Leadership Studies Commons^™

Smart Heuristics For Smart Management, Jochen Reb, Shenghua Luan, Gerd Gigerenzer

Asian Management Insights

How leaders can make effective decisions in a VUCA world.

Service Transformation That Will Boost Your Business, Neeta Lachmandas-Sakellariou

Asian Management Insights

Focus on your customers to catapult your company to success. However, leaders must drive a culture change to make it happen.

Female Ceos And Investment Efficiency In The Vietnamese Market, Jun Myung Song, Chune Young Chung

Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics

This paper proposes female CEOs’ overconfidence and risky behavior stem from gender stereotype threats. Using two subsamples from Vietnam—firms in the Northern and Southern regions—we empirically show that female CEOs in the North, where there is less gender stereotyping, tend to overinvest relative to male CEOs. However, in the South, they are indifferent. Additional analysis reinforces the main finding that female CEOs in the North tend to take more risks even when dealing with market volatility and uncertainty (e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic). Such risky behaviors do not deteriorate firm value but, instead, possibly improve firm performance.

Leading By Example And Giving Back To Society, N.R. Narayana Murthy, Havovi Joshi

Asian Management Insights

N.R. Narayana Murthy, the founder and former Chairman of Infosys, a global provider of next-generation digital services and consulting, speaks with Havovi Joshi about the Indian growth story.

Gender Bias In Cultural Tightness Across The 50 U.S. States And Its Links To Gender Inequality In Leadership And Innovation, Xin Qin, Roy Y. J. Chua, Ling Tan, Wanlu Li, Chen Chen

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Cultural tightness theory, which holds that “tight” cultures have rigid norms and sanctions, provides unique insights into cultural variations. However, current theorizing has not analyzed gender differences in cultural tightness. Addressing this gap, this research shows that women are more constrained than men by norms within the same society. By recruiting 15,425 respondents, we mapped state-level gender bias in cultural tightness across the United States. Variability in gender bias in cultural tightness was associated with state-level socio-political factors (religion and political ideology) and gender-related threats. Gender bias in cultural tightness was positively associated with state-level gender inequality in (business and …

Effects Of A Mindfulness-Based Leadership Training On Leadership Behaviors And Effectiveness, Nina Tan, Eva Katharina Peters, Jochen Reb

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Objectives: Organizations increasingly integrate mindfulness elements into their leadership development. However, there is limited evidence supporting the efficacy of mindfulness-based leadership training (MBLT) due to a scarcity of intervention studies. Theoretically, little is known about mediating mechanisms through which MBLT might affect leadership effectiveness. Thus, this research examined whether MBLT can improve leadership effectiveness and whether leadership behaviors mediated this effect.MethodsWe conducted a quasi-experimental study conducted in a real-world setting with an active control condition. Sixty leaders from various industries participated in either a 2-day intensive MBLT workshop followed by three individual coaching sessions over 3 months, or a presentation …

Expressed Humility In Inter-Organization Interactions: Why And When Boundary-Spanning Leaders’ Expressed Humility Can Promote Partner Cooperation Commitment, Wenhao Yang

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

In an organization, expressing humility can promote more meaningful and satisfying relationships with others. Given its potentially positive effects, researchers have been interested in studying the promotion and management of expressed humility for decades. Although there is some literature on the mechanism of expressing humility within an organization, none of them has pointed out the positive effects of expressed humility between organizations represented by their boundary-spanning leaders. Specially, no research efforts have been devoted to understanding how expressed humility between partners affects the economic behavior and outcomes of organizations and when it is effective for positive effects.

In this paper, …

Pursue Sustainability, Stay Paranoid In A Post-Covid World, Ho Kwon Ping, Havovi Joshi

Asian Management Insights

Ho Kwon Ping, Founder and Executive Chairman of Banyan Tree Holdings, speaks to Havovi Joshi about making sure sustainability is more than just a buzzword, his optimism regarding Asia’s growth in the future, and the need for youths to think differently about their careers.

