The five leadership articles you should read in 2025
Learn how to cultivate ‘conflict intelligence’ and what research is telling us about leadership best practice, with this reading list from our Associate Dean of Executive Degree Programs.
The way we do business is constantly changing, so what does it take to be a good leader in 2025? This reading list from Associate Professor Andrea North-Samardzic will get you up to speed with the latest thinking on leadership.
Associate Professor North-Samardzic is our Associate Dean of Executive Degree Programs and an accomplished, education and research executive, known for leading transformation and growth in MBA programs and Executive Education portfolios.
Her selection includes a digestible mix of academic and practitioner articles. The piece by the Harvard Business Review may require a subscription or purchase to read.
Why conflict intelligence is a crucial trait for good leaders
The Conflict Intelligent Leader
Peter T. Coleman
Harvard Business Review
Volume 103, Issue 4, July/August 2025
In today’s turbulent world, Professor Peter T. Coleman argues there is a new crucial leadership competency, conflict intelligence (CIQ). He argues that while conflict in the workplace is increasing due to societal polarisation, leaders with high CIQ can transform disputes into opportunities for growth and innovation.
The good news is that it can be cultivated. Even better news is that constructive conflict within an organisation is essential. If you don’t have constructive conflict, it means that people are not comfortable sharing dissenting views. However, destructive conflict also exists, and leaders need to be confident navigating all types of conflict.
Professor Coleman outlines four core competencies necessary for high CIQ and elaborates on seven principles for effectively managing conflict, drawing examples from both diplomacy and business.
Ultimately, developing conflict intelligence is no longer optional but a fundamental requirement for effective leadership.
How effective leadership can add value
The value of leadership: Evidence from a large-scale field experiment
Florian Englmaier, Stefan Grimm, Dominik Grothe, David Schindler & Simeon Schudy
The Leadership Quarterly
Volume 36, Issue 3, May 2025
This article highlights an important point about leadership and people-focused initiatives: we need to do better at capturing value.
For this piece, Englmaier and colleagues conducted a study that revealed some interesting findings on the relationship between leadership and team performance.
Firstly, they found that leadership is a valuable asset and the presence of a leader significantly improves team performance. Secondly, teams that chose their leader and did so quickly, performed better at tasks. Finally, the presence of a leader increased information acquisition, problem-solving and general team organisation.
This translates to some very helpful recommendations for practice. For example, asking teams with flat hierarchies to choose a leader will enhance performance.
The value of leadership can often be hard to measure, but that is where researchers can lend their expertise.
A new, dynamic approach to leadership
Shared leadership – vertical leadership dynamics in teams
Dan van Knippenberg, Craig L. Pearce & Wendy P. van Ginkel
Organizational Psychology Review
Volume 15, Issue 1, October 2024
Dan van Knippenberg and colleagues propose a new approach to leadership that recognises the dynamic interplay between formally assigned leadership (vertical leadership) and collective team leadership (shared leadership).
The authors argue that these two types of leadership are not mutually exclusive; they actually influence each other and grow together over time. The theory outlines how vertical leadership helps build and support shared leadership within the team, by fostering understanding and guiding behaviour, and outside the team through boundary-spanning activities. This highlights a shift from fixed models to a more flexible, dynamic view of team leadership.
To translate this into effective leadership practice, they suggest we have ongoing discussions about shared leadership with our team, and how we might put it into action. For example, guide them in building shared knowledge by encouraging them to learn about each other's skills, or engage them in discussions about team objectives to create buy-in and operational clarity.
For formally assigned leaders, they suggest adopting a coaching approach. This might be asking questions that encourage the team to think about who is best to lead on a specific issue, giving tips to help them evaluate situations, or advising on how to ensure balanced leadership transitions and avoid dominance by a few members.
Practical leadership recommendations, backed by research
The evolution of leadership: Past insights, present trends, and future directions<
Robert C. Liden, Xing Wang & Yue Wang
Journal of Business Research
Volume 186, January 2025
This article is for anyone who isn’t a leadership researcher and wants to practice more evidence-based leadership.
Robert Liden and his colleagues provide a comprehensive overview of leadership research and theories over time. This doesn’t mean that the article lacks practical relevance. In fact, you can take away several recommendations to improve your leadership effectiveness such as understanding how to effectively leverage both positional power (formal authority) and personal power (derived from traits like expertise or charisma), or utilising advanced technologies more readily into your leadership practice to increase effectiveness.
The authors also advocate for being mindful of personal well-being as even positive leadership behaviours can be personally costly, leading to psychological strain and even turnover intentions.
They raise an important point about leaders' personal lives and experiences outside of work influencing their leadership outcomes and styles, highlighting that support from family members is a key factor in influencing positive behaviour at work.
Can leaders prevent white-collar crime?
Why individuals commit professional misconduct and what leaders can do to prevent it
William S. Harvey, Navdeep Arora, Graeme Currie and Dimitrios Spyridonidis
California Management Review
Volume 67, Issue 3, May 2025
Engaging in professional conduct is something we want to believe we aren’t incapable of, something inherently driven by a personality trait we don’t possess. But what if there were factors beyond the individual that were at play?
The lead author of this article is Melbourne Business School’s own Professor Will Harvey. The research explores the complex reasons behind professional misconduct, moving beyond the simplistic "greed" explanation.
Drawing insights from interviews with 70 white-collar inmates in a U.S. Federal Prison, the authors introduce "flawed intuition" as a key concept. They define this as muddled logic influenced by individual behavioural triggers, organisational context, and the broader industry environment.
Ultimately, they argue that misconduct is a systemic issue requiring multi-level preventative measures from individuals, organizations, and industries, rather than relying on punitive measures alone.
“It’s not just a case of ‘the bad apple’ but often ‘the bad barrel’, and sometimes even ‘the bad cellar’”, they say.
The great thing about this piece of research is that it contains recommendations for what we can do address misconduct in our own backyards. These include understanding the needs of individuals and providing support and development for their health and well-being, especially when consistent patterns of stress and irregular behaviour are apparent.
And rather than relying on controlling for professional misconduct, we should instead, proactively focus on acknowledging and rewarding sound decisions and calling out unethical behaviours.
