Physician leadership. An emerging leadership position

Demand is growing for Vice Presidents for Medical Management. This is a new physician executive position that enhances the ability of hospitals and health systems to more fully integrate delivery of care and thus attract managed care contracts. Located at a hospital, a health system's headquarters, or at a hospital's MSO, this position complements the traditional role of a hospital Vice President for Medical Affairs (or Medical Director), as well as the role generally played by the Medical Director in a managed care organization, linking them via a continuum of responsibilities. Compensation and prospects are high for qualified candidates.     

Team leadership

Despite the ubiquity of leadership influences on organizational team performance and the large literatures on leadership and team/group dynamics, we know surprisingly little about how leaders create and handle effective teams. In this article, we focus on leader–team dynamics through the lens of “functional leadership.” This approach essentially asserts that the leader's main job is to do, or get done, whatever functions are not being handled adequately in terms of group needs. We explicate this functional leadership approach in terms of 4 superordinate and 13 subordinate leadership dimensions and relate these to team effectiveness and a range of team processes. We also develop a number of guiding propositions. A key point in considering such relationships is the reciprocal influence, whereby both leadership and team processes influence each other.     

Narcissistic leadership

Narcissism—a personality trait encompassing grandiosity, arrogance, self-absorption, entitlement, fragile self-esteem, and hostility—is an attribute of many powerful leaders. Narcissistic leaders have grandiose belief systems and leadership styles, and are generally motivated by their needs for power and admiration rather than empathetic concern for the constituents and institutions they lead. However, narcissists also possess the charisma and grand vision that are vital to effective leadership. We review and critically assess the theoretical and research literature on narcissistic leaders in order to understand the potential positive and negative consequences of their leadership, the trajectories of their leadership, and the relationship of narcissism to established models of leadership. We conclude that the study of narcissistic leaders is inherently limited in scope, and propose a new definition of narcissistic leadership in order to reframe the discussion and better incorporate the topic of narcissism into the field of leadership studies.     

Servant leadership

As corporations are eagerly pursuing reengineering and reorganization, leadership functions are changing to champion these efforts. Traditionally, organizations have had a "top-down" management approach, however, there is a gradual shift to other leadership models. Servant leadership is being successfully implemented in many settings. Servant leadership, first popularized by Robert Greenleaf in 1970, puts serving others as the number one priority. Ten characteristics of a servant leader include: Listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment to the growth of people, and building community. Both servant leadership and the chaos theory have in common the central tenet of relationships. Since America is now approximately 80 percent a "service-economy," servant leadership can greatly benefit the individual employees, as well as help to facilitate the organization's pursuit of its changing strategic plans.     

Aesthetic leadership

We introduce aesthetic leadership as a promising approach in leadership studies. Two current movements in leadership research, the inclusion of followers in leadership models and the exploration of subjective leadership qualities, make taking an aesthetic perspective in leadership especially attractive and timely. Aesthetics relates to felt meaning generated from sensory perceptions, and involves subjective, tacit knowledge rooted in feeling and emotion. We believe the aesthetics of leadership is an important, but little understood, aspect of organizational life. For example, while we know followers must attribute leadership qualities such as charisma and authenticity to leaders to allow for social influence, we know little about how these processes operate. We propose that followers use their aesthetic senses in making these assessments. We relate aesthetic leadership to several current topics in leadership research, and outline the assumptions and methods of aesthetic leadership.     

Intergroup leadership

Strong leadership within a group can increase the likelihood of conflict with other groups. This ingroup/outgroup leadership trade-off, occurring in contexts from businesses and political parties to ethnic groups and nations, raises questions about how a different kind of leadership can improve intergroup relations. Although leadership theory often focuses on a single group, sidelining questions of intergroup dynamics, some leadership literature addresses intergroup relations. Concurrently, some intergroup relations literature directly addresses leadership. Here, we synthesize and attempt to catalyze research on leadership that promotes positive intergroup relations: intergroup leadership. We begin by reviewing the ingroup/outgroup leadership trade-off. Next, we examine five theoretical approaches to leadership that show potential to promote positive intergroup relations. Finally, we identify six characteristics of the literature as it has developed and might develop in the future. These serve as possible directions for research to further illuminate the science and practice of intergroup leadership.     

Re-imagining ethical leadership as leadership for the greater good

As Western nations slowly emerge from the recent global recession, there is demand among citizens for authorities to practice, and be seen to practice, ethical leadership. Although these conditions have been favourable for research into ethical leadership, extant research privileges westernized perspectives on ethical leadership and is largely silent on the meaning and practice of ethical leadership in the context of the ‘big’ ethical questions. In consequence, most research into ethical leadership, although well meaning, offers little guidance about how to imagine and implement sustainable, ethical solutions to systemic problems. In this research note, we outline a proposal to reimagine ethical leadership as leadership for the greater good and identify three avenues of research into leadership for the greater good that compliment existing critical perspectives on ethical leadership.     

Common sense leadership

Common sense has to do with problem solving. In the complexities of everyday human life, we are faced time and again with the need to solve problems. In fact, every situation we face, at least at the first exposure, requires some form of problem solving. When we want food, we have to solve a series of problems from acquisition to preparation to serving and eating. When we deal with organizational needs, problem solving is the daily fare.     

Communicating collaborative leadership

Collaborative or shared leadership has frequently been advocated as an alternative to vertical or top-down leadership. Building on the conceptual and theoretical aspects of collaborative leadership developed in previous research, this study examined the specific communication behaviors and processes used to create collaborative leadership. Based on participant observation ethnography and interviews of all the major participants, the authors collaborated on this study to explore how the leader's attitudes, behaviors, and communication supported collaboration and how the group members participated in creating a collaborative culture. The findings may be transferable to other group endeavors in which leaders and members wish to create a collaborative group process.     

