The core role of leadership is to mobilize and motivate members for pursuits that serve the organization's purpose, such as organizational strategy. The concept of meaning-based leadership, leader advocacy of the meaning organizational purpose gives to the work, was proposed in recognition of this role. We study the indirect influence of team leader meaning-based leadership on team strategy implementation (efforts to put organizational strategy into practice) as it is mediated by team value alignment – team similarity with top management in perceptions of organizational values. We propose that higher-level meaning-based leadership – the meaning-based leadership from the team leader's direct superior – moderates the influence of team leader meaning-based leadership: team leader meaning-based leadership is a stronger influence on team value alignment and, mediated by team value alignment, team strategy implementation with more higher-level meaning-based leadership. We found support for this research model in a survey of N = 421 teams from an energy company.

Academic side hustles—entrepreneurial ventures pursued alongside traditional scholarly roles—are emerging as strategic assets for both individuals and institutions. Far more than sources of supplemental income, these ventures translate specialized academic expertise into real-world applications, advancing both career development and knowledge dissemination. Drawing on narrative reflection and literature-informed insights, we argue that academic entrepreneurship enhances both leadership scholars and scholarship through applied learning, enriched teaching, and research translation. We explore push-and-pull motivations, outline the benefits and tensions of hybrid identities, and offer practical strategies for integration. With institutional support, strategic alignment, and effective boundary management, academic side hustles can strengthen—not compete with—scholarly excellence. This article reframes faculty entrepreneurship as a source of organizational resilience and innovation within a hybrid knowledge economy in a way that benefits leadership scholars and their professional practice.

Employee change-supportive behavior is widely recognized as a key asset in driving successful organizational change, yet sustaining such behavior over time remains a significant challenge. While extensive research has explored how to initiate CSB, less attention has been paid to why such support often fades. One largely overlooked factor is leader narcissism—a construct that has evolved along a parallel yet independently developed trajectory to CSB in the change literature. Although narcissistic leaders are often admired for their bold vision and strategic drive, particularly in uncertain environments, they have also been paradoxically linked to poorer employee outcomes during transitions. By integrating these parallel research streams and drawing on social cognitive theory, we argue that leader narcissism offers a compelling explanation for the erosion of employee CSB during organizational change. A three-wave leader–follower dyadic field study supports our model, showing that leader narcissism diminishes followers’ change-related self-efficacy, even when initial support is present. As a result, employees with lower self-efficacy are more likely to disengage and remain silent throughout the change process. This study clarifies why employee change-supportive behavior often fails to yield lasting organizational outcomes and sheds light on the interplay between leader narcissism and follower responses during change.

It has been well-established that exposure to traumatic events is associated with greater incidences of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The current study examined the role of one's leader in this relationship, specifically focusing on laissez-faire leadership in the context of military peacekeeping deployments. Laissez-faire leaders are passive, pushing decisions to subordinates and abdicating their authority. We tested hypotheses that exposure to traumatic events is more strongly related to PTSD when individuals perceive their leaders have shirked their duties and failed to lead. Further, we explored substitutes for leadership, hypothesizing that 1) adequate training and preparation and 2) strong peer support can mitigate the deleterious impact of the laissez-faire leader's failure to take charge. Finally, we examine two types of traumatic experiences – combat-related (e.g., war zone danger exposure) and interpersonal (e.g., bullying, sexual harassment) since expectations of leadership could differ depending on trauma type. Results from data from Norwegian veterans who deployed to Lebanon ( n = 10,152) revealed that both combat-related and interpersonal trauma exposure and laissez-faire leadership style were positively associated with PTSD. The harmful effects of exposure to trauma were buffered when soldiers reported higher levels of peer support. Further, soldiers who reported receiving better training also reported lower levels of PTSD symptoms following their deployment. However, the protective effects of higher training were diminished in the presence of leadership that adopted a laissez-faire style, demonstrating the destructive nature of a laissez-faire leader.

Although existing research has explored the outcomes of supervisor bottom-line mentality (SBLM) extensively, its antecedents remain underexplored. Drawing on threat rigidity theory, we investigate how and when negative performance feedback (NPF) leads to SBLM. We conceptualize SBLM as a state-like variable and propose that supervisors feel threatened when receiving NPF from directors, which in turn leads to SBLM. We further propose that competitive climate and trait competitiveness moderate this relationship, such that higher (vs. lower) levels of competitive climate or trait competitiveness strengthen the indirect effects of NPF on SBLM through supervisors’ perception of threat. We tested our hypotheses in two studies: a scenario-based experiment and a three-wave time-lagged field study. The results generally supported our hypotheses. Overall, our findings show NPF received from directors increases the supervisor's threat perception, which then leads to SBLM. This indirect effect is more likely in a higher (vs. lower) competitive climate. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings.

