Leadership and Intellectual Capital of Public Institutions

Public institutions’ leadership and intellectual capital (IC) are vast areas of study. The study of these themes is frequent but very dispersed due to the complexity and diversity of public institutions. The studies focused on specific themes of this large area without any general and systematic approach to the subject. In this study, we intend to aggregate this vast theme, identify the research domains in this topic of knowledge, and, not least, understand to what extent the different leadership styles contribute to the development of the IC. In this systematic literature review (SLR), we carried out a bibliographic search exclusively in the Scopus database, selected 576 articles, and analyzed bibliometrically through bibliographic coupling, resulting in a final base of 107 articles grouped into four thematic clusters. This SLR is pertinent because it made it possible to find the lines of research used by the authors, some more general, such as leadership styles, knowledge management, the relationship between leaders and followers, innovation, motivation and performance, trust, and organizational citizenship. It also allowed for the perception that leadership assumes a central role in developing IC in public institutions. The ethical, transformational, and servant leadership styles are the most referred to as enhancers of IC development. Knowledge management plays a central role in developing IC and promoting service quality. For researchers, it points out future research guidelines, and for managers, it provides knowledge and systematizes experiences, methods, and models applicable and replicable in various practice contexts.