The Impact of Top Leaders’ Personalities: The Processes Through Which Organizations Become Reflections of Their Leaders

Abstract

The fascination with leaders and their impacts can be traced to ancient times and continues to this day. Organizations are often viewed as reflections of their leaders’ personalities, yet empirical evidence for this assumption has begun to amass only recently. In this article, we review this literature and trace findings about leaders’ personality traits, values, and motives and about the mechanisms through which these are manifested in their organizations. We specifically elaborate on research linking senior leaders’ values to organizational outcomes (e.g., financial performance, schoolchildren’s values) and demonstrate the mediating role of the organizational culture and climate.