This research investigates the positive relationship between leadership styles, high-involvement human resource management practices, and individual employee performance. In this study, we adopt servant, shared, and empowering leadership to explain leadership styles in the digital era. We propose four hypotheses and design a research framework to be analyzed. We develop a self-report questionnaire and distribute it online to three hundred targeted respondents, and collect two hundred and seventy-six complete responses from November 2021 to January 2022. This research applies a quantitative method, using structural equation modeling run by SPSS and AMOS. The results reveal well-distributed data, and all the indicators of the three variables are valid and reliable. The use of CFA confirms the indicators’ validity and reliability. The GoF analysis ensures that the research model is feasible for SMEs. The hypothesis analysis shows the acceptance of H1 and H3, but the rejection of H2 and H4. Leadership styles positively affect individual employee performance and high-involvement human resource management practices in SMEs operating in Lubuklinggau. High-involvement human resource management is not a mediator of the relationship between leadership styles and individual employee performance.

Human resource management (HRM) practices along with appropriate leadership have a paramount role in enhancing employees’ performance. Even though there was much literature on the subject of HRM and leadership, there were still some unanswered questions about the set of HR practices that most effectively contribute to improved employees’ performance through proper leadership. The primary goal of this research was to look at how leadership quality affects employee performance, as well as the function of human resource management in mediating the relationship between leadership and employee performance in manufacturing industries in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The study used an explanatory and descriptive research design, and a mixed research approach (qualitative and quantitative), to achieve its goal. More specifically, a multi-stage sampling technique (simple random and purposive sampling) was employed. The data was collected from both primary and secondary sources, and analysis was made using a structural and measurement model by AMOS Version 2021. The finding of the study implies that; leadership has a positive and significant relationship with employee performance through human resource management, hence the full mediating role of human resource management was observed between leadership and employee performance. This study is novel in that, it contributes new finding to the existing literature by combining the relationship between leadership and employee performance in a single study and two different directions (direct and indirect). Hence, the recommendations can be applied by industry managers to boost employees’ performance through appropriate HRM practices and leadership by taking this finding as a benchmark. Based on the finding of the study, we recommend industry managers focus on human resource management indicators such as collaboration, involvement, actualization, perceivance, and teamwork to boost their leadership quality that deliberately influences employees’ performance.

Since it first appeared, agency theory has argued that debt can decrease agency issues between agent and principal and enhance the value of firms. This paper explores the moderating effect of agency cost on the association between capital structure and firm performance. A panel econometric method, namely a fixed-effect regression model, was used to evaluate the above description. This investigation uses secondary data collected from published annual reports of manufacturing firms listed on Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) during 2011–2019. Empirical results show that capital structure is negatively related to firm performance. Agency cost also has a negative impact on corporate performance; however, in the case of ROA and EPS, the relationship is positive. Interestingly, the findings illustrate that increasing the level of debt can reduce agency costs and enhance firm performance. Moreover, robust correlations are revealing that agency cost significantly affects the relationship between capital structure and corporate performance. These findings provide proof to support the assumptions of agency theory, which explains the association between capital structure and performance of firms. This study provides new perspectives on the relationship between capital structure and firm performance by using data from listed manufacturing firms in Iran; hence, these new insights from a developing market improve the understanding of capital structure in Asian and Middle Eastern markets.