The Nature of Leadership

John Antonakis, David V. Day

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781506394992
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Leadership
• Index: Business

With contributions by leading scholars in the field, The Nature of Leadership, Third Edition begins with an overview of the major schools of leadership, examining individual differences, followership, relational leadership, and team leadership. The text then delves into important and timely topics such as social cognition, gender, power, identity, culture, and entrepreneurial leadership. Editors John Antonakis and David Day conclude by exploring philosophical and methodological issues in leadership, including ethics and corporate social responsibility. The fully updated new edition is more accessible and student friendly than ever with new vignettes, examples, statistics, and recommended case studies and videos.

Part I Introduction

Chapter 1 Leadership: Past, Present, and Future

John Antonakis

David V. Day

There are few problems of interest to behavioral scientists with as much apparent relevance to the problems of society as the study of leadership. The effective functioning of social systems [to countries] is assumed to be dependent on the quality of their leadership. This assumption is reflected in our tendency to blame a football coach for a losing season or to credit a general for a military victory. . . . [T]he critical importance of executive functions and of those who carry them out to the survival and effectiveness of the organization cannot be denied.

—Vroom (1976, p. 1527)

The epigraph above captures three important themes in the study of leadership. First, Victor Vroom suggests that leadership objectively matters; who is at the helm determines to a large extent what will happen to the vessel, whether it is a team, an institution, or even a country. Second, Vroom demonstrates that most laypeople believe leadership matters and that the “buck stops” with leaders. In other words, leaders are ultimately responsible for what happens to the entities they lead. It is the leaders who are in the limelight and it is they who reap the rewards or are pilloried. Third, the above suggests an interesting cognitive phenomenon that occurs in the minds of observers. Independent of what the leader does, those who observe leaders tend to “fill in the blanks.” If things go well (or poorly) they will tend to evaluate the leader, whether on leadership behaviors or other variables, in very favorable (or unfavorable) terms independent from what the leader might have actually done (Lord, Binning, Rush, & Thomas, 1978; Rush, Thomas, & Lord, 1977). That is, the outcomes “make” the leader, whether or not responsibility for the outcome is traceable to the leader or whether it was due to some exogenous event beyond the leader’s control (Weber, Camerer, Rottenstreich, & Knez, 2001).

The above three themes seem contradictory. The first two themes say that leaders matter. The third theme suggests that leaders may not matter, in that leadership may well be a social construction (Gemmill & Oakley, 1992; Meindl, 1995). As leadership scholars, we obviously believe that leadership matters; however, both the realist and the social constructionist perspectives contribute to explaining what happens in that alchemy called “leadership.” But what is leadership, exactly? That question turns out to be challenging to answer, and it is a guiding question of the book.

More than 100 years of leadership research have led to several paradigm shifts, as well as zeniths and nadirs, and much confusion. On several occasions, scholars of leadership became quite frustrated by the large amounts of false starts, incremental theoretical advances, and contradictory findings. As stated almost six decades ago by Warren Bennis (1959, pp. 259–260), “Of all the hazy and confounding areas in social psychology, leadership theory undoubtedly contends for top nomination. . . . Probably more has been written and less is known about leadership than about any other topic in the behavioral sciences.” In a similar vein, Richard Hackman and Ruth Wageman (2007) more recently concluded that the leadership field is “curiously unformed” (p. 43). How could such big names make such belittling statements about leadership?

For those who are not aware of the various crises leadership researchers have faced, imagine taking pieces of several sets of jigsaw puzzles, mixing them, and then asking someone to put the pieces together into one cohesive picture. Relatedly, leadership researchers have struggled for most of the last century to put together an integrated, theoretically cohesive view of the nature of leadership, invariably leading to disappointment in those who attempted it. Also, the puzzle itself is changing and leadership is an evolving construct (Day, 2012). For all these reasons, there has been much dissatisfaction and pessimism in the leadership field (Greene, 1977; Schriesheim & Kerr, 1977)—even calls for a moratorium on leadership research (Miner, 1975).

Fortunately, a clearer picture is beginning to emerge. Leadership scholars have been re-energized by new directions in the field, and research efforts have revitalized areas previously abandoned for apparent lack of consistency in findings (e.g., leadership trait theory). Our accumulated knowledge now allows us to explain—with a high degree of confidence—what leadership is, whether its antecedents, contextual constraints, or consequences. This accumulated knowledge is reflected in our volume, which will provide readers with a thorough overview of leadership that is sufficiently broad in scope to cover the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Publisher Note
• Acknowledgements
• Half Title
• Acknowledgements
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Brief Contents
• Detailed Contents
• Preface Why The Nature of Leadership, Third Edition?
• Acknowledgments
• Part I Introduction
• Chapter 1 Leadership: Past, Present, and Future
• Part II The Major Schools of Leadership
• Chapter 2 Leader Traits and Attributes
• Chapter 3 Charisma and the “New Leadership”
• Chapter 4 In the Minds of Followers Follower-Centric Approaches to Leadership
• Chapter 5 Relational Leadership
• Chapter 6 Contingencies, Context, Situation, and Leadership
• Chapter 7 Shared Leadership
• Chapter 8 Evolutionary, Biological, and Neuroscience Perspectives
• Part III Current Topics in Leadership
• Chapter 9 Social Cognition, Social Perception, and Leadership
• Chapter 10 Leadership and Gender
• Chapter 11 Power and Leadership
• Chapter 12 Leadership and Identity
• Chapter 13 Leadership, Culture, and Globalization
• Chapter 14 Leadership Development The Nature of Leadership Development
• Chapter 15 Entrepreneurial Leadership
• Part IV Philosophical and Methodological Issues in Leadership
• Chapter 16 Studying Leadership: Research Design and Methods
• Chapter 17 Ethics and Effectiveness: The Nature of Good Leadership
• Chapter 18 Corporate Social Responsibility and Leadership
• Chapter 19 The Chronicles of Leadership Foreword
• Author Index
• Index
• About the Editors
• About the Contributors