Leadership Studies Commons^™

Rebuilding With Values-Based Governance: Lessons From A Glass Cliff Leadership Role, Mel D. Rutherford

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

A department in crisis rebuilt its culture through values‑based governance. My department was in crisis and the world was locked down due to COVID restrictions, when I stepped into a Glass Cliff leadership role. Our faculty, staff, postdocs, and students worked together to articulate our shared values. These values became the foundation for three transformative practices: a Gap Analysis to align procedures with principles, adopting Formal Consensus Decision Making to ensure inclusive and values‑rooted decisions, and cultivating Compassionate Accountability grounded in covenantal relationships rather than punishment. Together, these practices created transparency, trust, and shared ownership of departmental life. Explicit values …

Beyond The Romance Of Leadership: Shackleton, Self-Inflicted Crisis, And The Values Of Recovery, Carl Lee Tolbert

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

Two men answered to the name Ernest Shackleton. One belonged to the ice, where he was pioneering, inspirational, and heroic. The other belonged to dry land, where he was restless, indebted, and unfulfilled (Smith, 2014). The 1914 to 1916 Endurance expedition has become the most celebrated leadership case study of the past century, a status the 2022 discovery of the ship's preserved wreck has only hardened. Public and scholarly sentiment runs overwhelmingly positive. This article reads that sentiment as a late expression of what Meindl and colleagues named the Romance of Leadership, the disposition to attribute outcomes to dramatic individual …

The Philosophical Aspect Of Spirituality And Entrepreneurial Leadership In The Indian Knowledge System, Nidhi Kaushal

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

Entrepreneurs have an obligation to conserve their literature, art, and culture in any format because it helps to fortify their cultural heritage and memories. In the context of entrepreneurship, a useful and insightful examination of the ancient Indian knowledge framework has proposed the growth of culture-based enterprises, which reflects the magnificent integration of human values with traditional wisdom-based work ethics. The nature of today's modern entrepreneurship is an adjusted specification based on innovative context, which is different from the ancient fundamental policies and practices. This study introduces cultural entrepreneurship and its originality through the traditional and indigenous art and skill …

Toward A Contemporary Understanding Of Global Leadership: Relevance Of Diverse Voices, International Collaboration, And New Perspectives, Joseph M. Cervantes, Viet A. Ho, Vui T. Nguyen, Tram N. Le, Minh N.P. Vo

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

This paper introduces Integral Global Attunement (IGA) as a transformative paradigm in global leadership, emerging in response to the unprecedented shifts catalyzed by theCOVID-19 pandemic. Rooted in the fusion of psychological insight, intercultural consciousness, and ethical stewardship, IGA proposes a fifth wave of leadership—one that transcends transactional strategies to embrace identity, ethics, and relational interconnectedness as central pillars of influence. The writing argues that the current global crises reflect not merely external disruption but an inner dissonance within humanity, calling for a deeper, multi-aware model of leadership. Through the triadic lens of identity (e.g., multicultural integration, visionary consciousness), ethics (e.g., …

Pure Leadership Model: A Framework For Leaders Desiring To Lead With An Upright Heart, Matome Liphy Ramalepe

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

Contemporary organisations face intensifying demands for value-driven decision-making, ethical consistency, and service-oriented leadership. These demands underscore the need for frameworks that integrate character formation with organisational performance. In response to these challenges, the Pure Leadership Model conceptualises leadership as a virtue-centred system in which specific virtues function as the mediating link between leadership styles and core organisational values. The model positions the virtues of meekness, compassion, courage, faithfulness, sincerity, and prudence as central mechanisms through which servant, ethical, and authentic leadership translate into the organisational values of service, accountability, and integrity. Through this virtuous mediation, the model ultimately promotes organisational …

