educational contexts to provide such guidance.

The purpose of this research is to highlight the impact of integrative leadership behaviors on network performance in local government networks.

The data were retrieved from a survey conducted on 362 local government network leaders in Italy. Their leadership behaviors were compared with the level of network performance anonymously self-reported.

The findings show that high frequency in the usage of a specific category of behavior does not always lead to high performance in local government networks. Moreover, leadership behaviors leading to highly performing networks are not always engaged most frequently by networks' leaders.

This research gives an empirical contribution to a neglected topic: network leadership. Moreover, the authors attempt to highlight how it is able to influence network performance.

In the current era, characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA), organizations are becoming increasingly more complex and less formal. Consequently, traditional control processes are being replaced by knowledge-sharing processes, informal coordination, and networks. Hence, different leadership theories and methods, which are more in line with these developments, are required. Terms such as “leadership in the plural,” “emergent leadership,” “leadership as a structural and networked phenomenon” reflect changes in how the author understands the phenomenon of leadership and sets the direction for new approaches. This chapter describes four paradigm shifts from the traditional approach to leadership, which highlighted the role of a formal leader who influences a group of followers. The author presents a stream of research emphasizing a relational approach among multiple individuals and reframe leadership as an influence action of many. These influence exchanges result in an emergent influence pattern or a leadership configuration. Nevertheless, the author sought to not “throw the baby out with the bathwater,” therefore the author claims that the formal leader is embedded in this configuration. Building on social network analysis and recently developed methodologies, the author provides a platform for measuring leadership as a many-on-many influence process. The author depicts the research she conducted analyzing advice networks, while aspiring to create a synthesis between the traditional and emergent leadership approaches. At the practical level, to understand and develop leadership in organizations nowadays, the author suggests acquiring a “broad and multi-focal lens” to capture the complexity of leadership.

Leadership is a social phenomenon. Therefore, it has to be examined according to its social context. The point to be underlined by the social context is the social network in which the leader emerges. Considering the studies, the social network side of leadership is relatively ignored comparing with sociometric studies. In that sense, the aim of this study is to reveal whether there is a relationship between the positions of the military personnel, who are defined as one of the gray-collar working groups in the literature, within the social network mechanisms of which they are members, and their self-leadership perceptions. To answer the question, a self-leadership scale was applied to 69 gray-collar employees working in a military unit and network analyses were performed. According to results, there is a strong, positive and significant relationship between the network mechanism centrality criteria indegree, reach centrality and closeness and the self-leadership perceptions of individuals. In addition, there was no significant relationship between eigenvector centrality and honest brokerage, which are among the network mechanism criteria, and the actors’ self-leadership perceptions. The study has aimed at accenting and adding different perspectives to the leadership studies and gray-collar literature.

The field of Human Resource Management (HRM) has long recognized the importance of interpersonal influence for employee and organizational effectiveness. HRM research and practice have focused primarily on individuals’ characteristics and behaviors as a means to understand “who” is influential in organizations, with substantially less attention paid to social networks. To reinvigorate a focus on network structures to explain interpersonal influence, the authors present a comprehensive account of how network structures enable and constrain influence within organizations. The authors begin by describing how power and status, two key determinants of individual influence in organizations, operate through different mechanisms, and delineate a range of network positions that yield power, reflect status, and/or capture realized influence. Then, the authors extend initial structural views of influence beyond the positions of individuals to consider how network structures within and between groups – capturing group social capital and/or shared leadership – enable and constrain groups’ ability to influence group members, other groups, and the broader organizational system. The authors also discuss how HRM may leverage these insights to facilitate interpersonal influence in ways that support individual, group, and organizational effectiveness.