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Incoming first-year college students (N = 4,292) were surveyed regarding attitudes and beliefs about leadership. Students’ opinions about their leadership ability were high and were related to having an outgoing personality, as well as the number of high school activities in which they had been involved. In addition, students’ understanding of leadership was largely hierarchical and unsophisticated. Gender was strongly related to beliefs about leadership, with males indicating a stronger belief in hierarchical leadership, and females indicating a stronger belief in systemic leadership. The results indicated men and women are most likely to be anchored in Komives et al.’s (2009) Stages 2 and 3 whereas women also show some characteristics of Stage 4. It was argued these results support a modular approach to leadership development in which students acquire credits toward a certificate in leadership and where some components of the training activities involve separating the genders.

With the emergence of a new generation of strong and empowered female student leaders on college campuses, a special type of female leader, the Alpha Female, has developed. This study examines the essence of having an Alpha Female identity for 13 undergraduate women at a Midwestern university. Extensive interviews were conducted; transcripts were generated; emergent themes were derived; horizonalization and cross-case analysis was conducted; and, constant comparative method among the researches was employed. Findings reveal that strong positive antecedent family variables are present. Each participant perceives strong advantages and a positive impact from being an Alpha Female in the collegiate environment. Suggestions for further rich, qualitative investigations and Possible educational interventions and institutional support are offered.

Leadership educators looking to successfully create and implement an interdisciplinary leadership minor can often find themselves overwhelmed and apprehensive. Little exists to help guide our way as we attempt what often is an initial academic beachhead on campus. This paper explores the creation, implementation, and outcomes of a highly-successful leadership minor on a small, private, urban campus. Reflections are offered concerning the difficulties faced in gaining approval of the minor, the problems created if you are too successful, the importance and cost of mentoring, issues of gender and race, the importance of evaluation, and the necessity of constant collaboration. A practical step-by-step guide is offered as a possible exemplar for leadership educators plucky enough to bring a new leadership minor to campus.

Expectations continue to evolve in today’s work environment. An innovative practice between university and industry partners has emerged as a response to these expectations. In this trend, programs prepare college students with essential skills before entering the workforce. One such partnership created a leadership development program for workforce preparation using proven best practices and theories. The 70-20-10 framework, developed by researchers and authors working with the Center for Creative Leadership, blends challenging experiences (70%), coaching/mentoring (20%), and formal training (10%) to strengthen participants’ leadership acumen (Johnson et al., 2018, McCall et al., 1988). Kirkpatrick’s four-level model of training evaluation was adopted to evaluate changes in reaction, learning, behavior, and results. This paper presents an engaged scholarship approach to create and evaluate a leadership development program committed to preparing the next generation.

This paper aims to contend that populism is damaging to both domestic and international politics; not only does it erode liberal democracy in established democracies but also fuels authoritarianism in despotic regimes and aggravates conflicts and crises in international system.

The research is divided into two main sections. First, it examines how populist mobilization affects liberal democracy, and refutes the claims that populism is beneficial and reinforcing to democracy. Second, it attempts to demonstrate how populism is damaging to domestic politics (by undermining liberal democracy and supporting authoritarianism) as well as international relations (by making interstate conflicts more likely to materialize). Theoretically, populism is assumed to be a strategy used by politicians to maximize their interest. Hence, populism is a strategy used by politicians to mobilize constituents using the main features of populist discourse.

The research argues that populism has detrimental consequences on both domestic and international politics; it undermines liberal democracy in democratic countries, upsurges authoritarianism in autocratic regimes and heightens the level of conflict and crises in international politics. Populism can lead to authoritarianism. There is one major undemocratic trait shared by all populist waves around the world, particularly democracies; that is anti-pluralism/anti-institutions. Populist leaders perceive foreign policy as the continuation of domestic politics, because they consider themselves as the only true representatives of the people. Therefore, populist actors abandon any political opposition as necessarily illegitimate, with repercussions on foreign policy.

Some scholars argue that populism reinforces democracy by underpinning its ability to include marginalized sectors of the society and to decrease voter apathy, the research refuted these arguments. Populism is destructive to world democracy; populists are reluctant to embrace the idea of full integration with other nations. Populists reject the idea of open borders, and reckon it an apparent threat to their national security. The research concludes that populists consider maximizing their national interests on the international level by following confrontational policies instead of cooperative ones.

The purpose of this study is to revisit the conventional wisdom about a key contribution [i.e. strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats (SWOT) analysis] in the field of strategic management. The societal context and the role of academics, consultants and executives is taken into account in the emergence of SWOT analysis during the 1960–1980 period as a pivotal development within the broader context of the satisfactory, opportunities, faults, threats (SOFT) approach. The authors report on both the content and the approach, so that other scholars seeking to invigorate indigenous theories and/or underreported strategy practices will thrive.

