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.     

A comparative study of three leadership approaches in India

We examined the validity of three leadership approaches in an organization in India. We used a multi-theory and multi-method design to competitively test transformational leadership theory, the nurturant–task leadership model, and a local organization-specific leadership model. Transformation leadership theory is one of the most widely studied and accepted theories in Western countries and is viewed as a universalistic leadership approach. The nurturant–task leadership model was developed in India and viewed as a culture-specific leadership approach. We also developed a local leadership model, called RDO, a pseudonym for the organization, and viewed it as an organization-specific leadership approach, using a qualitative analysis of interview data. The overall results of our qualitative–quantitative work provide strong support for the RDO leadership model, some support for a nurturant–task leadership model, and minimal support for transformational leadership theory. These results suggest that research designs that include a multi-theory, multi-methods approach in a single culture have the potential to increase our understanding of leadership processes.     

Organizational and contextual influences on the emergence and effectiveness of charismatic leadership

The literature on charismatic leadership in organizations has neglected the organizational context in which such leadership is embedded. The purpose of this article is to enrich and refine charismatic leadership theory by linking it to its organizational context. We argue that while charismatic leadership principles and processes potentially apply across a wide variety of situations, the emergence and effectiveness of such leadership may be facilitated by some contexts and inhibited by others. We develop and present a series of propositions linking contextual variable to the emergence and effectiveness of charismatic leadership. Among the contextual variable we examine are the organizational environment, life-cycle stage, technology, tasks, goals, structure, and culture, as well as the leader's level in the organization and the circumstances surrounding his or her appointment.     

Women's political leadership participation around the world: An institutional analysis

Understanding institutional systems is critical for the advancement of women's participation in leadership in varying contexts. A unique and global analysis of the contextual factors that affect women in political leadership, this paper extends prior research in the field. This is a cross-country study where we ask, “How are societal-level institutional forces related to women's participation in political leadership?” We collected data from 8 secondary sources on 181 countries and conducted linear regression analyses with six institutional influences: the business environment, societal development, the economic environment, physical and technological infrastructure, political freedom, and culture. Results indicate that to increase the political leadership participation of women, we need to evaluate the following: customs and trade regulations, graft, the gender gap in political empowerment, public spending on education, the economic viability of the country, access to power and the internet, political freedom, and cultural variables like performance orientation, collectivism, and power distance.     

The loci and mechanisms of leadership: Exploring a more comprehensive view of leadership theory

Through a qualitative review of the leadership literature, we derive two fundamental principles for codifying the last century of leadership theory and research: the locus and mechanism of leadership. Our systematic review and categorization of past theories suggests that further development of the follower, collective and context loci, and the affect mechanism is needed. Building on these insights, we propose that by simultaneously considering all five loci and four mechanisms in their theories, leadership scholars can advance a more comprehensive and integrative understanding of the leadership phenomenon. We then demonstrate the potential of using the locus and mechanism framework for examining and expanding current and future leadership theory including work on shared and strategic leadership.     

The Development of Entrepreneurial Leadership: The Role of Human,Social and Institutional Capital

This paper contributes to the literature on entrepreneurial leadership development. Leadership studies are characterized by an increasing emphasis given to an individual leader's social and organizational domain. Within the context of human capital and social capital theory, the paper reflects on the emergence of a social capital theory of leadership development. Using a retrospective, interpretivist research method, the authors present the experience of a cohort of business leaders on an executive development programme to uncover the everydayness of leadership development in practice. Specifically, they explore how entrepreneurial leadership develops as a social process and what the role of social capital is in this. The findings suggest that the enhancement of leaders’ human capital only occurred through their development of social capital. There is not, as extant literature suggests, a clear separation between leader development and leadership development. Further, the analysis implies that the social capital theory of leadership is limited in the context of the entrepreneurial small firm, and the authors propose that it should be expanded to incorporate institutional capital, that is, the formal structures and organizations which enhance the role of social capital and go beyond enriching the human capital stock of individual leaders.     

