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This conceptual paper aims to explore the leadership of Korean middle managers in a cross-cultural context.

This paper presents three propositions in relation to perceived charisma, individualized consideration and inspirational communication of Korean transformational leadership at home and overseas, especially in comparison with Anglo-Saxon countries such as North America and the UK.

Following the notion of implicit theory of leadership, this paper argues that the effectiveness of Korean leadership may depend on cultural dimensions such as collectivism/individualism and power distance.

In this paper, the perspective of transformational leadership with its universal appeal to various cultures in examining the effectiveness of Korean leadership at home and overseas has been adapted.

This illustration of the Korean leadership in a cross-cultural context sheds light on the challenges facing the Korean management in global contexts.

Despite significant ongoing investment abroad by Korean conglomerates, relatively little has been written on Korean leadership in cross-cultural contexts. This paper could stimulate further studies in this area.

The purpose of this paper is to paper investigates whether different perceptions exist with regard to diversity management within an organisation. Additionally, if such differences exist, what contextual factors influence these perceptions?

The approach of this study is based on inductive and interpretative case research, which aims to compare diverse perceptions in two different organisational units of a company. For this purpose, 30 semi-structured interviews were conducted.

The findings in this paper highlight the importance of contexts in the study of diversity management. That is, contexts such as workforce composition and power (e.g. organisational status) in an organisation as well as the social environment’s impact on social identity processes, which results in discrepant focusses on and recognition of diversity management within the same organisation.

This study contributes to research on a more nuanced approach to diversity by proposing an importance of contexts for the process of social identity and further perceptual discrepancy.

Qualitative research on and findings about perceptual discrepancy help to close the gap between the practice and rhetoric of diversity management.

Departing from extant empirical research on diversity at the workplace, which relies predominantly on quantitative methods, a qualitative design of this study allows a refinement of previous findings. Also, this paper provides deeper insight into the sense-making process, resulting in different diversity perceptions by different employees according to their work and social environments or contexts.

This paper aims to examine how leaders’ avoidance influences followers’ attitudes and well-being in China. Although conflict avoidance is one of the most commonly used conflict resolution styles in China, there has surprisingly been no explicit investigation of the effects of leaders’ avoidance.

Data were collected from 245 subordinates in three large companies in the People’s Republic of China through an online survey. Multiple regression analysis was adopted to test three sets of competing hypotheses.

Leaders’ avoidance behavior is positively related to followers’ perception of justice, supervisory trust and emotional well-being in Chinese organizations.

This paper joins growing attempts to consider conflict management in the context of leadership. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to examine empirically the relationships between a team leader’s avoidance behavior and his or her subordinates’ perceptions of justice, supervisory trust and emotional well-being in a single study. The findings are provoking by illustrating positive effect of leader’s conflict avoidance behavior in China. This paper supports that conflict avoidance could be a sustainable rather than one-off strategy by a leader, and that identifying conditions (e.g. culture) that affect the outcomes of conflict avoidance is important.

The purpose of this paper is to present a case study of the multilevel factors that influence the way in which an organization approaches ethnic diversity management in France. Syed and Özbilgin’s (2009) relational framework was adopted to understand and contextualize ethnic diversity management in a car manufacturing company in France.

In total, 37 semi-structured in-depth interviews with employees of different hierarchical levels in a French organization have been conducted and analyzed using the Gioia method.

The findings show that the lack of clear laws and the universal citizenship model on macro-level coupled with the gendered industry and superficial engagement with ethnic diversity on meso-level overlooks the difficult situation of ethnic minorities in the workplace, especially women. However, the findings also stress that it is on individual level that resilience and agency can be expressed, which means that despite the perceived barriers on societal and organizational level, ethnic minorities are motivated to improve the way they are treated in organizations.

Ethnic minorities are an understudied dimension of diversity management in organizations. The findings underscore the importance of the intersection of ethnicity and gender as this affects the career development possibilities and daily work experience of ethnic minority women.

Korean organizations’ attempts to transplant home management practices directly to their overseas operations have not been received positively by foreign staff; the application of hierarchical Confucianist management principles has led to high reliance on expatriates in Korean overseas operations and failed integration with both local staff and local markets in host country. In this conceptual chapter, we examine the significance of strong informal social ties (based on the unique social psychology of jeong, woori and nunchi) as cultural control in the Korean workplace and develop this as a novel explanation for Korean management discomfort in overseas settings. Promotion of weak social ties with local staff is suggested as more appropriate for achieving goals of exploring local expertise and knowledge.

The dominant view of laissez-faire leadership has so far been avoidant or regarded as zero leadership. Consequently, it has been suggested that laissez-faire leadership is likely to lead to negative consequences in subordinates’ performance and attitudes. The purpose of this paper is to argue that this conventional view is biased from the start as it is burdened with the concept that laissez-faire leadership is non-strategic and therefore implies negative consequences. This paper further argues that to be able to unveil the real outcomes of laissez-faire leadership, focus should shift to the behavioral aspect of laissez-faire leadership, or non-involvement of a leader/leadership.

This conceptual presentation and presented propositions could stimulate the examination of laissez-faire leadership in more balanced ways.

Shifted focus to the behavioral aspect of laissez-faire leadership, or non-involvement of a leader/leadership allows this paper to explore possible positive outcomes, especially with consideration with dynamics of time. While extant studies about laissez-faire leadership have been partial to negative consequences, this paper explores different contexts in which laissez-faire leadership could be positive.

This paper is one of the first attempts to tease out possible outcomes of laissez-faire leadership, which could be not just negative, by adapting the behavioral aspect of non-involvement of a leader.

Avoidance becomes the default management style for dealing with cross‐cultural conflict in overseas Korean organizations rather than a collaborative style. We argue in this conceptual paper, this is due to the absence of personalized informal social ties that are utilized in domestic Korean organizations to progress information sharing and conflict resolution, and to the absence of a structured and transparent conflict resolution mechanism understood and accepted by both Korean managers and overseas workers.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the effects of emotion as outcomes of cognition, in turn influencing levels of information system (IS) usage at work. In doing so, the author presents set of propositions illustrating an integrated model by adapting both cognitive and affects aspects to explain continuance of IS usage.

This conceptual paper explains the importance of cognitive judgement to IS usage via emotional lenses. Based on literature covering the concepts of technology adaptation theory, emotions, as well as the theoretical foundations in cognitive appraisal, the author has examined the relationship between cognition and IS usage with mediating emotion.

Propositions based on literature review of cognition and emotions in IS research are presented for further empirical study. The author argues that by connecting cognitive judgement and emotional reactions on IS, both ease of use and usefulness should be considered in designing IS as to how these may generate positive or negative emotions.

As the success of IS depends on the users’ continued use of the system, an integrated model adapting both cognitive and affects aspects will be better equipped to explain continuance of IS usage.

Good IS design could influence not only the effectiveness of IS but also the emotional well-being of employees.

This is one of the first studies to consider together the impact of the cognitive and affective processes leading to IS continuance in one model. This is one of the first studies in which one single model is used to consider together the impact of the cognitive and affective processes leading to IS continuance. Thus, the author contributes to IS continuance literature as well as employees’ well-being literatures given how IS is embedded in today’s working organization. The author also believes the model will stimulate more comprehensive understanding of IS continuance as IS users are considered as human beings with both cognition and emotions.

The first section of this volume deals with leadership qualities in the global environment. In particular, we are pleased to have scholars share their leading-edge research in terms of the following leadership characteristics and qualities: personality, competency, the ability to scan environment in search of useful information, the ability to anticipate and manage errors, and integrity and ethical leadership.