Co-Editor of the Book: Idiosyncratic Deals at Work. Exploring Individual, Organisational and Societal Perspectives

Idiosyncratic deals (i-deals; Rousseau et al., 2005) are individualized work agreements negotiated between leader and follower. Whether it be working from home, shorter work days or weeks, ideals should benefit not only the employee but also the employer. As other chapters in this volume explicate the nature and definition of i-deals, we now turn our attention to leadership vis a vis i-deals. Even though theory specifies that the leader is a critical perhaps even necessary component in the i-deals negotiation and granting process, little i-deals research (see Anand et al., 2010, 2018; Ho et al., 2016; Hornung et al., 2014; Singh, 2018; and Vidyarthi et al. for examples) has focused on the leader as an object of study, preferring rather the mechanisms and outcomes of i-deals in the workplace (Liao, Wayne, & Rousseau, 2017). While this may seem surprising at first glance, this lacuna may be explained by the scientific process that values parsimony as a virtue. The justification for new constructs requires demonstration of predictive validity. A study of mechanisms leading to those outcomes is a next natural step, followed by the exploration of contextual boundary conditions. The brick-upon-brick gradual extension of scientific exploration on the back of prior work combined with the theoretical assumption of the leader’s role as a simple Boolean “grant / no grant” decision leaves the leader by the wayside of i-deals exploration. The present situation leaves many unexplored questions regarding the leader in the i-deals process.