Change Management With Ethical Leadership, Sophia Rudisill Holmes

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

Ethical leadership ensures organizational environments are created and nurtured to support complex dilemmas that surface during change management. Leaders and followers in particular can navigate change management with intentional advance planning guided by the motives of their heart. The motives of a leader’s heart is observed by the ethical practices of their core values. Morally leaders and followers core values inform their ethical behaviors. Furthermore, Christian leaders have access to biblical scripture which provides a roadmap for leaders and followers in the mastery of adapting and not resisting during change management. Biblical scriptures also provide examples of practices that solve …

The Core Triplet Theory On Leadership, Sajid Hameed

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

There are many theories about what makes a leader effective, but no area of research has been studied more than leadership. Traditional models are comprehensive lists of traits; hence, we seldom find a person who possesses them all. One such model is the Core Triplet Theory on Leadership, which simplifies leadership into three core values: Integrity, Empathy, and Vision. These qualities express themselves at three levels: personal, human, and organizational. This theory is a simple, holistic, and pragmatic model to apply, and its adaptability to modern leadership challenges instills confidence. Integrity nurtures trust and ethical consistency at the individual level; …

Dna Of Leadership To Guide Our Existential Purposes Toward Kindness, Hakan Kapucu

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

This article examines the intersection of leadership and humanity’s quest for existential purpose, highlighting the role of human values such as kindness, empathy, respect, and ethics in guiding individuals toward meaning. It examines how existential purposes—shaped by philosophical, spiritual, social, and scientific perspectives—align with values that foster personal fulfillment and collective well-being. The article highlights the potential of leaders to address existential struggles, such as the dread of insignificance or isolation, by creating purpose-driven workplaces. Two leadership styles, servant leadership and technoversal leadership, are presented as exemplary models. Servant leadership prioritizes community, fostering environments where individuals discover purpose through shared …

Book Review: Building A God, Carl Lee Tolbert

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

No abstract provided.

A Culture Of Accountability Through Ethical Leadership Drives Citizenship Behavior In Ghana’S Traditional System Of Leadership, Eric Yeboah-Asiamah

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

This study seeks to investigate the influence of accountability on the community citizenship behavior of followers in Ghana's traditional system of leadership with the mediating role of ethical leadership behavior. A cross-sectional survey design was used to obtain quantitative data from 319 Ghanaians through questionnaires. Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) with SmartPLS 4.1.0.3 was utilized to test the study’s hypotheses. The results showed that accountability (ACC) was a significant predictor of ethical leadership behavior but had no direct effect on community citizenship behavior (CCB). Additionally, the relationship between ACC and CCB was partially mediated by ethical leadership behavior. …

If These Walls Could Talk: An Institutional Perspective On Values-Based Leadership, Arild Wæraas, Harald Askeland, Gry Espedal

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

Scholars usually conceptualize values-based leadership (VBL) as a subset of transformational leadership. By contrast, we see VBL as a form of leadership in its own right, having theoretical roots in institutional theory. Building on recent Scandinavian contributions to VBL, we develop our argument by delineating VBL from transformational leadership and proposing a conceptualization of VBL that is consistent with Selznick’s theory of institutional leadership. Specifically, we see VBL as an approach that involves focused attention throughout the organization to desired practices and critical reflection on values, emphasizing the leader’s role as a facilitator of values work and protector of existing …

Factor Analysis Of The Cultivated Leadership Questionnaire (Clq) And Measurement Against The Short Dark Triad (Sd3), Christopher Ewing, Michael Epstein

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

This study aimed to evaluate the Cultivated Leadership Questionnaire (CLQ), a self-report tool designed to assess leadership based on key constructs such as self-regulatory behaviors, emotional intelligence, prosocial actions, positive motivational strategies, and personal influence. An exploratory factor analysis identified two main components that together accounted for 65.44% of the variance, suggesting a general leadership factor and a secondary factor capturing more specific leadership attributes. The study also examined the relationship between Dark Triad traits—psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism—and the leadership behaviors measured by the CLQ. The results revealed negative correlations between both Machiavellianism and psychopathy with leadership behaviors, while narcissism …