Effect Of Leader-Member Exchange Social Comparison On Co-Worker’S Envy And Work Behavior Moderated By Perceived Deservingness Of Star Workers, Ronnie Ng

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

The extant leader-member exchange (LMX) literature suggests that leaders establish and develop different quality dyadic relationships with members in the same workgroup. High-quality LMX is argued as beneficial to employees. However, studies have overlooked the emotions and behaviors of low-quality LMX employees to determine how they differ from high-quality LMX employees. This study integrates LMX differentiation literature, social comparison theory and attributional theory to examine the role of LMX social comparison (LMXSC) perceptions in triggering help-seeking and knowledge hiding from star co-workers in the workplace. This study also explores the mediating role of dual envy, that is, benign and malicious …

Female Ceos And Investment Efficiency In The Vietnamese Market, Jun Myung Song, Chune Young Chung

Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics

This paper proposes female CEOs’ overconfidence and risky behavior stem from gender stereotype threats. With two subsamples in Vietnam—firms in the Northern and Southern regions–we empirically show that female CEOs in the North, where there is less gender stereotype, tend to overinvest relative to male CEOs. However, in the South, they are indifferent. Additional analysis reinforces the main finding that female CEOs from the North tend to take more risks even when dealing with market volatility and uncertainty (e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic). Such risky behaviors of female CEOs in the North do not deteriorate firm value but instead, possibly improve …

Ethical Leadership And Employee Unethical Behavior: A Dual-Processing Model, Chenjing Gan, Chi-Ying Cheng, Yandong Chai, Linbo Yang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Purpose – This study seeks to apply a dual-processing model to understand how ethical leadership prohibits employee unethical behavior through both employee deontic justice and distributive justice. Design/methodology/approach – A survey research was conducted with 62 supervisors and 244 subordinates of 17 firms collected at 2 time points separated by approximately 3 weeks in People’s Republic of China. Findings – A multilevel modeling analysis was used to test the dual-processing model. The results showed that both employee deontic justice (moral intuition process) and distributive justice (deliberate reasoning process) significantly mediate the negative relationship between ethical leadership and employee unethical behavior. …

How Transformational Leadership Transforms Followers’ Affect And Work Engagement, Benjamin Bader, Michael Gielnik, Ronald Bledow

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

How do episodes of transformational leadership transform followers? To address this question, we build on theories of affective events and affect regulation and develop a research model that explicates a mechanism of the transformation process implicit in transformational leadership theory. Specifically, the model explains how experiencing episodes of transformational leadership transforms (i.e., changes) followers’ positive affect and eventually their work engagement by fulfilling followers’ basic psychological needs. We tested our model in two independent longitudinal samples using daily and weekly measurement designs with 214 (N = 75) and 147 (N = 54) lagged observations, respectively. In support of our model, …

A Holistic Blueprint For Sustainability Publication Outlet, Lily Kong

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Instead of compartmentalising decisions about infrastructure or resource allocation, universities need a whole-system approach to sustainability that shifts attitudes and behaviour, writes Lily Kong

Algorithms, Leadership, And Morality: Why A Mere Human Effect Drives The Preference For Human Over Algorithmic Leadership, Jack Mcguire, David De Cremer

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Algorithms are increasingly making decisions in organizations that carry moral consequences and such decisions are considered to be ordinarily made by leaders. An important consideration to be made by organizations is therefore whether adopting algorithms in this domain will be accepted by employees and whether this practice will harm their reputation. Considering this emergent phenomenon, we set out to examine employees’ perceptions about (a) algorithmic decision-making systems employed to occupy leadership roles and make moral decisions in organizations, and (b) the reputation of organizations that employ such systems. Furthermore, we examine the extent to which the decision agent needs to …

The Influence Of Transformational Leadership On Team Performance And Team Creativity: A Team-Level Resilient Proactive Model, Youwei Zhu

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

The current Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity (VUCA) era is characterized by a number of factors, including globalization, technological advancements, geopolitical instability, and shifting consumer demands. These factors have combined to create an environment in which businesses and organizations must be highly adaptable and agile to survive and thrive.

