The role of leadership in attracting intellectual migrants and boosting innovative development of countries

Mishchuk, Halyna; Oliinyk, Olena; Bilan, Yuriy; Škare, Marinko Article The role of leadership in attracting intellectual migrants and boosting innovative development of countries Contemporary Economics Provided in Cooperation with: VIZJA University, Warsaw Suggested Citation: Mishchuk, Halyna; Oliinyk, Olena; Bilan, Yuriy; Škare, Marinko (2025) : The role of leadership in attracting intellectual migrants and boosting innovative development of countries, Contemporary Economics, ISSN 2300-8814, VIZJA University, Warsaw, Vol. 19, Iss. 3, pp. 339-354, https://doi.org/10.5709/ce.1897-9254.570 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/330347 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. 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The study aims to study the role of leadership in innovative development, including opportunities arising from the attractiveness of countries for intellectual migrants. The novelty of the research is in justifying the authors’ approach to assessing leadership development at the macroeconomic level and its use for defining the peculiarities of leadership development in the EU and assessing the links with of innovative development and attraction of countries for intellectual migrants. Considering leadership as an important feature of the macroeconomic environment for countries’ development, the correlation analysis was used to test hypotheses about the positive impact of leadership on (a) the attractiveness of countries for intellectual migrants; (b) the innovative development of countries. The resulting pairwise correlation coefficients for the EU show a strong relationship between the level of leadership and a country’s ability to attract (0.776) and retain talent (0.846), attract highly educated workers (0.757) and foreign entrepreneurs (0.780). A positive impact of leadership on innovative development is confirmed by the links with the overall value of the Global Innovation Index (0.825), the Growth of innovative companies (0.768) and the Entrepreneurial employee activity rate (0.599). The obtained findings prove the importance of leadership development as an important driver of talent attraction and the generation of innovative ideas. 1. Introduction1. Introduction Talents and skills of innovative thinking become an important source of competitive advantages due to their undoubtful influence on innovative development of organisations, regions, industries and countries. This is proven in many studies (Carayannis, 2020; Oliinyk et al., 2021; Samoliuk et al., 2021; Wübbelt & Tirrel, 2022; Bilan et al., 2023). Therefore, the ability to attract and retain talents to develop and implement new ideas into new products and services to thrive in competition requires a constant search for factors that enhance innovative development. Leadership is one of these intangible influencers. Leaders affect the entrepreneurial results using the potential of human resources which, in turn, can shift the effectiveness of related entrepreneurial resources use. Therefore, competition for talent increases, enhancing efforts to attract talent from all sources, including, the migration of The Role of Leadership in Attracting Intellectual Migrants and Boosting Innovative Development of Countries ABSTRACT J61, M54, O30, O52. KEY WORDS: JEL Classification: leadership, intellectual migration, innovations, talents, European. 1 Faculty of Economics and Entrepreneurship, Pan-European University, Slovakia 2 Department of Social Sciences, Kozminski University, Poland 3 Department of Labour Resources and Entrepreneurship, National University of Water and Environmental Engineering, Ukraine 4 Kautz Gyula Faculty of Business and Economics, Széchenyi István University, Hungary 5 Academic and Research Institute of Business, Economics, and Management, Sumy State University,Ukraine 6 Juraj Dobrila University of Pula, Croatia Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to: Yuriy Bilan, Academic and Research Institute of Business, Economics, and Management, Sumy State University, 2 Rymskogo-Korsakova St., 40007, Sumy, Ukraine. E-mail: y[email protected] Halyna Mishchuk1,2 , Olena Oliinyk3 , Yuriy Bilan4,5 , and Marinko Skare6 Primary submission: 29.03.2024 | Final acceptance: 11.02.2025 340 Mishchuk, Oliinyk, Bilan, Skare 10.5709/ce.1897-9254.570DOI: CONTEMPORARY ECONOMICS Vol. 19 Issue 3 339-3542025 skilled workers. Leaders and leadership development contribute to the achievement of strategic and tactical goals of organizations and countries being an important feature of business surroundings for innovative development and economic growth. The influence of leadership on innovative development increases in terms of the shortage of skilled employees. These circumstances are obvious for the developed countries. According to the research of Russell Reynolds Associates (2023), issues