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The purpose of this article is to review what influences leaders' behaviours and why leaders behave in certain ways and not in other ways. Using a range of job characteristics such as the different leadership styles utilised in conducting various tasks and the leaders' age and gender for example, and employing a binomial logit analysis on a survey data, this research focuses on a range of possible influences on leadership behaviours.

To investigate the influences on leadership behaviour, a questionnaire was constructed with leadership behaviour, leadership style, job satisfaction and some demographic questions. The population for the study comprised employees from various sizes of UK companies from a wide range of industries. The questionnaire was administered mainly, but not only, to managers and leaders in the Key British Enterprises.

The paper found that a number of the leadership style dimensions and other explanatory variables were significantly related with some of the individual leadership behaviour types. For example, intellectual stimulation was positively and significantly related to delegative leadership which is a characteristic of creative organisations that have confidence in the abilities of its workforce. However, it does not find a direct gender effect on leadership behaviour.

Collecting data from over 400 managers from a wide range of industries in the UK and reviewing the relevant literature on influences on leadership behaviour, the study found among other things, that delegative leadership style is significantly related to all the four transformational leadership factors. Delegative leadership is therefore judged to be a very popular leadership style that many managers practice in their organisations while consultative and participative leadership styles remain the least favourite and directive leadership style lies in‐between in a scheme of widespread application within organisations.

A variety of organisational leaders, workers, managers and academics had previously been classified on the basis of characteristics of their jobs including how they spent their time. This study investigated the extent to which managers from various UK industries could be meaningfully grouped on the basis of the leadership styles and behaviour patterns which they exhibited in the performance of their jobs.

Names of the potential respondents were randomly obtained from leaders and managers working in the UK key British enterprises. This comprised a variety of organisations and industries, namely: manufacturing, financial services, utilities, IT\telecommunications, public sector and others. A total number of 409 managers completed and returned usable questionnaires giving a response rate of 28.4 per cent. A cluster analysis methodology was used to group the respondents into three distinct units.

The managers were grouped into three categories: practical leaders (group 1), unity leaders (group 2) and uncaring leaders (group 3). Attention then focused on the distinctive styles and behaviour of the practical, unity and uncaring leaders who formed 12, 69 and 19 per cent of the managers, respectively.

The naming of the groups should not be allowed to give the impression that there was complete uniformity within each category. Furthermore, absolute statements about the effectiveness of the groups cannot be made with certainty; effectiveness of each group is relative.

Organisations can examine their managers and determine to which group they belong. For example, it was found in this study that practical and unity leaders formed 81 per cent of the managers in UK organisations. Since the major characteristics of the styles and behaviour profiles of uncaring leaders (19 per cent) were also identified, attention by organisational leaders should focus on suggestions aimed at making these managers more effective in the performance of their jobs.

This paper aims to account for the direct effect of ethical leadership on the sustainability of agro-allied firms and the moderating effect of environmental dynamism on ethical leadership–organisational sustainability relation.

A total of 215 managers participated in the survey, which covered agro-allied firms from the 6 geo-political zones of the country, Nigeria. Partial least square structural equation model was conducted with the aid of SmartPLSv3.

The result confirms that ethical leadership positively affects the sustainability of firms in the agro-allied sector and also supports that environmental dynamism strengthens the relation between ethical leadership and sustainability of firms.

The study advances ethical leadership literature through a nuanced examination of its relevance in the agricultural sector, while also validating the integrative social contract theory as a theoretical lens used in exploring the relationship. The specific focus on “ethical” leadership and a specific sector of the economy – agro allied firms is a new ground by not just looking at leadership but the ethical consideration part in relation to a specific industry where competition is a key driver to management/leadership performance.