To succeed in the current VUCA era, organizations must have the ability to anticipate and respond to change quickly while also being able to adapt to new technologies and business models. This task requires a strong focus on innovation, agility, and collaboration as well as a willingness to take calculated risks …

Ceo Humility And Firm Resilience, Yuehua Shen

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

In today’s fast-changing world, firm resilience becomes an important force for firms to survive and develop. This dissertation aims to investigate the relationship between CEO humility and firm resilience, and further tackle the underlying mechanism behind the relationship. Based on upper echelons theory, this dissertation proposes that CEO humility promotes firm resilience, and the positive influence is mediated by stakeholder relationship capability. Moreover, competitive uncertainty and CEO work experience variety positively moderate the connection between CEO humility and stakeholder relationship capability. Using survey data from 119 CEOs in China, this dissertation tests the theoretical hypotheses and offers several implications for …

The Impact Of Subordinates’ Proactive Personality On Empowering Leadership, Xin Zhan

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Research has documented numerous benefits of proactive personality for employees’ job outcomes. However, the success of proactive employees largely depends on their leaders’ empowerment. Extant research has focused on the bright side of proactive personality for inducing empowerment, without considering its risks. We thus have an incomplete understanding of the effects of employees’ proactive personality on empowering leadership. I take a balanced perspective on proactive personality and propose that proactive personality has an inverted U-shaped relationship with empowering leadership, such that empowering leadership is highest when proactive personality is at a moderate level. I argue that leader-member exchange (LMX) mediates …

The Dialectics Of Leadership Identity Construction: Case Studies From Indigenous Women Leaders, Mariana De Santibanes, Sonia M. Ospina, Seulki Lee, Angela Santamaria, Michelle Marie Evans, Dunen Muelas, Nazareth Guerrero

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Challenging oversimplified models, the leader identity literature calls for new perspectives of leadership identity construction (LIC). Using a collective leadership lens and narrative methods, this collaborative study explores how Indigenous women’s leadership identities develop within a contest for power and voice. Observations, interviews, and micro-ethnographies helped identify how history, community dynamics and cultural contradictions influence LIC. We find the LIC process to unfold as a dialectical spiral, informed by contradictions experienced when enacting social identities in various spheres of influence. This highlights the intersectionality of salient identities when theorizing LIC, and suggests that minoritized leaders can resignify and ultimately, capitalize …

How Boards Can Up Their Digital Game, Terence Quek

Asian Management Insights

Board leaders need to keep up with the accelerating rate of change.

Why And How Leaders Differentiate?, Srishti Banerjee

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

A key tenet of Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) Theory is that leaders treat followers differently, referred to as leader-member exchange differentiation (LMXD) (Yu et al., 2018). When leaders treat followers differently, they develop a varying quality of relationships within the team referred to as LMX quality (LMXQ). LMXQ has received the vast majority of research with findings being largely consistent that higher quality relationships benefit followers (Yu et al., 2018). In contrast, surprisingly, much less research has focused on how this actual differentiation (LMXD) impacts employee reactions and there are no conclusive findings regarding its effects (Bauer & Erdogan, 2015; Chen …

The Study Of Followers In Leadership Research: A Systematic And Critical Review, Burak Oc, Kraivin Chintakananda, Michael R. Bashshur, David V. Day

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Despite the significant amount of existing research examining the relationship of follower-related factors with leadership outcomes, there is no systematic, critical review that integrates and helps leadership scholars make sense of this rapidly growing body of research. To address this gap in the literature, we first briefly discuss the leading perspectives explaining the role of followers in leadership. Next, we identify and discuss the most frequently studied theoretical narratives explaining the relationship between follower-related predictors and leadership outcomes. Because theoretical arguments generally make causal claims, we identify and examine how methodological concerns including power analysis, multicollinearity, and endogeneity might prevent …

