Leadership Across Contexts: Empirical Investigations into Individual, Organizational and National Leadership Phenomena

Leadership, as a research domain, continues to evolve in response to the increasingly complex demands of organisations operating in diverse global environments. As the challenges of sustainability, organisational adaptability, and cultural diversity intensify, leadership has transitioned from being perceived as an individual attribute to a contextually nuanced, multifaceted phenomenon (Fischer & Sitkin, 2023). Scholars like Denis, Langley, & Sergi (2012) have advanced the notion of “leadership in the plural,” emphasizing that leadership should be understood as a collective, contextually embedded activity rather than a singular, top-down process. This change in thinking reflects the growing recognition that leadership is profoundly influenced by the social, cultural, and organisational contexts in which it occurs (Fairhurst & Grant, 2010). Although substantial research has been conducted on various leadership models, including transformational (Bass, 1994), ethical (Brown & Treviño, 2006) and authentic leadership (Avolio & Gardner, 2005), there is a lack of understanding regarding how leadership is adapted and enacted in specific contexts, such as individual, organisational, and national settings. This dissertation seeks to bridge this gap by presenting three empirical studies that investigate leadership phenomena in different contextual environments.