An Exploratory Literature Study into Digital Transformation and Leadership: Toward Future-Proof Middle Managers

This study aimed to obtain insight into the influence digital transformation has on future leadership behaviors and management. Up to now, most literature solely focuses on the need for strong strategic leadership to build and lead the transformation. This study was directed at future leadership behaviors and skills needed during and after digital transformation of management below senior level. An exploratory approach to review literature on digital transformation and leadership was used, inspired by the PRISMA protocol. Our findings show that digital transformation is a disruptive process that impacts the whole organization and results in new forms of working. This calls for altro-centric leadership, an other-centered leadership style. Specifically, soft skills such as empathy, humility, integrity and compassion are becoming increasingly important, as is understanding the power of digital technology. The emergence of artificial intelligence offers interesting opportunities. It could be used to handle quantifiable managerial tasks and evaluate the quantifiable part of performance, while managers focus on the soft skills side of management such as coaching, motivating and empowering employees. This study demonstrates the necessity to redefine leadership requirements in an increasingly digitalized world.

Long Tail Leadership

The increased weighting of digital natives in a fattening long tail has added complexity to organizational leadership, particularly during the global COVID-19 pandemic. Trends affecting the individual come from social, economic, and technological sources and affect leadership behaviors, and this in turn affects society. In order to understand this interconnection, lower-level influences and how they affect the higher-level visible signs are discussed. These lead to influences on behavior. Influences are felt as intensity and embeddedness of engagement, decision-management, feedback ability, and motivators. This chapter begins with a discussion of causes for this phenomenon and concludes with ways to work with the long tail, either from within as a member or externally as a leader. The chapter ends with a brief comment on future research based on findings discussed in this chapter.

Higher Education Leadership in a Changing World

The coronavirus pandemic remains one of the most significant and unpredictable global public health crises. The disease (COVID-19) caused by the virus represents a complex and ambiguous adaptive crisis that prompted the rise of the allostatic higher education leader. These leaders were able to learn from the pandemic and inspire faculty to exhibit similar leadership behaviors such as connecting with people, distributing leadership, and communicating clearly. COVID-19 provided higher education leadership with the opportunity for mission-driven changes related to course delivery models, pedagogy, student choices, affordability, access, and opportunity, and the post-COVID-19 institute of higher education will be a better place to work, and more student-centric. Those academic leaders with the adaptive capacity to see the crisis as an opportunity will envision a continued role for new and disruptive technologies. The pandemic has also provided faculty leaders with an opportunity for self-reflection that in many cases was long overdue.

The Investigation of the Relations Between Paternalistic Leadership, Organizational Creativity and Organizational Dissent

The aim of the research is to find out the relationship between the paternalistic leadership behaviours of public primary school principals and teachers’ organizational creativity and organizational dissent perception levels according to the perceptions of primary school teachers. Correlational survey method was utilized in the research. The sample of the research consists of 1059 teachers working in public primary schools selected by methods of stratified sampling method in Mardin city center and 8 districts of Mardin during 2016-2017 academic year. The data of the research were obtained by using the “Headmasters’ Paternalistic Leadership Behaviours Scale”, “Organizational Creativity Scale” and “Organizational Dissent Scale”. The data analysis revealed the following findings: There was a positive and significant correlation between the paternalistic leadership behaviours of primary school administrators and teachers’ perceptions toward organizational creativity and organizational dissent and paternalistic leadership behaviors of primary school administrators were found to be a significant predictor of teachers’ perceptions toward organizational creativity and organizational dissent. The headmasters should exhibit benevolent leadership behaviours that enchance the teachers organizational creativity perceptions, such as endeavouring to create a family milieu in school, being tolerant of teachers and supporting teachers to take the initiative.

