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Leadership: Current TheorieResearch, and FutureDirectionsBruce J. Avolio,1 Fred O. Walumbwa,2and Todd J. Weber 31Department of Management, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska 68588-0491email: [email protected] of Management, The Arizona State University, Glendale, Arizona 85306-4908; email: [email protected]

3Department of Management, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska 68588-0491email: [email protected]

Annu. Rev. Psychol. 2009. 60:42149

The Annual Review of Psychologyis online atpsych.annualreviews.org

This articles doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.60.110707.163621

Copyright c 2009 by Annual Reviews. All rights reserved

0066-4308/09/0110-0421$20.00

Key Wordsauthentic leadership, cognitive leadership, complexity leadership,cross-cultural leadership, new-genre leadership, shared leadership

Abstract This review examines recent theoretical and empirical developmenthe leadership literature, beginning with topics that are currently ceiving attention in terms of research, theory, and practice. We beby examining authentic leadership and its development, followe work that takes a cognitive science approach. We then examine ngenre leadership theories, complexity leadership, and leadership thshared, collective, or distributed. We examine the role of relationshthrough our review of leader member exchange and the emerging won followership. Finally, we examine work that has been done on stitutes for leadership, servant leadership, spirituality and leaderscross-cultural leadership, and e-leadership. This structure has the bet of creating a future focus as well as providing an interesting wexamine the development of the eld. Each section ends with an idecation of issues to be addressed in the future, in addition to the ovintegration of the literature we provide at the end of the article.

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ContentsINTRODUCTION .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 422OVERVIEW OF AUTHENTIC

LEADERSHIP. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423 Authentic Leadership Dened . . . . . . 423Future Focus Required . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424

AUTHENTIC LEADERSHIPDEVELOPMENT .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424Heritability and Leadership . . . . . . . . 425Examining Evidence for Positive

Leadership Interventions . . . . . . . . 425Future Focus Required . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425

COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY AND LEADERSHIP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426Emerging Cognitive Constructs . . . . 426Prototypical Abstractions

of Leadership. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427

Future Focus Required . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428NEW-GENRE LEADERSHIP . . . . . . . 428

New-Genre Versus TraditionalLeadership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428

Boundary Conditionsfor New-Genre Leadership . . . . . . 429

Future Focus Required . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429COMPLEXITY LEADERSHIP . . . . . . 430

Complexity and TraditionalLeadership Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . 430

Future Focus Required . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431

SHARED, COLLECTIVE,OR DISTRIBUTEDLEADERSHIP. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431Shared Leadership Dened. . . . . . . . . 431Research Evidence.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 432

Future Focus Required . . . . . . . . . . . . . LEADER-MEMBER EXCHANGE. . . 4

Extensions to LMX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Future Focus Required . . . . . . . . . . . . .

FOLLOWERSHIP

AND LEADERSHIP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4Romance of Leadership . . . . . . . . . . . . Updates on Follower-Centric

Views . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Future Focus Required . . . . . . . . . . . . .

SUBSTITUTES FORLEADERSHIP. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4Future Focus Required . . . . . . . . . . . . .

SERVANT LEADERSHIP . . . . . . . . . . . 4Future Focus Required . . . . . . . . . . . . .

SPIRITUALITY AND

LEADERSHIP. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4Future Focus Required . . . . . . . . . . . . .

CROSS-CULTURALLEADERSHIP. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4Project GLOBE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4Global Leadership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Comparative Leadership . . . . . . . . . . . Future Focus Required . . . . . . . . . . . . .

E-LEADERSHIP. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4Common Questions with

E-Leadership. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Group and Virtual TeamsResearch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Future Focus Required. . . . . . . . . . . . . CLOSING COMMENTS

AND INTEGRATION. . . . . . . . . . . . 44

INTRODUCTION One of our goals for this integrative reviewis to examine the ways in which the eld of leadership is evolving and the consequencesof its evolutionary path for the models, meth-ods, and populations examined. For example,at the outset of the eld of leadership, the pri-mary focus wasonstudying an individual leader, who was most likely a male working in somelarge private-sector organization in the United

States.Today, theeld of leadership focuseonly on the leader, but also on followers, supervisors, work setting/context, and cu

including a much broader array of indials representing the entire spectrum of dsity, public, private, and not-for-prot orzations, and increasingly over the past 20samplesof populations from nations arounglobe.Leadership is no longersimplydescas an individual characteristic or differenc

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rather is depicted in various models as dyadic,shared, relational, strategic, global, and a com-plex social dynamic (Avolio 2007, Yukl 2006).

We organize ourexaminationof howleader-ship is evolving bydiscussing signicant areasof inquiry that represent current pillars in leader-ship research, some understandably taller thanothers. We highlight the current state of eachparticular area of inquiry, and discuss what weknow, what we dont know, and what remainsinteresting possibilities to pursue in future re-search. Given our space limitations, we focusmore on the current state of these respective ar-eas in terms of advances in theory, research, andpractice, including the criticisms and bound-ariesof theories,models,andmethods whereverappropriate. From this analysis, we offer somerecommendations for future directions that thescience of leadership could pursue, and we dis-cuss the potential implications for leadershippractice.

Looking back over the past 100 years, wecannot imagine a more opportune time for theeld of leadership studies. Never before has somuch attention beenpaid to leadership, andthefundamental question we must ask is, what do we know and what should we know about lead-ers and leadership? We begin addressing thesequestions not by going back to the earliest work in leadership, but rather by focusing on whatis most current in the eld. We then examineother areas from which the current work hasemerged, rather than examiningleadership ma-terial covered in recent reviews (Gelfand et al.2007, Goethals 2005) or providing a compre-hensive historical review of the eld that is bet-ter left to the Handbook of Leadership(Bass &Bass 2008; see also Yukl & Van Fleet 1992).

OVERVIEW OF AUTHENTICLEADERSHIPOne of the emerging pillars of interest in theeld of leadership has been called authenticleadership development. As discussed in a spe-cial issue [edited by Avolio & Gardner (2005)]of the Leadership Quarterlyon this topic and inan earlier theoretical piece by Luthans & Avolio

Authenticleadership: a pattof transparent andethical leader behathat encouragesopenness in sharininformation needemake decisions whaccepting followerinputs

Transformationalleadership: leadebehaviors thattransform and inspfollowers to perfobeyond expectatio while transcendinself-interest for thgood of theorganizationPositiveorganizationalbehavior: literatuthat is focusing onpositive constructssuch as hope,resiliency, efcacyoptimism, happineand well-being as apply to organizat

Broaden-and-build

theory: suggestspositive emotionsexpand cognition behavioral tendencand encourage nov varied, and explorthoughts and actio

(2003), the advent of work on authentic leader-shipdevelopmentcameasaresultofwritingsontransformational leadership, in which authorssuch as Bass & Steidlmeier (1999) suggest thatthere are pseudo versus authentic transforma-tional leaders.

Luthans & Avolio (2003) also introducedthe concept of authentic leadership develop-ment into the literature with the goal of in-tegrating work on (Luthans 2002) positiveorganizational behavior with the life-span lead-ership development work of Avolio (1999). Their main purpose was to examine what con-stituted genuine leadership development in-cluding what worked and didnt work to develop leaders and leadership, as well as to bringto the foreground some of the recent work in positive psychology as a foundation for ex-amining how one might accelerate the development. Luthans and Avolio reasoned thatusing some of the theoretical work in posi-tive psychology such as Fredricksons (2001)broaden-and-build theory, they could offer amore positive way for conceptualizing leader-ship development. According to Fredrickson,those individuals who have more positive psy-chological resources areexpected to grow moreeffectively or to broaden themselves and buildout additional personal resources to perform.Luthans and Avolio report that to a large ex-tent, the prior leadership development work was based on a decit-reduction model strat-egy, where onediscovered what waswrong witha leader and then worked to correct decits interms of focusing on the leaders development(also see Avolio & Luthans 2006).

Authentic Leadership DenedFirst and foremost, the concept of authenticity has been around for a long time, as reected inmany philosophical discussions of what consti-tutes authenticity (Harter et al. 2002). George(2003) popularized authentic leadership in thegeneral practice community when he publishedhis book on the topic, as did Luthans & Avolio(2003) for the academic community. Luthans& Avolio (2003, p. 243) dened authentic

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Ethical leadership:the demonstration of normatively appropriate conductthrough personalactions andinterpersonalrelationships, and thepromotion of suchconduct to followers

Nomologicalnetwork: arepresentation of aconstruct, itsobservablemanifestation, and therelationship betweenthe two

leadership as a process that draws from bothpositive psychological capacities and a highly developed organizational context, which re-sults in both greater self-awareness and self-regulated positive behaviors on the part of leaders and associates, fostering positive self-development. This denition and subsequent work on authentic leadership was dened atthe outset as multilevel in that it included theleader, follower, and context very specically inthe way it was conceptualized and measured. This addressed a typical criticism in the lead-ership literature summarized by Yammarinoet al. (2005, p. 10) who concluded, relatively few studies in any of the areas of leadershipresearch have addressed levels-of-analysis is-suesappropriatelyin theory, measurement, dataanalysis, and inference drawing.

