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PurposeIn order to achieve sustained competitive advantage through developing human capital, organizations, apart from human resource management practices, concentrate on developing transformational leaders and implementing knowledge management (KM). To take part in their efforts, this paper intends to explore leadership and KM literatures to examine the interrelationship between transformational leadership, KM, and employee‐perceived human capital creation or benefits.Design/methodology/approachA systematic literature review is carried out of traditional and contemporary theoretical and empirical research studies to support the nexus of interrelationship between transformational leadership, KM, and human capital. This review is mainly integrated using a model and propositions that relate transformational leadership and KM with human capital benefits.FindingsTransformational leaders have potential to affect their employees' perceptions of human capital benefits. They also have the greatest potential to augment these benefits through involving them in the KM process, establishing organizational culture, and encouraging communication among employees.Research limitations/implicationsThis model suggests that human resource managers should provide training to managers with regard to developing transformational leadership behavior, since this behavior contributes to human capital creation by which an organization achieves competitive advantage. Furthermore, this study mainly focuses on leaders as transformational leaders, since these leaders are highly capable of stimulating their followers' creativity. Therefore, this study only considered the components described by Bass and Avolio.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to leadership literature by adding the notion of transformational leadership as an antecedent of human capital creation.

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Organizations striving to improve cycle time concentrate on developing long-term relationship with suppliers. In order to support organizational efforts, this study develops a conceptual model that explores the relationships among leadership behaviors, relational commitment and trust, information exchange, and cycle time. Although the supply chain management literature mentions leadership behavior in the context of supply chain, there are no studies that examine the impact of leadership behaviors on cycle time. This study proposes that transformational and transactional leadership behaviors of buyers increase the flow of information to suppliers directly as well as indirectly through relational commitment and trust, and these relationships also influence cycle time. However, it also proposes that the impact of transformational leadership behaviors on relational commitment and trust and information exchange is stronger than the impact of transactional leadership behaviors. Additionally, both uncertain environment and supplier base have potential to play moderation roles in the relationship between transformational leadership and relational commitment and trust and between transformational leadership and information exchange.

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This study focuses on integrating the premises of social capital theory and the theory of organizational learning to improve the operational performance of firms nurturing the buyer-supplier relationship. Social capital theory highlights the importance of developing social relationships between firms to create valuable resources and collectively access critical resources. Organizational learning theory highlights that the learning capacity of an organization strongly depends on top-level leaders' behaviors, organizational structure, culture, and flexibility, and uncertainties in the environment in which the organization functions. Though many studies have focused on the impact of social capital on performance improvements in the buyer-supplier relationship, the interlinkages between social capital and organizational learning have not been given much attention. Based upon these theories, a systemfocused perspective, which showcases the antecedents and outcome of the relationship between collaborative communication and learning, has been proposed in this study. A literature review has been carried out to support the linkages in the proposed conceptual model. Findings suggest that transformational buyers support creating cognitive capital with suppliers. This cognitive capital influences the structural capital, which supports improving the understanding of each party's processes in the buyersupplier relationship when parties have high long-term orientation. Improved learning capability reshapes organizations into flexible systems capable of responding quickly to customer requirements, and consequently, they realize a higher performance level.

Firms striving to achieve and sustain competitive advantage implement supply chain management (SCM) practices. It is reasoned that these practices significantly improve product quality and customer service level and increase market share and return on assets, and as a result, firms’ overall performance has been improved. The role of leadership, particularly transformational leadership, on implementing SCM practices is unexplained in the literature. In this direction, this study reviews literature in the fields of leadership and SCM to collect and systematically organize the findings in relation to the characteristics of transformational leaders and efforts they make to implement SCM practices in pursuit of achieving competitive advantage. This study indicates clearly that transformational leaders significantly contribute for implementing SCM practices. Further, implications for practices and future research are offered.

Purpose – It is widely agreed that top management's leadership behavior is a source for achieving and sustaining competitive advantage. Very few research studies analyzed the prevalence of transformational leadership style in the manufacturing environment, and importantly, the associations between transformational behaviors and manufacturing strategies in connection with flexibility, quality, delivery, and cost are not yet deeply explored in the literature. In this direction, efforts are initiated to explain the relationships between transformational leadership behaviors and manufacturing strategies in this study. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – A systematic literature review was conducted by analyzing all traditional and contemporary research studies in the fields of leadership and operations management in order to examine the link between transformational leadership and manufacturing strategies comprising of flexibility, quality, delivery, and cost strategy. Findings – It was found from the review that top-level leaders exhibit transformational leadership behaviors while implementing manufacturing strategies in their firms. In particular, transformational leaders are capable to transform the production system into flexible system, and in addition, they develop new production processes for manufacturing both new and old products. Such leaders ensure quality in all the levels of production process and support to speed up order delivery process with the help of technology. Finally, they also concentrate on reducing cost growth. Research limitations/implications – This study is bounded by its focus on Bass and Avolio's transformational leadership behaviors and Ward and Duray's manufacturing strategies comprising of flexibility, quality, delivery, and cost strategy. Originality/value – This study shows that transformational leaders, in the manufacturing environment, use manufacturing strategy as a tool to improve operational performance. Thus, they have potential to achieve and sustain competitive advantage through formulation of manufacturing strategy.