The Corporate International [ISSN: 2581-6438 (online)]

Leadership and Skilled Migration in Jamaica: Assessing the Impact of Brain Drain on Institutional Capacity

2026-04-23T10:09:01+00:00

This paper examines the impacts of skilled migration on leadership and institutional capacity in Jamaica, focusing on leadership vacuum, diaspora leadership networks, and leadership succession in the context of sustained outflows of highly skilled professionals. Jamaica’s migration patterns reflect one of the highest rates of skilled migration globally, with significant numbers of tertiary-educated individuals leaving the country over recent decades, which has implications for institutional leadership capabilities. Using a conceptual framework from leadership and human capital theory, the study analyses how such migration disrupts domestic leadership structures while highlighting the potential of diaspora engagement to contribute positively to organisational and national development. Findings suggest that brain drain intensifies leadership gaps within critical sectors such as healthcare and education, but also creates conditions for transnational leadership resources and networks to emerge. Strategic approaches to leadership succession and diaspora engagement are discussed as mechanisms for resilience and continuity. The study concludes with policy recommendations for strengthening leadership development frameworks, enhancing diaspora involvement, and improving national strategies to harness the benefits of skilled migration.

Building the Foundations of Contemporary Leadership: A Critical Analysis of Bernard M. Bass's Intellectual Legacy and Its Influence on Twenty-First-Century Leadership Theory

2026-07-17T08:40:13+00:00

Leadership scholarship has undergone substantial theoretical transformation over the past five decades, with Bernard M. Bass emerging as one of the most influential scholars in redefining how leadership is understood, measured, and applied across organisational contexts. This study critically examines Bass's contribution to the discipline of leadership and evaluates whether his scholarship established the theoretical platform upon which contemporary leadership paradigms have developed. Adopting a critical integrative literature review design, the study synthesises seminal and contemporary peer-reviewed literature published between 1978 and 2026 to assess the intellectual evolution, empirical validation, and continuing relevance of Bass's transformational leadership theory. The review analyses Bass's extension of Burns' conceptualisation of transformational leadership, his development of the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire, and his influence on subsequent leadership theories, including authentic, ethical, servant, adaptive, shared, distributed, inclusive, strategic, digital, sustainable, and responsible leadership. The current findings indicate that Bass fundamentally transformed leadership scholarship by shifting the discipline from predominantly trait-based and behavioural explanations towards empirically measurable relational processes centred on influence, motivation, organisational performance, and follower development. Although contemporary leadership theories have expanded leadership scholarship by incorporating contextual complexity, ethics, technological change, cultural diversity, and sustainability, they continue to draw extensively upon the theoretical assumptions, constructs, and measurement approaches introduced by Bass. This study concludes that Bass's scholarship constitutes one of the principal intellectual foundations of contemporary leadership research while acknowledging that emerging organisational realities require continued theoretical refinement beyond transformational leadership. The present study contributes to leadership scholarship by proposing an integrated conceptual framework that positions Bass's work as the critical bridge between classical leadership theories and contemporary multidimensional leadership paradigms and offers recommendations for future theoretical and empirical research.

Beyond the Race of Leadership: A Comparative Analysis of Historical Legacies, Institutional Quality, Governance, Corruption, State Capacity and Development in Black-Led and Comparative Nations, with Special Reference to Jamaica

2026-09-03T11:32:32+00:00

Considerable differences in economic development, institutional effectiveness, corruption, social welfare, political accountability and governmental responsiveness exist among nations, including countries predominantly governed by political leaders of African descent. Public and political discourse sometimes attributes the comparatively weak developmental performance of many African and Caribbean states to the racial identity of their political leadership. Yet such an explanation remains theoretically problematic cause race is intertwined with colonial history, slavery, institutional inheritance, global economic position and state formation. This study develops a comparative analytical framework to examine whether an apparent relationship between Black political leadership and adverse developmental outcomes persists after accounting for colonial institutional inheritance, state capacity, political accountability, economic structure, resource dependence, inequality, conflict and international economic integration. Jamaica is positioned as a critical Caribbean case and compared conceptually with Black-led states exhibiting different developmental trajectories and with appropriately selected non-Black-led comparator countries possessing relevant historical or socioeconomic similarities. Rather than presupposing racial causation, the study distinguishes leadership identity from leadership quality, institutional constraints, elite incentives and structural conditions, thereby transforming a potentially racialised proposition into a falsifiable institutional-development hypothesis. The study ultimately proposes an Institution-Leadership-Development Transformation Framework and a Mass-Oriented Policy Index through which Jamaica and other historically disadvantaged postcolonial states can evaluate institutional accountability, state capacity, citizen-centred policymaking, productive transformation and sustainable human development.

