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This paper reviews literature on interim leadership and management through the lens of effective interim performance. The purpose of this review is to advance understanding of interim assignment performance and the antecedent individual psychological characteristics of effective interim leaders and managers, to improve the practice of managing interim leaders from a human resources (HR) perspective.

The paper reports a targeted review of the literature on interim leadership and management.

The main proposition from this review is that the influence of individual factors on interim performance operates within the stages and contexts of assignments. Accordingly, the authors propose a framework of the demands on interim assignments (the interim assignment cycle), comprising stages of preparation, entry, delivery and exit. The paper subsequently reviews evidence of the potential individual characteristics (focussing on individual differences in personality, leadership approach, motivation and competencies) of effective preparation and entry to an assignment, actions and performance during an assignment and exit/disengagement.

The findings of the review have implications for the selection and placement of interims into organizations and their management once appointed.

The main original contribution of the paper is to provide a framework around which interim assignments can be modelled and better understood. The paper discusses implications for future research, theory and human resource management practice and calls for a renewed research effort in this critical area of management and leadership.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the role of employees’ career management processes and the relationship between human capital and interim leadership role importance.

Responses of 413 Indian manufacturing employees with middle or top‐level management positions and who have worked as interim leaders in their organizations, were used in this study.

The results of a series of hierarchical regression analyses showed that involvement in career management activities plays a mediator role in the relationship between human capital and interim leadership. More specifically, human capital variable age is a deciding factor to accept an interim leadership position in the Indian manufacturing industry.

This study focuses on the impact of employees’ career management process on choosing interim leadership positions. In other words, employees considerably invest on interim leadership positions to achieve career success through exploring the career, focusing on career goals, and implementing career strategy.

It is the first time that the nexus of interim leadership is empirically studied with both human capital and career management concepts. This study adds value to leadership literature since assessing interim leadership performance is one of the criteria for succession planning and has great potential to change organizational hierarchical structure.

Interim leaders often have little advance notice of their new assignments. Yet, they must skillfully lead their organizations, provide stability for staff and continue the direction of the mission and vision in a time of change. In addition, temporary leaders – often termed interim executive directors or interim chief executive officers (CEOs) – are frequently asked to guide the transition for a new and permanent leader.

This qualitative study presents the insights of 24 interim leaders, largely in the Chattanooga, Tennessee (TN) region, who participated in individual virtual interviews and a subsequent virtual focus group to address a protocol of questions concerned with all phases of carrying out the interim position.

The findings confirmed existing literature on how the interim was selected, the responsibilities of this leader and the costs and benefits for the organization of using an interim and extended findings with guidance for interim over their tenure.

The findings uncovered new insights into personal and career growth, along with unexpected personal and professional enrichment and satisfaction from the experience. The practical implications include providing detailed guidelines for interim leaders at each stage of their tenure, which can help them navigate the complexities of their roles more effectively. Additionally, the findings highlight the potential for significant personal and professional growth, offering interim leaders unexpected enrichment and satisfaction from their experiences.

The exploratory research validated the existing literature on interim leadership and added additional detail in practical guidance for beginning an interim position, carrying out the interim position and even ending the position. This study delineates practical guidelines at each stage of the interim lifecycle for both the temporary leader and the organization and provides areas for future research. Qualitative findings also identified key characteristics of an interim leader. This study also includes discussion of the political implications of interim CEOs.

The study presents original insights into the role of interim leaders by combining qualitative data from 24 participants in the Chattanooga, TN region with existing literature, thereby enhancing understanding of the challenges and successes these leaders face. It confirms previous findings regarding interim leadership and provides practical guidelines for navigating the interim lifecycle, highlighting aspects of personal growth and satisfaction that have not been extensively explored in prior research.

The purpose of this study is to carry out a literature review on interim leadership and management focusing on interim assignment performance and the antecedent characteristics of effective interim leaders.

A targeted review of the literature on the literature on interim leadership and management is carried out and reported.

A cycle of interim assignments is proposed consisting of four stages, preparation, entry, delivery and exit. Individual characteristics seen as antecedents of effectiveness are then applied to each of these stages.

The interim assignment cycle proposed in this paper can help to address gaps in the literature and aid the development of methods and tools for selection of interims and management of effectiveness during assignments.

This paper has an original approach in providing a model through which interim assignments can be better understood.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the challenges presented by interim leadership in academic libraries.

The author reviews the literature in this field, and offers his own suggestions for succeeding in an interim capacity.

This paper brings to light the dearth of literature written on this common occurrence.

This paper offers suggestions to those who are serving in an interim leadership role.

Within the literature on moving into library directorships, the track of the internal candidate is largely ignored. The purpose of this paper is to address this gap through description and analysis of the experiences of a successful inside candidate for the position of law library director.

The paper reports a first‐person account of an internal candidate. Accompanying analysis places the narrative into the larger context of relevant literature of personnel and library management.

The internal candidate is suggested to differ from external applicants in several ways. Most significantly, possessing prior knowledge of the library, she can move quickly to address pressing problems, using that initial success to set the new administration on a productive course. Additional issues include the greater psychological toll of having to distance herself from former colleagues to fulfill administrative duties.

Comparatively little consideration of the internal candidate exists in the library literature. This paper fills an identified gap in the literature on personnel and library management, and suggests relevant directions for future works.

The learning objectives of this case study are based on Bloom’s taxonomy. Upon completion of the case study discussion and exercises, successful students will be able to design a leadership transition and succession plan for non-profit organisations; identify and evaluate critical skills and competencies required in leadership positions; and frame expectations and responsibilities for new and departing executives.