A Dynamic Leadership Approach In Different Situations And Contexts, Francois Kammoe

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

This paper is one of the first to provide empirical evidence supporting the conceptualization of a dynamic leadership approach in which employee maturity and organizational dynamism help leaders make the right choice of leadership styles to improve employee job satisfaction. As business environments change and employee maturity differs in this dynamic business era, and as there is a chaos characterized by numerous leadership styles in the leadership literature, adopting a dynamic leadership approach has become important to identify the most effective leadership styles suitable for employees. A quantitative study using conditional process analysis was conducted to examine a dynamic leadership …

Crafting Ethical Problem-Solving Cultures: A Leader’S Role In Complex Adaptive Systems, Elizabeth A. Luckman

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

In today’s complex and interconnected world, leaders play a critical role in fostering ethical problem-solving cultures within organizations. To enable leaders to succeed in this evolving landscape, this paper advocates for a necessary paradigm shift: a transition in mental models about how organizations function. Historically, organizations have been viewed as mechanistic systems, but there is a substantial opportunity to improve our work by viewing organizations as complex adaptive systems. This shift alters fundamental assumptions about organizational operations and redefines leadership as the creation of conditions for effective and ethical problem-solving. In this paper, I examine the changing mental models that …

Perspective - Leadership And Management, Eric Silfen

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

Why do we care?

Leadership is a word on everyone’s tongue. A hackneyed word. A much bantered about word. A word that engenders “good feeling”. A word that denotes reaching the pinnacle. A word akin to soaring heights. An Icarus word. A word that implies others will follow. A Pied Piper word.

But what is our view of leadership from below? What inspires us to be led? What makes us strive for this pinnacle? And why do we care? And why do we ignore that the leader might not be one of us?

In this article, we explore the origin …

The Leadership Identity Presented On Linkedin, Carl L. Tolbert

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

LinkedIn has evolved in a way similar to other social media platforms but is unique in that it focuses on professional networking and careers. Many professionals seek to showcase their leadership skills and philosophies as part of a publicly showcased online persona. This paper aimed to examine the posts specific to leadership and thematically investigate presentation strategies, motivation, and purposes behind the posts. The paper begins with a historical review from the inception of LinkedIn through pivotal milestones in the history of the company. Key concepts from the literature are then reviewed specific to social media use and motivations behind …

Kitkats And Boiling Kettles: Understanding Reciprocal Relationships In The Workplace, Gavin Mason, Garry Nicholson

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

Often referred to as a law, principle, norm or rule, reciprocity can be defined as a state or condition of free interchange or mutual responsiveness. This paper considers the importance of reciprocity in organisational settings, whilst identifying three reciprocal exchange behaviours of which leaders should be aware. A Socratic dialogue using the Nelson/Heckmann approach is adopted as a research method, with the primary methodological concern being that of the axiological field of philosophy. Axiology deals with the nature of value and asks what is intrinsically worthwhile. This can lead to multiple questions about what we value in an organisational context. …

Leadership Ethics As A Political Instrument – Normative Challenges Of Global Chinese Expansion For Western Enterprise Cultures, Elmar Nass

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

Chinese enterprises with a global focus are emerging as strong competitors in the international market while simultaneously acquiring foreign companies or substantial stakes in them. Distinct leadership paradigms intersect during interactions or within change processes under Chinese influence, significantly impacting goals, strategies, and actions in leadership culture. Chinese businesses are exporting a leadership culture previously unknown in the West. Its ideal follows the large-scale cultural policy of Sinicization, promulgated by state and party leader Xi Jinping. As an ideal model of Sinicized leadership, it is rooted in Sino-Marxist values and infused with Confucian and market-oriented elements. This article deciphers the …

