The Impact of Leadership Styles on Organizational Performance

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6463-770-0_54How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Transformational Leadership; Organizational Performance; Contextual Adaptation

Abstract

This article explores the impact of multiple factors on the effectiveness of leadership styles through a comparative analysis of Microsoft's Satya Nadella and WeWork's Adam Neumann. Although both leaders adopted a transformational leadership style, the results were quite different due to background and organizational factors. Satya Nadella successfully utilized cultural change to drive innovation and sustainable growth at Microsoft, transforming the organizational structure and leadership style, which had a positive impact on the company's development. In contrast, Adam Neumann's overly aggressive leadership style at WeWork resulted in rapid expansion, ultimately leading to financial instability and organizational decline, mainly attributed to lack of financial discipline and ethical lapses. The findings highlight that even when the same leadership style is adopted, its effectiveness is affected by contextual adjustments, external environmental factors and organizational culture. The paper concludes that transformational leadership is not generally effective and requires contextual adaptation. Recommendations include matching leadership styles to organizational culture and ensuring ethical governance and cultural fit. The study emphasizes the importance of situational awareness and strategic flexibility in leadership practices.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Li Xu
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/06/26
TI  - The Impact of Leadership Styles on Organizational Performance
BT  - Proceedings of the 2025 3rd International Conference on Digital Economy and Management Science (CDEMS 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 482
EP  - 492
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-770-0_54
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6463-770-0_54
ID  - Xu2025
ER  -