At the same time, several scholars (e.g.,Cooper et al. 2005, Sparrowe 2005) expressedconcerns with Luthans & Avolios initial de-nition of authentic leadership. The initial con-ceptual differences notwithstanding, there ap-pears to be general agreement in the literatureon four factors that cover the components of authentic leadership: balanced processing, in-ternalized moral perspective, relational trans-parency, and self-awareness. Balanced process-ing refers to objectively analyzing relevant databefore making a decision. Internalized moralperspective refers to being guided by internalmoral standards,which areused to self-regulateones behavior. Relational transparency referstopresenting ones authentic self through openly sharing information and feelings as appropriatefor situations (i.e., avoiding inappropriate dis-plays of emotions). Self-awareness refers to thedemonstratedunderstanding of ones strengths, weaknesses, and the way one makes sense of the world. These four constructs were furtheroperationally dened by Walumbwa and col-leagues (2008). Walumbwa et al. (2008) provided initial evidence using a multisample strat-egy involving U.S. and non-U.S. participantsto determine the construct validity of a new setof authentic leadership scales. Specically, they showed the four components described aboverepresented unique scales that were reliable.

These four scales loaded on a higher-ordetor labeled authentic leadership that wacriminantly valid from measures of transfotional leadership (e.g., Avolio 1999) and eleadership (e.g., Brown et al. 2005) andsignicant and positive predictor of orgational citizenshipbehavior, organizationalmitment, and satisfaction with supervisoperformance.

Future Focus Required Work on dening and measuring authleadership is in the very early stages velopment. Future research will need fer additional evidence for the construclidity of this measure or other measuresit will also need to demonstrate how authleadership relates to other constructs withnomological network. This would includestructs such as moral perspective, self-coclarity, well-being, spirituality, and judgm Moreover, there is a need to examine hothentic leadership is viewed across situand cultures and whether it is a univeprescribed positive root constructmeit represents the base of good leadershgardless of form, e.g., participative, direor inspiring. In the next section, we turattention to the second major focus onthentic leadership, which incorporates thedevelopment.

AUTHENTIC LEADERSHIPDEVELOPMENT Up until very recently, one would be hpressed to nd in the leadership litera general model of leadership develop(Luthans&Avolio2003).Evenmoredifcnd is evidence-based leadership developSpecically, what evidence is there to su whether leaders or leadership can be deveusing one or more specic theories of leship? This question led to a concerted effexplore what was known about whetherers are born or made, as well as the efcleadership interventions.


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Heritability and LeadershipOne avenue of research that has explored whether leaders are born versus made has involved studying identical and fraternal twins.Preliminary evidence using a behavioral ge-netics approach has shown that approximately 30% of the variation in leadership style and

emergence was accounted for by heritabil-ity; the remaining variation was attributed todifferences in environmental factors such asindividuals having different role models andearly opportunities for leadership development(Arveyet al. 2007).Because identical twins have100% of the same genetic makeup and fraternaltwins share about 50%, this behavioral geneticsresearch was able to control for heritability toexamine how many leadership roles the twinsemerged into over their respective careers. In

this and subsequent research for both men and women across cultures, similar results were ob-tained. The authors conducting this researchconclude that the life context one grows upin and later works in is much more importantthan heritability in predicting leadership emer-gence across ones career.

Examining Evidence for PositiveLeadership InterventionsLord & Hall (1992, p. 153) noted, too muchresearch in the past has attempted to probe thecomplex issues of leadership using simple bi- variate correlations. It seems fair to say thatalthough most models of leadershiphave causalpredictions, a relatively small percentage of theaccumulated literature has actually tested thesepredictions using controlled leadership interventions, especially in eld research settings(Yukl 2006).

To determine whether experimental interventions actually impacted leadership devel-opment and/or performance, a qualitative andquantitative review of the leadership interven-tion (i.e., studies where a researcher overtly manipulated leadership to examine its impacton some specic intermediate process vari-ables or outcomes) literature was undertaken

(see Avolio & Luthans 2006, Avolio et al. 2009,Reichard & Avolio 2005). The focus of thismeta-analytic review was unique in that up tothat point, more than 30 meta-analyses hadbeen published on leadership research, noneof which had focused on leadership interven-tions and more than one model of leadership.For each study, the leadership intervention ex-amined was categorized into six types: train-ing, actor/role-play, scenario/vignette, assign-ments, expectations, others. Reichard & Avolio(2005)reportedthatregardlessofthetheorybe-ing investigated, results showed that leadershipinterventions had a positive impact on work outcomes (e.g., ratings of leader performance),even when the duration of those interventions was less than one day. In terms of utility, partic-ipants in the broadly dened leadership treat-ment condition had on average a 66% chanceof positive outcomes versus only a 34% chanceof success for the comparison group.

Future Focus RequiredRelatively little work has been done over thepast 100 years to substantiate whether leader-ship can actually be developed. Indeed, basedon the meta-analysis ndings reviewed above,only 201 studies were identied that t theintervention denition. Of those 201 studies,only about one third focused on developingleadership as opposed to manipulating it forimpact through role plays or scripts to testa particular proposition in one of the variousmodels.

One of the emerging areas of interest inleadership research, which we have dedicatedmore attention to in its own section, con-cerns the linkages between cognitive scienceand how leaders perceive, decide, behave, andtake action (Lord & Brown 2004). For exam-ple, to develop leadership, it is imperative that we examine how a leaders self-concept and/oridentity is formed, changed, and inuences be-havior (Swann et al. 2007). This raises a key question regarding what constitutes leaders working self-concept and/or identity with re-spect to how they go about inuencing others


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(Swann et al. 2007). For example, does an au-thentic leader have a different working self-concept than someone who is described by fol-lowers as transformational or transactional, andhow do these differences develop in the leaderover time?

We know from previous literature that al-though a leaders working self-concept is con-structed in the current moment, it is also basedon more stable self-concepts and identitiesstored in the individuals long-term memory. Avolio & Chan (2008) indicate there arecertaintrigger events that activate the leaders workingself-concept. These trigger events induce self-focused attention, self-assessment, and activatea leaders working self-concept. These triggermoments can occur naturally as the leader in-teracts with others during leadership episodesor they can be induced through formal train-ing exercises and self-reection (Roberts et al.2005).

Another very promising area of researchthat has not received sufcient attention in theleadership literature focuses on understanding what constitutes an individuals level of devel-opmental readiness or ones capacity or motivational orientation to develop to ones full po-tential.Priorauthors havedeneddevelopmen-tal readiness as being made up of componentssuch as ones goal orientation (Dweck1986) andmotivation to develop leadership (Maurer &Lippstreu 2005). In this literature, the authorsargue that leaders who are more motivated tolearn at the outset and who have higher motivation to lead will more likely embrace triggerevents that stimulate their thinking about theirowndevelopment as an opportunity to improvetheir leadership effectiveness.

In sum, a great deal of energy and interestis emerging in the leadership development lit-erature that suggests there will be a lot moreactivity in trying to discover what impacts gen-uine leadership development at multiple levelsof analysis, from cognitive through to organi-zational climates. This literature will no doubtlink to the life-span development and cognitivepsychology literatures to fuel further work inthis area.

COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY AND LEADERSHIP The cognitive science leadership literaturearea of research and theory containing arange of approaches that are united by thecus on explaining the way leaders and fers think and process information. This

ature includes a broad range of topics suself-concept theory, meta-cognitions, andplicit leadership theory (e.g., Lord & Em2000), which are addressed in more below.

One of the more recent developmenthe literature has been an attempt to devmodels of leadership cognition. Lord &(2005) developed a model of leadersh velopment that emphasized the leadersnitive attributes or abilities. A second m

was developed by Mumford et al. (200examined the way shared thinking contrito leader creativity. These two approachlustrate a fundamental way in which vileadership cognitions vary, with the formcusing on activities with the individual and the latter focusing on interactions thacur between individuals (Mumford et al. 2 We examine several of the key emerginstructs withinthis literature, beginningwitself-concept.

