Conceptualizing leadership with respect to its historical–contextual antecedents to power

An attempt is made here to build on the ideas and arguments presented in a recent Leadership Quarterly journal article written by Hunt and Dodge [Leadership Q. Yearly Overview Leadership 11 (2000) 435]. In their article, these authors argue that contemporary leadership researchers tend to neglect the historical–contextual antecedents of the field and as a result are developing many theories that reflect little more than a form of “academic amnesia” and “leadership déjà vu”. The importance of Hunt and Dodge's argument is reinforced through the use here of a form of deconstruction to reveal a lacuna in the leadership literature—the insufficient coverage of power, particularly at what is termed a deep structure level. With the current context of organizational change in mind, this lacuna is shown to have problematic consequences for leadership theory in general. More specifically, the increasing use of dispersed leadership strategies is shown to be particularly problematic. The article proposes a new conceptual framework that begins to address these problems and in so doing provides ideas and challenges for future research in the field.     

Social network analysis and the evaluation of leadership networks

Leadership development practitioners are increasingly interested in social networks as a way to strengthen relationships among leaders in fields, communities, and organizations. This paper offers a framework for conceptualizing different types of leadership networks and uses case examples to identify outcomes typically associated with each type of network. Evaluating leadership networks is a challenge for the field of leadership development. Social network analysis (SNA) is an evaluation approach that uses mathematics and visualization to represent the structure of relationships between people, organizations, goals, interests, and other entities within a larger system. In this article we describe core social network concepts and the application of them to illuminate the value of SNA as an evaluation tool.     

信心领导：来自95家企业的证据

信心领导是基于中国企业管理研究而提出的新领导理论.从领导-下属关系角度可将信心领导定义为领导传达两类不同导向的信心:对自我的信心和对下属的信心.将这2种领导行为与下属承诺相联系,检验以上关系在不同企业竞争水平下的变化规律.对我国95家企业数据分析的结果显示,信心领导的两类"信心行为"会交互影响下属的组织承诺,另外,在激烈的竞争环境中两类行为之间的交互作用更强.     

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.     

Radical Authentic Leadership: Co-creating the conditions under which all members of the organization can be authentic

Recently, in response to ethical challenges and loss of meaning within business, leadership theory and research has seen a proliferation of literature on ‘Authentic Leadership’. In this paper we argue that Authentic Leadership (AL), in the way it is currently theorized, is in danger of not reaching its stated objectives. We systematically address the “paradoxes” and shortcomings in current theory and suggest an extended focus of study. To do so, we draw on four existential authenticity themes: 1) inauthenticity is inevitable; 2) authenticity requires creating one's own meaning; 3) authenticity does not imply goal and value congruence, 4) authenticity is not intrinsically ethical. We systematically pursue the implications of these themes for the future development of Authentic Leadership theory and propose a more radical form of AL in which the focus of study shifts from the individual leader to understanding the conditions under which all members of the organization behave authentically. We suggest this is more likely to achieve the objectives of Authentic Leadership theory.     

Ten years of The leadership quarterly: Contributions and challenges for the future

This article reviews the founding of The Leadership Quarterly (LQ) and the 188 articles published in its first decade. Multiple methods were used to prepare this review including interviews with former and current LQ editors; quantitative techniques; and qualitative analysis to examine the themes, methods, and contributions of the journal during its first decade. Directions for future research are provided, which integrate a decade of LQ author directives with interviews of prominent leadership scholars and the current authors' opinions grounded in the literature review.     

Leadership in the digital era: A review of who,what, when,where, and why

Leadership as a social influence process has always involved a complex set of phenomena that demands an interdisciplinary lens. Leadership scholarship has now entered into a digital era. In a digital era, the overall phenomenon is changing, as are the tools through which we study it, demanding a new “lens” through which we view leadership. Yet, this raises the question, to what extent is leadership different in a digital era? In acknowledgement of this trend, a special issue was commissioned at The Leadership Quarterly that sought to stimulate the imagination of leadership scholars and practitioners. In the current work, we begin with a brief review of who, what, when, where and why of digital leadership. We cover leadership in informal contexts (e.g., social media), generalization from face-to-face to virtual contexts, computational modeling, the leveraging of technology (e.g., machine learning; Big Data), as well methodological how-to guides. We then plot a path forward for leadership scholars in the dawn of the digital era.     