of lack of key talent and skills, along with current uncertainty in the business environment, are the most significant threats to the activity of the organisation for the next 12-18 months. The availability of key talents and knowledge leads to the rating of the top 10 external threats for organisations in France (69%), Germany (70%), and the Netherlands (68%). By industry differentiation, the most critical problem of attracting and retaining talent is healthcare (73%), manufacturing (63%), and technology (74%) (Russell Reynolds Associates, 2023). EU firms exhibit a significantly higher probability of experiencing skill shortages than non-EU firms. While the likelihood that a firm in the EU finds it very difficult to recruit staff with the right skills is estimated, on average, to be 40.6%, the corresponding value for a firm outside the EU is 29.2% (Di Pietro, 2024). However, the shortage of highly skilled workers is also characteristic of non-EU countries. According to Manpower Group, 85% of Japanese employers report difficulty in filling roles in 2024. For the UK, the talent shortage was at 80%, Canada - 80%, Brazil - 80%, Australia - 78%, and South Africa - 76% in 2024 (Manpower Group, 2024). At the same time, the question of researching the skills and competencies that talented employees should possess is becoming particularly relevant. Analytical and creative thinking remained the most important skills for employees in 2023 (WEF, 2023), and 73.2% of surveyed organisations ranked creative thinking, which is a source of innovation, as the TOP skill expected to be most important during 2023-2027 (Statista, 2023). Leaders with their well-developed abilities of critical thinking can enforce innovative development by attracting and retaining talented employees. This assumption is investigated well at the level of organisations; however, at the national level, there are no agreed approaches for comprehensively assessing the level of leadership in the country. Therefore, the impact of leadership on the attraction and retention of intellectual migrants which can be a valuable source of innovative development is omitted in the economic research. Given this, the study aims to investigate the role of leadership in innovative development, including opportunities arising from the attractiveness of countries for intellectual migrants. Following the existing studies in the field of the analysis of leadership as a driver of innovative development and intellectual migration (Ali et al., 2020; Bernstein et al., 2022; Khaddam et al., 2023; Lee et al., 2020; Prokop et al., 2021; Puccio et al., 2020; Shafi et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2021; Supriyanto et al., 2023), we proceed in our work from the assumption that leadership at the macroeconomic level should be manifested with a synergistic effect. Under current circumstances, efforts to create comfortable conditions for intellectual migrants cannot be ignored, including efforts to attract, develop and retain them. We also agree that there is a saturation point to immigration so increasing immigration past this point no longer increases creativity and innovation (Kačerauskas, 2018). As modern economic trends reveal, such a saturation point is not yet characteristic of the EU countries exemplifying the study. Based on this, we test the following hypothesis in our study: H1: the level of leadership in the country has a significant impact on the attraction of intellectual migrants; H2: the level of leadership largely determines the innovative development of countries. 2. Literature Review2. Literature Review Currently numerous firms encounter a «race for talent», so, organisations must present themselves as attractive employers (Dauth et al., 2023). The results of scientific research (Al Hammadi & Noor, 2020; Nowak & Scanlan, 2021; Mey et al., 2021; Jassim & Hamad, 2023; Mabasa et al., 2024) prove that leadership is an important driver of attracting, developing and retaining talents. In www.ce.vizja.pl 341 The Role of Leadership in Attracting Intellectual Migrants and Boosting Innovative Development of Countries This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. trying to understand the determinants of talent attraction, researchers investigate the influence of different incentives. The results obtained by Mangisa et al. (2020) demonstrate that not only salaries are important to attract and retain highly qualified employees, but also effective leadership is essential especially the transformational leadership philosophy. Leadership is dependent on talent (Grigorescu et al., 2020). The study of Shingenge & Saurombe (2022) revealed specific elements that constitute a sound leadership mindset regarding talent management. These were talent management practices, leadership mindset, recruitment strategy/ talent acquisition and talent retention strategy. Kafetzopoulos & Gotzamani (2022) reveal the significance of authoritative and