Journal of Advanced Research in Leadership

Autonomy with Clear Boundaries Stimulates Innovation Energy of Employees

2025-09-14T11:14:21+00:00

In the current era of rapid global tensions and transformations, organisations increasingly recognise that bottom-up innovation is essential for sustaining effective innovation processes. While research on Innovative Work Behaviour (IWB) has grown, limited attention has been paid to the necessary delimitation of autonomy to stimulate IWB in conjunction with the strategic direction of an organisation. This study addresses this gap by examining how personal and contextual factors shape IWB within organisational settings. Employees who engage in IWB function as key agents of change, aligning innovative efforts with organisational strategy through problem recognition, idea generation, idea promotion, and idea realisation. Their contributions are influenced by individual attributes—such as creativity, psychological empowerment, and optimism—together with enabling factors including perceived autonomy, external collaboration, innovative teamwork, and supportive leadership. Yet organisations face continuous risks of obsolescence, driven by expanding knowledge and volatile market demands that require new products and services. Within this context, innovative and conservative employee groups coexist; when conservative orientations prevail, stagnation and decline become more likely. To explore these dynamics, we conducted semi-structured interviews with twenty-seven managers and seventy employees, complemented by five focus groups with seventeen employees across diverse departments in three profit and nonprofit organisations. Findings highlight perceived autonomy as a central facilitator of IWB but also emphasise the necessity of clearly defined boundaries. Without constraints—such as deadlines, regulatory frameworks, organisational procedures, or system requirements—innovation risks becoming unfocused, ambiguous, or misaligned with strategic priorities. This study contributes by demonstrating that innovation outcomes are most successful when top and middle management ensure close alignment between organisational strategy and innovation objectives. Such strategic coherence reduces the risk of employee disillusionment, ensuring that innovative initiatives are not developed in isolation but embedded within the organisation.

Artificial Intelligence as a Leader: A Systematic Literature Review of the Status Quo and Future Challenges

2025-09-14T04:13:49+00:00

The digital transformation is fundamentally changing traditional leadership processes. In particular, the deployment of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in leadership roles presents organizations with new psychological and organizational challenges. This paper conducts a systematic literature review to examine the current state of research concerning AI as a leader, identifies existing research gaps, and discusses future fields of action. The findings reveal that empirical evidence regarding the perception and acceptance of AI-supported leadership is scarce, especially from a psychological perspective. This underscores a significant need for research on how to effectively design human-AI interaction within leadership contexts.

Managers’ Leadership Styles and the role of Contextual Factors in the Workplace in the Indian IT Sector: A Qualitative Study

2025-08-27T13:46:43+00:00

An exploratory study was conducted to understand the use of emotional leadership styles by managers employed in the Indian IT sector along with identification of workplace contextual factors that influence the use of leadership styles. The six emotional leadership styles are classified as resonant (visionary, coaching, affiliative, democratic) and dissonant (pacesetting, coercive). Theories state that these leadership styles are effective in various situations and should be used interchangeably. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect data from 13 managers managing a team of minimum 2 employees working in multinational companies and start-ups under the Indian IT sector. The initial set of participants were recruited by sharing information of this study with personal networks and social media. They referred potential participants based on primary requirements of managers. Hence, sampling techniques employed were convenience and snowball sampling. Data was analysed using inductive thematic analysis and revealed two themes and seven subthemes. The first theme of ‘Synchronized use of Emotional Leadership Styles’ discussed participants’ use of five emotional leadership styles simultaneously rather than individually. The majority of participants employed characteristics of two leadership styles in a situation while interacting with subordinates. The second theme of ‘Influence of Team, Organisation and Client on Selection of Leadership Style’ revealed workplace contextual factors that are considered by managers while choosing appropriate leadership approaches. The workplace factors included team characteristics such as work experience and employment types, organisational policies and changing client demands. The implications of this study were for managers, learning and HR departments of the Indian IT sector to tailor and enhance their leadership development programs.

Transformational Leadership in the Era of Digital Transformation

2025-10-06T05:00:52+00:00

Digital transformation is reshaping organizations worldwide by altering business models, operations, and customer engagement; it creates opportunities in efficiency, data-driven decision-making, and innovation, but also introduces challenges such as skill gaps, resistance to change, and cybersecurity risks. This study integrates Transformational Leadership Theory, Dynamic Capabilities Theory, and Strategic Agility to examine how leadership enables and sustains digital transformation, with a focus on how the core behaviors of transformational leadership; idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration; foster adaptability and innovation. The analysis finds that transformational leaders bridge the gap between technological potential and human capability: they accelerate digital adoption, promote continuous learning, encourage innovation, and build organizational resilience, allowing firms to navigate rapid technological and market change. The study concludes that transformational leadership is a critical enabler of successful digital transformation; theoretically, it links leadership and digital transformation scholarship, and practically, it offers guidance for developing leadership competencies that strengthen employee capabilities, support innovation, and drive agile strategic responses in digitally dynamic environments.