Doing better leadership science via replications and registered reports

In 2018, the Leadership Quarterly commissioned a Special Issue (SI) on replications of previously published studies in leadership. We adopted the Registered Reports path for this special issue to facilitate constructive reviewer feedback prior to data collection and to minimize any bias against non-significant findings in the publishing process. In this editorial, we reflect on how this approach worked, what we learned about replications, and identify three myths that we have seen throughout this process regarding the value and conduct of replications. We then offer actionable solutions to further advance replications in science. We close with a discussion of the six studies included in this SI and the implications of these studies for leadership science. We hope that this work continues to inspire replications and registered reports and in support The Leadership Quarterly offers an open call for such submissions.     

Applying mixed methods to leadership research: A review of current practices

Leadership research has a long history of a quantitative approach, and it remains the most commonly used approach among leadership researchers. Researchers in a variety of fields have been applying mixed methods designs to their research as a way to advance theory. Mixed methods designs are used for collecting, analyzing, and mixing both quantitative and qualitative data in a single study or series of studies to both explain and explore specific research questions. This article provides a review of the basic characteristics of mixed methods designs. A broad series of leadership approaches is offered to help emphasize how the application of mixed methods designs have already been applied and where they might be directed in future research. Our review of articles published in the Leadership Quarterly between 1990 and June 2012 revealed a slight occurrence of existing application of mixed methods designs to leadership research. Of the articles reviewed, only 15 studies were found to represent mixed methods research, according to our conceptual framework. The overall intent of this article is to highlight the value of purposeful application of mixed methods designs toward advancing leadership theory and/or theoretical thinking about leadership phenomena.     

Leadership research and cognitive neuroscience: The state of this union

Advances in cognitive neuroscience and other approaches to understanding human behavior from a biological standpoint are only now beginning to filter into leadership research. The purpose of this introduction to the Leadership Quarterly Special Issue on the Biology of Leadership is to outline the organizational cognitive neuroscience approach to leadership research, and show how such an approach can fruitfully inform both leadership and neuroscientific research. Indeed, we advance the view that the further application of cognitive neuroscientific techniques to leadership research will pay great dividends in our understanding of effective leadership behaviors and as such, a future symbiosis between the two fields is a necessity.     

Complexity leadership in bureaucratic forms of organizing: A meso model

We consider Complexity Leadership Theory [Uhl-Bien, M., Marion, R., & McKelvey, B. (2007). Complexity Leadership Theory: Shifting leadership from the industrial age to the knowledge era. The Leadership Quarterly.] in contexts of bureaucratic forms of organizing to describe how adaptive dynamics can work in combination with administrative functions to generate emergence and change in organizations. Complexity leadership approaches are consistent with the central assertion of the meso argument that leadership is multi-level, processual, contextual, and interactive. In this paper we focus on the adaptive function, an interactive process between adaptive leadership (an agentic behavior) and complexity dynamics (non-agentic social dynamics) that generates emergent outcomes (e.g., innovation, learning, adaptability) for the firm. Propositions regarding the actions of complexity leadership in bureaucratic forms of organizing are offered.     

The intersection of leadership and entrepreneurship: Mutual lessons to be learned

Leadership scholars are quite familiar with the often convoluted and problematic path that leadership theory has taken. Despite these challenges, leadership is currently considered a “mature field” [Hunt, J.G., & Dodge, G.E. (2000). Leader Deja Vu all over again. The Leadership Quarterly, 11 (4), 453–458] even though this maturity has not been achieved without considerable growing pains. Similar to the path that leadership scholars have taken, those who study entrepreneurship also struggle with issues associated with a field in its early stages. This review examines the intersection between the fields of leadership and entrepreneurship with an emphasis on how the path taken by leadership research can inform entrepreneurship and possibly lessen this young field's growing pains. We first identify several areas where these fields theoretically converge (both in the models employed and the research questions addressed). Next, we take a historical perspective of leadership and entrepreneurship by identifying the life cycle stage of each construct or domain. Finally, we conclude with some thoughts on how the entrepreneurship field may avoid (or is avoiding) the pitfalls experienced by those who study leadership.     

