Societal impact leadership behavior: conceptualization, measure development and validation

Purpose While earlier research has conceptualized various leadership styles such as transformational, transactional, servant, authentic and ethical, for example, as well as their implications at the workplace, relatively lesser is known regarding the role of a leader in society. Focusing on the leader’s societal impact, we conceptualize and develop a set of measurement for Societal Impact Leadership Scale (SILS). Design/methodology/approach We adopted a multiphase process grounded in Hinkin’s (1998) psychometric framework to conceptualize and develop the Societal Impact Leadership Scale (SILS). For empirical validation, data were collected from organizations within the public sector in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The scale development process involved initial item generation, item reduction accompanied by reliability analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and assessments of both convergent and discriminant validity. Findings We develop a Societal Impact Leadership Scale (SILS) having a consistent unidimensional structure. By harmonizing with better-known leadership paradigms such as transformational, servant and ethical leadership, the validity of SILS is established. Originality/value Research ignores the societal impact of leadership and hence there is little or no conceptualization of the proposed construct. By offering such, we propose a number of theoretical and practical implications vis-à-vis the societal impact of the leaders.