Emerging Cognitive ConstructsRecent literature on what constitutes theconcept has distinguished between the sture of the self-concept and its con(Altrocchi 1999).The content refers to theeuations one makes of oneself as well abeliefs. The structure refers to ways in wthe self-concept content is organized forcessing. In a study on the structure of theconcept, Campbell et al. (2003) examinecompeting arguments that one benets having either unity in self-concept or pism. Although the literature tends to treatwo as opposite ends of a continuum, study showed they are not necessarily rto each other. This study further showedtwo measures of pluralism (self-complexi


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self-concept compartmentalization) were notrelated to each other and that multiple mea-sures of self-concept unity, such as self-conceptdifferentiation, self-concept clarity, and self-discrepancies, were moderately related to eachother and that each had implications for leaderdevelopment.

Lord & Brown (2001) presented a modelexamining two specic ways that leaders caninuence the way followers choose to behavein terms of the motivations they use to regu-late actions/behaviors. The rst way relates to values (e.g., achievement) andemphasizes mak-ing specic values (or patterns of values) salientfor the follower to motivate him or her to ac-tion. The second relates to the followers self-concept, whereby the leader activates a specicidentityto which followerscanrelate,creatingacollective identity that the follower ultimately embraces as his or her own. Both values andself-concept are viewed as mediating the link-age between the leaders actions and the behav-ior of the follower.

Because there are a range of peripheral andcore identities that could be salient to an in-dividual at any one point in time, the ques-tion of which identities are activated at any time is relevant to research on leadership andits impact on followers. The idea of a workingself-concept refers to the identity (or combi-nation of identities) that is salient in the mo-ment, and it consists of three types of com-ponents: self-views, current goals, and possibleselves (Lord & Brown 2004). The self-view re-lates to the current working model or view of oneself, whereas the possible selves may repre-sent the ideal model an individual may be striv-ing for and something that could be leveragedby the leader to motivate and develop follow-ers into better followers or leaders themselves.Overall, the working self-concept has the po-tential to provide insight into the challengingissue of how salient ones identity is and howleadership can enhance its salience, though itsuse within the leadership literature has beensomewhat limited so far.

One of the essential building blocks in thecognitive leadership literature is the idea of a

Cognitive leadersha broad range of approaches toleadershipemphasizing howleaders and followthink and processinformation

Transactionalleadership:leadership largely based on the exchof rewards contingon performance

schema, which is a broad organizing frame- work that helpsone understand and make senseof a given context or experience. One notableexample of the use of schemas with respectto leadership research is the work of Woffordet al. (1998), who proposeda cognitive model toexplain the way transformational and transac-tional leaders viewwork with followers. In theireld study, Wofford et al. examined schematicprocesses (e.g., vision, follower, self) andscripts(behaviors associated with a schema), arguingthat transformational and transactional leader-ship use different schemas to interpret events, which then results in the choice of differ-ent leadership behaviors/actions in responseto those events. Support was found for trans-formational leader cognitions being related tothe leaders choice of acting transformationally. Mixed support was found for the relationshipsbetween transactional leader schemas and be-haviors and actions chosen.

Prototypical Abstractionsof Leadership The leadership research on social identity for-mation has also focused heavily on what con-stitutes prototypicality, which has shown thatfollowers may be more drawn to leaders whoare exemplars of groups they belong to or wantto join. Early research conceptualized proto-types as being relatively static and applicable inmany situations. Recentwork hascontestedthat view, arguing that prototypes are dynamic andcan be applied and adapted based on the exist-ing constraints or challenges being confrontedby leaders (Lord et al. 2001).

Subsequent research has also focused on therelationship between implicit leadership theo-ries andseveral relevant performance outcomes(Epitropaki & Martin 2005). We note that formore than 25 years, a great deal of the work oncognitivepsychology andleadership focused onhow implicit theories and prototypes affectedthe perceptions of leaders and followers, gener-ally examining how it disadvantaged or biasedthem in views of others. More recent trendsin this literature coincide nicely with emphasis


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New-genreleadership: leadershipemphasizingcharismatic leaderbehavior, visionary,inspiring, ideological

and moral values, as well astransformationalleadership such asindividualizedattention, andintellectual stimulation

now being placed on authentic leadership development. Specically, research is now at-tempting to link howleaders thinkaboutevents,choose to behave, and/or develop.

Future Focus Required

Cognitive approaches to investigating leader-ship draw heavily on several literatures de-scribed above. This broad stream of researchhas potential for enhancing existing theories of leadership in terms of helping to explain howleaders and followers attend to, process, andmake decisions and develop. Additional work linking self-concept and meta-cognitive theo-ries to research on leadership will no doubtcontribute to our understanding of how lead-ers and followers actually develop. For ex-ample, if a leader has low self-concept clar-ity, to what extent can we expect that sameleader to be self-aware? What are the impli-cations for enhancing a leaders self-conceptclarity or working self-concept about whatconstitutes the roles of effective leadershipin developing that leaders self-awareness andperformance?

NEW-GENRE LEADERSHIP

Although prior authors have focused on whatconstitutes charismatic, inspirational, and vi-sionary leadership as far back as the early 1920s,much of the attention in the literature on thesenewer theories of leadership has come aboutover the past 25 years. Burns (1978) and Bass(1985) signaled the need to shift the focus of leadership research from predominantly exam-ining transactional models that were based onhow leaders and followers exchanged with eachother to models that might augment transac-tional leadership and were labeled charismatic,inspirational, transformational, and visionary. The early work of Bass and Burns set the stagefordistinguishing what Bryman(1992) referredto as more traditional theories of leadership versus what they termed new-genre leadershiptheories.

New-Genre Versus TraditionalLeadershipBryman (1992) commented, There wassiderable disillusionment with leadershipory and research in the early 1980s. Part disillusionment was attributed to the facmost models of leadership and measur

countedforarelativelysmallpercentageofance in performance outcomes such as prtivity and effectiveness. Out of this pessemerged a number of alternative approa which shared some common features. . .,lectively referred to as the new leade(Bryman 1992, p. 21). Unlike the traditleadership models, which described leadhavior in terms of leader-follower exchanlationships, setting goals, providing direand support, and reinforcement behavio

what Bass (1985) referred to as beingon economic cost-benet assumptions (the new leadership models emphasizedbolic leader behavior; visionary, inspiramessages; emotional feelings; ideologicmoral values; individualized attention; atellectual stimulation. Emerging from early works, charismatic and transformaleadership theories have turned out to bmost frequently researched theories ovepast 20 years (Avolio 2005, Lowe & Ga

2000). The theory of charismatic/transformatileadership suggests that such leaders railowers aspirations and activate their hiorder values (e.g., altruism) such thalowers identify with the leader and hher mission/vision, feel better about work, and then work to perform beyondple transactions and base expectations Avolio 1999, Bass 1985, Conger & Kan1998). Accumulated research (see Avolio

2004a for a summary of this literaturecluding a series of meta-analytic studies Judge & Piccolo 2004), has found that cmatic/transformational leadership was tively associated with leadership effectiand a number of important organizatoutcomes across many different typ


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organizations, situations, levels of analyses, andcultures such as productivity and turnover.

Over the past decade, a lot of research ef-fort has been invested in understanding theprocesses through which charismatic/transfor-mational leaders positively inuence follow-ers attitudes, behaviors, and performance. Forexample, a number of studies have examineddifferent processes through which transforma-tional leadership effects are ultimately realizedin terms of performance outcomes. These pro-cesses include followers formation of com-mitment; satisfaction; identication; perceivedfairness (e.g.,Liao & Chuang2007, Walumbwaet al. 2008); job characteristics such as variety,identity, signicance, autonomy and feedback (e.g., Piccolo & Colquitt 2006); trust in theleader (e.g., Wang et al. 2005); and how fol-lowers come to feel about themselves and theirgroup in terms of efcacy, potency, and cohe-sion (e.g., Bass et al. 2003, Bono & Judge 2003,Schaubroeck et al. 2007).

Boundary Conditionsfor New-Genre Leadership After establishing the positive links betweentransformational leadership and the interven-ing variables and performance outcomes, morerecent research has examined the boundary conditions in which transformational leader-ship is more (or less) effective in predictingfollower attitudes and behaviors. For example,several studies have focused on identifying andunderstanding contextual variables (e.g., idio-centrism) that mediate or moderate the rela-tionship of charismatic/transformational lead-ership with followers level of motivationand performance at the individual, team orgroup, and organizational levels (e.g., DeCremer& vanKnippenberg 2004, Keller 2006, Walumbwa et al. 2007). Additional researchhas focused on examining the moderating ef-fects of follower dispositions such as efcacy (Dvir & Shamir 2003, Zhu et al. 2008), phys-ical and structural distance (e.g., Avolio et al.2004b), perceived environmental uncertainty (e.g., Agle et al. 2006), social networks (e.g.,

Mediatedmoderation: amoderatingrelationship that ismediated by anoth variable

Moderatedmediation: amediating relationthat is moderated another variable

Bono & Anderson 2005), technology to sup-port group decision-making (e.g., Sosik et al.1997), and cultural orientations such as collec-tivism (e.g., Walumbwa & Lawler 2003).

