Leadership Theory and Research: A Critical Approach to New and Existing Paradigms

By Christian Harrison

This book provides a concise yet comprehensive literature review on leadership. As well as offering critical insight into leadership research, the author addresses emerging paradigms and identifies new approaches. A vital tool for leadership students and scholars, the text will enable readers to demonstrate a critical awareness of current developments both in theory and practice of leadership and its importance in modern organizations. Both scholars and practitioners will find the engaging discussion in this book particularly useful as the author offers practical ideas for development and a much-needed unified theory on leadership.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Release date: Nov 16, 2017
• ISBN: 9783319686721

Book preview

© The Author(s) 2018

Christian HarrisonLeadership Theory and Research https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68672-1_1

1. Introduction

Christian Harrison¹  

(1)

School of Business and Enterprise, University of the West of Scotland, Hamilton, UK

Christian Harrison

Email: [e-mail]

Abstract

This chapter provides a comprehensive literature review on leadership. The aim is to provide a critical insight into leadership research. This chapter discusses the varying conceptions of leadership. Scholars argue that a universally acceptable definition for leadership is practically impossible and will hinder creative ways of thinking. Some of the different ways in which leadership has been defined over the past 70 years with reference to conceptual underpinning are provided in this chapter. The distinction between leadership and management is often made in the literature. However, in the world today, a question remains unanswered which is: Is leadership now increasingly needed by all managers? This chapter examines the similarities and differences between leadership and management. The functions and activities of management and leadership are discussed.

Keywords

Leadership conceptionsDefinitions of leadershipLeadershipManagementRoles of leadersRoles of managers

Introduction

The number of published research studies in the field of leadership is vast and spans several decades. However, despite such a large body of scholarship, leadership still remains an elusive concept. Despite considerable investment in research by both governments and organisations, knowledge gaps about leadership still exist due to a lack of comprehensive information studies of the field (Leitch et al. 2009).

This chapter provides a comprehensive literature review on leadership. The aim is to provide a critical insight into leadership research . This chapter will discuss the varying conceptions of leadership. Scholars argue that a universally acceptable definition for leadership is practically impossible and will hinder new ideas and creative ways of thinking. Some of the different ways in which leadership has been defined over the past 70 years with reference to conceptual underpinning are provided in this chapter.

The distinction between leadership and management is often made in the literature. However in the world today, a question remains unanswered which is: Is leadership now increasingly needed by all managers ? This chapter will examine the similarities and differences between leadership and management . The functions and activities of management and leadership are discussed.

The Definitions of Leadership

To date, there is no precise definition of the term leadership. Stogdill (1974, p. 259) argued that ‘…there are almost as many different definitions of leadership as there are people who have attempted to define the concept’. This is evident, given the large volume of publications and studies relating to the domain of leadership. Upon entering the search string ‘lead*’ into Web of Science, 2,122,285 publications were listed, and on Springer Link, 4,333,478 publications in form of journals and books were identified as being relevant to the topic (17th January 2017). Researchers have proposed varying concepts of leadership and have investigated it by using different phenomena that suited them (Yukl 2010). This is not surprising because, although leadership is a universal phenomenon (Bass and Bass 2009), it remains complex. Alvesson and Sveningsson (2003) argue that a universally acceptable definition for leadership is practically impossible and will hinder new ideas and creative ways of thinking. Some of the different ways in which leadership has been defined over the past 70 years, with reference to conceptual underpinning, are listed in Table 1.1.

Table 1.1

Definitions of leadership

The definitions listed in the table demonstrate how the perception of leadership has evolved from it being viewed as an ability or behaviour to being viewed as a process of influence . The section below examines the similarities and differences between leadership and management