: “the Ambiguity of Leadership”

My article entitles: “The Ambiguity of Leadership” and it is from Jeffrey Pfeffer. This review consists in three parts. First of all, I’ll purpose a short summary. Then, I’ll give an analysis of how it is connected with the course contents and the course literature. Finally, I will do my personal assessment. This article is divided in 6 parts which address three major leadership’s issues: (1) the ambiguity of its definition and measurement; (2) the question of whether it affects organizational performance; and (3) the process of selecting leaders and leadership as individual social actors. The introduction, first part, mentions the paper’s purpose and majors issues. The second, Ambiguity of the Concept, is focused on the first major issue. Preview studies on the dimensions and definitions of leadership concept are mentioned. All of them seem to have an agreement relating leadership to social influence. The same is not true to the basic dimensions of leadership behaviours, examples of dimensions are: group maintenance, task accomplishment, closeness to supervision, and so on. The third part, The Effects of Leaders, is an attempt to answer to the question “Is there any evidence on the magnitude of effects of leadership?”. Based on several studies, this part is subdivided in four parts, shows the reasons why it might be argued that the observed leader’s effects on organizational outcome would be small and few studies that sustaining the idea: Homogeneity of Leaders ( as leadership positions are selected, limited styles may be chosen); Constraints of Behaviour (situational characteristic constrain leadership behaviour); External Factors ( Leaders can only affect few of the variables that may impact organizational performance) and Empirical Evidence. In the fourth part, The Process of Selecting Leaders, the process and criteria of choosing leaders are approached through some studies. These studies showed that frequently the process