Advances in Organizational Leadership

Perspectives from African Scholars

Abstract

Organizations today are operating in an environment that is more complex, interconnected and uncertain. Technological disruption, changing expectations of employees and stakeholders, demographic shifts, climate and sustainability pressures, public accountability, geopolitical uncertainty and the growing demand for ethical and responsible business are reshaping what organizations must accomplish and, consequently, what leadership within organizations must become (Rashed et al., 2025; Zu, 2023). The leadership question is therefore no longer simply Who is the leader? or What does the leader do? It is increasingly about how leadership is distributed, how collective action is mobilized, how organizations adapt, how decisions create value for multiple stakeholders, and how leadership remains credible and legitimate in changing contexts. This shift has significant implications for organizational leadership scholarship and practice. Most leadership approaches often concentrated attention on the individual leader: the leader's traits, behaviours, competencies, style, charisma or capacity to influence followers (Bakker et al., 2023; Meirinhos, 2023). These perspectives have generated important insights and remain relevant. Yet contemporary organizations increasingly operate as complex systems in which outcomes are rarely attributable to one individual alone. Leadership can emerge through interactions among people, teams, structures, technologies, institutions and external stakeholders. Complexity leadership scholarship, for example, conceptualizes leadership as a dynamic and interactive process capable of generating learning, innovation and adaptation within complex organizational systems (Enang et al., 2025; EspejoPereda et al., 2025). Similarly, research on organizational effectiveness demonstrates that leadership operates through multiple mechanisms, including adaptation, efficiency, human capital and coordinated organizational action, rather than through the actions of a single heroic executive (Park et al., 2025; Sott & Bender, 2025). It is within this dynamic organizational landscape that this e-book, Advances in Organizational Leadership, is situated.