Introduction: Advancing the Field of Global Leadership

This quotation, which refers to the need for global leaders in all sectors, is even more compelling today in light of current global crises related to environmental sustainability, war, refugees and immigration, income inequality, and pandemics. Fortunately, global leadership research and development are rapidly growing fields that are receiving more attention from researchers, global organizations, and practitioners. Nevertheless, global leadership remains a fertile field for researchers with important unanswered questions.

As shown in Table 1, critical issues and needed refinements still exist in every area of foundational research: construct definition, scope of global leadership tasks and behaviors, competencies, dynamic processes, assessment instruments, global leadership effectiveness, training and development (Osland, Li, & Wang, 2014b). Additionally, three research directions have been suggested to expand the global leadership field: bridging the micro-macro divide in theoretical and empirical work, shifting from a content to process and learning perspectives, and studying the intersection of global leadership and other fields of study (Maznevski, Stahl, & Mendenhall, 2013).