Issues in researching leadership in health care organizations

Purpose - We provide a review of the research in this volume and suggest avenues for future research. Design/methodology/approach - Review of the research in this volume and unstructured interviews with health care executives. Findings - We identified the three central themes: (1) trust in leadership, (2) leading by example, and (3) multi-level leadership. For each of these themes, we highlight the shared concerns and findings, and provide commentary about the contribution to the literature on leadership. Research implications - While relation-oriented leadership is important in health care, there is a danger of too much emphasis on relations in an already caring profession. Moreover, in most health care organizations, leadership is distributed and scholars need to adopt the appropriate methods to investigate these multi-level phenomena. Practical implications - In health care organizations, hands-on leadership, through role modeling, may be necessary to promote change. However, practicing what you preach is not as easy as it may seem. Value/originality - We provide a framework for understanding current research on leadership in health care organizations.