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Prior research has established that culturally adapted leadership is associated with positive outcomes for organizations as well as for leaders and followers. However, the adaptation of leadership styles to national culture is under pressure mainly due to the professionalization of leadership grounded in a formal knowledge base that is predominantly derived from research in Anglo-American cultural settings and performed by Anglo-American leadership researchers. In this paper, we argue that the forces leading to a drift away from cultural adaptation are partly counteracted by three mechanisms tying leaders to the cultural context in which they operate. This theoretical perspective allows us to understand better observed leadership in a national setting as equilibrium between cultural forces and institutional forces grounded in culturally biased formal research and leadership education based on this research. To illustrate the added value of this perspective, we develop some specific propositions concerning the three mechanisms and their relative strengths under a variety of cultural conditions.

PurposeWith the transition into a knowledge economy, the concept of leading knowledge workers (KWs) has gained an increasing amount of attention in organisational studies and among practitioners. The emerging literature on the leadership of KW addresses an important phenomenon, but theoretical underpinnings and empirical inquiry into leadership effectiveness in a KW context do not agree on a common conceptualisation of KWs. Thus, a concerted research effort seems warranted.Design/methodology/approachThe purpose of this study is to take stock of the existing literature on the leadership of KW. Based on a critical literature review, this paper provides a timely synthesis of the diffuse literature and identifies research gaps facing the leadership of KW field.FindingsThis paper suggests that the literature to date is deficient in terms of theory and evidence for how KWs are different from other classes of workers and argues that this deficiency stands in the way of developing ideas about how KWs could be effectively led.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper extends a discussion on establishing "KW" as a clear, independent construct and how the nomological network in which KW is situated (i.e. leadership antecedents, and workplace outcomes) may be elucidated, extended and researched.Originality/valueThis paper extends beyond the identified research gaps and findings to present an agenda for future research. Specifically, we propose that insights from research in educational psychology should be used as a platform for theorising about how to lead in a KW context.

Purpose: This paper details an experimental study (n=197) that explores how different types of managerial change justifications affect employees' reactions. The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of managerial justification of a controversial decision in referential terms, ideological terms or a combination of the two. Design/methodology/approach: A randomized controlled experiment was used applying case-based video clips to ensure vividness and realism in the experimental manipulation. Findings: The results show that referential justification caused a drop in the perceived trustworthiness of management, such that it reduced employees' perceptions of the manager's integrity. The effect was most pronounced in participants having elevated levels of dispositional resistance to change. The drop in perceived integrity was indirectly associated with reduced intention to support the change together with adverse affective and cognitive reactions to change. Originality/value: A robust test of different change justifications in a randomized, controlled setting, which also highlights the psychological mechanisms through which referential change justifications reduce follower trust. This result should help managers more readily understand the components of successful communication in organizational change.

Mindfulness has recently attracted a great deal of interest in the field of management. However, even though mindfulness - broadly viewed as a state of active awareness - has been described mainly at the individual level, it may also have important effects at aggregated levels. In this article, we adopt a team-based conceptualization of mindfulness, and develop a framework that represents the powerful effect of team mindfulness on facilitating effective decision-making. We further discuss how a conceptualization of team mindfulness may mitigate the process of false consensus by interacting positively with the following five central team processes: open-mindedness, participation, empowerment, conflict management, and value and ambiguity tolerance. A false consensus constitutes a cognitive bias, leading to the perception of a consensus that does not exist. In essence, we argue that, although a conceptualization of team mindfulness does not guarantee effective decision-making in itself, it may successfully reduce false consensus when coupled with these five team processes. Accordingly, this article contributes to the theory and practice of team decision-making by demonstrating how a conceptualization of team mindfulness can be helpful in the increasingly complex and ambiguous situations faced by contemporary teams.

This paper investigates the relationships between organizational change and trust in management. It is argued that organizational change represents a critical episode for the production and destruction of trust in management. Although trust in management is seen as a semi stable psychological state, changes in organizations make trust issues salient and organizational members attend to and process trust relevant information resulting in a reassessment of their trust in management. The direction and magnitude of change in trust is dependent on a set of change dimensions that reflect trust relevant experiences and information. We distinguish between dimensions related to trust relevant consequences of the change and trust relevant aspects of how the change process is performed. Empirical results indicate that increases in post change emotional stress and the use of referential accounts for justifying change are both negatively related to post change trust in management. The use of ideological accounts and participation were found to be positively related to post change trust in management, so was perceived decision quality. Findings also indicate that the effects of change on trust are negatively moderated by tenure.

Trust has a great potential for furthering our understanding of organizational change and learning. This potential however remains largely untapped. It is argued that two reasons as for why this potential remains unrealized are: (i) A narrow conceptualization of change as implementation and (ii) an emphasis on direct and aggregated effects of individual trust to the exclusion of other effects. It is further suggested that our understanding of the effects of trust on organizational change, should benefit from including effects of trust on the formulation stage. It should also benefit from exploring the structuring effects of trust in organizations. Throughout this chapter, ways to extend current research on trust in organizations are suggested. The chapter also provides examples of relevant contributions where available. In order to capture organizational effects of trust, it is suggested that trust should be studied over longer time intervals, and include several referents of trust, spanning both horizontal and vertical relationships in the organization.

A review of the research literature on participation and organizational commitment during change is conducted. It is argued that the research field as a whole is moving from a rather utopian to a more realistic stance.