Qualitative and historiometric methods in leadership research: A review of the first 25 years of The Leadership Quarterly

In the spirit of the 25th anniversary edition of The Leadership Quarterly, as the world's premier outlet for leadership research, we have reviewed qualitative and historiometric research across those 25 years. Qualitative research is a complex and cluttered area of scholarship. This is not because there is an inherent confusion about it. Rather, it is because ‘qualitative’ research is a cover-all term for a wide range of research strategies, paradigms, parent disciplines, sources of data, and methods of analysis for them. More so than in previous journal review articles, we explored variation in qualitative analysis as well as variety in qualitative data. In terms of methodologies, our efforts concentrated on case study, content analysis, grounded theory and historiometrics. We also examined trends toward post-positivism, post-modernity and liquid modernity, and their resultant benefits for researching leadership. Future directions for leadership research are posited.     

Crisis leadership: A review and future research agenda

The past few decades have witnessed numerous crises that have drawn increasing attention to the study of crisis leadership. However, research in this field remains fragmented and existing reviews often adopt a subjective approach to identify and synthesize the findings of relevant articles. These limitations make it difficult for scholars to appreciate the progress made in the literature, to derive comprehensive and objective insights, and to forge a path ahead. This study synthesizes theoretical insights and empirical findings in the crisis leadership literature using bibliometric techniques. We first review the intellectual structure of the crisis leadership literature by conducting co-citation and bibliographic coupling analyses. We then map the major conceptual themes in the crisis leadership literature via a co-word analysis. To supplement the findings of the bibliometric analyses, we review the key methodological approaches adopted by crisis leadership researchers. Based on the integrative insights, we propose a research agenda highlighting opportunities for theoretical and methodological advancements in crisis leadership research.     

群体思维理论的发展及其实证研究综述

对群体思维理论的发展过程进行了简要回顾. 重点对其自1971 年提出以来的实证研 究,包括案例分析和实验检验,进行了比较详尽的总结和评述. 并对这两种研究的方法、内容和 结果进行了比较. 最后提出了群体思维理论研究下一步应该关注的问题     

Strategic leadership in organizational crises: A review and research agenda

Of all actors involved in managing an organizational crisis, strategic leaders play a particularly central role. However, the growing scholarship on the impact of strategic leaders in crisis situations is characterized by a high degree of fragmentation, considerably hindering the generation of parsimonious theory and practically useful insights. To address this issue, we conduct a systematic multidisciplinary literature review that spans the research streams on strategic leadership and organizational crises. For each type of strategic leader—Chief Executive Officer (CEO), top management team, and board of directors—we identify the different applied theoretical lenses and highlight commonalities and differences between studies and their insights. We use our review to derive an integrative conceptual framework that guides future research. Our exploratory review unveils that, while each type of strategic leader plays a significant role in a crisis context, the perspectives taken and the resulting evidence vary: as for the CEO, research focuses on social evaluations—for instance, based on the CEO's appearance—as well as agency-theoretic considerations—particularly, financial incentives. Regarding the top management team, research mostly adopts a managerial and organizational cognition lens, focusing on characteristics such as personality and human capital. Lastly, for the board of directors, agency-theoretic considerations again dominate the scholarly conversation, especially studies of board independence. Overall, we review and organize a rich but patchy research landscape, and we derive ample opportunities for novel theoretical and empirical inquiries into strategic leaders and their role in managing organizational crises.     

Contemporary public leadership in China: A research review and consideration

China garners great international attention due to its rapid economic development, unprecedented nationwide political reform, and significant social progress over the last 25 years. Contemporary public leadership in China is arguably a major force for the myriad of recent economic, political, and social transformations in the country. This article reviews the academic literature on that leadership, providing an overview of interest to scholars, teachers, and practitioners whose work deals with cross-cultural studies of leadership development. The review focuses primarily on materials published between January 1999 and June 2004 that explicitly address public leadership in China. The review identifies six areas of research to date: (1) leadership transition, (2) democratization, (3) prominent political figures, (4) local leadership, (5) cultural and historical traditions, and (6) other identified forms of public leadership (military versus Party leadership, women as public leaders, religion and public leadership, and student leadership). The article concludes with discussions of characteristics of the literature and directions for future theoretical and empirical work.     

