Personal branding has become an important concept in management literature in recent years. Yet, with more than 100 scholarly papers published on the concept to date, it has developed into a fragmented area of research with a diversity of definitions and conceptual boundaries. This paper posits that this heterogeneity of extant research impedes theoretical and empirical advancement. To strengthen the foundation for future work, we review the extant literature and offer an integrative model of personal branding. Through our systematic literature (...) review we identify the key attributes of the construct, establish its clarity by comparing it with similar concepts in its nomological network, and suggest the definitions of personal branding and personal brand based on the reviewed literature. Further, we propose a theoretical model of personal branding summarizing the findings from the reviewed papers. The proposed model outlines the trends conducive to personal branding, as well as its drivers, processes, and outcomes. Finally, we discuss ethical implications of personal branding for both scholarly work and practice. In conclusion, we outline a further research agenda for studying personal branding as a critical career and organizational behavior activity in contemporary working environment. (shrink)

This paper examines how employees’ career aspirations benefit organizations, i.e., contribute to strengthening organizational capabilities and connections, by means of two aspects of contemporary work: proactive and relational. Data were collected from alumni of a public university in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in two waves with a one-year time lag. The results showed that employees with career aspirations strengthen: a) organizational capabilities; and b) organizational connections through their instrumental and psychosocial relationships. Interestingly, although employees’ career aspirations were positively associated with taking (...) charge, we did not find that taking charge mediates the relationship between career aspirations and employees’ individual contributions to organizational capabilities. This study is the first to examine how individual career aspirations benefit organizations, and it discusses the results in light of their novel contributions to theory and practice. (shrink)

The number of traumatic events that occur worldwide is increasing, yet the literature pays little attention to their implications for leader development. This paper calls for a consideration of how collective trauma such as genocides and the Holocaust can shape the cognition of leaders who are second- and third-generation descendants. Drawing on research on the transgenerational transmission of collective trauma, social learning, social identity and psychodynamic theories, we identify three mechanisms through which collective trauma can be transmitted to leaders: cultural (...) artifacts, community events and family narratives. In this article, we introduce the topic of collective trauma in leader development and draw on the theories of psychodynamic, social identity and social learning to explain how the transmission of collective trauma occurs. We also propose how the transmitted trauma shapes leader cognition, values and behaviors. This framework can serve as a basis for future theory-building in leader and leadership development that will be key to the study of authentic and ethical leadership. (shrink)