“Grounded in Causality: Elevating Evidence for Leadership Practice”

Call for Papers – Special Issue: “Grounded in Causality: Elevating Evidence for Leadership Practice”

Journal: The Leadership Quarterly
Publisher: Elsevier
Impact Factor: 9.7 | CiteScore: 18.3
Submission deadline: 22 November 2026

Overview

This special issue aims to elevate evidence‑based leadership practice by focusing on rigorous causal research. It challenges leadership scholars to move beyond correlational findings and employ designs that robustly estimate causal effects (e.g., experiments, quasi‑experiments, instrumental‑variable, regression‑discontinuity, replication, and natural‑experiment studies). The goal is to produce findings that are both methodologically strong and practically relevant for leaders, organizations, and policymakers.

Core Themes

Submissions should address leadership phenomena using causal or quasi‑causal designs and demonstrate actionable implications for practice. Indicative themes include:

• Field studies using exogenous shocks (e.g., pandemics, regulations, crises) to test causal effects of shifting contexts on leadership behaviors, effectiveness, and outcomes.

• Replication and generalizability studies that test leadership effects across contexts (e.g., industry, public vs. private, culture, team size), clarifying boundary conditions.

• Leadership development and coaching interventions that estimate causal effects of trainings, workshops, or coaching programs on leader behavior, team performance, and follower outcomes, including longitudinal follow‑ups.

• Virtual vs. face‑to‑face leadership (e.g., remote coaching, virtual training) to provide evidence‑based guidance for hybrid work.

• Crisis and technological‑change interventions that test how organizations can support leaders in turbulent times (e.g., AI adoption, digital transformation).

• AI/ML‑driven leadership research leveraging data‑driven insights while embedding causal logic (e.g., instrumental‑variable, panel‑data models).

• Scaling leadership interventions from single‑leader pilots to whole‑organization impact.

• Mixed‑methods causal studies where quantitative designs estimate causal effects and qualitative work uncovers the “how” and “why” (e.g., with counter‑factual logic).

• Methodological‑practice papers on quasi‑experimental designs, randomized‑training setups, staggered interventions, and open‑science improvements (pre‑registration, open data/materials).

All work must clearly articulate theoretical grounding, operationalization of leadership constructs, and alignment between research questions and causal design.

Submission Types

The journal accepts:

• Completed empirical studies,

• Registered reports (introduction + methods reviewed before data collection), and

• Results‑blind submissions (introduction + methods reviewed after data collection).

Open‑science practices (data, code, materials, pre‑registration) are strongly encouraged.

Guest Editors

• Andy Loignon, Center for Creative Leadership, USA

• Paulo Arvate, FGV‑EAESP, Brazil

• Tiffany Keller Hansbrough, Binghamton University, USA

• Billy Obenauer, University of Maine, USA

Submission Details

• Submission platform: The Leadership Quarterly EVISE (Editorial Manager) at:
  https://www.editorialmanager.com/leaqua/default.aspx

• Select “VSI: Grounded in Causality” (or equivalent special‑issue option) when submitting.

• Deadline: 22 November 2026; submissions are handled on a rolling basis.

• Follow the journal’s Guide for Authors:
  https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/the-leadership-quarterly/publish/guide-for-authors

• All submissions must demonstrate or explicitly address causal identification (temporal order, covariation, and control of confounds/endogeneity) and be relevant to leadership practice.

Why This Issue Matters

• There is growing recognition that “theories‑as‑facts” without strong causal evidence can mislead leadership practice and waste organizational resources.

• This SI explicitly seeks to strengthen causal inference in leadership science, clarify boundary conditions, and offer practitioners clear, evidence‑based guidance on what leadership behaviors, development programs, and interventions are likely to work in which contexts.

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