A Bibliometric Review of Positive Leadership Styles

Abstract

In the last twenty-five years, leadership approaches to defining ideal leadership behaviors have shown that positive attitudes are emphasized in leadership. These leadership models, which focus on trust, justice, employee well-being, psychological capital, and the transformation of organizational culture, are gathered under the umbrella of positive leadership. The purpose of this study is to bibliometrically analyze the studies on positive leadership styles in the literature, to identify the trends of positive leadership styles and to present a general evaluation for the field of practiceIt is based on the bibliometric data of publications on positive leadership. The number of publications, first published in 1982 in the Web of Science database, was reduced to 257, which was reached as a result of certain filters. Of these publications to date, 36 were published in 2022, 31 in 2021, and 25 in 2020. It was determined that the most cited authors were Fred Luthans (675), William Bommer (501), James Dulebohn (501), Julia Hoch (501), Dongyuan Wu (501), and Carolyn Youssef-Morgan (449). In terms of research fields, publications were made in the fields of management (84), applied psychology (34), business (29), and nursing (22). It has been determined that the leadership in the distribution of publications by country are the USA (69), Australia (28) and England (24) publishers. When we look at the most frequently used keywords in the publications about positive leadership, leadership has 49 repetitions, positive leadership has 35 repetitions, authentic leadership has 19 repetitions, and transformational leadership has 14 repetitions.