In the face of increasingly volatile, digital, and complex organizational environments, effective leadership increasingly relies on contextual adaptation rather than strict adherence to a singular model. Although leadership scholarship has expanded to encompass transformational, servant, shared, stakeholder, digital, and AI-enabled paradigms, the existing literature frequently examines these perspectives in isolation, leading to conceptual fragmentation and construct overlap. To address this gap, this study conducts a theory-driven integrative review and a mechanism-based interpretive synthesis of leadership models published between 1990 and 2025, in accordance with the PRISMA 2020 statement. The findings indicate that many theories share common underlying mechanisms, such as motivational activation, relational trust-building, and ethical framing, yet differ in their activation pathways and contextual contingencies. The primary contribution of this study is the development of a practical, integrative implementation framework that facilitates context diagnosis, evidence-based theory selection, and multi-level measurement. This framework advances leadership theory by reconceptualizing models as context-dependent activation systems rather than competing paradigms, thereby providing actionable guidance for adaptive leadership practice in the era of AI.
Hundie et al. (2026) studied this question.