Literature Review: Positive Leadership

Running head: LITERATURE REVIEW: POSITIVE LEADERSHIP
Literature Review: Positive Leadership
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1LITERATURE REVIEW: POSITIVE LEADERSHIP
Introduction
In the contemporary global organizational scenario, with increasing integration,
inclusiveness as well as inter-connectedness of the business domains across the globe,
attributing to international phenomena like Globalization, trade liberalisation and
technological innovations, the operational frameworks of the organizations, especially
commercial organizations have developed significantly (Brunetto, Xerri and Nelson 2013).
With the global business scenarios becoming more competitive and dynamic, it has become
immensely crucial for the organizations to incorporate efficiency and increased productivity
as well as higher employee performance so as to stay profitable, prospective and sustainable
in the long run. In this context, factors like authentic leadership, development of employees;
psychological capital and aspects like that of Leader-Member Exchange have been gaining
increasing popularity and importance in the aspects of enhancement of employment
performance and overall organizational development (Muenjoh and McMurray 2016). The
essay, in this context, tries to conduct and extensive review of the existing literatures, present
in these domains, so as to observed the relationships between the aspects of authentic
leadership, leader-member exchange as well as the psychological capital of the employees,
thereby discussion the perceptions and theories present in the aspects of development of
psychological capital for different types of employees. The essay also tries to analyse and
critically review the reasons behind the influences of emotions on the performances of the
employees, as found to be present in different literary and scholarly evidences.
Authentic Leadership
Over the years, with the development of commercial organizational scenario and with
the increasing competitiveness, dynamics and complexities in the domains of operational
framework of the organizations, considerable changes can also be seen to be occurring in the

2LITERATURE REVIEW: POSITIVE LEADERSHIP
aspects of the leadership structures within these organizations, in the global framework. In
this context, Odumeru and Ogbonna (2013), in their research paper, highlights the two broad
types of leadership frameworks currently observable in contemporary organizational
scenario, to be those of transactional and transformational leadership. The authors
differentiate between these two types of leadership patterns in the sense that while
transactional leadership does not intend to change the future and is more focussed to keep the
organizational patterns and activities the same, the transformational leaders are more
interested in stimulating, inspiring and thereby transforming the activities with positive
approaches for achieving extraordinary outcomes.
The above assertions are augmented by McCleskey (2014), who highlight that
transformational leadership is a more proactive form of leadership, where higher ideals and
moral values are instilled among the employees, thereby motivating them and stimulating
their creative and innovative traits, which bring previously non-derived results for the
concerned results. However, neither of the two above mentioned scholarly works discuss
about the sub-categories of leadership styles or traits which exist under the two broad
domains of leaderships and the variations among these sub-groups.
In this context, Wong and Laschinger (2013), highlights one of the leadership styles,
in the contemporary period, with resemblance to the structure and objectives of
transformational leadership, as that of the concept of “Authentic Leadership”. According to
the authors, several common attributes of transformational leadership as well as servant
leadership can also be found in authentic leadership styles, the attributes being positive
morals, self-awareness of the leaders in terms of cognitions, emotions and values as well as
positive modelling on parts of the leaders (Laschinger, Wong and Grau 2012). Although the
research paper of Wong and Laschinger (2013), discusses the resemblance of authentic
leadership structure with that of transformational and servant leaderships, the paper lacks in

3LITERATURE REVIEW: POSITIVE LEADERSHIP
the aspect of providing a comprehensive and appropriate definition of the notion of
“Authentic Leadership”.
Černe, Jaklič and Škerlavaj (2013), define authentic leadership as a new kind of
leadership where the primary emphasis is on the legitimacy of the leaders and on the
construction of honest relationships with their followers, thereby ensuring the presence of
ethical components in the operational frameworks of the organizations as a whole.
Nichols and Erakovich (2013), discusses the Authentic Leadership Model developed
by Bill George, in which the five characteristics of an authentic leader are cited with the help
of an action wheel which is as follows:
Figure 1: Authentic Action Wheel
(Source: Powlus 2018)
As per this model, the attributes of the authentic leaders are: