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In this era of rapid technological advancement, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has emerged as a crucial factor in reshaping organisational dynamics, notably in the realm of leadership. This systematic literature review (SLR) aims to investigate the emerging relationship between AI and leadership, focussing on defining AI-powered leadership, identifying prevalent themes, exploring challenges, and uncovering research gaps within the relevant literature.

A sample of 73 papers was chosen after carefully applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria to 1,387 research articles that were initially sought. Using the methodological framework presented by Denyer and Tranfield (2009), our study adopted a four-step procedure to obtain insights from the corpus of literature. The papers were analysed by employing content and thematic analysis to address four key questions.

The review explores various definitions of AI-powered leadership proposed in the literature based on real-world situations. The study further synthesises significant themes in the existing literature, such as the past, present and future of AI and AI in various facets of organisational leadership, transitional management, and urban management. The review revealed a range of key challenges in AI-powered leadership, including ethical dilemmas, complications in human-AI interactions, hurdles in AI implementation within leadership contexts, and long-term risks associated with AI integration. In addition, this study identified areas within AI-powered leadership research that require further investigation by revealing significant research gaps in the papers.

By adopting a comprehensive approach, this research advances understanding of the complex relationship between AI and leadership dynamics, thus facilitating comprehension of the current body of knowledge and enabling future scholarly investigations in the AI-powered leadership domain.

The purpose of this study is to understand how leaders of entrepreneurial small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Australia and Pakistan strategise and design their organisational environments to enable innovation and enhanced organisational performance.

Drawing from the resource-based view (RBV) theory, this study investigates the mediating role of workplace innovation between design leadership and organisational performance across entrepreneurial SMEs in Australia and Pakistan. Data were obtained from 367 top-level executives in Australia and 367 from Pakistan using paper-based and online surveys.

The results highlight significant cross-country differences, indicating that entrepreneurial SMEs in Pakistan tend to overlook the creation of an enabling work environment favourable for innovation, which reduces the positive impact on organisational performance. In contrast, Australian SMEs exhibit a stronger alignment between innovation and performance outcomes.

The study makes a theoretical contribution by extending RBV theory within the contexts of design leadership, workplace innovation and SME performance, particularly in comparative international settings.

The findings offer actionable strategies for SME leaders, particularly in developing economies, highlighting the significance of encouraging internal abilities such as a conducive innovation culture. This could model strategic development and training schemes designed to achieve sustainable competitive advantage through improved organisational performance.

This study uniquely reveals the differential mediating effect of workplace innovation on the design leadership–performance nexus in developed versus developing countries. The absence of significant mediation in Pakistan stresses the distinct entrepreneurial underlying forces and challenges faced by SMEs in developing economies.