Book Review: Credible: The Power Of Expert Leaders, Carl L. Tolbert

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

Amanda Goodall’s (2023) book Credible: The Power of Expert Leaders argues why expert leaders are needed more now than ever across all organizational domains. Goodall describes the book as a chronicle of the “natural experiment” showcasing failures of nonexperts leading various sized groups and organizations, also citing parallel success by expert leaders (p. 1). The book is divided into eight chapters, starting with the introduction and examining the need for experts, the recruitment and development of experts, and finally, the organizational environment to sustain experts. The introduction begins as a corollary to Nichols’ (2024) work regarding how society no longer …

Rupert Murdoch: Altruism Inverted, Elizabeth Summerfield

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

American entrepreneur, television producer, media owner and philanthropist, Ted Turner, once described Rupert Murdoch as “the most dangerous man in the world” (Beahm, 1). This is not an unusual judgement. But it is also one which may contribute to sustaining the Murdoch “brand”, his notoriety and appeal to supporters.

This article examines the deep origins of Murdoch’s cynical worldview, and the source of an ambition that drove him from ownership of a small provincial Australian newspaper to global media mogul. What compelled the need to disseminate often dangerously divisive views on as large a stage as possible, while purporting to …

Remote Work: How Leaders Impact Employee Wellbeing, Russ Carfagno, Jonas Strömbäck, Cheryl Joyner, Gilbert Franco

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

Leaders face many challenges in motivating team members including maintaining remote workers' sense of organizational inclusion. Remote work and flexible working arrangements (FWA) have increased the complexity. Flexible working arrangements (FWA) provide value to employees and may help with work-life balance yet FWA can create employee loneliness and contribute to higher turnover. This quantitative study looked at whether leadership behavior affected remote workers’ loneliness, and the intention to quit. An online survey was conducted through LinkedIn sampling 92 adults who worked remotely at least 20 hours per week in the United States. The study found that the leader-member relationship does …

The “Consistent Chameleon”: Values-Driven Leadership Among Social And Business Leaders Doing Social Entrepreneurship, Esthi Nave, Hagai Katz

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

Changing norms in the organizational world drive new hybrid organizational phenomena that reflect an expectation that businesses will be more values-driven and values-driven social organizations will be more businesslike. However, mixing moral values and hard-nosed business creates contradictions. Indeed, research on social/business hybrids has revealed tensions and challenges. Yet, not enough is known about how social entrepreneurs address these inherent contradictions. We explore this question qualitatively through 25 interviews with two types of social/business hybrid organization leaders and their seconds in command: social entrepreneurs who work solely in the social sector (‘exclusive’) and businesspeople who start social ventures (‘dual’).

Analysis …

"Being On God’S Side": Biblical Leaders On Wokeness, Social Justice, Cancel Culture, White Privilege, And Other Controversial Terms, Hershey H. Friedman, Svetlana Vlady

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

Terms such as “woke,” “social justice,” “cancel culture,” “identity politics,” “politically correct,” “critical race theory,” and “DEI” have been increasingly misused and politicized by both the left and the right in recent years. This paper will examine the Hebrew Bible and explore what it says about social justice, compassion for the indigent, inclusion, and many other terms causing such an uproar. The authors assert that the ancient prophets, the true social justice warriors, would be horrified by the actions of both the left and right.

The Intersection Of Leader-Follower Trade (Lft) And Leader-Member Exchange (Lmx) In Alleviating Work-Family Conflict (Wfc), Ashlie James

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

In an organizational context, employees are more than mere followers but individuals with multiple roles beyond their employment which interact and influence the way they work. When the demands from work and family life collide, scholars describe this inter-role conflict as work–family conflict (WFC) where the role pressures from work and family are mutually incompatible creating increased feelings of strain and decreased life and job satisfaction which affect their work performance and commitment (Blanch & Aluja, 2012; Hagqvist et al., 2017). Given the importance of having work-life balance, human resource management (HRM) theory argues work flexibility, such as the opportunity …