Future Focus Required Although signicant progress has been madein studying charismatic/transformational lead-ership, a number of areas still deserve furtherattention. First, despite the important andpositive contributions made by charismatic ortransformational leadership in practice, ques-tions remain as to what determines or predictscharismatic or transformational leadership,or why some leaders engage in charismaticor transformational leadership behavior andothers do not. Limited research has examinedleaders biographies or the role of followers(Howell & Shamir 2005) as predictor variables.

Second, despite signicant progress in un-derstanding how and when charismatic andtransformational leadership behaviors are moreeffective, further research is needed that ex-plores the process and boundary conditionsfor charismaticand transformational leadership with benecial work behaviors. For example,althoughscholars whohave investigated charis-matic and transformational leadership havediscussed motivational constructs as centralcomponents in their frameworks, generally speaking, few have paid any attention to the un-derlying psychological processes, mechanisms,and conditions through which charismatic andtransformational leaders motivate followers tohigher levels of motivation and performance(Kark & Van Dijk 2007).

Yukl (1999) has called for a more con-certed effort to understand both the moderat-ing and mediating mechanisms that link charis-matic/transformational leadership to followeroutcomes. To date, only a few preliminary studies havesimultaneously examinedmediatedmoderation or moderated mediation (e.g., DeCremer & van Knippenberg 2004, Walumbwaet al. 2008).

Third, other areas that deserve researchattention include examining how to link


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CAS: complexadaptive system

charismatic/transformational leadership to theemerging literature on emotions and leader-ship. Although all of these newer theories em-phasize the emotional attachment of followersto the leader, there has been a dearth of con-ceptual and empirical research on examiningthe relationships between these new leadershiptheories and followers affective states (Bono &Ilies 2006).

Fourth, research on charismatic and trans-formational leadership at the organizationalor strategic level has generally lagged behindall other areas of leadership research exceptperhaps the focus on leadership development(Waldman & Yammarino 1999), and the resultsthus far have been mixed (Agle et al. 2006).For example, Waldman and colleagues (Tosiet al. 2004, Waldman et al. 2001) found that thecharisma of the chief executive ofcer (CEO) was not related to subsequent organizationalperformance as measured by net prot mar-gin and shareholder return or return on as-sets, respectively. On the other hand, Agle et al.(2006) and Waldman et al. (2004) reported thatCEO charisma was associated with subsequentorganizational performance. Clearly, more re-search is needed that focuseson potentialmedi-ating and moderating variables such as externalstakeholders while examining the relationshipbetween CEO charismatic or transformationalleadership and rm performance.

Finally, although cross-cultural researchpertaining to charismatic/transformationalleadership generally supports the relationshipsreported for the United States and other West-ern cultures, it is important to note that thesestudies largely involve survey-based designs. We recommend that researchers incorporatea number of alternative research designs,including but not limited to experimentaldesigns, longitudinal designs, and qualitativedesigns, as well as the use of multiple sourcesand mixed methods studies.

COMPLEXITY LEADERSHIP Many previous models of leadership have beendesigned to accommodate more traditional hi-

erarchical structures of organizations. Tdegree that organizations are hierarchictoo are leadership models (Uhl-Bien 2007). Yet, there has been a growing setension in the leadership literature that mels of leadership that were designed fopast century may not fully capture the leship dynamic of organizations operating days knowledge-driveneconomy (Lichtenet al. 2007). Applying the concepts ofplexity theory to the study of leadershiresulted in what has been referred to as plexity leadership (Uhl-Bien & Marion 2Basedonthisframework,leadershipisviewan interactive systemof dynamic, unpredicagents that interact with each other in plex feedback networks, which can thenduce adaptive outcomes such as knowledsemination, learning, innovation, and fuadaptation to change (Uhl-Bien et al. 2 According to complex systems leadershiory, leadership can be enacted throughinteraction in an organization . . . leadershan emergent phenomenon within complextems (Hazy et al. 2007, p. 2).

In line with leadership tting the neethe situation or challenges in which it opecomplexity leadershipposits that to achievtimal performance,organizations cannotbsigned with simple, rationalized structureunderestimate the complexity of the coin which the organization must functionadapt (Uhl-Bien et al. 2007). Simply vithe leader and follower in a simple excprocess wont y in terms of explaining tdynamics of leadership.

Complexity and TraditionalLeadership Theory In traditional leadership theory, theunit ofa ysis is oftentimes the leader, the leadefollower, the leader and group, and so f The fundamental unit of analysis in comity leadership is referred to as a complextive system, or CAS (Uhl-Bien et al. 2 The CAS has its roots in the physicaencesandiscomposedofinterdependenta


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that can operate simultaneously on the basis of certain rules and localized knowledge that gov-erns the CAS, while also being able to adaptand emerge based on feedback from the sys-tem (Plowman & Duchon 2008). Complexity leadership theory (CLT; Uhl-Bien et al. 2007)has been developed as an overarching explana-tion of how CAS operates within a bureaucraticorganization, and it identies three leadershiproles to explore: adaptive (e.g., engaging oth-ers in brainstorming to overcome a challenge),administrative (e.g., formal planning accordingto doctrine), and enabling (e.g., minimizing theconstraints of an organizational bureaucracy toenhance follower potential).

Future Focus RequiredOne of the core propositions of complexity leadership theory is that much of leadershipthinking has failed to recognize that leader-ship is not merely the inuential act of an in-dividual or individuals but rather is embeddedin a complex interplay of numerous interact-ing forces (Uhl-Bien et al. 2007, p. 302). Howshould one then study this form of leadership?Dooley & Lichtenstein (2008) describe severalmethods for studying complex leadership in-teractions, including by focusing on (a) micro,daily interactions using real-time observation,(b) meso interactions (days and weeks) using so-cial network analysis, where one examines a setof agents and how they are linked over time,and (c ) macro interactions (weeks, months, andlonger) through event history analysis. Finally,agent-based modeling simulations (i.e., com-puter simulations based on a set of explicit as-sumptions about how agents are supposed tooperate) are also being used as a means to study complexity leadership.

In sum, the complexity leadership eldclearly lacks substantive research. We suspectthis is a result of the difculties in assessingthis type of emergent construct within a dy-namically changing context. However, substan-tive research is needed if this area of leader-ship research is to advance beyond conceptualdiscussions.

CLT: complexityleadership theory

Shared leadership:an emergent state where team membcollectively lead eother

SHARED, COLLECTIVE,OR DISTRIBUTED LEADERSHIPSimilar to our discussionabove about complex-ity leadership, we see more evidence for sharedor collective leadership in organizations as hi-erarchical levels are deleted and team-basedstructures areinserted.Indescribing sharedand

team leadership, it is important to pointout thatthese forms of leadership are typically viewedas different streams of research. For example,team leadership research has typically focusedon the role of an individual leading the team. Incontrast, those authors examining shared lead-ershipgenerally viewit asa process versus a per-son engaging multiple members of the team.In this section, we refer to the terms sharedleadership, distributed leadership, and col-lective leadership interchangeably, paralleling

their usage in the leadership literature.

Shared Leadership Dened According to Day et al. (2004), team and sharedleadership capacity is an emergent statesomething dynamic that develops throughouta teams lifespan and that varies based on theinputs, processes, and outcomes of the team.It produces patterns of reciprocal inuence, which reinforce and develop further relation-ships between team members (Carson et al.2007). The most widely cited denition of shared leadership is that of Pearce & Conger(2003): a dynamic, interactive inuence pro-cess among individuals in groups for which theobjective is to lead one another to the achieve-ment of group or organizational goals or both. This inuence process often involves peer, orlateral, inuence and at other times involvesupward or downward hierarchical inuence(p.1).Theterm shared leadershipoverlaps withrelational and complexity leadership, and dif-fers from more traditional, hierarchical, or ver-ticalmodelsofleadership(Pearce&Sims2002).

Highly shared leadership is broadly dis-tributed within a group or a team of individ-uals rather than localized in any one individ-ual who serves in the role of supervisor (Pearce


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& Conger2003).More specically, sharedlead-ership is dened as a team-level outcome (Day et al. 2004) or as a simultaneous, ongoing, mu-tual inuence process withina teamthat is char-acterizedby serial emergence of ofcial as wellas unofcial leaders (Pearce 2004, p. 48). Simi-lar towhatweve described with respect tocom-plexity leadership, when shared leadership canbe viewed as a property of the whole system,as opposed to solely the property of individu-als, effectiveness in leadership becomes more aproduct of those connections or relationshipsamong the parts than the result of any one partof that system (such as the leader) (OConnor& Quinn 2004, p. 423).

