Inspirational Leadership Research Articles

The individual side of ambidexterity

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to examine whether inspirational leadership of heads of specialized medical units is related to individual ambidexterity of their dependent physicians; and second, to study the possible mediating role of organizational learning capability (OLC) in the relationship between inspirational leadership and individual ambidexterity.Design/methodology/approachStructural equation modeling was used on a sample of 194 medical specialists from Spanish public hospitals.FindingsResults show that inspirational leadership is positively related to individual ambidexterity among healthcare physicians. In addition, the results of the study revealed that the relationship between inspirational leadership and individual ambidexterity is mediated by conditions that facilitate learning, namely, OLC.Research limitations/implicationsThis study uses cross-sectional data, which do not guarantee causality relationships among the examined variables.Practical implicationsThe results of this paper suggest first that heads of healthcare units should inspire followers to achieve both exploration and exploitation. Second, it is also necessary to consider that inspirational leaders promote those conditions that facilitate learning, which should be particularly taken into account to enhance both physician’s exploration and exploitation.Originality/valueIn stressing an evident gap in the relationship between leadership and ambidexterity at the individual level, this paper attempts to advance in the leadership literature by revealing how the action or power of moving the intellect or emotions, and enhancing enthusiasm and confidence, empowers physicians to both explore and exploit knowledge. The results also indicate that the inspiration transmitted by the heads of medical services, facilitate physician’s perceived learning conditions which, in turn, fosters their individual ambidexterity.

A new captain on the bridge

Dear Readers, as the American author and inspirational leader, John C. Maxwell, once said, “Change is inevitable. Growth is optional”. Over its 23-year history, the International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment has seen both change and fantastic growth. This editorial announces a change in the editorial staff that is underway. Effective January 2020, Matthias Finkbeiner of the Technical University Berlin will change from subject editor for the International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment team to Editor-in-Chief, at which point Mary Ann Curran will step down. Fritz Schmuhl of Springer invites all to thank Mary Ann both for her past work and her continued leadership this year, and in tandem warmly welcome Matthias.

Inspirational leadership, positive mood, and team innovation: A moderated mediation investigation into the pivotal role of professional salience

Multidisciplinary teams are increasingly advocated for in healthcare policy consequent to their capacity to develop innovative solutions to seemingly intractable service and care challenges. Recent arguments that inspirational leadership styles may foster innovation in multidisciplinary teams point to their potential value in this effort. However, inconsistency in the capacity of such leaders to engender innovation highlights the need to understand the mechanisms and boundary conditions that determine when such leadership generates positive effects. We argue that follower positive mood acts to mediate the path between inspirational leadership and innovation and may account for its variable effects. By increasing positive team mood, inspirational leaders can potentially bring about more flexible thinking and enhance innovation but can also increase reliance on less effortful information processing, undermining innovative potential. In an effort to address the dilemma posed by these contrasting effects, we propose that professional salience acts as an important boundary condition of this relationship such that only when profession is salient do inspirational leaders enhance multidisciplinary team innovation through positive mood. An analysis of survey data from 60 UK‐based multidisciplinary healthcare teams, investigating the inspirational leadership of practice‐based innovation, supports our moderated mediation model. Finally, the implications for HRM are considered, specifically for leader development and work team design.

Effective Leadership in Organizations: African Ethics and Corruption

There is much evidence to support the notion that inspirational leadership is inextricably crucial for the functioning of any organization, either in the private or public sector, which is bent on operating as a goal-oriented body within which various individuals work under the coordination of an ethically oriented leader. The paper unpacks African Ethics and how a loss of virtue in leadership in both the public and private sectors, has led to corruption with its hugely negative impacts on society. The paper highlights theoretical conceptions and potential practical actualizations of ethical practice. Recommendations and suggestions are made as to what can be done to mitigate unethical practices such as corruption with its corrosive effect on life in general.

Indicators of Inspirational Leadership for Primary School Principals: Developing and Testing the Structural Relationship Model

This study aimed to examine the consistency of the structural relationship model in which developed from related theories, previous studies, and empirical data, respectively. The study also investigated factor loading of main components, subcomponents, and indicators. The population in this study was primary school principals under Office of the Basic Education Commission in Thailand. Collected data were used by multi-stage random sampling to get 660 samples. The data were analyzed by using statistical application and AMOS program. The results were consistent with hypothesis. The model of which developed from related theories and previous studies were consistent with empirical data based on the following values, e.g. relative Chi-square (CMIN/DF), Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA), Goodness-of-Fit Index (GFI), Adjusted Goodness-of-Fit Index (AGFI), Comparative Fit Index (CFI), and Normed Fit Index (NFI). Both first and second order confirmatory factors were also analyzed. Fator loading of main components was 0.90-1.47 which was higher than 0.70. Factor loading of sub-components was 0.73-2.13. Floading of indicators was 0.74-2.77 which was higher than 0.30, respectively.

