Chair of Leadership, Networks, and Organizations

Our mission at the Chair of Leadership, Networks, and Organizations is to foster exceptional leadership and empower dynamic networks through cutting-edge knowledge and transformative training. We are dedicated to enhancing organizational excellence while weaving sustainability and happiness into the fabric of our pursuits. The disrupted, fragmented world generates new organizational challenges for leaders. Leadership and management in such a world necessitate new mindsets and new tools – leaders need to be able to recognize, energize and leverage networks within their organization and ecosystem to respond to these challenges successfully.

Contact

Our team

Our research

About us

At the Chair of Leadership, Networks and Organizations at WHU Campus Düsseldorf we research, educate and train in new forms of leadership that are more suitable for the rapidly changing world. We aspire to better understand how gender, political skills, charisma, networks, and time interact as they enhance or hinder leadership.

Our work has received multiple international awards and has been published in leading journals, including the Journal of Applied Psychology, Organizational Research Methods, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Human Resource Management, Social Psychological and Personality Science, and The Leadership Quarterly.

By adopting an academic-practitioner focus, our work provides theoretical guidance, training, and consulting to SMBs, governments, and large corporations at the intersection of networks, leadership, and power.

Our team

Professor Yuval Kalish

Chairholder

yuval.kalish(at)whu.edu

+49 (0) 211 44709 360

Learn more

Shelley Steinhorst

Personal Assistant

shelley.steinhorst(at)whu.edu

+49 (0) 211 44709 852

Kim Scheller

Research Assistant/Doctoral Candidate

kim.scheller(at)whu.edu

+49 (0) 211 44709 362

Roi Shir Dishon

Research Assistant/Doctoral Candidate

roi.dishon(at)whu.edu

+49 (0) 211 44709 363

Chau Truong

Student Assistant

chau.truong(at)whu.edu

+49 (0) 211 44709 852

Research

Our research aims to better understand the interconnectedness of the world. It examines how individual attributes such as personality, attractiveness, gender, and stress influence, and are influenced by, the dynamics of friendship and leadership networks.

Using field data, surveys, case studies, and lab experiments (as well as integrating sociological and psychological theories) our research provides answers to a range of questions such as what are the antecedents and consequences of leadership and followership emergence over time, how being political interacts with communication style and personal attributes in leader effectiveness, and how forming various types of relationships and being embedded in different types of network configurations influences effectiveness and well-being.

We aim to create an inclusive, inquisitive research group that provides innovative, interdisciplinary research at the intersection of psychology, sociology, and leadership studies.

Our research focus:

Charismatic leadership, gender, time, and distance

With this research, we seek to understand how charisma influences followers by examining how gender, attractiveness, distance, and time interact with leaders’ communication patterns.

Network brokerage, network accuracy, political skills, and (emergent) leadership

Here, we seek to understand how certain personality traits, communication styles, and network astuteness interact in allowing individuals to emerge as leaders and to maintain their position.

Relationship types, network positions, and (psychological) outcomes

We define relationships to understand how different relational configurations are conducive to – or hinder – psychological wellbeing, growth, and the exercise of leadership.