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To be a young manager is to deviate from the norm, because youth and management are perceived as contradictory social positions. Thus, young managers are positioned as nonprototypical, which poses challenges to gaining acceptance and claiming the managerial identity. In this multicase interview study, we show how available social prototypes of management and self-to-prototype comparisons are important as young managers approach the identity work process. We conducted interviews (N = 38) and workshops (N = 6) in three businesssectors with young and senior managers, subordinates, and those performing support functions. Based on an analysis of these interviews and workshops, we developed a theoretical model illustrating how young managers use implicit theories of leadership (ILT) to reduce the incongruity between internal self-conceptions and external prototypes of management as a benchmark toward managerial identity, revealing three main approaches to identity work. Young managers approach age-based drawbacks by acting based on noncontextualized ILTs, making adjustments in relation to available prototypes, and by making self-to-prototype insights. Our findings augment the identity work theory by providing an age perspective on this process and highlight the importance of future research engaging in depth with age as a sociodemographic factor in relation to the managerial role.

While the role of the organizational context in enabling leadership behaviours has attracted increasing research attention, the role of leaders’ age in this dynamic has been overlooked. Using transformational leadership theory (Bass, 1985) and Oc’s framework of context (2018), we examine how aspects of the task, social, physical, and temporal context shape leadership behaviour from a lifespan perspective. A random sample of young leaders and their older colleagues was surveyed (n = 847). Multiple group structural equation modelling was used to test the study hypotheses. Results indicated that the task context, in terms of role clarity, was a stronger predictor of transformational leadership among young leaders than it was among their older colleagues. Social, physical, and temporal contexts did not differ in their effect on the leaders’ ability to exhibit transformational leadership. Our findings suggest that organizations can facilitate young leaders’ role clarity to support their development of constructive (i.e. transformational) leadership behaviours. In addition, our study demonstrates that leadership research benefits from a lifespan perspective to facilitate a better understanding of how leaders’ age influences the emergence of leadership behaviour.

This study explores leadership in public sector automation, considering how contextual characteristics in two Swedish municipalities interact with the evolution of leadership. Through qualitative analysis of semistructured interviews with leaders and employees in elder care, we examine leadership skills and behaviors understood as crucial for implementing medicine robots. Grounded in reflexive thematic analyses, we present six themes: (1) Tech openness, (2) Optimism toward change, (3) Collaborative coordination, (4) Training and support, (5) Instrumental understanding, and (6) Operational feedback. The main findings illustrate how leadership skills, including cultivating optimism, engaging with technology and fostering collaboration, were considered essential. While proactive leadership was limited, knowledgeable and supportive leadership was apparent. Behaviors understood as supportive included communicating purpose and providing timely education. Leadership is vital in automation implementations, requiring skills to address complexities of human–technology interaction and balancing enthusiasm for automation with strategic foresight and deep understanding of the public sector context.

Background: Destructive leadership has been linked to negative consequences for both organizations and followers. Research has also shown that leader gender affects follower perceptions of leadership behavior and follower outcomes [1,2,3]. However, knowledge is limited as to whether this also applies to destructive leadership [4]. This study aims to combine gendered organization theory with destructive leadership research to investigate the role that gender plays in the relation between destructive leadership behavior and follower outcomes.

Methods: The data were collected in collaboration with Statistic Sweden. It is a representative sample from the working population in Sweden. We used a two-wave survey design and included 1,121 participants in the analysis.

Results: The results from structural equation models indicated that destructive leadership has negative consequences for follower burnout, job satisfaction, and turnover intention 6 months later. The results also showed that followers reported a greater intention to leave the organization if the leader was the same gender and used destructive leadership.

Conclusions: Our study contributes to destructive leadership research by showing that the gender of both the leader and follower matters for the relation between destructive leadership behavior and follower outcomes. Additionally, our study makes a theoretical contribution by integrating a gender research perspective into destructive leadership research.

The purpose of the present study was to identify the paths through which leaders' pretraining motivation and work environment lead to the transfer of leadership training. Building on self-determination theory and the Baldwin and Ford transfer model, we examined the role of leaders' autonomous and controlled motivation and the opportunity to use trained skills back at work on transfer quantity and effectiveness. Surveys were sent to municipality leaders (n = 20) and their employees (n = 323) before and after a leadership training programme aimed at increasing need support. Coincidence analysis (CNA) identified two alternative paths that lead to transfer quantity (i.e., trying new skills after training), either through controlled motivation or a combination of frequent interactions with employees while simultaneously having a large group of employees to practice on. Transfer quality, the improvement in need support, was achieved only through a combination of autonomous motivation and frequent interactions with employees. Our study demonstrates the usefulness of an interactionist approach to study how combinations of individual and work environment factors lead to training transfer. In addition, CNA enables us to identify different paths to transfer, which sheds light on the different routes that can help leaders try new behaviours and skills after they attend leadership training.