Research Evidence Although a number of authors [beginning with Mary Parker Follett (1924)] have discussed theidea of shared leadership, it has only gainedattention in the academic leadership literaturerecently, and relatively few studies have triedto measure shared leadership. One exceptionis the work by Avolio & Bass (1995). In theirstudy, instead of raters evaluating the individ-ual leader, the target of ratings was the team it-self. Avolio & Bass (1995) report that the team-level measures of transformational and trans-actional leadership positively predicted perfor-mance similar to the individual-level measuresin previous research.

Future Focus RequiredOne of thecriticismsofresearchonsharedlead-ershipinvolves the lack ofagreementon itsde-nition(Carson et al. 2007).Forexample, shouldthere be a generic denition of shared leader-ship that is qualied by such terms as transac-tional or transformational shared leadership?

Other potential areas that have yet to beexplored involve certain boundary conditions,mediators, and moderators that have been rec-ommended as a focus for future research. Forexample, Pearce & Conger (2003) noted thatfuture research was needed to examine poten-tial moderators such as the distribution of cul-

tural values, task interdependence, task cotence, task complexity, and the team life Carson et al. (2007) proposed that greattention be paid to levels of task competethe team, complexity of tasks, and task dependence in terms of examining how function when using shared leadership. Tauthors have also recommended that futusearch focus on the teams life cycle.

Another area that has not received musearch attention involves the environme which teams function. For example, Cet al. (2007) proposed that future researcamine the type of team environment thaables shared leadership, suggesting that th vironment consists of three highly interreand mutually reinforcing dimensions: spurpose, social support, and voice. Thesthors described several organizational clfactors that could potentially support shared leadership in teams, including (a) shpurpose, which exists when team memhave similar understandings of their teammary objectives and take steps to ensurecus on collective goals; (b) social supporscribed as team members efforts to premotional and psychological strength toanother. This helps to create an environm where team members feel their input is vandappreciated;and(c )voice,whichisthgree to which a teams members have inpuhow the team carries out its purpose (p. 1

Future research also needs to examineexternal team leaders affect the teams aand motivation to be self-directed and in leadership (Carson et al. 2007). Hackm Wageman(2005) suggest that anexternal ltotheteamcanhelpteammembersmakecdinatedand task-appropriateuse of their cotive resources in accomplishing the teams(p. 269).

In a nutshell, the time for examining sleadership may be upon us to the extent thaganizations aremovinginto a knowledgedera where rms are distributed across cul This suggests that individual-based hmodels of leadership may not be sustainaand of themselves (Pearce 2004).


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LEADER-MEMBER EXCHANGEUnlike shared leadership, which has focused ongroups, leader-member exchange (LMX) the-ory has focused on the relationship betweentheleader and follower (Cogliser & Schriesheim2000). The central principle in LMX theory is that leaders develop different exchange re-

lationships with their followers, whereby thequality of the relationship alters the impacton important leader and member outcomes(Gerstner & Day 1997). Thus, leadership oc-curs when leaders and followers are able todevelop effective relationships that result inmutual and incremental inuence (Uhl-Bien2006).

This literature has evolved from focusingexclusively on the consequences of the LMXrelationship to focusing on both antecedents

and consequences. For example, Tekleab & Taylor (2003) assessed leader and followerlevels of agreement on their mutual obligationsand their psychological contract with eachother. In a recent meta-analysis reported by Ilies et al. (2007), the authors reported thata higher-quality LMX relationship not only predicted higher levels of performance, butalso organizational citizenshipbehaviors. Someadditional areas of focus in terms of high- ver-sus low-quality LMX relationships have been

the context in which those relationships havedeveloped. Kacmar et al. (2007) examined theconditions under which leaders and followersin low-quality exchanges exerted more effortin examining how the situation interacted with the impact of supervisors. Using controltheory, the authors tried to explain howperceptions of supervisor competence, central-ization, and organizational politics inuencedtheir willingness to exert effort on the jobbeyond what would be typically expected in a

less-than-effective exchange relationship. Additional research on the nature of the re-lationship and how it is formed has focused onthe use of impression management tactics andits impact on the quality of the LMX relation-ship. Colella & Varma (2001) investigated howa followers perceived disability and use of in-

LMX: leader memexchange

gratiation related to LMX quality. By using in-gratiation tactics, the individuals with disabil-ities were able to increase the quality of therelationship between the leader and follower.Similar resultswere reported by Sparrowe et al.(2006), who showed that downward-inuencetactics used by the leader affected the quality of the LMX relationship.

Extensions to LMX The original work produced by Graen & Uhl-Bien (1995) on the role-making and role-takingprocesses hasbeenextended byUhl-Bienand colleagues (2000) to examine how leader-follower dyads transformfrom individual inter-est to shared interest basedon the developmentof trust, respect, and obligations to each other.Similar work along these lines has examined

the effects of goal congruence on the quality of the LMX relationship. This work suggeststhat to the extent that goals are similar or mu-tually reinforcing, one would expect to producea higher-quality LMX relationship.

Additional LMX research on individual dif-ferences has examined the impact of gender onthe quality of the LMX relationship, althoughthese ndings have been mixed. For instance, Adebayo & Udegbe (2004) reported that fol-lowers in opposite-sex dyads perceived a better

LMX quality in comparison with those fromsame-sex dyads.Recent research has moved beyond exam-

ining LMX in terms of antecedents and con-sequences and has examined the quality of theleader and follower relationship as a modera-tor and/or mediator of performance. For ex-ample, Sparrowe et al. (2006) reported that thequality of the relationship moderated the re-lationship between downward-inuence tacticsand helping behaviors. Martin et al. (2005) re-

ported that LMX either fully or partially medi-ated the relationship between locus of controland several work-related outcomes such as jobsatisfaction, work-relatedwell-being, and orga-nizational commitment.

In an extension of the linkages between so-cial network theory and LMX, Graen (2006)


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put forth a recent transformation of LMX the-ory that he refers to as the new LMXMMXtheory of sharing network leadership. Accord-ingly, both Uhl-Bien (2006) and Graen (2006),buildingonearlierLMXresearch,nowviewor-ganizationsas systems of interdependent dyadicrelationships, or dyadic subassemblies, and advocate the importance of bothformal andinfor-malinuenceson individual, team,andnetwork ows of behavior.

Future Focus RequiredOver the years, LMX theory and research havebeen targets of criticism. One pervasive crit-icism of this literature revolves around mea-surement. For example, many different mea-sures of LMX have been developed and usedsince the theory was rst proposed (Yukl 2006).Schriesheim et al. (1999, p. 100) argued, LMXscales seem to have been developed on ad hoc,evolutionary basis, without the presentation of any clear logic or theory justifying the changes whichwere made.LMXresearch hasalso beencriticized for failing to conceptualize the socialcontext in which leaders and followers are em-bedded. With a fewexceptions, the majority of research is,quite explicitly, locatedat thedyadiclevel, with very little theorizing or empirical work examining LMX work at the group level(Hogg et al. 2004, p. 22). In other words, the-ory and research on LMX have focused on theleader-follower relationship without acknowl-edging that each dyadic relationship occurs within a system of other relationships (Cogliser& Schriesheim 2000, Yukl 2006). LMX theory and research also tend to assume that peoplesimply evaluate their own LMX relationshipin an absolute sense. According to Hogg et al.(2004), this is an oversimplication of howpeo-ple judge relationships. The authors argue thatit is much more likely that followers evaluatethe quality of their LMX relationship not only in the absolute sense (i.e., low versus high), butalso with reference to their perception of oth-ers LMX relationships. Another criticism of the LMX literature is that most of it is basedon correlation designs. This was a central crit-

icism made by Cogliser & Schriesheim (regarding the lack of causal results reporthe extensive stream of research associatedLMX research.

LMX research has also been criticiznot including more objective measures oformance (Erdogan & Liden2002). Frequeresearch in this area has collected performoutcomes that were generated by the leadsupervisor. It is nowtime to extendthis resby collecting independent outcome meathat logically would be inuenced by theity of LMX relationship.

Another promising area for future resis to extend work on LMX theory acrostures. Specically, what are the implicatinational culture for the formation and dopment of an LMX quality relationship, aturn how would that link to key organizaoutcomes?Preliminaryresearchaddressinquestion across cultures has produced interesting results. For example, Chen (2006) reported that regardless of whethemanager was American or Chinese, the qof the LMX relationship was related to coative goal setting or interdependence.