Center the Relationship between Self-Leadership Behaviors of Sports-Sports Training Specialists and Job Satisfaction Levels (An Example from Eastern Anatolia Region)

This study aims to determine the relationship between self-leadership behaviors and job satisfaction levels of Sports-Sports Training Specialists working in Provincial Directorates of Youth and Sports. The research population consists of 230 Sports-Sports Training Specialists working in the Provincial Directorates of Youth and Sports in the Eastern Anatolia Region. “Personal Information Form”, “Self-Leadership Questionnaire-SLQ” and “Job Satisfaction Scale” were used for data collection. 72.2% of the participants are male, 73.4% have an undergraduate degree and 64.6% are working in their institution on a contractual basis. There is a significant difference in favor of women between gender and the self-talk sub-dimension of the self-leadership scale. There was a significant difference between the working positions and the total score of the self-leadership scale and the sub-dimension of self-cueing in favor of permanent employees. There was a statistically significant difference between the job satisfaction scale and the sports training specialists having poor economic status. No positive relationship was found between self-leadership and job satisfaction. It has been concluded that female sports-sports training specialists are more focused on self-talk than males and this has an effect on self-leadership levels, but gender does not affect their job satisfaction levels. Permanent staff experts motivate themselves better and have a better sense of self-leadership than contracted experts. It has been determined that compared to their senior colleagues, newcomers to the profession are in an effort to reveal their self-leadership behaviors more in order to prove themselves in their institutions and to be successful.

The Mediating Role of Emotional Intelligence in the Relationship Between School Principals’ Sustainable Leadership Behaviors and Diversity Management Skills

The purpose of this research is to examine the mediating role of emotional intelligence in the relationship between school principals’ sustainable leadership behaviors and their diversity management skills. For this purpose, this research, which was designed in the relational survey model, was carried out on teachers. The data of the study were collected using the “Sustainable Leadership Scale,” “Diversity Management Scale,” and “Emotional Intelligence Scale.” Descriptive statistics, Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient, t-test, one-way ANOVA analyses and structural equation model were used in the analysis of the data. As a result of the research, it was found that the school principals’ sustainable leadership behavior levels, their ability to manage differences and their emotional intelligence levels were high according to teacher perceptions. According to the correlation analysis, it was found that there is a positive and significant relationship between sustainable leadership, diversity management, and emotional intelligence. In addition, path analyses to examine the mediator variable effect revealed that emotional intelligence has a full mediating role in the relationship between school principals’ sustainable leadership behaviors and their diversity management skills. In addition to the research, it was also examined whether teachers perceptions of school principals on sustainable leadership behaviors, diversity management skills, and emotional intelligence levels differ significantly according to teachers’ gender, professional seniority, educational status and the level of education they work in. In addition to this, they have shown that they need to use their emotional intelligence effectively.

Leadership Styles in Vietnamese Small and Medium Enterprises

Leadership and leadership styles are considered as decisive factors to the success and failure of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The objectives of the paper are to identify benefits and drawbacks of applying three major leadership styles, namely autocratic, democratic and laissez-faire styles of Vietnamese SMEs leaders, who are working in various business fields. The qualitative approach was used to explore the perceptions of 51 Vietnamese SME managers, and the N-vivo software was useful in data analysis. The theoretical contribution, therefore, can be seen by the in-depth investigating on the leadership styles from the multi-dimensional viewpoints of SMEs leaders in the culture context of one Asian emerging nation such as Vietnam. The paper is also expected to be useful for SME managers to better understanding leadership styles, in order to adjust and perfect their leadership behaviors for more effective managerial and organizational performance.

The Importance of Similarity: How Gender Congruence Matters for the Impact of Leadership Training

Leadership training is key to promoting more active leadership, but the effects of leadership training can depend on the gender context. Gender congruence between manager and employee can affect how the manager employs leadership behaviors adapted from training and how employees perceive leadership behavior. Quantitative data on 474 managers’ 4,833 employees before and after a large-scale field experiment with leadership training enable us to examine changes in employee-perceived leadership following training. The results show that gender congruence between manager and employee is associated with stronger leadership training effects on employee-perceived leadership behaviors. Female gender congruence shows the most pronounced effects.

Positive School Leadership Behaviors

To introduce and define the core behaviors of positive school leadership (PSL), we explore six positively anchored sets of work (supporting, developing relationships, establishing values, acting authentically, modeling, and enabling or empowering) that move us beyond the deeply ingrained negative and deficit roots that have defined schooling for over a century. The exploration of research primarily on positive organizational scholarship (POS) accomplishes this, showing that POS attends to the growth of others and helps grow and reinforce relationships that focus on personalization, trust, and caring. Additionally, PSL produces important outcomes, enhancing the cultural climate in schools in particular; however, it is also important to note that the current structure and culture of schooling create significant barriers to the implementation of PSL.