transformational leadership in talent management. The results also show the positive effect of talent development on sustainability. Talent management at the country level is defined as a process that includes attraction, selection and assessment, training and development, reward and recognition, retention and exit, succession planning (Neyroud, 2011). The national talent management framework is underpinned by a professional leadership qualification and the provision of enhanced development opportunities. Concomitantly, the relationship between not only leadership and talent management but also the innovative activity of the leader’s followers has been proven. The authors (Lee et al., 2020) studied 13 leadership variables (transformational, transactional, ethical, humble, exchange leader, benevolent, authoritarian, entrepreneurial, authentic, serving, empowering, supportive, and destructive), and conclusively proved that transactional and supportive leadership is the most relevant to ensure innovative performance. Results of Alrowwad et al. (2020) demonstrate that leadership is positively related to organisational performance. At the same time, it is innovations that play a mediating role between leadership and organisational effectiveness. Leaders play a critical role in the success or failure of their organisations. Leaders can be effective in implementing change, developing their organisation’s capabilities, and improving its performance, or conversely, they can be ineffective (Al Amiri et al., 2020). Scientific research proves the importance of leadership for the development of innovation offered by employees (Ali et al., 2020; Puccio et al., 2020; Mumford et al., 2023; Khaddam et al., 2023). The greatest influence on the creativity of employees turns out to be exerted by leaders with in-depth professional training because they are perceived as significantly more effective compared to others. The results (Shafi et al., 2020) also confirm the positive and significant moderating effect of leadership on innovation. Based on collected data from 164 supervisor-employee dyads, the authors prove that leadership management style can stimulate employee creativity through the interactive effect of intrinsic motivation, inspiring employees to think outside the box, which leads to the development and implementation of innovations within the organisation. At the same time, innovation in and from emerging economies is primarily shaped by the challenges of sustaining and catching up with advanced economies. Innovation includes organizational improvements and is essentially a process of recombination of local and imported knowledge shared through multiple forms of collaboration (Anand et al., 2021). Emerging markets are in economic, political, social, and demographic transitions from higher levels of volatility to stable institutional commitments. In this regard, innovation is essential for company survival and sustainable economic growth (Dana et al., 2022), and leadership is seen as a resource capable of influencing flexibility during periods of market turbulence. Additionally, market flexibility emanating from leadership wields enough power and resource support to tackle turbulent market conditions better than firms with less support (Anning-Dorson, 2021). Both universal leadership principles and context-specific challenges shape leadership in emerging economies. To thrive, strategic leaders must balance immediate pressures with long-term organizational vision, focusing on innovation, ethical practices, and robust stakeholder engagement (Kebede et al., 2024). Having an important effect on the development 342 Mishchuk, Oliinyk, Bilan, Skare 10.5709/ce.1897-9254.570DOI: CONTEMPORARY ECONOMICS Vol. 19 Issue 3 339-3542025 of organisations, and provided that innovative processes are supported by the government, leadership allows obtaining a synergistic effect and fully implements national development strategies at the national level. The analysis of the research findings proves that leadership is an important tool in promoting innovation at different hierarchical levels. At the same time, the value of leadership behaviour is heterogeneous in different countries of the world (Crede et al., 2019), which affects the level of attractiveness of the country for talented workers. Therefore, an important task is to determine the level of leadership in the country and assess its impact on attracting and retaining talent. After all, leadership that creates a positive environment for personal and professional growth, encourages talent, has a significant impact on the attraction and retention of highly qualified employees. Following the developed approaches for investigating the role of leadership in organizational development, it can be concluded that the most typical approach to measure leadership influence is correlation analysis using the data from surveys. The set of independent variables can differ, and the dependent variable