Toxic leadership has emerged as a pressing concern in contemporary organizational discourse, gaining significant traction across diverse sectors and academic disciplines. Despite its severe implications, the scholarly landscape of toxic leadership remains fragmented, with overlapping terminologies and disciplinary silos obscuring conceptual clarity and cumulative knowledge development. This study addresses a critical gap in the literature by conducting a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of toxic leadership research spanning 2010–2025. Drawing on 230 documents retrieved from the Scopus database and employing VOSviewer for data visualization, the analysis maps the intellectual structure, author networks, and thematic evolution of the field. Key findings reveal a multidisciplinary character, with dominant contributions from business, psychology, nursing, and social sciences. The Journal of Nursing Management emerges as the most prolific outlet, reflecting heightened concerns regarding toxic leadership in healthcare settings. Prominent scholars such as Boddy, Labrague, and Padilla shape the field, contributing foundational theories and empirical insights. Thematic mapping indicates a shift in scholarly focus, from early depictions of toxic leadership as an individual pathology to later recognition of its relational and strategic organizational consequences. Co-authorship networks reveal strong collaboration clusters, particularly in the United States, fostering sustained intellectual exchange and cross-institutional synergy. Moreover, co-occurrence and temporal analyses underscore the deepening integration of toxic leadership with constructs such as corporate psychopathy, emotional exhaustion, organizational cynicism, and workplace bullying. These insights provide actionable guidance for organizations to develop early detection mechanisms, strengthen ethical climates, and design leadership development programs that prioritize empathy, accountability, and psychological safety. Such measures can mitigate the systemic risks posed by toxic leaders.

In today’s rapidly changing world, characterized by technological disruption and socio-political complexity, traditional leadership models often prove insufficient. Adaptive leadership provides a flexible approach that enables people to address adaptive challenges through learning, resilience, and systemic change. Despite growing scholarly interest, research on adaptive leadership remains fragmented and lacks strong empirical support. Systematic Literature Review (SLR) and bibliometric analysis of 126 peer-reviewed articles published between 2010 and May 2025 from the Scopus database were employed to address these gaps. Findings reveal a significant rise in publications after 2020, largely influenced by the Covid-19 pandemic and accelerated organizational transformation. Using VOSviewer, the bibliometric analysis identifies influential authors such as R.A. Anderson and D.E. Bailey, leading institutions including Duke University and the University of North Carolina, and prominent publication outlets like California Management Review. Thematic mapping shows a shift from crisis leadership and healthcare to digital agility, emotional intelligence, and psychosocial resilience. This study strengthens the theoretical foundation of adaptive leadership by synthesizing its core competencies, including system diagnosis, distress regulation, and inclusive problem-solving, and demonstrates its practical relevance across sectors. In doing so, it supports global development goals, including SDGs 3 (Good Health and Well-being), SDGs 4 (Quality Education), SDGs 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth), SDGs 9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure), and SDGs 16 (Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions), positioning adaptive leadership as a key driver of sustainable organizational and societal transformation.

Background: Healthcare access in Vietnam confronts regional disparities and rising demand, requiring collaborative policies and strong workforce performance to guarantee effective and affordable services. This study scrutinises how organisational culture shapes healthcare workforce performance within Vietnam’s public healthcare organisations, with particular emphasis on organisational commitment, knowledge-sharing behaviour, and digital health transformation. Methods: This study employed a quantitative, cross-sectional survey design. Data were collected from 450 healthcare professionals in public healthcare facilities in southern Vietnam through convenience and snowball sampling, using a structured questionnaire measuring organisational culture (Denison model), organisational commitment, knowledge-sharing behaviour, digital health transformation and job performance on a six-point Likert scale. Data were analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) in SmartPLS 3.0. Results: The findings indicate that organisational culture is directly and substantively associated with healthcare workforce performance. In addition, knowledge sharing and digital health transformation operate as mediating mechanisms, with knowledge sharing showing a notably stronger indirect association. Notably, the relationship between organisational commitment and healthcare workforce performance was indicated to be not statistically significant. Conclusions: This study offers important practical and healthcare policy implications for healthcare administrators, human resource practitioners, public-sector leaders, and health policy stakeholders, predominantly in designing and employing targeted, culture-driven interventions aimed at improving healthcare workforce performance. Specifically, fostering a culture that encourages knowledge exchange and supports digital health transformation emerges as a critical pathway for organisational advancement. Such initiatives are instrumental in nurturing a motivated, engaged, and high-performing workforce, thereby underlining the sustainable development of public healthcare organisations.