How And Why Is Context Important In Leadership?, Burak Oc, Joseph A. Carpini

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Leadership can be defined as a goal-influence process that occurs between a leader and a follower, groups of followers, or institutions that directs effort towards the achievement of a shared objective (Antonakis & Day, 2018, p. 5). From this definition, we can distil four key elements of leadership: a) leaders, b) followers, c) influence and d) goals, motivation and performance. While leaders and followers are the main actors of leadership processes, how they influence each other has implications for group goals. However, most leadership research focuses on leaders, largely treating them as the sole driver of organisation success or failure …

Leadership Through Effective Communication, Han Boon Kevin Lim

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Charismatic leadership oratory is critical in aligning the organisational vision and goals for business sustainability. This research focuses on charismatic leadership, particularly on oratory leading to charismatic perception by the audience. This research seeks to provide future leaders with a better perspective of the multigenerational workforce in an effort to customise the rhetorical process for this diverse workforce to enhance charismatic perception, thereby promoting organisational communication.

The audience in prior studies has been treated as a homogeneous unit (Clark & Greatbatch, 2011; Groß et al., 2015), without distinguishing between different generational groups and their respective receptiveness to a leadership oratory. …

Leading A Business School, Julie Davis, Howard Thomas, Eric Cornuel, Rolf D. Cremer

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Business schools are critical players in higher education, educating current and future leaders to make a difference in the world. Yet we know surprisingly little about the leaders of business schools. Leading a Business School demystifies this complex and dynamic role, offering international insights into deans’ dilemmas in different contexts and situations. It highlights the importance of deans creating challenging and supportive learning cultures to enhance business and management education, organizations and society more broadly. The book traces the historical evolution of the business school deanship, the current challenges and future sources of disruption. The leadership characteristics and styles of …

Leading By Example, Whee Jim Yeo

Asian Management Insights

Leadership lessons from Singapore’s pioneer civil servants.

Smu Founding Chairman Ho Kwon Ping To Step Down After 25 Years Of Distinguished Leadership, Singapore Management University

SMU Press Releases and News

Mr Ho Kwon Ping (何光平), Chairman of the Singapore Management University (SMU) Board of Trustees (BOT), will step down on 11 January 2023 after an illustrious 25 years of distinguished leadership. Mr Piyush Gupta (高博德), currently a member of the SMU BOT, will succeed Mr Ho as the new Chairman of SMU from 12 January 2023.

Growing A Mapletree, Hiew Yoon Khong

Perspectives@SMU

By focusing on recycling capital and re-seeding its portfolio, Singapore’s Mapletree Investments have moved beyond the island and into the global market

How Should Leaders Manage Hybrid Working Relationships?, Karin Sanders, Andrew Dhaenens

Perspectives@SMU

Organisations and their leaders need to adapt to new ways of working and hybrid work relationships, write UNSW Business School’s Karin Sanders, Andrew Dhaenens and Patrick Sharry

The Catholic Church Abuse Scandal In Ireland: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back By Pope Francis?, Augustine Pang, Eada Hogan, Igor Andrasevic

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Purpose: Ireland is viewed as the shining base for Catholicism. That image is shattered as survivors revealed the abuse in the Magdalene Laundries and Mother and Baby Homes, and sexual abuse by priests. This study aims to examine image repair efforts by the Pope during his August 2018 visit. Design/methodology/approach: Examined against the Letter of His Holiness released days earlier, this study evaluates all the Pope's speeches during his visit to Ireland using the image repair theory (Benoit and Pang, 2008) as its theoretical lens. Findings: Pope Francis used the evasion of responsibility strategy to address the Magdalene Laundries and …

The Pandemic As Political Opportunity: Jokowi’S Indonesia In The Time Of Covid-19, Charlotte Setijadi

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In mid-2021, the Delta strain of the Covid-19 virus caused a second wave of transmissions and deaths in Indonesia at a scale much greater than what was seen in 2020. In this paper, I examine what the Indonesian government’s handling of the Covid crisis in 2021 reveals about the priorities of President Joko Widodo (Jokowi), as well as his political agenda and attitude towards the country’s democracy, as he strives to cement his legacy. I argue that, while devastating, the Covid-19 pandemic has given Jokowi the opportunity to push through long-planned economic and political reforms. Furthermore, I contend that, under …