is measured using some scales for assessing the style, behaviour type, and overall perception of leadership effectiveness – it depends on the purposes of the research. At the same time, the national talent management well-justified by Neyroud (2011) requires a transformation of approaches to measure the leadership influence on the attraction and retention of talents with respect for their possible influence on national innovative development. At the national level, large-scale surveys of leadership using the variables substantiated by the above-mentioned scientists are unavailable. Therefore, in our study, we transform the leadership assessment using the findings of many researchers, which specify the essence, components and competencies of modern leadership. Leadership includes the ability to motivate, delegate authority, participate in decision-making, inform employees about regulations, cooperation and organizational performance: the important constituents also are justice, a culture of ethical resilience, prioritizing human dignity, promoting continuous learning, showing concern, and interacting with the team members (Chukwu et al., 2023; Juhana et al., 2020; Kuráth et al., 2023; Odgers Berndtson, 2022; Supriyanto et al., 2023). The findings of Hahang et al. (2022) confirm that positive thinking, decisionmaking, flexibility, divergent thinking, trustbuilding, and communication skills have a positive impact on leadership effectiveness. The leader is motivated by a genuine desire to develop and advance the prospects of their followers (Garner et al., 2020). In assessing the criteria for a leader, one can judge the ability of the leader to carry out various leadership functions: as a determinant of direction, as the representative and spokesperson of the organization, as an effective communicator, as a reliable mediator, as an integrator (Sriadmitum et al., 2023; Saputra, 2021). Therefore, leadership is built by being connected with such managerial areas: leadership of the organisation, human resource management, structure of the organisation, knowledge management and work well-being, and leadership of self (Fonsén & Soukainen, 2020). The current workplace has changed the nature of human capital development practice to be more employee-driven. Under such conditions, one of the leader's tasks is employee development, ensuring a partnership between the employer and employee (Dachner et al., 2021). Leadership is highlighted as the key catalyst in encouraging employee learning and in formulating an HRD-supportive culture toward key organizational outcomes (Akdere & Egan, 2020). Leadership entails expressing visions, embodying shared values between leaders and followers, and fostering an environment conducive to achieving goals (Patterson, 2022). These patterns have obvious manifestation in creative industries (Oliinyk et al., 2024). The enduring impact of globalization alongside the rising tide of ethnic and gender diversity has prompted leaders to focus on managing cultural disparities within a diverse and inclusive organizational framework (Ince, 2023). The imperative to adapt compels organizations to recognize and appreciate diversity. So, respect for diversity and inclusion are now important features of leadership (Odgers Berndtson, 2022; Khalid et al., 2021). www.ce.vizja.pl 343 The Role of Leadership in Attracting Intellectual Migrants and Boosting Innovative Development of Countries This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. However, considering the scope of the research and data available, the authors’ approach is based on integrating the possible statistical dataset covering the leadership feature. Regarding the talents attractiveness and retention as well as the innovative development, the existing theoretical framework is suitable for the aim of our research. Following this, we further select the appropriate data for testing the hypotheses. 3. Methodology 3. Methodology The basis of hypotheses testing is the author’s method of integral assessment of the level of leadership. Transforming the components of leadership defined in the literature review section to the macroeconomic level, we collected data on partial indicators characterising the development of leadership at the national level. To reach this goal, the most suitable data sources are the Global Talent Competitiveness Index and the Rule of Law Index. Their partial indicators corresponding to modern trends of leadership analysis are as follows: Х 1 , score – Labour-employer cooperation – Average response to the question: In your country, how would you characterise the labour relations with the employer? [1 = generally confrontational; 7 = generally cooperative] (INSEAD, 2023). This indicator corresponds to such components of leadership as encouraging collaboration, participating in decision-making, informing employees about regulations, interacting with the team members, partnership between the employer and employee. Х 