Considering the shareholder perspective: value-based management systems and stock market performance

We empirically study the use of value-based management systems in listed German firms and examine implications for firms’ stock market performance. Using a novel, hand-collected data set covering 1,083 firm years from 2002 to 2008, we find that value-based management systems become increasingly common. Specifically, in 2008 42% of our sample firms have implemented such a system. In the empirical analysis, we find that firms implementing value-based management systems earn both statistically significant and economically substantial abnormal stock market returns measured within a 2-year adoption phase. These excess returns are not jeopardized by poor post-adoption returns. In the analysis, we carefully control for risk and account for endogeneity concerns. Overall, our findings support the view that shareholders consider the adoption of a value-based management system as a credible signal that management will focus on shareholder interests and that such systems actually increase shareholder value.     

Cultural and societal influences on shared leadership in globally dispersed teams

Leading globally dispersed teams poses critical challenges, especially if the team members are not only physically separated, but also culturally diverse and their tasks are dynamic and complex. It has been argued that shared leadership behaviors, such as continuous reflection, anticipation of a team's information needs, and initiating a team's social influence, positively influence virtual team performance. Country-level effects on shared leadership in globally dispersed teams, however, have been neglected. Building on the country institutional profile developed by Kostova (1997), we argue that regulative, cognitive, and normative components influence the likelihood that the individual will engage in shared leadership behaviors. Analyzing the differences between the institutional profiles of team members' home countries as reflected in institutional diversity as a team-level property, we furthermore point to different levels of institutional diversity as an enabling or hindering condition of shared leadership.     

Charisma under crisis revisited: Presidential leadership,perceived leader effectiveness,and contextual influences

This study investigates the influence of crisis on leader use of charismatic rhetoric. We examine leader charismatic rhetoric across two major crises, longitudinally exploring potential long-term influences of charismatic rhetoric on perceptions of leader effectiveness. Using an inductive approach to theory generation, we draw upon findings from the data analysis of eight charismatic rhetoric constructs (collective focus, temporal orientation, followers' worth, similarity to followers, values and moral justifications, tangibility, action, and adversity) to advance propositions regarding potential time and ceiling effects of charismatic rhetorical leadership on followers. Additionally, we discuss the relationships between characteristics of the crisis and the use of charismatic rhetorical leadership. In doing so, we identify potential boundary conditions for the use of charismatic rhetoric (as an element of charismatic leadership) within the context of different crises.     

Women’s career development in an Arab Middle Eastern context

This study examines women’s perspectives on requirements for enabling their access to senior leadership roles in the under-researched context of the Arab Middle East. It draws on an approach that utilizes qualitative, in-depth, semi-structured interviews with academic women working in Saudi Arabia higher education. The findings of this study reveal several culturally responsive strategies for supporting the advancement of women into leading positions within higher education. Also, the study demonstrates how women in Saudi higher education learn to resist patriarchal power structures and gender discrimination, and to develop their own strategies for negotiating those issues. In addition, the results provide evidence of the academy’s importance as an institution that works collaboratively with the government to develop women’s careers. The originality of this paper is its contribution to the limited knowledge that currently exists on women’s career development in the Arab Middle Eastern context. This study also will benefit human resource departments and human resource development practitioners with knowledge regarding the intertwining of social forces with university practices, and gender-related issues, which in turn affect women’s positions in the academy. Additionally, the study suggests that human resource development practitioners should establish policies and practices with respect to gender-related equity issues that could have a positive impact on wider national human resource development systems, and potentially open more opportunities for positive career development for women.     

基于制度环境和任务环境观点的厂商关系管理

在构建、发展和维持成功的合作关系上,以往的营销渠道研究主要从经济效率角度强调了任务环境的观点,在很大程度上忽略了以合法性为基础的制度环境的观点.另外,在渠道研究上,与其它国家相比,我国的制度环境可能有很多特殊性,对渠道的影响力不容忽视.本研究将两种环境观点结合起来发展了一个管理渠道关系的综合框架,并通过对北京、上海224家4S店的调研数据进行实证分析,从而验证了两种观点在解释渠道管理中的一些现象时的互补性.文章最后指出了本研究的意义及对未来研究的建议.     

