Effective small and medium enterprise (SME) leadership demands creative solutions to ensure organisations survive and thrive during the turbulent times that COVID-19 continues to bring. This paper explores how SME leaders (in micro and small organisations) prioritise and access the skills and development needed to provide effective and sustainable leadership to organisations, focusing on the role of resilience and the benefits it provides. Participants were selected through purposive and snowballing sampling. Online surveys and semi-structured interviews were conducted and provided qualitative data that contributes to an understanding of the role of resilience and the view of participants as to what is needed to effectively respond to a dynamic environment. Evidence shows that SME leaders prioritise learning and development opportunities that provide demonstrable benefits throughout the organisation. Building business resilience remains a fuzzy concept; however, viewing resilience as a multi-level construct offers benefits when designing and delivering development opportunities. It has been found that networking, partnerships, and relationship building promote resilience and may offer a solution to how to embed resilience building into development opportunities that SME leaders value and wish to engage with. This article contributes by illustrating and exploring leadership development within SMEs during a period of unexpected and untested uncertainty. The pandemic caused major shock waves within business communities, and SMEs were significantly affected. The research is limited in that it is expected to be a once-in-a lifetime event, and as such conditions may not be replicable, learning opportunities for other ‘shock’ events are possible. The findings of this paper have relevance to practice in that, while the event may be one-off, shocks to the business environment are not.

The study of authoritarian leadership has undergone significant development, with researchers exploring its different dimensions and consequences. This leadership style, characterized by a top-down approach and centralized decision-making authority, has been extensively examined in psychology, organizational behavior, and management literature. Scholars have delved into the effects of authoritarian leadership on various aspects of organizations such as employee satisfaction, motivation levels, productivity rates, turnover rates, and team dynamics. The research landscape surrounding authoritarian leadership has witnessed a recent surge in interest as scholars strive to understand its intricate connections with different variables. The primary objective of this study is to conduct a comprehensive bibliometric analysis on authoritarian leadership, aiming to identify the key research areas, influential authors, prominent journals in the field, and citation patterns. To our knowledge, no bibliometric analysis on authoritarian leadership can be found in the Scopus database, highlighting the novelty of our research. Through a source-based examination of scholarly articles and their citations pertaining to authoritarian leadership, this analysis offers valuable insights into the current state of research in this domain. By focusing on publications from the past decade onwards, we aim to uncover trends and potential gaps within existing literature while also providing guidance for future research endeavors. Our research findings will provide valuable insights into the phenomenon of authoritarian leadership, contributing to a deeper understanding of its implications. By delving into this topic, we hope to pave the way for future studies and investigations in this field that can build upon our findings and expand knowledge even further.

This study is aimed at exploring the degree of association between workforce diversity dimensions and the academic performance of four universities in Ethiopia. The diversity management attributes were diversity, climate, values, and organizational justice; identity, schemas, and communication adapted to the contexts of higher education institutions. The universities were selected purposively, and stratified and systematic sampling techniques were further used to identify respondents. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected to achieve the purpose of the study. Correlation and regression analyses were used to analyze the data. Results from correlation analysis revealed that there are statistically significant positive relations between the dimensions of workforce diversity and academic performance. This implies that the organizational performance of higher education institutions can be significantly influenced by existing diversity. The freedom to express one’s own identity in the university workforce landscape was also observed to be limited in the universities studied, and this has to be improved. A democratic work environment is critical for the productivity of the staff, and an effort has to be geared towards the goal of creating such an environment. The regression analysis indicated that diversity, climate, organizational justice, identity, schema, and communication have statistically significant effects on the academic performance of higher educational institutions in Ethiopia. Finally, academic leaders are advised to apply the transformational leadership style, as it moderates the relationship between diversity management and academic performance.

Leadership is one of the important factors that ensured organizational achievement. Servant leadership offers a unique point of view on leadership which developed around the idea of service to subordinates. The implementation of servant leadership can lead to various positive outcomes, including increased engagement, organizational citizenship behavior, and improved performance. However, engagement and organizational citizenship behavior can serve as mediators to enhance organizational performance even further. The present study aimed to explore a prediction model of servant leadership using mediating variables such as employee engagement and organizational citizenship behavior, with employee performance as the outcome. The sampling method used was purposive sampling. This study used a structural equation model analysis approach to determine the predicted model of servant leadership. The research showed that the role of mediating variables indicated that employee engagement and organizational citizenship behavior had a positive effect in mediating the relationship between servant leadership and employee performance. The study indicated that applying servant leadership, with employee engagement, and organizational citizenship behavior as mediating variables would have an impact on better results of employee performance.

In the current digital era, digital communication has a profound impact on the construction of product brands and affects the organizational performance of enterprises; thus, digital communication has become a power that cannot be ignored to improve the organizational performance of enterprises. This study demonstrated three hypotheses based on previous research and used a questionnaire survey to collect first-hand data from distributors of a China’s leading domestic down coat brand (named BRAND A in this study), and then studied and analyzed the relationships among digital integrated and interactive brand communication (DIIBC), brand value, and organizational performance through SEM analysis methods. The results showed that DIIBC had an indirect negative significant positive effect on organizational performance through brand value, while it had a highly significant direct positive effect on the organizational performance of this brand in China’s domestic down coat industry, and DIIBC’s final function on organizational performance was highly significant positive.

Under the concept of independent maintenance proposed by the Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) for operational equipment, a thorough analysis of its management processes is necessary. Leadership involvement at various levels can affect maintenance outcomes, impacting sustainability. This research creates a thinking model that connects responsible leadership (RL) with sustainable performance (SP) through agile organization (AO) mediation and maintenance management implementation (MMI) in the management of leading operations equipment. The method used was a survey of 366 respondents who were BMKG employees, and explanatory analysis was analyzed based on descriptive statistical analysis using SmartPLS. The research results show that the third hypothesis proposed is acceptable, and the two mediator variables are partial mediation. The discussion of the study results shows some theoretical and practical implications for achieving the goals of SP, where organizations should encourage RL behavior that can implement current practices regarding AO and MMI. The test results show that AO and MMI have a significant role as mediators in encouraging the influence of RL on SP. This study is the first step in examining the relationship of RL to SP using AO and MMI mediation. Furthermore, this model can be developed and analyzed in other sectors or fields to increase knowledge.