An article on causal effects in leadership research has appeared in The Leadership Quarterly

The article “Are the effects of servant leadership only spurious? The state of research on the causal effects of servant leadership, recommendations, and an illustrative experiment” by Annika Schowalter and Judith Volmer has been published in The Leadership Quarterly. The paper forms a part of Annika Schowalter’s dissertation and will appear in a special issue on the use of questionnaires in research (“Beyond the ritualized use of questionnaires: Toward a science of actual behaviors and psychological states”). The focus of the work is the investigation of causal effects in leadership research.

The study comprises two systematic reviews, which investigate the current state of research regarding causal effects in the field of servant and authentic leadership. Recommendations for improvement are derived on how causally identified studies can be conducted. In addition, the work demonstrates these recommendations with a randomized experiment to investigate leadership behaviors and by applying instrumental variable regression to investigate perceptions of leadership.

The article gives valuable impetus to the design of future studies in leadership research.

The article is available at the following address: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1i1RP3kWknyeYc