While past work has demonstrated that experienced authenticity is important for well-being, the interpersonal consequences of perceiving oneself as authentic are less well-understood. This paper fills this gap in the literature using theory and research on behavioral integrity, highlighting the perceptual filters that exist when conveying one's authenticity to others and thus the importance of political skill to help counter misinterpretations of one's authenticity. We tested our hypothesized model in a time-lagged, multi-source survey study of 78 teams. Our results demonstrated that leaders’ experienced authenticity was negatively related to followers’ perception of leader behavioral integrity unless the leader was politically skilled. Additionally, behavioral integrity was a key mechanism in our moderated-mediation model explaining why leader authenticity and political skill combine to predict team performance.

Voice, defined as employees’ expression of ideas with an intention to improve team or organizational functioning, is often directed to their immediate leader. This makes the quality of the leader-member relationship—conceptualized as leader-member exchange (LMX)—a key predictor of voice. However, research has largely overlooked the fact that the influence of one's LMX is also shaped by the LMX relationships that others have with the same leader. Drawing on the social identity perspective, we propose two ways in which the LMX of others can shape the LMX-voice relationship: (a) LMX similarity (i.e., similar LMX quality between the focal employee and team members) emphasizes a shared collective identity, thereby motivating voice; and (b) LMX positive dissimilarity (i.e., having a better LMX relationship than others) highlights a unique relational identity with the leader, which may also motivate voice. We further argue that leader group prototypicality—the extent to which the leader is seen as embodying the team's collective identity—moderates which of these dynamics is more salient in predicting voice. These interactive effects are expected to be more pronounced for prohibitive voice (suggestions to discontinue a practice) than for promotive voice (suggestions to improve work practices), as the former entails greater social risk and thus depends more heavily on social identity considerations. Using multilevel polynomial regression and response surface analyses on field data of 321 leader-member dyads nested in 47 teams, we found support for most of our predictions.

Leadership categorization theory proposes that individuals hold multiple implicit leadership theories (ILTs), each tailored to a specific context and organized hierarchically from superordinate to subordinate levels. A central assumption of this model is that ILT attributes maintain consistent meanings across levels, forming nested cognitive structures. This study questions that assumption by examining how the commonly cited attribute of intelligence is defined at hierarchical levels in a political leadership context. Drawing on serial cognitive and connectionist models of schema activation, we use cognitive mapping and verbal protocols with 30 participants to analyze intelligence at superordinate, basic, and subordinate levels. Our findings suggest that ILT attributes often shift in meaning across these levels, undermining the assumption of stable, coherent hierarchies. Quantitatively, adjacent levels shared about half of their attributes, with the rest unique to each level, underscoring both the commonality and the variability of leadership prototypes. Rather than nested subsets, ILTs reflect context-sensitive configurations that vary with level of abstraction. These results refine leadership categorization theory by challenging its structural assumptions and support a more dynamic model of leadership categorization. We conclude with implications for leadership development, performance evaluation, and succession planning, highlighting the importance of recognizing shifting expectations when assessing leaders.

The relationship between conflict and performance has been studied for decades, but little is known about how and under what conditions task conflict among top managers affects firm-level outcomes. In this study, we examine a curvilinear effect of task conflict in top management teams (TMTs) on both firm performance and TMT resilience efficacy, as moderated by behavioral integration. We argue and find that TMT task conflict can improve firm performance when behavioral integration is high, but the effect is not linear; rather it levels off. In contrast, we maintain and find that TMT task conflict can improve TMT resilience efficacy at an increasing rate when behavioral integration is low. We also find that behavioral integration itself is predicted by Chief Executive Officer relational leadership such that leaders with a more relationship-oriented style encourage more behavioral integration in their teams. Field data from 555 top managers from 111 organizations in South Korea provided support for our hypotheses. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Leadership is critical to any enterprise, raising the question of when managerial leadership is accepted—specifically, whether managers communicate in ways that earn employee endorsement. The claiming and granting framework suggests managers can claim leadership, but employees may or may not grant it. Yet most research relies on retrospective evaluations and overlooks actual verbal behaviors. Moreover, responses to leadership claims likely depend on a manager's demographics, particularly age and gender. While studies often examine these cues in isolation, their interplay matters. To explore this, we fine-coded 37,277 verbal behaviors from 68 manager-employee dyads during workplace meetings. Male and female managers claimed leadership equally often. However, for female managers younger than their employees, claiming leadership was linked to lower post-meeting endorsement—but not to in-meeting granting. In contrast, older female managers received the highest post-meeting endorsement across all age-gender constellations when claiming leadership. For male managers claiming leadership, age was unrelated to endorsement. These findings highlight how subtle gender and age biases shape leadership acceptance: younger female managers, in particular, may face undermined authority without overt resistance. Raising awareness of these dynamics is key to fostering equitable leadership recognition.