Visualizing the landscape and evolution of leadership research

Complementing prior quantitative and qualitative reviews of the leadership literature, we conduct a bibliometric analysis of leadership articles. Our bibliometric review provides a different perspective by portraying the landscape and developmental trajectory of leadership research over time via co-citation and co-occurrence analyses. Using a scientific visualization tool CiteSpace and 6528 leadership works collected from the Web of Science database from 1990 to 2017, we detect and visualize the landscape of leadership research and track how this landscape has evolved. After mapping the landscape, we discuss the insights gleaned from our bibliometric review, with a focus on open questions, future research directions, and implications. In doing so, our review provides readers with a systematic understanding of the development of the leadership field and a roadmap to spark leadership research and move this literature forward.     

The enactment of plural leadership in a health and social care network: The influence of institutional context

In this article we employ developments in social network analysis (SNA), specifically the p* model, to examine the enactment of plural leadership within, and across, hierarchical levels and organizational boundaries (Denis et al., 2012). Drawing on an empirical study of an inter-professional, inter-organizational network (number of nodes = 23) that delivers health and social care, we address two research gaps: (i) the effect of power relations, derived from professional hierarchy, upon spread of plural leadership; and (ii) the effect of formal leadership, derived from managerial accountability, in channeling the spread of plural leadership for coherent strategic effect. We show that, in a routine situation, the network is characterized by generalized leadership exchanges. In this situation, professional hierarchy and managerial accountability are not visible, nor is channeling of plural leadership by the formal leader. In a non-routine situation, when a disruptive event occurs, the network is characterized by restricted exchange. In this situation, professional hierarchy and managerial accountability are evident, and a formal leader channels plural leadership.     

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.     

Effects of Leadership Style,Creativity Technique and Personal Initiative on Employee Creativity

Transformational leadership is assumed to enhance employees' creativity. However, results of meta‐analytic research on the relations between transformational leadership and creativity have fallen short of expectations. The authors argue that, besides leadership style, the creativity technique that a leader employs is an important means of stimulating employees' creativity. In addition, it is assumed that leadership styles and creativity techniques may have different effects, depending on the measure of creativity output (quantitative vs qualitative). Therefore, in an experimental setting, the effects of different creativity techniques (provocation technique vs brainwriting) and leadership styles (transformational vs transactional) on both quantitative and qualitative creativity were examined. Results showed that transformational leadership and provocation technique led to higher levels of qualitative creativity than transactional leadership and brainwriting, respectively. Conversely, transactional leadership and brainwriting were more effective for quantitative creativity. The additional benefit of the provocation technique in qualitative creativity was found to be higher in the transactional leadership condition than in the transformational leadership condition. Moreover, personal initiative made a significant and independent contribution to both qualitative and quantitative creativity. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.     

The mediating role of leadership and people management practices on HRD and organizational performance

Drawing upon prior research, we identify strategic value and transaction effectiveness as two significant HRD contributions and examine their dyadic effect on leadership and people management practices, and influence on firm performance. Results of path analysis on 138 participants supported the dyadic effect hypothesis. More significantly, we found leadership and people management practices as a significant predictor on the relationship between strategic value and organizational performance, which suggests that organizational performance is affected by the combined effect of leadership and people management practices. A key implication of this research is that where organizations had effective leadership and people management practices, both types of HRD contributions – strategic value and transaction effectiveness – significantly enhanced firm performance.     

Do third-party certifications work in a weak institutional environment?

We investigate whether third-party certification may negatively affect firm performance in a weak institutional environment. Firms in weak institutional environments often obtain certifications to appeal to foreign audiences. But these audiences hold negative evaluations of firms from weak institutional settings, judging them as being of poor quality due to their geographic origin. We argue that these negative evaluations greatly diminish the informational value of certifications, such that the costs of certification exceed revenue gains causing performance decline. We also examine whether industry-level evaluations can challenge country-level ones. Focusing on industry legitimation, we argue that this increases the salience of the industry over the institutional context. Audiences see the industry first, not the weak institutional environment. Thus, third-party certifications can become a basis for differentiating among firms and thereby help improve firm performance as industry legitimation increases. We use the first decade post-liberalization of the Indian software industry, 1992–2003, to test our hypotheses. Based on a sample of 792 firms, we find support for our arguments suggesting that in weak institutional environments certification alone is not enough for firms targeting foreign audiences to overcome the stigma of their origins; it needs to be accompanied by positive industry-level processes.