Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of a positive form of leadership, particularly authentic leadership, on ambidexterity, as ambidexterity has shown to improve financial performance. What is less clear, however, is how to create the organisational context towards ambidexterity or balanced exploitative and explorative innovation. This study set out to fill that gap in researching the direct influence of authentic leadership as well as indirect effect through innovation climate on ambidexterity. Design/methodology/approach A quantitative research approach was followed, with an online survey to employees in South African organisations. There were 733 useable questionnaires. Structural equation modelling was used to test proposed hypotheses of direct, indirect and moderation effects. Findings The results revealed that authentic leadership has a significant and positive direct effect on ambidexterity and a significant indirect effect through an innovation climate. Environmental dynamism lessened the regression weight of the relationship between authentic leadership and ambidexterity. Research limitations/implications The data collected were cross-sectional and respondents were South African employees; therefore, caution should be exercised when generalising the results to other organisations in a broader African context. Practical implications Understanding that both authentic leadership and innovation climate are required to significantly influence ambidexterity allows organisations to direct their leadership selection and development. Originality/value The main contribution of this research lies in clarifying the influence of authentic leadership on ambidexterity in the South African context.

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to test the effects of CEO arrogance on key attitudes of a company's top management team (TMT). Design/Method/Approach -An experimental design involving a business simulationis employed to test the effects of a CEO's perceived arrogance and humility on the TMT in a boardroom setting. Findings -The study finds that, as predicted, arrogant CEOs adversely impacts TMT engagement, cohesiveness, collaboration and consensual decision-making. Thus, the higher the level of CEO arrogance, the lower the levels of positive TMT attitudes. The study intriguingly also finds that CEOs who displayed humility also negatively influenced the attitudes of the TMT.Research limitations/implications -The study took place in South Africa, which may limit the generalizability of the findings. The use of a laboratory experiment may affect the ecological validity of the findings.Practical Implications -The results demonstrate that a "Goldilocks" area of neutrality between arrogance and humility should be sought after by CEOs and recruiters of CEOs. If this is impossible, humble CEOs are preferable to arrogant ones.Originality/Value -This paper empirically demonstrates that arrogant leaders negatively impact their TMT followers in a boardroom environment across a number of attitudes that are key to the success of effectively managing a corporation. The study also demonstrates that moderation is desired by followers and that CEOs being perceived as overly humble is almost as bad as being perceived as arrogant.

Purpose: In South Africa women in senior management positions experience social identity dilemmas, necessitating more research into this domain. While research has been conducted into coaching and mentoring of these women, limited scholarly attention has been paid to sponsorship. This paper thus explored the social identity of women at senior management levels as well as sponsorship as a proposed mechanism to develop talented women.Design/methodology/ approach: This qualitative research included two studies using two sample groups, both of which included executive level respondents in corporate organisations.One study focussed on sponsorship; here the 29-strong sample included 14 male and 15 female executives, of whom 15 were White; nine were African and five Indian. The second study, consisting of only African, Coloured and Indian (ACI) women executives (23 interviewees), focussed more broadly on their development path to the C-suite. Findings:A common theme across the two studies was the inclination to give developmental support, in turn, once supported. There were prerequisites in this support-giving, however. For example, 2 sponsors identified criteria that protégés had to meet. Despite evident gender inequality at senior management levels in South Africa, this paper reveals that in the Study 1 sample, gender as well as race were ostensibly irrelevant when choosing a sponsor or who to sponsor. A closer examination revealed a gender-based expectation, embedded in the South African context. Study 2 showed that ACI women above 50 years of age were more inclined to mentor others; even when they themselves were not mentored, some purposefully developed other ACI women. This paper thus suggests age as an important additional diversity dimension in relation to the career development of ACI women towards the C-suite. The findings have implications for the career development of individual ACI women and for organisations in reaching equality. Gender differences with regards to perceptions also revealed that male respondents perceived sponsorship more as task-based actions, whereas female respondents focussed on relational elements. The paper concludes with recommendations on how individual ACI women and organisations can proactively develop talented women.Originality/ value: The paper offers insight into the gendered expectations of sponsors and gendered perceptions around merit in identifying protégés worthy of sponsorship. ACI women's social identity changed when they joined the C-suite to identify more with their roles as executives, and became less associated with their original ACI women group.

Orientation: Beneficiary contact moderates the relationship between authentic leadership and work engagement.Research purpose: The objective of this study was to examine the moderating effect of the breadth, depth and frequency of employee interaction with the beneficiaries of their work on the positive impact of authentic leadership on work engagement.Motivation for the study: Investigating the boundary conditions of the relationship between leaders and followers is vital to enhance the positive effect of leadership. Authentic leadership has not previously been examined with respect to beneficiary contact as a specific situational factor. The researchers therefore set out to ascertain whether beneficiary contact has a strengthening or weakening effect on the impact of authentic leadership on work engagement.Research design, approach and method: The researchers administered the Authentic Leadership Questionnaire (ALQ), the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES-9) and Grant’s scale on Beneficiary Contact.Main findings: The findings showed that beneficiary contact had a weakening effect on the positive relationship between authentic leadership and work engagement.Practical/managerial implications: Ideally, organisations create environments conducive to work engagement in which leadership plays an important role. This study found that one factor in the work environment, namely beneficiary contact, might have an adverse effect on the positive relationship that authentic leadership has on work engagement. Leaders should therefore take organisational contextual realities into account, such as regular, intense interaction of employees with the beneficiaries of their work. This situation could create strain for individual employees, requiring additional organisational support.Contribution/value-add: Organisations need to recognise the impact of beneficiary contact on the relationship between authentic leadership and work engagement. The researchers propose further studies on the influence of contextual variables on the relationship between leaders and followers.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between complexity leadership and contextual ambidexterity as well as the mediating effect of organisational innovation climate in this link. This study is an answer to a call on which leadership approach and mediating factors can meet today’s seemingly contradictory challenges of efficiently managing business demands, while simultaneously searching for new opportunities. Design/methodology/approach The researchers analysed 1,204 usable survey responses from employees of South African organisations. Analysis was in the form of structural equation modelling. Mediation analysis was carried out on estimates of the indirect effect. Findings Results show that complexity leadership was a strong predictor of innovation climate; in turn, innovation climate positively impacts exploratory innovation by 64 per cent; complexity leadership and innovation climate positively affect exploitation by 57 per cent. The innovation climate plays a total mediator role between complexity leadership and exploratory innovation and a partial effect on exploitation. Practical implications This study gives human resource management (HRM) insight into strategically directing leadership recruitment and development towards creating an organisational climate to enhance ambidexterity. HRM must conduct regular climate surveys to ascertain whether current leadership is creating an environment that enables exploratory and exploitative innovation. Originality/value The authors’ contribution includes a theoretical contribution to the emerging field of complexity leadership by offering conceptual as well as empirical evidence of its role in ambidexterity. This study extends previous research in highlighting organisational climate’s mediating role of being open to new ideas to enable exploratory innovation.