The human side of leadership: Inspirational leadership effects on follower characteristics and happiness at work (HAW)

Leadership has received significant attention over the past years. Now is the time to refine how leaders impact on followers and their attitudes. This study examines how inspirational leaders influence follower characteristics (FC), and in turn, their happiness at work. In this study, the mediating effect of follower characteristics in the relationship between inspirational leadership and happiness at work was specifically examined. Data was gathered from 389 frontline banking employees working in Italian and Spanish banks. A confirmatory factor analysis revealed a positive partial mediating role of follower characteristics in the relationship between inspirational leadership and happiness at work. Results showed that inspirational leadership exerts a more positive influence on followers' happiness at work when follower characteristics are more positive. Our discussion highlights the importance of understanding the role of the follower characteristics that are involved in the effectiveness of inspirational leadership.

Interaction effect of strategic leadership behaviors and organizational culture on IS-Business strategic alignment and Enterprise Systems assimilation

Drawing upon strategic leadership theory, this study develops a theoretical model to explore the impact of senior executives’ leadership behaviors on IS-Business strategic alignment in the context of Enterprise Systems (ES) assimilation. In particular, organizational culture is added as a critical moderator in the research model based on contingency theory. Empirical analysis results suggest that idealized influence and inspirational motivation leadership behaviors are significant drivers of IS-Business strategic alignment, which further has a positive influence on Enterprise Systems assimilation. Moreover, flexibility-oriented culture positively moderates the relationship between strategic leadership behaviors and IS-Business strategic alignment, while control-oriented culture negatively moderates the path relationships. Our study contributes to the extant literature in both leadership and IS-business strategic alignment.

Dr. Mathilde Krim: A Scientist and Her Fellowship Legacy.

On January 15, 2018, the world lost Dr. Mathilde Krim, a woman who changed the life of every person who has ever worked in HIV research. Variously remembered as a humanitarian, a socialite, a philanthropist, and a political activist, Dr. Krim was first and foremost a scientist. We highlight her pioneering research in fetal sex determination, as well as her activism during the unfolding AIDS epidemic, which culminated in the cofounding of amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research. Finally, we provide an analysis of the award named in honor of her inspirational leadership, the Mathilde Krim Fellowships in Basic Biomedical Research, which aims to catapult the careers of exceptional, early-stage researchers in the HIV/AIDS field. We follow applicants through the two-tier application process and dissect what defines a successful applicant at each stage. Through the Krim Fellowships, we hope to ensure that a new generation of HIV scientists can realize amfAR's goal of ending the AIDS epidemic.

Inspired to Inspire: An Attachment Theory View of Family Enrichment and Inspirational Leadership

Inspirational leadership represents a foundational and vital set of leader behaviors for both scholars and practitioners. However, leaders often struggle to inspire their followers. And when they d...

Teamwork Under Stress: The Role of Mobile Affordances and Inspirational Leadership

Team-based forms of organizing have been hailed for enabling organizations to leverage the intellectual resources of their employees. The past several years have witnessed increasing demands on tea...

Paul D. Boyer (1918-2018).

Pioneer of molecular machines and inspirational leader

Taking the three steps to inspirational leadership

This article will walk you through the three-step approach I took, with the settings and schools I worked with, in order to feel confident and inspired to be the champions who can do what is best for the children.

A Study About the Relationships Between Perceived Leadership and Job Satisfaction in Fuel Sector

Due to their popularity, there are countless studies about job satisfaction and leadership. With this aspect in mind, this study scrutinizes relationships between perceived leadership and job satisfaction in a rather less considered context: fuel sector. The participants of the study are workers of fuel stations, gathered from specific regions of Istanbul. According to results obtained, their job satisfaction depends on four factors; namely task, and social, managerial and institutional aspects. Another result reveals that they perceive their immediate managers as leaders and this perceived leadership is also made of four factors: inspirational, productive and laissez-faire styles, and success orientation. Although perceived leadership is unable to affect job satisfaction completely, there are some partial effects. A look on these partial effects reveals that most items of inspirational and laissez-faire leadership styles are effective on worker’s job satisfaction. While success orientation feature of leadership can affect job satisfaction via one of its items solely, productive leadership style completely fails to affect the mentioned job satisfaction.

Chapter 4 – Migration research and analysis: Growth, reach and recent contributions

Chapter 4 – Migration research and analysis: Growth, reach and recent contributions

ACS Award in Applied Polymer Science: Paula T. Hammond

ACS NEWS ACS Award in Applied Polymer Science: Paula T. Hammond ShareShare onFacebookTwitterWechatLinked InRedditEmail C&EN, 2018, 96 (2), p 41January 8, 2018Cite this:C&EN 96, 2, 41Figure1of1Sponsor: Eastman Chemical Citation:For her work in polymeric electrostatic thin film assembly and its translational application to the fields of electrochemical energy and controlled drug delivery.Current position: David H. Koch Chair Professor of Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Education: B.S., chemical engineering, MIT; M.S., chemical engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology; Ph.D., chemical engineering, MIT Hammond on what gets her creative juices flowing: “I get excited when I hear people speak who work in entirely different fields because that is how I get to learn about challenging problems I didn’t know existed.”What her colleagues say: “Simply put, Paula is not only an absolutely top innovator in polymer science but is also a most generous human being. Her impact as an iconic, inspirational, and compassionate leader in science and engineering cannot be overstated.”—Timothy M. Swager, MIT

Investigating the critical characteristics of an inspirational leader

Digested key messageWhat are the critical components of Inspirational Leadership and Executive Presence? These are two ambiguous concepts that are both hard to define and difficult to achieve within business. There is a wealth of research pertaining to the strengths and characteristics of leaders. However, the distinct qualities exuded by those leaders identified as Inspirational, and what it means to have Executive Presence, remain relatively unexamined.In this research we attempted to identify those qualities and explore the differences in concept of both terms. We also looked at the perceived value of having leaders with these qualities in an organisation. We found that although there are four main qualities of Executive Presence such as Gravitas and Confidence, Inspirational Leadership actually consists of intrapersonal (Emotional) qualities (e.g. Integrity, Vision and Charisma) as well as interpersonal (Social) qualities (e.g. Inspiring and Engaging).

The Art of Revision: How Vera Inber Scripted the Siege and Her Self during World War II

The Art of RevisionHow Vera Inber Scripted the Siege and Her Self during World War II Alexis Peri (bio) “Today marks the completion of the most important year of my life,” Vera Mikhailovna Inber wrote in her diary on 24 August 1942.1 For 12 months, the poet had endured severe hunger, cold, and bombardment in blockaded Leningrad, home to one of the longest and deadliest sieges in modern history. Between September 1941 and January 1944, German and Finnish troops encircled Leningrad, cut it off from supply lines, and attempted to bombard and starve its residents into surrender. As many as 700,000 civilians perished from the starvation and hypothermia they suffered during the 1941–42 winter, when most received little more than 125 grams of bread a day. Although rations and evacuations increased in the spring of 1942, malnutrition and enemy fire persisted, and the blockade took over a million lives before it was lifted in 1944.2 Inber was undernourished and exhausted, and her husband near death. Yet, as she went on to explain in that August entry, 1941–42 was also an important year because it catapulted her career as a writer. “My dreams have come true!” she exclaimed.3 However, when Inber prepared her [End Page 143] diary for publication in 1944, she reduced this jubilant entry to a one-line observation: “I have been here for a year.”4 Professionally at least, Inber was in the right place at the right time inside besieged Leningrad. For the first time in her career, the 51-year-old achieved tremendous acclaim from readers, colleagues, and party leaders. Although she questioned whether she and her husband could survive a second siege winter, Inber refused to evacuate. “How strange it sounds, but things are good for me in Leningrad,” she wrote in May 1942.5 She reaffirmed her decision not to leave that autumn: “for me, this would be complicated and even more simply—bad.”6 She also cut these statements from the published diary. For her to have admitted that “Leningrad is good for me” when millions were suffering would have been an act of sacrilege against the hallowed myth of the blockade, a narrative she helped create.7 Through her wartime compositions, Inber became a principal author of what the historian Lisa Kirschenbaum called the myth of the siege of Leningrad.8 This narrative frames the blockade primarily as an epic battle between the barbaric fascists and the steadfast defenders of Soviet civilization who withstood the enemy’s assault by virtue of their heroic sacrifices, inspirational leaders, and commitment to socialism. Kirschenbaum’s pioneering research identifies the major tropes and phases that came to define this myth or masterplot.9 Below, I offer a detailed examination of the personal, literary, and political forces driving Inber’s contribution to it. By comparing published and unpublished editions of her principal wartime works, the [End Page 144] poem Pulkovo Meridian (Pulkovskii meridian) and the diary Almost Three Years (Pochti tri goda), I trace how her articulation of the siege story evolved in response to shifting personal, political, and aesthetic circumstances.10 Inber was both a creator and a captive of the blockade myth. I argue that the critical framework for understanding the twists and turns of her wartime writings, of her literary career, and of the siege masterplot more generally is revision. Inber’s writings on the siege were guided by both internal and external factors. First and foremost were her own creativity, ambition, and fear. However, cues from editors, readers, and policy makers as well as the evolving conditions of the blockade also shaped her writings. These elements are deeply interwoven on the pages of her diary and difficult to disentangle. Inber wrote and rewrote Pulkovo Meridian between October 1941 and November 1943, during which time the accepted themes of the blockade myth changed significantly. Drafts of Pulkovo Meridian, along with critiques and edits of it, are preserved in the notebooks of Inber’s unpublished diary.11 As she crafted the poem and tried to get it published, she uncovered tacit guidelines on how to present the siege and herself to readers. In 1944, she revised her diary...