Money as an Instrument of Leadership: An Examination of Power, Ethical Decision-Making, and Governance in Contemporary Organisations

2026-09-04T07:01:03+00:00

Money is frequently treated as an economic resource, yet it also functions as a powerful instrument of leadership, organisational control, political influence, and social transformation. Leaders determine how financial resources are acquired, distributed, withheld, invested, and monitored, thereby influencing institutional priorities, stakeholder behaviour, employee motivation, and public welfare. This review article examines money as a tool of leadership by integrating perspectives from power theory, resource dependence theory, agency theory, stakeholder theory, ethical leadership, and institutional governance. It argues that financial authority is neither inherently constructive nor inherently corrupting; its effects depend on the values, institutional arrangements, accountability mechanisms, and power relationships governing its use. Financial resources can enable leaders to pursue innovation, social development, organisational resilience, and employee well-being, but they can also facilitate patronage, coercion, corruption, elite capture, and inequality. The contemporary importance of financial leadership is particularly visible in corporate governance, public administration, political systems, non-profit organisations, religious institutions, higher education, digital platforms, and artificial intelligence. The article further demonstrates that transparency alone is insufficient unless stakeholders possess the authority, information, and institutional protection required to challenge financial decisions. Ethical financial leadership requires stewardship, procedural justice, strategic competence, stakeholder participation, independent oversight, and consequences for misconduct. The review concludes that money becomes a legitimate leadership tool when it is governed as a means of advancing collective purposes rather than as an instrument for protecting personal or institutional privilege.

Beyond Human-Centred Leadership Theory: Digital Leadership, Artificial Intelligence and the Governance of Hybrid Human-Machine Organisations

2026-09-24T05:38:08+00:00

Leadership scholarship has developed sophisticated explanations of transformational, transactional, servant, authentic, adaptive, distributed, strategic, and ethical leadership. Yet the accelerating diffusion of artificial intelligence (AI), generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), automation, robotics, algorithmic management, and autonomous systems is altering the technological environment within which leadership occurs. This conceptual study critically examines the contemporary leadership literature and argues that digital leadership should no longer be treated as a peripheral technological extension of conventional leadership. Instead, digital leadership should be conceptualised as an increasingly foundational leadership capability for organisations operating within intelligent, automated, data-intensive, and human-machine environments. Using an integrative and comparative literature-review approach, this paper synthesises classical leadership theories with research on e-leadership, digital transformation, dynamic capabilities, strategic leadership, AI-enabled management, and human-AI collaboration. The current study develops the Digital-Artificial Intelligence Leadership Integration Framework (DAILIF), which conceptualises future leadership through eight interdependent domains: digital vision, technological intelligence, human-AI orchestration, algorithmic judgement, digital ethics and governance, workforce transformation, cyber-resilience, and continuous technological adaptation. Thispaper argues that AI will not simply become another tool available to leaders; it will increasingly participate in analysis, prediction, communication, coordination, evaluation, resource allocation, and organisational decision-making. Leadership, therefore, will progressively involve governing hybrid systems consisting of human workers, intelligent technologies, automated processes, robots, algorithms, and autonomous agents. Comparative analysis indicates that digital leadership requirements differ between advanced and developing economies because technological infrastructure, institutional capacity, digital inequality, organisational resources, and workforce readiness condition AI adoption. The present study concludes that leadership theory must evolve from predominantly human-to-human models towards socio-technical and human-AI models capable of explaining leadership within intelligent organisations beyond 2035.