Leadership theory and practice: Fostering an effective symbiosis

Leadership theory has not lived up to its promise of helping practitioners resolve the challenges and problematics that occur in organizational leadership. Many current theories and models are not contextualized, nor do the dynamic and critical issues facing leaders drive their construction. Alternatively, practitioners too often approach leadership problems using trial and error tactics derived more from anecdotes and popular fads than validated scientific data and models. Yet, while this gap between theory and research has bedeviled the leadership community for much of its history, there have been few if any systematic examinations of its causes. In this review, we have sought to highlight the particular barriers on the leadership practice and theory-building/testing constituencies, respectively, that constrain efforts to integrate them. We also offer a number of propositions and guidelines that we hope can break through these barriers and help stakeholders create a more effective leadership theory and practice symbiosis (LTPS). Finally, we have offered two cases of effective LTPS as examples and models for such integrative research efforts.     

Turnaround leadership core tensions during the company turnaround process

How leaders turn around declining performance is a significant issue for companies, their employees, their customers, their shareholders and, more generally, society. Leadership influence during times of change is well recognised in the literature; however, leadership during a turnaround is more complex and less understood. In-depth examinations of the role and activities of turnaround leaders have received insufficient attention in the literature to date. Specifically, studies have not investigated, in-depth, the tensions that leaders face during a turnaround process. To begin addressing this gap in the literature, we utilise case studies of four companies to examine the core tensions leaders experience, when they occur during the turnaround process and how they are managed. We frame our focus on leadership tensions in three prominent domains in the literature, leadership change, leadership assertiveness and strategic orientation. Our findings identify and detail the management of six core tensions that leaders experience across a five-stage turnaround process model. We conclude that effective turnaround leadership is less about particular skill sets or ‘types’ of leaders for different stages of the recovery process, and more about their ability to purposefully navigate and balance apparently conflicting activities within these tensions. We discuss the implications of these findings for theory and practice.     

Jesus Centered Leadership and Business Applications: An Alternative Approach

In this article we evaluate Jesus Centered Leadership (JCL), a new concept that has emerged in the realm of spirituality and business management. JCL questions the “Christianity” of Christian business leadership, and proposes principles for ethical leadership that provide a truer representation of the teachings and traits of Jesus. We consider these principles and contribute principles of our own, thereby providing an alternative approach to JCL that remains consistent with the JCL message of morality but addresses issues that offer greater opportunities for adoption within existing business and institutional models.     

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.     

Embodying who we are: Leader group prototypicality and leadership effectiveness

Leadership is a process enacted in the context of a shared group membership, and leadership effectiveness is contingent on followers' perceptions of the leader as a group member. Addressing this role of group membership, the social identity theory of leadership puts leader group prototypicality, the extent to which the leader is perceived to embody group identity, center-stage in leadership effectiveness. I review empirical research in leader group prototypicality, concluding there is a robust empirical basis for the key propositions of the social identity theory of leadership. I also identify newer developments that extend and enrich the social identity analysis of leadership, including attention to the roles of uncertainty, leader fairness, leader–follower relationship, leader self-perceived prototypicality, and leadership of creativity and innovation.     

Construct redundancy in leader behaviors: A review and agenda for the future

Leadership remains a popular and heavily researched area in the social sciences. Such popularity has led to a proliferation of new constructs within the leadership domain. Here, we argue that such construct proliferation without pruning is unhealthy and violates the principle of parsimony. Our purpose was to examine construct redundancy via a comprehensive review of task-oriented, relational, passive, and inspirational leader behaviors as well as values-based and moral leadership behaviors. Our findings, as indexed via meta-analytic correlations, reveal that construct redundancy remains problematic for the leadership literature. In addition, many of the values-based and moral behavior models correlated heavily with constructs traditionally examined as outcome variables (e.g., trust, LMX, justice). Implications for future research are discussed in regards to construct redundancy and how to avoid endogeneity bias in primary studies in the leadership literature.     

„Coaching“ durch die Führungskraft — eine kritische Betrachtung

?Leadership Coaching“ — A critical discussion?Leadership Coaching“ comes into vogue again. It is possible that cutting down the expenses for HRM (and specially for counsultants) reinforces this trend. Therefore it is again time to discuss the question about the main differences between “leadership coaching” and coaching by professionals. Consultations by the superior can be helpful, however there are distinct differences to the professional coaching.