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This paper aims to integrate the extant literature on the impact of positive leadership on organisational outcomes within the Australian not-for-profit (NFP) organisations, identifies existing gaps in the literature and proposes a framework capturing feasible pathways for future research on positive leadership in NFP organisations.

This is a systematic review of the existing literature on positive leadership and external/environmental factors and organisational values as applied to Australian NFP organisations mainly based on journal articles.

This paper proposes a plausible conceptual framework postulating how Australian NFP organisations could attain superior performance outcomes when there is a perfect alignment between positive forms of leadership, external/environmental factors and organisational values. We explain the conceptual framework through testable research propositions explaining interrelationships between positive leadership, external/environmental factors, organisational values and organisational performance.

The review focused on two positive forms of leadership (i.e. transformational and servant) and could benefit by including other closely related leadership styles and behaviours (like authentic and ethical leadership). In addition to the positivist paradigm and quantitative approach adopted by this paper, interpretative and critical paradigms and related qualitative approaches may also lend themselves well to exposing pertinent issues and relationships that have not been imagined before in the under-researched NFP sector.

Leaders within NFP organisations need to understand when and how to align positive forms of leadership, external/environmental factors and organisational values to maximise limited resources available to Australian NFP organisations.

This systematic review adds to the limited literature exploring the impact of positive forms of leadership within Australian NFP organisations. The proposed framework offers unique insights into the relationships between positive forms of leadership, external/environmental factors, organisational values and organisational performance.

Drawing on crisis management theory and complexity theory, the purpose of this study is to examine the impact of a prolonged COVID-19 induced lockdown on tourism small and medium enterprise (SME) operators’ well-being.

A mixed methods approach was used, with survey data from 226 SME tourism operators located in Victoria (Australia) and 33 interviews with a cross-representative selection of tourism stakeholders.

The findings of this study show that planned resilience, adaptive resilience, government communication (i.e. Roadmap to Recovery announcement) and revenue status are positively linked to well-being.

The cross-sectional nature of this study is not able to provide evidence of a temporal relationship between exposure and outcome, as both are examined at the same time. This study is restricted to one Australian State and may have limited generalisability.

The findings identify strategies to improve tourism SMEs resilience and their operator well-being. Programs designed to meet the needs of tourism SME owners and enhance access to well-being services, while training for SME tourism operators should focus on improving the diversification potential of the business.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is among the first studies applying crisis management and complexity theories as theoretical lenses to explore the joint effect of organisational resilience and government communication on SME tourism operators’ well-being. The inclusion of communication on SME well-being is an area hitherto unexplored in the tourism literature.

This study draws on the Social Process of Leadership (SPL) to identify the necessary behavioural leadership characteristics for trust-building in virtual crisis environments.

The study employs an in-depth qualitative case-study approach that is embedded in local contexts. Multiple sources of data – organisational documents, in-depth qualitative interviews, observational evidence and field notes – were used in the study. Interviews were informed by a purposeful sampling strategy and were semi-structured. This allowed the interviewer to use prompts to follow up with unanticipated issues raised by participants. Thematic analysis was conducted using NVivo.

Three key themes (related to how leaders nurture trust in virtual and crisis contexts) emerged from the data. These relate to nurturing trust by (1) optimising and providing a clear vision through reconfigured and personalised communication structures; (2) minimising uncertainty, optimising and modelling values-based behaviours and (3) enhancing adaptability and performance.

The study extends the applicability of this theoretical approach to remote workplaces. It also contributes to the literature on crisis leadership by showcasing how leaders’ crisis responses based on SPL help organisations navigate disruptions. Limitations regarding the small sample size and the one case study context exist.

Organisations should invest in leadership and resilience and build strong remote/hybrid working models in preparation for future crises.

Despite the growing popularity of SPL, there is limited work on how leaders implement SPL processes to build and maintain trust in virtual workplaces. Furthermore, SPL has not yet been applied in highly disruptive work contexts, like those created by the pandemic.