Leadership in military and other dangerous contexts: Introduction to the special topic issue

Abstract

Although researchers have examined the situational demands that conventional environments place on leadership, the demands that highly dangerous environments impose on leadership have been much less explored. While investigations in such environments are extremely difficult to conduct, such research is essential if we are to understand the functioning of leadership in contexts where leadership matters most. This paper introduces six studies that accepted the difficulties of this kind of research; and examined leadership in various challenging, dangerous contexts. We discuss the contributions of the six papers in terms of three related questions (1) what precisely is leadership in dangerous environments?; (2) what does danger do to leadership?; and (3) what distinguishes effective leadership in dangerous contexts?