Character-enabled improvisation and the new normal: A paradox perspective.

The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified and exacerbated organizational paradoxes felt by individuals largely because of the nostalgia individuals feel for the "old" normal while facing the need to let go in order to create a "new" normal. We position improvisation as a synthesis-type approach to working through the paradoxes of the pandemic. Furthermore, we look at individual differences that underpin the ability to improvise, and identify that it is the strength of character and character-based judgment of the individual that enables the enactment of a focal context, the choice to improvise, and the act of effectively improvising to work through paradoxes.

Character matters: The network structure of leader character and its relation to follower positive outcomes.

We investigated the relationship between self-ratings of leader character and follower positive outcomes-namely, subjective well-being, resilience, organizational commitment, and work engagement-in a public-sector organization using a time-lagged cross-sectional design involving 188 leader-follower dyads and 22 offices. Our study is an important step forward in the conceptual development of leader character and the application of character to enhance workplace practices. We combined confirmatory factor analysis and network-based analysis to determine the factorial and network structure of leader character.