Instrumental leadership: Measurement and extension of transformational–transactional leadership theory

Leaders must scan the internal and external environment, chart strategic and task objectives, and provide performance feedback. These instrumental leadership (IL) functions go beyond the motivational and quid-pro quo leader behaviors that comprise the full-range—transformational, transactional, and laissez faire—leadership model. In four studies we examined the construct validity of IL. We found evidence for a four-factor IL model that was highly prototypical of good leadership. IL predicted top-level leader emergence controlling for the full-range factors, initiating structure, and consideration. It also explained a unique variance in outcomes beyond the full-range factors; the effects of transformational leadership were vastly overstated when IL was omitted from the model. We discuss the importance of a “fuller full-range” leadership theory for theory and practice. We also showcase our methodological contributions regarding corrections for common method variance (i.e., endogeneity) bias using two-stage least squares (2SLS) regression and Monte Carlo split-sample designs.     

Setting the stage for effective leadership: Antecedents of transformational leadership behavior

Although transformational leadership behavior (TLB) has been linked to a number of positive organizational outcomes, research regarding the antecedents of such behavior is limited. Guided by Ajzen and Fishbein's theory of reasoned action [Psychological Bulletin 84 (1977) 888], we investigated two potentially relevant antecedents to performing TLB: cynicism about organizational change (CAOC) and the leader's social context—specifically peer leadership behavior. We hypothesized that CAOC would negatively predict TLB, while peer leadership behavior would positively predict TLB. Further, we expected that peer leadership behavior would have a positive moderating effect on leader CAOC. Data were gathered from 227 managers from multiple organizations and their 2247 subordinates. Findings supported the proposed hypotheses. Cynicism and peer leadership behavior explained nearly one quarter (24%) of the variance in TLB. Further, it appears that both CAOC and TLB may be malleable in organizational contexts. Implications for leadership research and practice are discussed.     

Zeroing in on leadership effectiveness: The methodological challenges of benchmarking leadership practices

Business success in the 21st century will be based on the widespread mastery of leadership roles, rather than on the directives of a professional or leadership elite. The first step for systematically enacting a leadership development agenda for our nation is to identify the factors, values or qualities most important to leadership effectiveness. Next, we must improve our understanding of how these guiding ideas and insights translate into what successful leaders do. As we perfect this understanding, we will need to operationally define the best practices of successful leaders. These best practices must then become benchmarks for intensive leadership development efforts.This article considers nine methodological challenges of the first agenda item-identification of the factors, values or qualities most important to leadership effectiveness. To illustrate these challenges, the authors use their own business leadership research as a case study. This research surveys 127 chairmen, chief executive officers, and presidents-a cross section of successful U.S.A. business leaders, including men and women from all parts of the nation who have diverse industry, racial, ethnic and religious backgrounds. The authors identify where methodological improvements are needed to cope with the challenges of leadership research. They suggest important directions for methodological development and propose three minimum standards for future leadership research.     

Contextual leadership,transformational leadership and the performance of international innovation seeking alliances

In this paper, we examined aspects of contextual leadership [Osborn, R. N., Hunt, J. G., & Jauch, L. R. (2002). Toward a contextual theory of leadership. The Leadership Quarterly, 13, 797–837] and transformational leadership [Bass, B. M. (1985). Leadership and performance beyond expectations. New York: Free Press] by alliance heads and by executives in the sponsoring firms for a sample of innovation seeking U.S./Japanese alliances in research-intensive sectors. We identified three aspects of performance (a) alliance innovation, (b) the strategic contributions to the U.S. sponsor and (c) the strategic contributions to the Japanese sponsor. We found that (a) knowledge/ information based (contextual dimensions) leadership by the alliance head was associated with higher innovation and strategic contributions to the sponsors and (b) transformational leadership by sponsoring executives was dysfunctional for alliance innovation but contributed positively to the strategic contribution the alliance provided a sponsor and, (c) the linkage between leadership by the alliance head and performance was much more important for some types of alliance governance (administrative) structures than others. That is, we argue that appropriate leadership is embedded in its context.     

Combinative aspects of leadership style: The ordering and temporal spacing of leadership behaviors

This article introduces the concept of combinative aspects of leadership style, which addresses elements of leadership style such as the ordering and temporal spacing of leadership behaviors. The major purpose is to show that perceptions of leadership are influenced by the manner in which leadership behaviors are combined. Different combinations of task-oriented leadership statements and socioemotionally oriented leadership statements were examined. All of the participants were full-time employees. In all three of the studies, combinative aspects of leadership style clearly influenced perceptions of leadership statements. The findings indicate that task-oriented leadership should not be provided without socioemotional leadership and that socioemotionally oriented leadership should generally be provided immediately before task-oriented leadership. Further work is needed to investigate the applicability of combinative aspects of leadership style to components of transactional and transformational leadership.     

Eight puzzles of leadership science

In the early 1900s, David Hilbert introduced a set of 23 mathematical problems. These problems caught the imagination of mathematicians around the world for the coming century and beyond. The advantage of such defined scientific puzzles is to galvanize coordinated efforts to pursue key scientific questions, whose answers can also address the grand challenges faced by society. Consequently, science can advance more quickly in a theory-driven, rigorous, open and collaborative manner, with meaningful implications for stakeholders. In the current editorial, I propose eight puzzles that could similarly motivate and guide leadership science. Whereas this list is not exhaustive--rather it is just eight starting points--beginning to solve such puzzles will accelerate our science and deliver on shared promises to our stakeholders. I then present actionable guidelines necessary to solve these puzzles and conclude by discussing the role The Leadership Quarterly will play in facilitating the pursuit of solutions to these puzzles.