FOLLOWERSHIP AND LEADERSHIPPerhaps one of the most interesting omisin theory and research on leadership is thsence of discussions of followership and pacton leadership.Leadershipresearchersfollower attributes as outcomes of the leship process as opposed to inputs, even ththere have been a number of callsover theto examine the role that followers play leadership process (e.g., Shamir 2007).

Romance of LeadershipOur examination of follower-centric viewgins with a focus on what the leadersherature describes as the romance of leship. Meindl et al. (1985) proposed a constructionist theory to describe the relashipbetweenleadershipandfollowership.


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argued that leadership is signicantly affectedby the way followers construct their under-standing of the leader in termsof their interpre-tation of his or her personality, behaviors, andeffectiveness.

Accumulated research on the romance of leadershiphasproduced mixedndings.Schynset al. (2007) conducted a meta-analysis todetermine whether they could tease out theeffects controlling for such things as mea-surement error and sampling bias while fo-cusing on whether followers had a tendency to romanticize their perceptions of transfor-mational/charismatic leadership. Their resultsrevealed a modest relationship between the ro-mance of leadership and perceptions of trans-formational/charismatic leadership, accountingfor approximately 5% of the variance in lead-ership ratings. In another study, Kulich et al.(2007) examined the relevance of the romanceof leadershiptheory through anexperiment thatcompared how the performance of a male anda female leader was viewed by allowing partici-pants tochoose how muchofa bonus to allocateto theleader. Their results showedthat themaleCEOs bonus differed substantially dependingon the companys performance, whereas no dif-ferences were reported for the female CEO.

Bligh et al. (2007) found that followers neg-ative views of their work environment wereoverly attributed to their leaders in that they viewed the leader as more responsible for thesenegative outcomes and situations than was war-ranted. Along the same lines, Weber et al.(2001) reported that group success and failure were overly attributed to the leader. However,these authors also reported that attributions of failure to the leader may have had more sig-nicant negative repercussions, with the failingteam consistently voting to replace their lead-ers when the situation was more of the causeforthe teams failure.

Updates on Follower-Centric ViewsHowell & Shamir (2005) put forth some im-portant theoretical propositions regarding howfollower traits and characteristics might inu-

ence leader and follower relationships (also seeDvir & Shamir 2003). Specically, they iden-tied followers self-concept clarity and collec-tive identityas importantfactors indetermininghow followers form charismatic relationships with their leader. Howell & Shamir (2005) thensuggested that followers, who have a personal-ized relationship with a charismatic leader, may be more likely to show blind loyalty, obedience,and deference.

Carsten et al. (2007) examined how individ-uals hold divergent social constructions of fol-lowership that seemto coalesce aroundlevels of passivity or proactivity, which followers believecould lead to effectiveness in their role. Thus,like leaders, not all followers are created equalin the minds of followers. This pattern was re-ected in the work of Kelley (1992), who con-ceptualized followers as falling into quadrants,based on their being active or passive followersas well as whether they were critical or noncrit-ical thinkers.

Future Focus RequiredShamir (2007) suggested that leadership ef-fectiveness is just as much a product of goodfollowers as it is of good leaders. Shamir(2007) made some specic recommendationsfor future work on follower-centered research,including examining how followers needs,identities, and implicit theories affect leaderselection and emergence as well as leader en-dorsement and acceptance; how follower in-teractions/social networks inuence the emer-gence of leadership and effectiveness; howfollowers expectations, values, and attitudesdetermine leader behavior; how followers ex-pectations affect the leaders motivation andperformance; how followers acceptance of theleader and their support for the leader affectthe leaders self-condence, self-efcacy, andbehavior; how followers characteristics (e.g.,self-conceptclarity) determinethenatureof theleadership relationship formed with the leader;and how followers attitudes and characteris-tics (e.g., level of development) affect leaderbehavior.


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In addition, more work needs to be done ex-amining how followership is construed acrossdifferent industries and cultures. It is possiblethat in more advanced and newly forming in-dustries, the concept of followership may beconstrued and enacteddifferently than what wemight nd in more established industries withlong histories of treating leaders and followersin a particular way (Schyns et al. 2007).

SUBSTITUTES FOR LEADERSHIP The substitutes-for-leadership theory focuseson situational factors that enhance, neutral-ize, and/or totally substitute for leadership. Forexample, a group of people engaged in elec-tronic brainstorming using technology, such asa group decision support system, may operateas though there was a participative leader who was leading the group, but in fact, leadershipcomes from the operating rules for using thesystem to engage. Kerr & Jermier (1978) pro-posed the substitutes-for-leadership theory toaddress some of the romance effects describedabove. This research stream focuses on a rangeof situational/organizational and follower char-acteristics that might inuence the leadershipdynamic (Howell et al. 2007).

Since this theory was originally proposed, aconsiderable amountof research hasbeencom-pleted to determine whether there are substi-tutes for leadership with respect to impacts onperformance. A number of authors have con-cluded that evidence is not sufcient to supportthe main propositions in the theory (Dionneet al. 2002, Keller 2006). For example, Dionneet al. (2002) tested the moderating effects of task variability, organization formulation, or-ganization inexibility, and lack of control onthe relationship between leadership behaviorand group effectiveness. However, the authorsfound little support for the moderating effectsproposed by the substitutes-for-leadership the-ory. This lack of support may be attributableto problems in measuring these substitutes forleadership. Yet, revisions to the scale and its usein subsequent research have not provided any further support for this theory.

Future Focus Required Villa et al. (2003) recommended that futusearch consider including multiple moderthat may interact with eachother to impactformance that might be erroneously attribto the leader. Dionne et al. (2005) suggthat future research consider testing the

possible conditions linking leader behleadership effectiveness, and other situa variables (e.g., substitutes), which includleadership main effects model, (b) a substmain effect model, (c ) an interactive or effects model, (d ) a mediation model, whthe substitutes mediate leadership impacsus moderate, and (e) the originally propmoderated model. Future research shouldfocus more on the nature of the samplesincluded in tests of substitutes for leade

For example, one might focus on the cubackground as well as quality of ones folby sampling professional workers who fuin highly independent roles, as a posample for studying the boundary condifor the effects of substitutes for lead(Howell et al. 2007).

Finally, to evaluate fairly the substituttheory propositions will require more ltudinal research designs. For example, le who aremore transformationalwill develo

lowers over time to take on more leaderoles and responsibilities.The waysuch lestructure the context to develop followeand the followership itself may ultimatelstitute for the leaders inuence (Keller 2

SERVANT LEADERSHIPBuilding on the work of Greenleaf (Spears (2004) listed ten characteristicsresenting a servant leader: (a) liste(b) empathy, (c ) healing, (d ) awareness, (e)suasion, ( f ) conceptualization, ( g ) fores(h) stewardship, (i ) commitment, ( j ) building community. Russell & (2002) reviewed the literature on servantership, distinguishing such leadership intbroad categories: functional and accomattributes. Functional attributes include ha


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vision, being honest, trustworthy, serviceoriented, a role model, demonstrating appre-ciation of others service, and empowerment.In terms of accompany attributes, servantleaders are described as good communicatorsand listeners, credible, competent, encour-aging of others, teachers, and delegators.In general, the limited empirical researchon servant leadership has shown that it ispositively related to follower satisfaction, their job satisfaction, intrinsic work satisfaction,caring for the safety of others, and organi-zational commitment. Joseph & Winston(2005) examined the relationship between em-ployee perceptions of servant leadership andorganizational trust, and reported a positiverelationship with both trust in the leader as well as trust in ones organization. Washingtonet al. (2006) examined the relationship betweenservant leadership and the leaders values of empathy, integrity, competence, and agree-ableness, and reported that followers ratingsof leaders servant leadership were positively related to followers ratings of leaders values of empathy, integrity, and competence (p. 700).

Future Focus RequiredOne major tenet of servant leadership pro-posed by Greenleaf (1991) was that followersof servant leaders would be expected to be-come healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomousandmore likely to becomeservants themselves(Barbuto & Wheeler 2006, p. 321). This sug-gests that future research could take a morefollower-centric approach in looking at the well-being of followers of servant leaders andthe ways in which their well-being affects theability of the leader and followers to perform. Aswith LMX, themeasurementof servant lead-ership is problematic. Already many differentmeasures of servant leadership have been pro-posed with scales and items varying based onproblems with its denition. Future researchneeds to examine how the personal values of servant leaders differ from those of other lead-ership styles, such as transformational (Russell& Stone 2002).

SPIRITUALITY AND LEADERSHIPOne might ask leaders the question,Doyou feelthere is something missing in the work that youdo and the way you lead others? Many authorshave referred to that void and have attemptedto examine how a greater sense of spirituality in the workplace may be fostered. The research

on workplace spirituality also now includes afocus on spiritual leadershipdened as com-prising the values, attitudes, and behaviors thatare necessary to intrinsically motivate ones self and others so that they have a sense of spiritualsurvival through calling and membership (Fry 2003, p. 711).

