Leadership is a one-way or mutual process of influence that obtains compliance. It may be focused in one individual, but does not have to be. Leadership is sometimes treated as though it were virtually coterminous with management, but increasingly studies of leadership tend to emphasize various aspects of change, while those of management stress the status quo (Yukl 1994). Scholarly interest in leadership has waxed and waned over time, but since the early 1980s there has been a virtual explosion in interest, especially in leadership as it operates in an organizational context.
Scholarly studies of leadership began around 1900 and focused on traits that distinguished great historical leaders from the masses. Related research, after the Second World War, began to emphasize the behaviour of leaders rather than the traits that distinguish leaders. A ‘situational contingency perspective’, ushered in by Fred Fiedler, stressed that in addition to these traits and forms of action such situational contingencies of leadership as the nature of the task must be taken into account (Bass 1990). Some have laid so much stress on situational contingencies, in particular the nature of the followers, or the characteristics of jobs and organizations, that they leave little or no room for the influence of leaders. While accepting that the substantive impact of leadership may be strongly restricted by other forces, some writers, however, emphasize the fact that people may attribute significant symbolic powers to their leaders, especially where it is difficult to determine the ‘real’ causes behind relative success and failure. What has been called the ‘romance of leadership notion’ (Hunt 1991) often helps to explain the replacement of corporate leaders or leaders of sports teams, where performance is poor for reasons that are not evident. Poor leadership is invoked to explain the failure, and almost magical powers may be attributed to replacement leaders under such circumstances.
The recognition of this process of attribution has revived interest in transformational or charismatic leadership since the 1970s. Under what Bryman (1992) terms ‘new leadership’, followers do not merely enter into day-to-day transactional dealings with leaders, in which rewards are offered for services; new leaders expand the goals of their followers, and give them confidence to exceed their own expectations of their potential. Vision, a sense of mission, and movement beyond the status quo are emphasized; extraordinary things are attributed to the leader.
A perceptual and information-processing framework is especially important in the study of strategic leadership (leadership of organizations) where the acceptance and impact of strategic leadership decisions is strongly influenced by perceptions of the leader (Lord and Maher 1991). The notion of strategic leadership is now increasingly important in research, despite the preponderance of studies that emphasize rather lower-level face-to-face leadership in organizations (Hunt 1991).
Numerous perspectives on strategic leadership are also being developed. One integrative framework (Hunt 1991) extends Jaques’s (1989) work on the impact of strategic leadership as it cascades down the organization. This suggests that leadership requirements become increasingly complex as one moves up the hierarchy (Phillips and Hunt 1992).
A final, increasingly important perspective that encompasses many of these other approaches is concerned with leadership of high-performance teams (Yukl 1994). These teams are a response to more and more common thrusts to empower employees and to ensure their active participation in organizations. Like the strategic-leadership approach, studies of leadership of high-performance teams consider leadership to be embedded within an organization and recognize such factors as culture and organizational design. Moreover, using employee or formal management facilitators, the teams need both traditional and new leadership.
James G.Hunt
Texas Tech University
References
Bryman, A. (1992) Charisma and Leadership in Organisations, London.
Fiedler, F.E. (1967) A Theory of Leadership Effectiveness, New York.
Hunt, J.G. (1991) Leadership: A New Synthesis, Newbury Park, CA.
Jacques, E. (1989) Requisite Organization, Arlington, VA.
Lord, R.G. and Maher, K.J. (1991) Leadership and Information Processing, Boston, MA.
Phillips, R.L. and Hunt, J.G. (eds) (1992) Strategic Leadership: A Multiorganizational-Level Perspective, Westport, CT.
Yukl, G. (1994) Leadership in Organizations, 3rd edn, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