Applying a historiographic approach, the authors introduce an evidence-based methodology for interpreting historical sources. This methodology incorporates source criticism, triangulation and hermeneutical interpretation, drawing upon insights from robust evidence through three iterative stages.

The underreporting of the SOFT approach/SWOT analysis can be attributed to several factors, including strategy tools being integrated into planning frameworks rather than being published as standalone materials; restricted circulation of crucial long-range planning service/theory and practice of planning reports due to copyright limitations; restricted access to the Stanford Research Institute Planning Library in California; and the enduring popularity of SOFT and SWOT variations, driven in part by their memorable acronyms.

In the spirit of a renaissance in strategic planning research, the authors unveil novel theoretical and social connections in the emergence of SWOT analysis by combining evidence from both theory and practice and delving into previously unexplored areas.

Caution is advised for scholars who examine the discrete time frame of 1960–1980 through mere bibliometric techniques. This study underscores the risks associated with gathering incomplete and/or inaccurate data, emphasizing the importance of triangulating evidence beyond scholarly databases. The paradigm shift of strategic management research due to the advent of large language models poses new challenges and the risk of conserving and perpetuating academic urban legends, myths and lies if training data is not adequately curated.

Corruption has been evidenced as one of the major factors that drive a firm's dynamics and growth. This study examines the relationship between corruption and financing structure decisions of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Vietnam.

The authors use a longitudinal data set from the Vietnam's SME Survey in the period 2007–2013 and adopt the two-stage least squares method to deal with endogeneity.

After controlling for endogeneity and firm heterogeneity, the authors find that, overall, corruption does significantly affect the decisions of financing sources. Given that, corruption increases the use of informal debt and decreases the levels of formal debt, owner's equity and retained earnings.

The findings suggest implications for corruption-combating actions and policies.

Different from previous studies that either provide evidence of government corruption and a firm's capital structure at the country level or focus on corruption and debt only, we deliver a more comprehensive analysis on the nexus between corruption and various financing sources.

A topic currently receiving significant academic and practitioner attention is called evidence-based management. The purpose of this paper is to suggest that this approach is sometimes over-sold and may be a fad. Additionally, evidence-based management fails to fully recognize the importance of tacit knowledge, what Kahneman calls system 1. Evidence-based management does provide tools to better use what Kahneman calls system 2, rationality. Decision-makers need to take advantage of both rational and beyond rational processes.

This is an essay, it is not a report of a study. At this point in time, this paper needs thinking, reflection, pondering, more than a data-based study.

Advocates promote evidence-based management in part to help avoid fads, yet evidence-based management itself has many of the characteristics of a fad. Evidence-based management is based on an objective rational view of the world and suggests highly rational methods of decision-making. However, a rational fact-based might not give sufficient credit to instinct and feelings. Decision-makers should take into account facts, evidence, when making decisions, but not ignore intuition, hunches and feelings. This study is learning that decisions use a galaxy of approaches, with both cognitive and affective flexibility.

As with any opinion-based paper, this lacks empirical support. Proponents ask us to believe in evidence-based management. Neither we, the authors of this paper, nor the proponents of evidence-based management can empirically support the ideas offered. An additional limitation is that the paper is written in one language, English. Translation into another language might yield different meanings.

There are advantages for scholars and practitioners to look at the best available evidence. There can be disadvantages in overlooking non-quantifiable factors.

Those who use evidence-based management should also take into account feelings, ethics, aesthetics, creativity, for the betterment of society. To solve wicked problems one needs more than facts and rational analysis.

The overwhelming majority of those writing about evidence-based management are supporters. This study offers a different view. This paper brings new ideas and new thinking to both the extensive fad literature and the huge evidence-based management literature. Evidence-based management is discussed widely. Google Scholar lists more than two million papers in 2019, 2020 and 2021 on evidence-based management. Readers of this journal should critically evaluate this popular set of ideas.

This paper offers a critical review of climate change related initiatives in small island states, including Small Island Developing States (SIDS), which can end up as ontological traps: fuelled and supported by external donor agencies, thwarting out-migration and shifting scarce and finite resources away from other, shorter-term and locally spawned development trajectories and objectives.

This paper is based on a selective literature review. It clusters important themes found in published research and policy documents.

The results identify a burgeoning critical voice in regards to resilience and its legitimation of climate change driven projects in SIDS. This paper recommends a more nuanced approach which also privileges migration.

This paper provided a critical overview and synthesis of the immobility implicit in much climate change related work, through the critical lens of island studies and post-colonial studies.