Dent et al. (2005) examined how spiritual-ity and leadership was dened in the literatureand concluded, The eld of study is marked by all of the typical characteristics of paradigm de-

velopment including a lack of consensus abouta denition of workplace spirituality (p. 626).Fry (2003) contends that spiritual leadershipadds to the existing leadership literature com-ponents that have been explicitly missing, suchas a sense of calling on the part of leaders andfollowers as well as the creation of organiza-tional cultures characterized by altruistic love whereby leaders and followers express genuinecare,concern,andappreciationfor both selfandothers. Fry (2003) states, The ultimate effect

of spiritual leadership is to bring together orcreate a sense of fusion among the four funda-mental forces of human existence (body, mind,heart, and spirit) so that people are motivatedfor high performance, have increased organiza-tional commitment, and personally experience joy, peace, and serenity (p. 727).

Future Focus RequiredPart of the challenge in this area of leader-ship researchis simplydening what spirituality meanswithout necessarily tying it to onepartic-ular religion or philosophical base. Dent et al.(2005) summarized a number of denitions of spirituality that highlight some of the chal-lenges in building theory and research in thisarea. The authors concluded that a wide array


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Cross-culturalleadership: theexamination of leadership inmulticultural contexts

GLOBE: globalleadership andorganizationalbehavioraleffectiveness

of concepts/constructs is included in the de-nition of spirituality, but some of the commonelements are a search for meaning, reection,an innerconnection, creativity, transformation,sacredness, and energy.

Fry (2005) denes spiritual leadership ascomprising the values, attitudes, and behav-iors that are necessary to intrinsically motivate self and others to enhance a sense of spir-itual survival through calling and membership. Yet, some authors criticize Frys model as wellas other models of spirituality and leadershipfor not providing a sufcient understandingof what constitutes spirituality and the waysin which it ties to leadership. For example,Beneel (2005) criticized the work on spiri-tuality and leadership, stating that it inad- vertently draws upon outdated, discredited, orshallow approachesto spirituality;they reinventthe wheel; they dip into credible theories of spirituality but then dont fully develop themor resolve the conicts among them. Whilethese theories are comprehensive and creativein the context of leadership studies, a more ro-bust, up-to-date, and sophisticated understand-ing of spirituality is needed if theories of spir-itual leadership are to stand up under scrutiny and be takenseriously in the wideracademy(p.727). Finally, there still seem to be two schoolsof thought in this area of leadership research:In one school, a set of scholars discuss spiri-tuality in the theological sense (Whittingtonet al. 2005), whereas in the other school, thefocus is more on understanding the inner mo-tivation and drive a leader creates in followersto enhance workplace spirituality (Fry 2005).Until a denition of what constitutes spiritu-ality and leadership is agreed upon, it will bedifcult to conceptualize and measure theseconstructs.

CROSS-CULTURAL LEADERSHIP Although most leadership research and the-ory has been developed and tested within a Western context, a growing interest in researchand theory focuses on the role of leadershipacross cultural contexts. This interest is driven

in part by the globalization of organizathat encourage and, at times, require leto work from and across an increasingly dset of locations. The result is an increasedon cross-cultural leadership research (Geet al. 2007, House et al. 2004). Extreviews also exist for cross-cultural rethat is more tangentially linked to leade(Hofstede 2001, Kirkman et al. 2006, Let al. 2005).

Project GLOBE Although there have been numerous critand discussions of work in this area (seenal of International Business Studies , VolNo. 6), the work of Project GLOBE (gleadership and organizational behavioral tiveness) constitutes one of the more amband inuential cross-cultural leadership ies. The study, as detailed in an edited(House et al. 2004), involved a group ofthan 160 researchers working in 62 socResearch included a mix of quantitativqualitative investigations. The study wasigned to address a number of goals, thof which was to develop cultural dimenat both the organizational and societal leanalysis, building upon the work of Ho(2001). A second major goal of the projetoexaminethebeliefsthatdifferentcultureabout effective leaders. Although many leadership attributes and behaviors exam varied by culture, the research did detethat certain implicit leadership theories charisma/transformational, team-oriented)universal endorsement. A third phase oresearch involved ethnographies of indivcountries based largely on qualitative dat

Global Leadership The goal of identifying leaders who arto effectively lead across a variety of chas great appeal and has been the of numerous articles in both the acad(Mobley et al. 1999) and popular (Goldsmith 2003, Green et al. 2003,


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2004). However, substantial differences andapproaches remain in how global leadershipis conceptualized and dened. One approachprimarily focuses on international experience,implying that leaders must spend time living indifferentculturesinordertobepreparedtolead(Van Dyne & Ang 2006). A second approachemphasizes the competencies a leader needs tohave in order to lead effectively and success-fully across cultures (Mendenhall 2001). Thisapproach emphasizes having a broad set of ex-periences and competencies that allow leadersto manage across cultures rather than focusingon a deep knowledge of one or two specic cul-tures. This approach is reected in the related work on global mindset (Boyacigiller et al.2004, Clapp-Smith et al. 2007) and culturalintelligence (Earley et al. 2007, Thomas 2006).

Comparative LeadershipComparative research on the effectiveness of leadership in different cultures was the basis of early work in this eld and continues to be amajor area of research (Dickson et al. 2003,Dorfman 2004, Gelfand et al. 2007, Kirkmanet al. 2006). Such research compares leadershipin two or more cultures, examining the degreeto which a practice that was developed in oneculture applies to others. A common approachexamines the direct impact a cultural dimen-sion has on leadership. For example, one majorcross-cultural study examined theimpactof cul-tural values on the selection of sources of guid-ance fordealing withworkevents that managersare likely to face in 47 countries (Smith et al.2002). This study identied which sources of guidance were correlated with specic culturaldimensions using several major cultural valuedimension frameworks.

Another common strategy examines the in-direct inuence of culture as it moderates therelationship between leadership practice andrelevant performance outcomes. Walumbwaet al. (2007) examined the effect of allocentrism(collective orientation) and idiocentrism (individual orientation) on the relationships amongleadership (transformational and transactional)

andboth organizational commitment andsatis-faction withsupervisor. Allocentrics werefoundto react more positively to transformationalleaders, whereas idiocentrics had a more pos-itive reaction to transactional leaders.

Future Focus Required Although signicant progress has been madein the cross-cultural leadership literature, sev-eral important issues need to be addressed. Forexample, the term culture itself refers to acomplex setof constructs around which there isongoing debate. Not surprisingly, the attemptto examine the effect that culture has on lead-ership brings with it the associated conceptualand methodological challenges that are already associated with cross-cultural research (Van de Vijver & Leung 2000). Despite improvementsmade over the years, a need remains for futureresearch to focus on levels ofanalysis whencon-ducting cross-cultural leadershipresearch.Thisapplies to the development of explicitly cross-level theoretical models as well as the use of appropriatestatistical techniques.Although therelevance of levels is widely recognized, the im-plications of cross-level analysis are often notreected in the research design in this litera-ture, particularly when it comes to insuring asufcient number of cultures are included toconduct the analysis. Many researchers assumethey can use the country as a convenient sub-stitute for measuring culture, which may bean erroneous level of analysis given the diver-sity of cultures represented in most countries.Large-scale collaborations such as the GLOBE(House et al. 2004) study and the 47-nationstudy of Smith et al. (2002) are likely to be re-quired to develop the types of samples neededfor such analytical approaches.

E-LEADERSHIPLeading virtually involves leading people fromdifferent departments, organizations, coun-tries, and sometimes even competitor compa-nies (Avolio et al. 2001). In virtual teams, chal-lengesaremore likely tooccurwhendistributed


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E-leadership:leadership whereindividuals or groupsare geographically dispersed andinteractions aremediated by technology

work occurs in different time zones, when localcommunication and human infrastructures fail, when team members hardware and softwareplatforms are different, or when local work de-mands require the immediate attention of col-located managers andworkers, thereby creatingpressure to pursue local priorities over the objectives of distant collaborators (A. Weisband2008b, p. 6).

Zigurs (2003) suggested that traditionalleadership modelsbuilt on a foundation of face-to-face interactions may not fully explain how virtual leadership and teams work. Specically,howoneprovides feedback,encouragement, rewards, and motivation needs to be re-examined where leadership is mediated through technol-ogy. Zigurs (2003) suggests that the continuingdevelopment in technology such as increasedbandwidth,wireless networks, integratedhand-held devices, voice input, built-in video, video walls, and automatic translation will no doubthave a signicant impact on how virtual teamscommunicate and how leadership is manifestedin such teams. To date, a great deal of the work on e-leadership focuses on either leadership in virtualwork teamsorgroupsinteracting inwhatare called group decision support systems.For example, Zaccaro & Bader (2003) providedan overview of the similarities and differencesbetween face-to-face teams and e-teams. They specically focused on the impact of leader-ship functions such as communication build-ing, role clarication, team development, andeffective task execution and how they differed when mediated through technology. Other au-thors have focused on the effects of structuralfactors such as distance and multiple locationson e-leadership and virtual team effectiveness(e.g., Cascio & Shurygailo 2003).