Demographic changes and the high pace of technological development are placing new demands on leaders in social care. These leaders must play key roles in efforts to ensure that advances in automation, particularly the use of robots and artificial intelligence (AI), benefit social care clients, employees, and society at large. In this chapter, we outline central leadership challenges and the roles that leaders in social care will need to assume as automation is integrated into employees’ work procedures. We explore the utility of the ‘implementation leadership’ concept for addressing needs to align leadership at all levels, and specific issues connected to first-line managers’ behaviours related to implementation of automation in social care. We also highlight the importance of leadership development and basic technical literacy for managers and students in social care to enhance their capabilities to address challenges associated with the implementation of automation.

Although the organizational context has been identified as an important factor contributing to the success or failure of leadership training initiatives, exploration of the interaction between differing contextual perceptions in relation to the transfer of leadership training is lacking. Building on Oc’s framework on context and leadership, we examine how the degree of perceptual alignment of leader and teams on two contextual factors, formalization and employee orientation, were related to followers’ ratings of transformational leadership after a leadership training in the forest industry (n = 37 leaders). Polynomial regression with response surface analysis revealed that agreement between leaders and their teams on formalization and employee orientation predicted improvements in transformational leadership but only up to a certain point. At high levels of formalization agreement negatively impacted leaders’ development of transformational leadership, and at high levels of employee orientation the positive impact of agreement flattened out. Leaders who rated formalization and employee orientation higher than their teams increased their transformational leadership to a lesser extent as rated by their followers. Our findings extend the framework developed by Oc and offer a new perspective on the complex interplay between leader, follower, and contextual factors that all matter for successful leadership training transfer.

Automation of work tasks presents both opportunities and challenges for social workers, whose roles are heavily reliant on human interaction and emotional engagement. In this study we investigated motivational implications of automation in the social services sector through the lens of self-determination theory. Using data from a large-scale survey of 6309 social workers in Sweden, we examined differences in work motivation, job satisfaction, and turnover intentions between those working with and without automation. Automation was associated with lower levels of self-determined motivation and job satisfaction, and higher turnover intentions. Mediation analyses revealed that automation negatively predicted job satisfaction and positively predicted turnover intentions through self-determined motivation. Although automation may enhance efficiency and alleviate administrative burdens, its current implementation seems to undermine social workers’ self-determined motivation. Our findings underscore the importance of designing automation that supports employees’ self-determined motivation, and we offer practical recommendations for implementing automation while supporting social workers’ motivation.

Destructive leadership does not occur in a vacuum; rather, these behaviors are part of a social process in which leader and follower interact and influence each other. Still, knowledge regarding followers’ behaviors as antecedents to destructive leadership behavior is limited, even more so from a gender perspective. In this study, we investigate the relationship between perceived lack of team motivation and destructive leadership behavior, with the leader’s gender as a moderator. Together with Statistic Sweden, we collected data using a two-wave survey design. We included 784 participants in the analysis, using structural equation modeling (SEM). The results showed that perceived lack of team motivation was associated with active and passive destructive leadership behaviors. Beyond that, the leader’s gender moderated the relationship between leaders’ perception of team amotivation and active destructive leadership. The results show that male leaders are more prone to act destructively when they perceive a lack of team motivation. These results suggest that male leaders may be more susceptible to engaging in destructive leadership behaviors due to identity threat than female leaders. Therefore, we examine how the construction of gender and identity and the close association between masculinity and leader identity contribute to the risk of engaging in destructive leadership behavior.

Purpose: This study aims to investigate how leaders’ perceptions of two organizational change characteristics, the frequency of organizational change and involvement in change planning, influence their role clarity and laissez-faire leadership behaviors.

Design/methodology/approach: A total of 767 leaders in Sweden participated by responding to a questionnaire at two time points.

Findings: The frequency of organizational change was negatively related to leaders’ role clarity. Furthermore, the frequency of organizational change was indirectly and positively related to leaders’ laissez-faire leadership through role clarity. In contrast, involvement in change planning is positively related to leaders’ role clarity and indirectly and negatively related to laissez-faire leadership through role clarity.

Practical implications: Overall, our results suggest that helping leaders manage the strain triggered by frequent organizational change and actively involving them in the planning process can improve role clarity and thereby reduce the likelihood of laissez-faire leadership behaviors.

Originality/value: The findings of this study highlight the importance of considering organizational change characteristics when examining leaders’ role clarity and, indirectly, their leadership behaviors. This is particularly relevant for understanding why leaders may disengage from role-related responsibilities in the context of organizational change.