CCL Sponsors Awards for Leadership Research Scholars

The Center for Creative Leadership (CCL)® annually sponsors 2 awards honoring leadership scholars who are making an impact on the learning, practice, and development of leadership through their research.  

The Kenneth E. Clark Student Research Award recognizes outstanding unpublished papers by undergraduate and graduate students. Named in memory of Kenneth Clark, a distinguished scholar and former president of CCL, the award is co-sponsored with the International Leadership Association.  

Dr. Karryna Madison received the 2024 award for her paper titled, “Rewrite the Recipe: A Gendered Examination of Social Exchange Theory in Leadership Research.” Dr. Madison is an Assistant Professor in Leadership from the Australian National University and her research examines how gender interacts with communal approaches to leadership.   

The awarded paper challenges traditional leadership studies to consider gender dynamics within organizations. It also highlights how this oversight can limit our understanding of leadership, noting that research must acknowledge gender as a key factor to accurately capture the complexities of social exchanges between leaders and their teams. 

Also sponsored by CCL, the Leadership Quarterly Best Paper Award is presented annually in recognition of the best published paper submitted during the previous year to Leadership Quarterly.  

Dr. Mladen Adamovic, a Senior Lecturer in Cross-Cultural Management at King’s College London, and Dr. Andreas Leibbrandt, a Professor of Economics at Monash Business School, are the 2023 Leadership Quarterly Award winners for their paper. Their research focuses on social issues in the workplace as they relate to leadership, with an emphasis on diversity and inclusion and cross-cultural management. 

This paper reveals that ethnic minorities experience significantly greater discrimination when applying for leadership roles compared to non-leadership positions. The Australia-based study involved submitting over 12,000 job applications and found that applicants with non-English names received 57.4% fewer positive response for leadership roles than those with English names, despite identical resumes.    

As a pioneer of the industry with over 50 years of experience in leadership research, CCL is dedicated to stimulating and recognizing outstanding research in the field and its application to the practice of leadership at every level in organizations across the world.  

“Our mission is to advance the understanding and practice of leadership for the benefit of society worldwide. To achieve this mission, we must support scholars who are conducting vital research that shines light on leadership dynamics affected by gender and ethnicity,” said Sarah Stawiski, Vice President of Leadership Research & Analytics. “By doing so we’re investing in a future where leadership is accessible to all, regardless of gender or ethnicity.” 

Learn more about our leadership development research.