Follower transformation as the linchpin of transformational leadership theory: A systematic review and future research agenda

Transformational leadership theory represents a cornerstone in leadership research. Despite an impressive empirical record highlighted by both the breadth of its nomological network and magnitudes of effects, scholars raise serious construct and content validity concerns. In this article, we address a remarkable oversight in the transformational leadership literature. Few studies have assessed the theory assumption that the positive individual, group, and organizational effects of transformational leadership are due to the transformation of followers in specific and enduring ways. We offer a systematic review of empirical evidence related to follower transformation as the conceptual foundation of transformational leadership theory. Findings from this review highlight the radical leap in the evolution of transformational leadership theory from nascent phenomena to mature paradigm. Calling for a return to nascent and intermediary phases of theory development, we conclude with a research agenda aimed at creating a stronger theory, better measures, and more actionable leadership models.     

Authentic leadership: A review of the literature and research agenda

The past decade has seen a dramatic increase in scholarly interest in the topic of authentic leadership. We review this literature with the goal of clarifying the state of knowledge in the field. We begin with a historical overview of the construct's definition and evolution. Next, we present the results of a content analysis of 91 publications that focus on authentic leadership. Specifically, we examined the publication type (theoretical, empirical, and practitioner), contributors (e.g., discipline, nationality, and institutional affiliation), theoretical foundations, research strategies, sample location/type, data collection methods, analytical procedures, and nomological network of authentic leadership. We conclude by presenting an agenda for future research.     

A 25-year perspective on levels of analysis in leadership research

The purpose of this article is to present a comprehensive 25-year review of the incorporation of levels of analysis into conceptual and empirical leadership research published within Leadership Quarterly throughout its history. We assessed the population of Leadership Quarterly's research (790 research articles) on four key levels of analysis-based issues: (1) explicit statement of the focal level(s) of analysis; (2) appropriate measurement given level of constructs; (3) use of a multi-level data analysis technique; and, (4) alignment of theory and data. Prior reviews regarding levels of analysis incorporation into leadership research have been limited to major research domains. Results revealed that while both conceptual and empirical articles only explicitly state the focal level of analysis in approximately one-third of the articles, appropriate levels-based measurement and alignment between theory and data are relatively strong areas of achievement for the articles within Leadership Quarterly. Multi-level data analysis techniques are used in less than one-fifth of all articles. Although there is room for improvement, there is evidence that Leadership Quarterly is a premier outlet for levels-based leadership research. Given the increasing complexity of organizational science with regard to groups, teams and collectives, Leadership Quarterly has an opportunity to model for organizational research on how to build and test complicated multi-level theories and models.     

Reconciling identity leadership and leader identity: A dual-identity framework

Research exploring the powerful links between leadership and identity has burgeoned in recent years but cohered around two distinct approaches. Research on identity leadership, the main focus of this special issue, sees leadership as a group process that centers on leaders’ ability to represent, advance, create and embed a social identity that they share with the collectives they lead—a sense of “us as a group”. Research on leader identity sees leadership as a process that is advanced by individuals who have a well-developed personal understanding of themselves as leaders—a sense of “me as a leader”. This article explores the nature and implications of these divergent approaches, focusing on their specification of profiles, processes, pathways, products, and philosophies that have distinct implications for theory and practice. We formalize our observations in a series of propositions and also outline a dual-identity framework with the potential to integrate the two approaches.     

Developing the theory and practice of leadership development: A relational view

Organizations are demanding leadership development that is more sensitive to context and supportive of organizational transformation, and critics of current leadership development practices claim they are too narrowly construed to yield meaningful results. Relational views of leadership may be the disruptive idea that helps reconstruct leadership development in ways that meets these concerns. To better understand how these relational views can impact the practice of leadership development, we examined the use a specific relational framework in one leadership development organization. We found that leadership development professionals used the framework to convey a relational point of view on leadership to their participants, to facilitate collective identification and action on leadership issues, to develop leadership by focusing on leadership culture, and to enable the democratization of leadership development. We use these findings to advance a constructive-developmental perspective on the development of leadership development.     

Qualitative research on leadership: A critical but appreciative review

This article reviews a large number of articles that derive from qualitative research on leadership that were published prior to 2004 in peer-reviewed journals. The article then goes on to examine critically but appreciatively the ways in which qualitative research on leadership is and is not distinctive. This review shows that while qualitative research has made some important contributions to certain areas of leadership, such as the role of leaders in the change process, it is sometimes not as distinctive, when compared to quantitative research, as might be supposed. The piece also examines studies that combine quantitative with qualitative research. The different ways in which the two approaches are combined is a particular emphasis in this examination. In addition, the article explores the issue of whether the corpus of research that has been accumulated by qualitative researchers can be combined with that of quantitative researchers. A central ingredient of the discussion of qualitative research is the tendency for many researchers not to build sufficiently on the studies of leadership conducted by others. It is argued that giving greater attention to this issue will allow the contributions of qualitative research on leadership to become clearer.     