Authentic Leadership Measures: An Authentic Measure For Authentic Leadership?, Mitch Butterworth, Jessica Black, Robert Terry

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

This study broadly addresses some of the criticisms associated with authentic leadership theory related to measurement and antecedents. Measurement: One purpose of this study was to verify the dimensionality of authentic leadership by testing the construct validity of three measures for authentic leadership: the Authentic Leadership Questionnaire (ALQ), the Authentic Leadership Inventory (ALI), and the Authentic Leadership Integrated Questionnaire (AL-IQ), proposed by Levesque-Cote et al. (2018) as an improvement on the previous two scales. This study was designed to replicate and extend Levesque-Cote et al. (2018) study with an English-speaking sample to further test the structural validity of the AL-IQ. …

Book Review: The Courage To Lead Through Values: How Management By Values Supports Transformational Leadership, Culture, And Success, Nidhi Aggarwal, Nana Manu, Eya Mahouachi, Jyoti Aggarwal

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

The Courage to Lead through Values: How Management by Values Supports Transformational Leadership, Culture, and Success is about being fearless and implementing the values in changing or sustaining the organization and its people. Transformational leadership is shown as an influential factor in the individual’s ability to deal with different circumstances and where leaders courageously provide support to maintain the employee confidence level. This book is also about the type of leader an individual can become, who may not have answers or solutions to every problem, but genuinely keep working on and acknowledge their inner sense of courage and values by …

A Comparative Analysis Of Values-Based Leadership Theories: A Review And Future Research Agenda, Simon Tareke Abay, Jorge F. S. Gomes, Abeba Beyene Mengistu

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

This paper systematically reviews the literature on values-based leadership (VBL) theories by analyzing 161 studies published in different peer-review journals from 2000 to 2022. The study first identified the literature on VBL and found that terms “values-oriented, values-centered, or value-based” leadership are used interchangeably as a roof term for various theories focusing on the moral, authentic, principled, and ethical dimension of leadership. The literature on leadership offers different types of leadership theories that constitute VBL, but we focused on six leadership theories that are widely cited as forms of VBL and have a strong theoretical background. This was followed by …

Power Of Attachment Styles In Servant Leadership: A Conceptual Paper, Stacy Menezes

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

The paper aims to advance an understanding of the relationship between servant leadership and attachment styles. This paper provides a review of servant leadership and attachment styles to explain how this understanding can be used to confront challenges faced by leaders due to a crisis. A proposed conceptual model is posited to investigate the moderating effect of followers' attachment styles on the relationship between servant leadership and desired follower outcomes. Additionally, this study adds support to the criticism of the leader-centric approach of research by investigating the moderating role of followers' characteristics, such as followers' attachment styles. The practical implications …

Built For Continuous Improvement: Professional Accountability In The Academic Setting, Richard Sinclair

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

One way to organize schools to continue to improve is to build the culture around the natural spirit of its people. Rich Sinclair collected data from one of North Carolina’s highest-rated public schools to learn how the design and development of their professional culture have progressed over the last five years, including through the height of the pandemic. This mixed-methods study on the K-12 efficacy of values-driven organizational development offers three lessons that can help guide systematic efforts to align more school work environments with the best in the world.

Ethical Leadership: Descriptive Literature Review Of The Diverse Influence And Development Of Ethics Upon Public Sector And Military Leaders, Followers, And Organizations, Stephen M. King, Steve Firestone, Harold Henkel, Brian Moore

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

Literature reviews are a significant tool for examining the breadth and depth of a selected body of literature. Although there are many types of literature reviews, ranging from narrative to meta-analysis, this article uses a descriptive review. Descriptive reviews are extremely useful for examining a body of literature, highlighting key areas of interest, particularly as it addresses a specific research question, or is directed toward a particular purpose. This article utilizes a descriptive review of ethical public leadership, both in civilian and military organizations, particularly focusing on two critical areas of interest: theme identification and issue development. Four key themes …