Conceptualizing Democratic Leadership as a Driver for Organizational Survival: A Review of Literature and Research Agenda

The reviewed literature on leadership scholarship highlighted the inapplicability and restrictive nature of conventional management practices in twenty-first-century organizations. This calls for adopting newer leadership approaches that offer robust, flexible, and more innovative solutions and confer competitive advantage and sustained business survival under Industry 4.0 conditions. Democratic leadership was considered a suitable leadership style that can enhance firm survival due to its ability to build relationships, promote employee participation in decision-making, and connect employees with organizational goals. Although the leadership style is among the oldest leadership practices, the state of scholarly work on the construct has been found insufficient, and methodological and conceptualization research challenges have been encountered thus stifling the generalization of study findings. This study intended to bring to light the current state of scholarship on democratic leadership and also extend knowledge on the construct. It sought to review the conceptual, theoretical, and empirical literature on democratic leadership and present the outcomes that arise and therefore give an opportunity to propose a new theoretical model that can enlighten researchers on current issues on democratic leadership and the phenomenon that it generates on deployment in organizations. The current paper proposed a consolidated theoretical framework that links democratic leadership and firm survival while at the same time giving provision for the role of dynamic capabilities and firm size.