Common Questions with E-LeadershipSome of the common questions or hypothe-ses suggested to guide research on e-leadershipand virtual teams have been summarized by Avolio et al. (2001), Barelka (2007), as well as Ahuja & Galvin (2003) and include the follow-

ing: How does the nature and structure of tnology impact how leadership style inufollower motivation and performance? Weffect will leadership mediated through nologyhave on trust formation? Will thenaof the technology such as its richness or parency be a factor in building trust in vteams? How will the leadership and locof teams and technology connecting memaffect the quality and quantity of their comnication? How will the nature of the tasits complexity inuence how leadership a virtual team performance?

Group and Virtual Teams Research A number of studies have examinleadership and virtual teams. For exaKahai & Avolio (2008) investigated the of leadership style and anonymity on thcussion of an ethical issue in an electrontem context. Kahai & Avolio examinedgroups discussed an ethical issue by malating the leadership style of the target e-land whether the group members were anmous or identied. They reported thatquency of group member participation incussing how to address the ethical issugreater when leadership style was transac versus transformational.

Xiao et al. (2008) conducted a eld ement focusing on surgical teams operatinreal-life trauma center. In their study, the leader either was placed in the room wisurgical team or interacted with them vally. The authors reported that when the leader was in the next room, the leadegreater inuence on communications betthe senior member in the room and other members. However, when thesenior leadecollocated, the amount of communicatiotween the team leader, the senior member junior members was more balanced. Withtask urgency, theteamleaderwas more inv with the senior team member in terms ofmunication regardless of location, wherecommunication between the team leade junior members was reduced.


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Balthazard et al. (2008) examined the me-diational role of leadership and group memberinteraction styles in comparingvirtual andface-to-face teams. They reported that group mem-bers in face-to-face teams were generally morecohesive,were more acceptingofa groups deci-sions,andexhibitedagreateramountofsynergy than did virtual teams. Face-to-face teams ex-hibited a greater amount of constructive inter-action in comparison with virtual teams, whichscored signicantly higher on defensive inter-action styles.

Malhotra et al. (2007) collected survey, in-terview, andobservationaldata on virtual teamsto identify the leadership practices of effectiveleaders of virtual teams. These leadershippractices included the ability to (a) establishand maintain trust through the use of commu-nication technology, (b) ensure that distributeddiversity is understood and appreciated,(c ) manage effectively virtual work-life cycles,(d ) monitor team progress using technology,(e) enhance visibility of virtual members withinthe team and outside the organization, and( f ) let individual team members benet fromthe team.

Future Focus RequiredHambley et al. (2006) advocate that future re-search on e-leadership be conducted in eldsettings. They recommend that virtual teams working on actual problem-solving tasks andprojects be examined to help capture the motivational element that may not exist with ad hocgroups working in the lab. A. Weisband(2008a)argued, Future research may want to considerhow we lead in environments that lack any cen-tral coordination mechanism, or how multipleleaders work together to innovate, create, andhelp others (p. 255).

E-leadership areas recommended for futureresearch by authors of papers on the virtualteam topic include task ownership, cohesion,media richness (i.e., technologys capacity forproviding immediate feedback, the number of cues and channels utilized, personalization of messages, and language variety), communica-

tion quality, asynchronous and synchronouscommunication, task complexity, and work-ing on multiple virtual teams simultaneously (Kozlowski & Bell 2003, Zaccaro & Bader2003). For example, Watson et al. (1993) stud-ied culturally diverse and homogenous virtualgroups and compared their interactions over a17-week period. They found that culturally diverse groups initially suffered in their perfor-mance but over time surpassed homogenousgroups, especially in terms of the number of alternative ideas generated.

In summary, we expect that the work on virtual leadership and team interactions willcontinue to be a growth area for leadershipresearch. The fundamental issue for leader-ship scholars and practitioners to address ishow technology is transforming the tradi-tional roles of leadership at both individualand collective levels by examining how exist-ing leadership styles and cultures embedded ina group and/or organization affect the appro-priation of advanced information technology systems (Avolio et al. 2001, p. 658).

CLOSING COMMENTS AND INTEGRATION The evolution of this literaturepoints to severalimportant trends. The rst trend involves theeld of leadership taking a more holistic view of leadership. Specically, researchers are now ex-amining all angles of leadership and includingin their models and studies the leader, the fol-lower, thecontext, the levels, andtheir dynamicinteraction. The second trend involves examin-ing how the process of leadership actually takesplace by, for example, integrating the work of cognitive psychology with strategic leadership.In this regard, we are witnessing greater in-terest in how the leader processes informationas well as how the follower does so, and howeach affects the other, the group, and organiza-tion. More work is expected on examining the various mediators and moderators that help toexplain howleadership inuences intendedout-comes. A third trend involves deriving alterna-tive ways to examine leadership. We expect to


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see a greater use of mixed-methods designs infuture research. The quantitative strategies forstudying leadership have dominated the litera-ture over the past 100 years, but increasing at-tention is being paid to cases and qualitative re-searchthatshouldnowbeintegratedwithquan-titative approaches.

Part of the evolution of leadership the-ory and research will continue to involve fur-ther dening what actually constitutes leader-ship from a content perspective, e.g., authen-tic, transformational, or visionary, anda processperspective, e.g., shared, complex, or strategic. We also expect much more attention to be paidto the area of strategic leadership, which wedid not have space here to cover, and apply-ing what we have learned about content andprocess to this level of analysis. Finally, we goback to the point where we started in suggest-ing that the time has never been better to ex-amine the genuine development of leadership. The eld of leadership has done surprisingly

little to focus its energies on what contrito or detracts from genuine leadership dopment. Given the forces in the global ket, we expect that over the next 10 research and theory in this area will explorganizations increasinglyaskforways toerate positive leadership development aenter the front lines of the war for leadetalent.

In summary, the leadership eld ovepast decade has made tremendous proin uncovering some of the enduring myies associated with leadership. These in whether leaders are born or made, how foers affect how successful leaders can bsome charismatic leaders build up societiothers destroy them, as well as what imleading through technology has on indivand collective performance. The periodleadership theory and research will enterthe next decade is indeed one of the mosting in the history of this planet.

SUMMARY POINTS

1. The eld of leadership is evolving to a more holistic view of leadership.

2. More positive forms of leadership are being integrated into literature.

3. Increasing attention is being given to examining how leadership causally impacts inteand ultimate outcomes.

4. The follower is becoming an integral part of the leadership dynamic system.

5. There is growing interest in what genuinely develops leadership.

6. E-leadership is becoming a commonplace dynamic in work organizations.

7. More and more leadership is being distributed and shared in organizations.

8. Leadership is being viewed as a complex and emergent dynamic in organizations.

FUTURE ISSUES

1. More future research in leadership will be mixed methods.

2. Determining the causal mechanisms that link leadership to outcomes will be a priori

3. Assessinganddeveloping leadership usingevidence-based strategies will be a target fo

4. Examining strategic leadership as a process and person will be an evolving area of thand research.


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5. More theoretical work and research will focus on the follower as a prime element in theleadership dynamic.

6. How to develop global mindsets among leaders will be an area of interest.

7. A top priority area will be leadership in cultures that are underrepresented in the litera-ture, such as Muslim cultures.

8. How shared leadership evolves and develops will be a focus in face-to-face and virtualenvironments.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT The authors are not aware of any biases that might be perceived as affecting the objectivity of thisreview.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We greatly appreciate the contributions made to this paper by Melissa Carsten, Rachel Clapp-Smith, Jakari Grifth, Yongwoon Kim, Ketan Mhatre, David Sweetman, Mary Uhl-Bien, andKay-Ann Willis.

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of the relationships among organizational performance, environmental uncertainty, and top managementteam perceptions of CEO charisma. Acad. Manage. J.49:16174

Ahuja MK, Galvin JE. 2003. Socialization in virtual groups.J. Manage. 29:16185 Altrocchi J. 1999. Individualdifferences in pluralismin self-structure. InThePluralSelf: Multiplicity in Everyday

Life, ed. J Rowan, M Cooper, pp. 16882. London: Sage Arvey RD, Zhang Z, Avolio BJ, Krueger RF. 2007. Developmental and genetic determinants of leadership

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