Servant Leadership: A systematic review and call for future research

Leadership Research Summary: • Notwithstanding the proliferation of servant leadership studies with over 100 articles published in the last four years alone, a lack of coherence and clarity around the construct has impeded its theory development. The study provides an integrative and comprehensive review of the 285 articles on servant leadership spanning 20 years (1998–2018), and […]

From classroom to conscription. Leadership emergence in childhood and early adulthood

Leadership Research Summary: • Research on leadership emergence has mainly focused on adulthood and relied on retrospective accounts of childhood factors. Based on a prospective cohort study of 7719 boys born in 1953, of which 5928 were later drafted, we explored individual differences in leadership emergence in childhood and early adulthood. The data set consisted […]

Born to lead? A twin design and genetic association study of leadership role occupancy

Leadership Research Summary: The study addresses leadership emergence and the possibility that there is a partially innate predisposition to occupy a leadership role. Employing twin design methods on data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we estimate the heritabilityof leadership role occupancy at 24%. Twin studies do not point to specific genes or neurological […]

Leadership as social identity management: Introducing the Identity Leadership Inventory (ILI) to assess and validate a four-dimensional model

Leadership Research Summary: Although nearly two decades of research have provided support for the social identity approach to leadership, most previous work has focused on leaders’ identity prototypicality while neglecting the assessment of other equally important dimensions of social identity management. However, recent theoretical developments have argued that in order to mobilize and direct followers’ […]

Leadership ratings: Toward focusing more on specific behaviors

Leadership Research Summary: • Current leadership rating scales emphasize assessing behaviors rather than other characteristics. Yet an examination of their content, as well as the current research literature, suggests that they tap much more. • In the interest of increasing the utility of leadership ratings, a relatively narrow conception of “behavior” is advocated, and leadership-behavior […]

Personality and charismatic leadership

Leadership Research Summary: • In this study, researchers review prior theory and empirical evidence relevant to the personality characteristics that differentiate charismatic leaders from noncharismatic leaders. Researchers conclude from this review that charismatic leaders in present day complex organizations fit the stereotypical image of supportive, sensitive, nurturing, and considerate leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi or […]

Opening the black box: Uncovering the leader trait paradigm through machine learning

Leadership Research Summary: • Understanding the traits that define a leader is a perennial quest. An ongoing debate surrounds the complexity required to unravel the leader trait paradigm. With the advancement of machine learning, scholars are now better equipped to model leadership as an outcome of complex patterns in traits. However, interpreting those models is […]

Strategies for improving decision making of leaders with ADHD and without ADHD in combat military context

Leadership Research Summary: • Environment-leader congruency yields better adaptability manifested in better decision-making. The military combat environment offers advantages for leaders with ADHD; though they are expected to encounter difficulties due to executive dysfunction. This research aspired to increase the congruency effect for leaders with ADHD in a stressful military environment through interventions that improve […]

When are women willing to lead? The effect of team gender composition and gendered tasks

Leadership Research Summary: • It is a well-documented phenomenon that a group’s gender composition can impact group performance. Understanding why and how this phenomenon happens is a prominent puzzle in the literature. To shed light on this puzzle, we propose and experimentally test one novel theory: through the salience of gender stereotype, a group’s gender […]

Beware the angry leader: Trait anger and trait anxiety as predictors of petty tyranny

Leadership Research Summary: • Drawing on the general aggression model and theories of victimization and temperamental goodness-of-fit, we investigated trait anger and trait anxiety as antecedents of petty tyranny: employing a multilevel design with data from 84 sea captains and 177 crew members. Leader trait anger predicted subordinate-reported petty tyranny. Subordinate trait anxiety was associated […]