Apar Gupta co-founded Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF), a digital rights organisation born out of SaveTheInternet – Net Neutrality movement of 2015, credited for urging the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India to uphold net neutrality in India. And ban zero-cost internet services that promoted data discrimination in the country. After working on and winning the net neutrality movement, Gupta identified many areas in technology where democratic rights had not been identified or were yet to be clearly defined (like in the case of net neutrality). There was also a service gap between the existing internet volunteer groups and digital rights organisations, which could IFF fill. This was to provide objective clarity, stakeholder identification, handle policy discussions and, most importantly, arrange resources to support movements over the long term. This prompted him to co-found IFF in 2017, which he later joined as a full-time executive director in 2018. IFF worked at the intersection of technology, democratic rights and government policies and was comparable to some global organisations, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation in the USA and the Open Rights Group in the UK. Still, none existed in India at the time. After four years as a full-time executive director in 2022, he was convinced that it was finally time for him to act on the pre-defined strategic departure plan and work towards succession for the executive director position. While there were visible gaps in the system, Gupta’s leadership design and plans had helped IFF overcome existential challenges in the past. Also, while digital rights were still at a nascent stage in emerging economies, under Gupta’s leadership, IFF had delivered unmatched value to its beneficiaries in the world’s biggest digital consumer market. However, constant changes in regulations and continuing financial constraints made him nervous about the outcomes of the succession and the overall sustainability of IFF. Gupta wanted to ensure that this phased transition from executive director after two years and then trustee manager after the next four years are carefully communicated to reduce the likelihood of attrition and loss of trust.

Being the co-founder and the first and only executive director IFF had seen, the organisation would also require significant skill and competency mapping to identify the new executive leadership. But with no clear internal successor in sight, the non-profit trust would also need a successor who not only was competent but also would share a passion for the type of work done by IFF, its unique delivery mode, and also would openly inherit its position in society. The other alternative strategic routes present were to look for dual leadership or interim leadership, but then there could be concerns about Gupta’s influence overshadowing any such alternative.

In the case scenario, IFF is planning for succession while navigating the organisation through financial constraints and constant regulatory changes to ensure long- and short-term sustainability.

The case study has been written to gain insights into departure-defined successive planning in non-profit organisations. The case study can also be used to gain insights into innovative start-ups and innovative non-profit start-ups, as digital rights are still at nascent stages in emerging markets. The case study will be valuable for courses such as human resource management, strategic human resource management, social entrepreneurial leadership, leadership development, start-up environment, innovation and entrepreneurship, public policy, development studies, cyber security and information technology. The case study also allows students and young professionals to take the perspective of an innovative start-up founder and design a departure-defined succession plan. The case study can also be useful for senior students wanting to undertake an entrepreneurial career by starting or joining a non-profit organisation. While the case study is suitable for postgraduate- and executive-level courses, it can also be used for conducting entrepreneurial workshops and skill training.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

It is widely agreed that top management's leadership behavior is a source for achieving and sustaining competitive advantage. Very few research studies analyzed the prevalence of transformational leadership style in the manufacturing environment, and importantly, the associations between transformational behaviors and manufacturing strategies in connection with flexibility, quality, delivery, and cost are not yet deeply explored in the literature. In this direction, efforts are initiated to explain the relationships between transformational leadership behaviors and manufacturing strategies in this study. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

A systematic literature review was conducted by analyzing all traditional and contemporary research studies in the fields of leadership and operations management in order to examine the link between transformational leadership and manufacturing strategies comprising of flexibility, quality, delivery, and cost strategy.

It was found from the review that top-level leaders exhibit transformational leadership behaviors while implementing manufacturing strategies in their firms. In particular, transformational leaders are capable to transform the production system into flexible system, and in addition, they develop new production processes for manufacturing both new and old products. Such leaders ensure quality in all the levels of production process and support to speed up order delivery process with the help of technology. Finally, they also concentrate on reducing cost growth.

This study is bounded by its focus on Bass and Avolio's transformational leadership behaviors and Ward and Duray's manufacturing strategies comprising of flexibility, quality, delivery, and cost strategy.

This study shows that transformational leaders, in the manufacturing environment, use manufacturing strategy as a tool to improve operational performance. Thus, they have potential to achieve and sustain competitive advantage through formulation of manufacturing strategy.

Leadership decisions are among the most vexing issues that face an alliance partnership. Permanent leaders imply expectations about their treatment as employees, even after they are no longer an ideal fit. Staffing from among the partners’ human resources assumes that talent is not in short supply and implies a potential favoritism in the operation of the alliance. Interim management offers a unique and superior, albeit not perfect, alternative. Interim leaders may be particularly effective at facilitating an alliance start‐up and when the alliance is to transition from one stage of the organization’s life cycle to the next.

There is no previous systematic and theoretical investigation of the interim CEO succession practice. This research attempts to fill the gap by studying this phenomenon and hence advance executive succession research/practice.

Based on agency theory, the authors propose a model and several propositions to predict what determines the origin of interim CEOs, the length of the interim tenure, and the career prospects for the interim CEO after the interim tenure.

Both firm performance and environmental uncertainty play an important role in the dynamic interim CEO succession process.

The paper provides the foundations for future empirical research on interim CEO succession.

Board members at companies experiencing sudden CEO departures should choose a loyal non‐aggressive veteran to be the interim CEO so as to minimize disruption and to smooth the transition. They should use caution when choosing an internal candidate because if such a candidate is not chosen to be the permanent CEO later, a talent may be lost.

The research is the first to systematically examine the phenomenon of interim CEOs. The authors make a unique contribution to the literature on CEO succession.