Purpose Recent academic discussion depicts leadership development (LD) as an important tool for supporting the implementation of an organization’s strategy, maintaining ongoing development of the organization, and building capabilities that are essential for the future. However, the role of LD in reality depends to a considerable extent on how human resource (HR) managers and other top managers perceive LD and its importance. In this study, the purpose of this paper is to examine how LD manifests in HR managers’ and other top managers’ views on the future challenges of HRM. Accordingly, the authors reason what the findings indicate concerning the strategic role of LD in managers’ minds. Design/methodology/approach The topic was approached inductively. The qualitative data were collected from 473 Finnish HR managers and 276 other top managers, using a web-based brainstorming tool that adopted ideas from social media platforms. All of the informants are part of the top management team. The material was analysed using content analysis. Findings The findings were a cause for concern. They show that top managers do not very actively consider either leadership or LD when asked to consider the HR challenges of the future. In addition, when they did so, the ideas of LD were mostly traditional and individual-centred. Only a few of the informants connected LD to business needs. The comments mainly reflected ideas of heroic leadership and training. Originality/value The study advances the understanding of the perceptions of LD decision makers in organizations, but also suggests that more research on the topic is needed. In addition, the study shows that more discussion would be required between academics and managers to deepen the common view of the content, potential, and reality of LD.

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PurposeThe purpose of the present study is to examine the general and travel-specific job exhaustion of international business travelers (IBTs). The study employs a JD-R model to explain general and travel-specific job exhaustion (IBTExh) through international business travel as demand and leadership (LMX) as a resource buffering the demands of international business travel.Design/methodology/approachThe study was conducted among Finnish service company employees who had taken at least one international business trip during the previous year. The data (N = 569), collected in 2015, were analyzed with path models.FindingsThe results suggest that a higher number of international business travel days is related to a higher level of job exhaustion, especially the exhaustion related to international business travel. Moreover, a high-quality LMX was found to be linked to lower levels of both types of exhaustion. Interestingly, for those IBTs' with a low-quality LMX, even a high number of long-haul international business travel days was not connected with IBTExhOriginality/valueThe contribution of our study is threefold. First, this study contributes to JD-R theory and the ill-health process by focusing on a job-specific well-being indicator, IBTExh, in addition to general exhaustion. Second, specific job demands related to international business travel, particularly the duration of business travel spent in short-haul and long-haul destinations, contributes to the literature on global mobility. This study sheds light on the potential effects on IBTs of different types of business travel. Third, our study contributes to the leadership literature and the importance of acknowledging the context in which LMX occurs.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to focus on satisfaction with an expatriate job and how such satisfaction is linked to leadership. Specifically, this research examines how two different kinds of distances – physical distance and functional distance – between an expatriate and his/her supervisor are related to satisfaction with the expatriate job. Design/methodology/approach The study was conducted among 290 Finnish expatriates. Moderated hierarchical regression analysis was conducted in order to test the research hypothesis. Findings The results show that low functional distance with a supervisor is related to greater satisfaction with the expatriate job. The physical distance is not directly connected to expatriate job satisfaction, but the common effect of the two types of distance shows that among those whose functional distance is low, working in the same country with the leader is linked to greater expatriate satisfaction than recorded among those who were physically distant. Interestingly, expatriates with high functional distance are more satisfied with the expatriate job if they work in a different country to their supervisor. Originality/value This study makes a contribution in three areas; first, it addresses the understudied phenomena of international work-specific job satisfaction, specifically satisfaction with an expatriate job. Second, it provides new knowledge on the outcomes of leader distance in the context of expatriation, a work situation that is inherently related to changes in physical location and to organizational relationships. Third, it contributes to leadership literature and highlights the importance of the conditions and the context in which leadership occurs.

The study aims to discover the dynamic and processual nature of a supervisory relationship (here a leader–member exchange) through a novel, theoretical concept termed leader–member exchange breach, and by examining the characteristics of negative exchange interactions within the leader–member exchange relationship. The notion of the leader–member exchange breach is empirically defined through data on 336 responses to open-ended questions on negative interactions between leaders and subordinates, analyzed through qualitative analysis methods. The results of the study raise questions about the complexity of leader–member exchange relationships and show that breaches of the leader–member exchange relationship might lead to a reassessment of the dyadic relationship between leaders and their subordinates, spanning or even breaking the exchange relationships. This study extends current knowledge on leader–member exchange relationships by providing a viewpoint on the leader–member exchange breach that helps explain the processual and dynamic nature of those relationships through interpersonal interactions and exchanges.