2 , score – Professional management – Average response to the question: In your country, who holds the highest management positions in companies? [1 = usually relatives or friends, regardless of merit; 7 = mostly professional managers chosen on merit and qualifications] (INSEAD, 2023). This indicator corresponds to such components of leadership as the ability to motivate, communication ability, implement the right leadership style, make the right decision, performance, and organisational effectiveness. Х 3 , score – Tolerance of minorities – Discrimination and violence against minorities. Its dimensions include post-conflict response, equality, conflict and intercommunal violence; measured on a 10-point scale from 0 (low pressure) to 10 (very high pressure) (INSEAD, 2023). This indicator corresponds to such components of leadership as: embrace diversity and inclusion, a diverse and inclusive organisational culture, ethnic diversity. Х 4 , score – Leadership opportunities for women – Average response to the question: To what extent do companies in your country offer women the same opportunities as men to hold managerial positions? [1 = not at all; 7 = to a great extent] (INSEAD, 2023). This indicator corresponds to such components of leadership as gender diversity, embracing diversity and inclusion, a diverse and inclusive organisational culture. Х 5 , score – Employee development – Average response to the question: To what extent do companies in your country invest in training and employee development? [1 = not at all; 7 = to a great extent] (INSEAD, 2023). This indicator corresponds to such components of leadership as organisational HRD culture, employee-driven development, knowledge management. Х 6 , score – Prevalence of training in firms – This indicator refers to the percentage of firms that offered formal training programs in the most recent complete fiscal year for its permanent, full-time employees (INSEAD, 2023). This indicator corresponds to such components of leadership as promote continuous learning, encouraging employee learning. Х 7 , score – Delegation of authority – Average response to the question: To what extent does senior management delegate authority to subordinates in your country? [1 = not at all; 7 = to a great extent] (INSEAD, 2023). This indicator corresponds to such components of leadership as delegation of authority, clear division of tasks, implementation of the decentralization, structure of the organization. Х 8 , score – Professionals – The share of professionals from the total workforce. This includes specialists in physical, mathematical and engineering sciences; professionals in the field of life science and health care; pedagogical specialists; and other professionals (business, lawyers, archivists, librarians, social scientists, religious professionals, as well as writers or artists) (INSEAD, 2023). This indicator corresponds to such components of leadership 344 Mishchuk, Oliinyk, Bilan, Skare 10.5709/ce.1897-9254.570DOI: CONTEMPORARY ECONOMICS Vol. 19 Issue 3 339-3542025 as becoming a role model, professional knowledge, leadership of self, high professional status, organisation’s professionalism. The information source for indicators X1-X8 was The Global Talent Competitiveness Index. To adjust for differences in units of measurement and ranges of variation, all indicators in this index were normalised into the [0, 100] range, with higher scores representing better outcomes. A min-max normalisation method was adopted, based on the minimum and maximum values of each indicator, respectively (INSEAD, 2023). For indicators X1-X8 the following normalisation formula was applied: (1) where value is the actual value of the indicator; min is the minimum value of the indicator; max is the maximum value of indicator. Х 9 , score – Fundamental labour rights are effectively guaranteed – Measures the effective enforcement of fundamental labour rights, including freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining, the absence of discrimination with respect to employment, and freedom from forced labour and child labour (WJP, 2023). This indicator corresponds to such components of leadership as values between leader and followers, embracing diversity and inclusion, a diverse and inclusive organizational culture, prioritizing human dignity. The information source for indicator X 9 was The Rule of Law Index (WJP, 2023). The country scores and rankings presented in this report are built from more than 500 variables drawn from the assessments of over 214,000 households and 3,500 legal practitioners and experts in 142 countries and jurisdictions. Individual answers are then mapped onto the sub-factors of the Index (or onto the intermediate categories that make up each sub-factor), codified so that all values fall between 0 (weakest adherence to the rule of law) and 1 (strongest adherence to the rule of law), and aggregated at the country level using the simple (or