Followership theory: A review and research agenda

While theory and research on leaders and leadership abound, followers and followership theory have been given short shrift. It is accepted wisdom that there is no leadership without followers, yet followers are very often left out of the leadership research equation. Fortunately this problem is being addressed in recent research, with more attention being paid to the role of followership in the leadership process. The purpose of this article is to provide a systematic review of the followership literature, and from this review, introduce a broad theory of followership into leadership research. Based on our review, we identify two theoretical frameworks for the study of followership, one from a role-based approach (“reversing the lens”) and one from a constructionist approach (“the leadership process”). These frameworks are used to outline directions for future research. We conclude with a discussion of conceptual and methodological issues in the study of followership theory.     

The study of followers in leadership research: A systematic and critical review

Despite the significant amount of existing research examining the relationship of follower-related factors with leadership outcomes, there is no systematic, critical review that integrates and helps leadership scholars make sense of this rapidly growing body of research. To address this gap in the literature, we first briefly discuss the leading perspectives explaining the role of followers in leadership. Next, we identify and discuss the most frequently studied theoretical narratives explaining the relationship between follower-related predictors and leadership outcomes. Because theoretical arguments generally make causal claims, we identify and examine how methodological concerns including power analysis, multicollinearity, and endogeneity might prevent researchers from supporting those claims. We further explore how these concerns, when relevant and unaddressed, might affect the reported effect sizes. We provide recommendations to help meaningfully structure the field and seed conversations for theoretical and methodological advancements in research on the role of followers in leadership.     

Building cross-disciplinary bridges in leadership: Integrating top executive personality and leadership theory and research

The top executive personality literature has grown significantly in recent years. We review this literature, consider its contributions to leadership research and practice, and discuss how future research on top executive personality should draw more heavily on the broader leadership literature. The paper first describes the top executive context and highlights the advantages and challenges of studying top executives. We then review the top executive personality literature in four areas that capture the bulk of the research: leadership of human resources, ethical leadership, strategic leadership and corporate governance, and firm performance. We examine how the top executive personality research in each area compares with other research on leaders' and their personalities that has been conducted on similar topics. The paper concludes with a future research agenda, which identifies other leader, team, and contextual considerations to advance our understanding of top executive personality and its influence. We also address methodological challenges related to measurement and endogeneity, because they are important for theory development and have received much attention in top executive personality research. In short, our paper examines how the literatures on top executives and leadership inform one another, and it helps lay a foundation for integrating these literatures more thoroughly.     

A meta-analytic review of leadership impact research: Experimental and quasi-experimental studies

In this study we set out to conduct a comprehensive quantitative research analysis of literature reporting results on the causal impact of leadership by focusing on examining what we refer to as ‘leadership interventions.’ We defined leadership interventions as those studies where the researcher overtly manipulated leadership as the independent variable through training, assignment, scenario or other means. Our focus included both examining experimental and quasi-experimental as well as lab and field studies conducted in public and private organizations. Our goal was to address a simple question: do leadership interventions have the intended impact and if so to what degree? We conducted a comprehensive review of the published and unpublished literature and uncovered 200 lab and field studies that met our criterion as leadership intervention studies. We report here the findings of a series of meta-analyzed effects comparing the relative impact of leadership interventions across intervention types, leadership theories, and several common dependent variables. Overall, leadership interventions produced a 66% probability of achieving a positive outcome versus a 50–50 random effect for treatment participants, but this effect varied significantly when assessing moderators such as type of leadership theory.     

A systematic and critical review of research on respect in leadership

Respect is an important psychological and interpersonal phenomenon that has been included in various theoretical and empirical approaches to leadership for nearly 70 years. In this systematic and critical review article, we provide a comprehensive summary and critique of theories, definitions, measures, and empirical studies of respect in leadership. We first provide an overview of the historical and theoretical background, including the most common theories, definitions, and measures that inform empirical studies of respect in leadership. Second, we present a systematic literature review of empirical studies on respect in leadership, including a critical evaluation of research designs and statistical analyses that support claims of the validity of various conceptualizations of respect that pertain to the study of leadership. Finally, we offer a new working definition of respect in leadership, and an accompanying conceptual framework which informs a number of recommendations for future theory development, empirical research, and leadership practice.