Construct redundancy in leader behaviors: A review and agenda for the future

Leadership remains a popular and heavily researched area in the social sciences. Such popularity has led to a proliferation of new constructs within the leadership domain. Here, we argue that such construct proliferation without pruning is unhealthy and violates the principle of parsimony. Our purpose was to examine construct redundancy via a comprehensive review of task-oriented, relational, passive, and inspirational leader behaviors as well as values-based and moral leadership behaviors. Our findings, as indexed via meta-analytic correlations, reveal that construct redundancy remains problematic for the leadership literature. In addition, many of the values-based and moral behavior models correlated heavily with constructs traditionally examined as outcome variables (e.g., trust, LMX, justice). Implications for future research are discussed in regards to construct redundancy and how to avoid endogeneity bias in primary studies in the leadership literature.

The Growth of Hydrological Understanding: Technologies, Ideas, and Societal Needs Shape the Field

AbstractInspired by the work of Newton, Darwin, and Wegener, this paper tracks the drivers and dynamics that have shaped the growth of hydrological understanding over the last century. On the basis of an interpretation of this history, the paper then speculates about what kind of future is in store for hydrology and how we can better prepare for it. The historical narrative underpinning this analysis indicates that progress in hydrological understanding is brought about by changing societal needs and technological opportunities: new ideas are generated by hydrologists through addressing societal needs with the technologies of their time. We suggest that progress in hydrological understanding over the last century has expressed itself through repeated cycles of euphoria and disenchantment, which have served as stimuli for the progress. The progress, for it to happen, also needed inspirational leaders as well as a supportive scientific community that provided the backdrop to major advances in the field. The paper concludes that, in a similar way to how Newton, Darwin, and Wegener conducted their research, hydrology too can benefit from synthesis activities aimed at “connecting the dots.”

Transformational leadership and individual creativity: the mediating role of intrinsic motivation

Purpose- It is assumed that transformational leadership as an organizational context might have a significant effect on the development of individual creativity capabilities within followers. Further, it is argued that intrinsic motivation mediates the transformational leadership behavior - individual creativity link, which we empirically know little about so far. Methodology- Given hypothesis were investigated by using 304 questionnaires from 61 manufacturing companies operating in Eastern Marmara region. To more vigorously test the proposed model, partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) was employed with SmartPLS 3.0 statistical program. Findings- The findings suggest that transformational leadership is an important tool that enhance individual creativity. The SEM results revealed that transformational leadership is positively associated with individual creativity and the effect of transformational leadership on individual creativity is partially mediated by inspirational motivation, which means both of our hypothesis are supported. Conclusion- According to the findings, transformational leaders provide their followers’ with recognition, provide a vision towards future; they act as role models and promote followers’ commitment. They encourage the followers to take risks, increase their energy to generate novel ideas and solutions. As a result, followers with increased self-confidence become more inspired motivated and creative. Additionally, these followers, through the way that their leaders behave them, are inspired and motivated to be more creative in doing their tasks. Partially through inspirational motivation transformational leaders can stimulate the creative capabilities of followers. Finally, this study reveals the fact that the effect of transformational leadership is partially mediated by inspirational mediation.