unweighted) average of all respondents. Taking into account the totality of the indicators above, it is proposed to determine the level of leadership based on an aggregate index. The formula for calculating the integral index (І l ): (2) where Іi is the level of leadership in the country; І 1 , …, I n are partial indicators of leadership in the country; n is the number of partial indicators. To calculate partial indicators (І 1 – І n ), the most relevant approach is to use the maximum value of a specific assessment component as a standard, since all indicators are stimulants, i.e. have a positive impact on the level of leadership in a country: where Q fi is actual values of individual component partial indices; Q mini is minimum values of individual component partial indices; Q maxi is maximum values of individual component partial indices. The approbation of this approach was carried out in this study on the example of EU countries. This group of countries has been selected as they share numerous common features that determine their interaction. Thus, the EU countries strive for significant economic integration, including the free movement of goods, services, capital and labour between them. This is determined by the common internal market and the customs union. Besides, EU countries share common values such as democracy, human rights, the rule of law and social protection, which, among other things, make them attractive to intellectual migrants (Oliinyk et al., 2022). An important result of using the methodology itself is the ability to rank countries and develop effective regulatory measures for leadership development. We consider the assessment of the impact of leadership on creative development to be a more important possibility for applied application of this technique, which involves testing the hypotheses we have substantiated. The evaluation of the relationships of factors was carried out based on Pearson correlation coefficient values using MS Excel software. The interpretation of the correlation coefficient values is fulfilled based on the Cheddock scale criteria, where the relationship of the factors is interpreted as moderate starting from www.ce.vizja.pl 345 The Role of Leadership in Attracting Intellectual Migrants and Boosting Innovative Development of Countries This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. 0.3-0.5; noticeable in measures of 0.5-0.7; close when it is in the interval from 0.7 to 0.9; strong - from 0.9 to 0.99; and functional – from 0.99 to 1.0 (Turan, 2020). The t-test formula was used to check the statistical significance of the correlation coefficients: where r is the value of the correlation coefficient; n is the total number of observations. To test hypothesis H1, the authors used the method of correlation analysis between the calculated level of leadership in EU countries (І i ) and indicators: У 1 – «Brain gain» (average response to the question: To what extent does your country attract talented people from abroad? [1 = not at all; 7 = country largely attracts the best and brightest talent from around the world], score); У 2 – «Brain retention» (average response to the question: How well does your country retain talented people? [1 = not at all – the best and brightest leave to seek opportunities abroad; 7 = to a great extent – the best and brightest seek opportunities at home], score). У 3 – «The Human Flight and Brain Drain Indicator» (considers the economic impact of human displacement (for economic or political reasons) and the consequences this may have on a country’s development, score). У 4 – «Highly educated workers» (tool to capture the strengths and weaknesses of OECD countries regarding their capacity to attract and retain such type of talented migrants as highly educated workers, score). У 5 – «University Students» (tool to capture the strengths and weaknesses of OECD countries regarding their capacity to attract and retain such type of talented migrants as university students, score). У 6 – «Foreign entrepreneurs» (tool to capture the strengths and weaknesses of OECD countries regarding their capacity to attract and retain such type of talented migrants as foreign entrepreneurs, score). У 7 – «Start-up founders» (tool to capture the strengths and weaknesses of OECD countries regarding their capacity to attract and retain such type of talented migrants as start-up founders, score). The values of indicators У 1 – У 2 are selected from the INSEAD report (2023). The value of factor У 3 is selected from the report of FFP (2023). The values of indicators У 4 – У 7 are selected from the OECD Indicators of Talent Attractiveness (2023). The verification of hypothesis H 2 was carried out based on the calculation of correlation coefficients between the calculated level of leadership in the EU countries (І i ) with the following indicators: У 8 – Global innovation index in 2023, score; У 9 – Growth of innovative companies, value; У 10 – Entrepreneurial