For many organizations, human resources are their greatest asset. Indeed, organizational performance and organizations’ ability to gain a competitive advantage is often critically contingent on the effective management of people. Leadership is a key element in this process. Leaders may motivate employees to excellent performance and mobilise employees for the organization’s mission and vision. Leaders may also be a primary source of conflict and demotivation, however. Understanding how leadership can bring out the best in people as well as where leadership can go wrong therefore is of critical importance to successful organizational functioning.

The mission of the Erasmus Centre for Leadership Studies is to contribute to this understanding through fundamental as well as applied research in leadership. To this end, we conduct field research in collaboration with a variety of organizations as well as experimental research in carefully controlled laboratory environments. This research has allowed us to develop models of effective leadership that highlights leaders’ role as influencing agents and motivators of followers, and that emphasise such aspects of leadership as leaders’ vision, servant leadership, team leadership, and leaders’ ability to represent the shared identity of the team or organization. Researchers at the Erasmus Centre for Leadership Studies are keen to apply these models to help organizations resolve leadership issues and increase organizations’ understanding of the role of leadership in their effective functioning, and invite interested organizations to contact us.