employee activity rate (rate of involvement of employees in entrepreneurial activities, such as developing or launching new goods or services, or setting up a new business unit, a new establishment or a subsidiary), value. The value of factor У 8 is selected from the report WIPO (2023); У 9 and У 10 – from the reports UNDP and MBRF (2023). Using publicly available datasets to assess the level of leadership in a country may have a number of limitations. Institutions that create international indices may be subject to bias (political, ideological). The way in which indices assign weight to different indicators may contradict the real significance of these criteria for assessing leadership. Sometimes, international indices do not take into account specific local features that affect leadership, such as traditional governance structures or local values. In order to minimize the impact of these limitations, the authors selected indicators that most accurately reflect leadership practices in a given context. We also critically assessed information sources for possible biases, conducting the study exemplified by the EU countries. 4. Results4. Results Since the verification of each hypothesis involves the assessment of connections with a complex indicator of the development of leadership in the country, the first stage of our research is the calculation of such an indicator according to formulas 2-3. The actual, maximum and minimum values of leadership indicators, as well as the calculation of partial indicators and the integral index of leadership in EU countries, are shown in Table 1. According to the results of the calculations, Finland is the leader among the EU countries by the 346 Mishchuk, Oliinyk, Bilan, Skare 10.5709/ce.1897-9254.570DOI: CONTEMPORARY ECONOMICS Vol. 19 Issue 3 339-3542025 level of leadership (0.819). Denmark has the second position in the rating with an integral index value of 0.810. The top three leaders are closed by the Netherlands (0.746). The peculiarities of the leadership in the leading countries can be connected with the special culture of relations. Particularly, the Dutch leadership culture is one of consensus and equality, where the manager is a facilitator rather than a sole maker of management decisions (Human in Progress, 2023). As we can see from the results above, such leadership models are successful, and even without further comparisons with innovative development and talent attraction it is obvious that the leaders belong to the most highly developed countries in the EU. Concomitantly, the lowest level of leadership among EU countries in 2023 is characteristic of Croatia (0.139). Croatian managers have (statistically) significantly different attitudes towards individual leadership styles. The difference between subordinates and management becomes more visible in Croatia. Croatian managers have a businessTable 1 Calculation of the Integral Index of Leadership in EU Countries in 2023 Country Х1Х2Х3Х4Х5Х6Х7Х8Х9 Belgium 60.45 67.18 62.77 55.92 77.86 71.58 63.7 61.35 0.81 Bulgaria 46.08 35.84 57.45 54.06 53.97 21.38 43.98 41.73 0.63 Czech Republic 53.29 74.55 57.45 69.29 65.27 52.72 63.07 42.64 0.73 Denmark 99.54 91.67 67.02 84.64 88.31 48.74 100 64.28 0.95 Germany 64.25 70.95 63.83 49.64 81.55 53.39 61.98 51.23 0.85 Estonia 75.76 81.99 27.66 82.77 71.13 48.87 67.26 56.32 0.72 Ireland 80.01 87.36 96.81 69.52 84.59 74.24 78.93 59.27 0.86 Greece 42.7 44.19 57.45 45.36 49.48 23.51 43.12 50.35 0.57 Spain 45.45 60.25 28.72 53.55 47.92 68.13 42 44.46 0.75 France 49.36 74.66 31.91 53.28 76.94 84.99 58.02 52.81 0.78 Croatia 13.79 32.18 54.26 13.3 34.53 29.61 28.51 40.6 0.75 Italy 40.47 48.48 60.64 36.96 63.86 11.55 55.04 34.68 0.59 Cyprus 54.01 34.07 52.13 45.4 57.69 47.54 44.66 48.69 0.63 Latvia 46.83 40.29 18.09 67.33 55.01 65.07 37.02 47.45 0.78 Lithuania 70.74 80.71 71.28 89.62 82.61 31.34 68.52 63.25 0.74 Luxembourg 82.5 70.83 84.04 68.19 80.05 82.6 58.06 100 0.81 Hungary 37.63 53.86 64.89 45.73 50.69 33.73 48.73 43.38 0.67 Malta 60.36 53.3 77.66 47.08 61.32 61.09 50.87 48.23 0.79 Netherlands 90.86 94.49 68.09 63.8 84.55 66.67 84.32 72.05 0.82 Austria 82.47 70.99 64.89 58.18 87.16 51.39 62.15 48.45 0.83 Poland 41.54 38.33 46.81 38.34 49.63 23.64 36.1 48.57 0.66 Portugal 50.31 52.1 92.55 55.42 59.78 33.33 39.31 55.03 0.65 Romania 34.41 37.48 42.55 56.83 49.03 22.05 38.38 41.93 0.69 Slovenia 48.03 54.89 68.09 70.28 68.66 53.25 49.47 62.02 0.74 Slovakia 38.79 37.68 45.74 46.47 41.95 52.32 41.36 36.42 0.74 Finland 76.34 100 100 91.79 91.09 61.49 87.57 60.62 0.85 Sweden 68.2 77.24 81.91 66.3 84.11 77.03 66.06 75.56 0.8 Minimum value 13.79 32.18 18.09 13.3 34.53 11.55 28.51 34.68 0.57 Maximum value 99.54 100 100 91.79 91.09 84.99 100 100 0.95 www.ce.vizja.pl 353 The Role of Leadership in Attracting Intellectual Migrants and Boosting Innovative Development of Countries This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. 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