The Leadership Quarterly

The Leadership Quarterly 17 (2006) 559 – 576 www.elsevier.com/locate/leaqua

Leadership and the organizational context: Like the weather? ☆
Lyman W. Porter ⁎, Grace B. McLaughlin 1
The Paul Merage School of Business, University of California–Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697-3125, USA

Abstract This article reviews the leadership literature from 1990–2005 in twenty-one major journals in order to determine the nature and extent of attention to the organizational context as a factor affecting leaders' behavior and their effectiveness. Both conceptual and empirical articles were rated as having “moderate/strong,” “slight,” or “no” emphasis on the organizational context. Those articles classified in the moderate/strong category were analyzed under seven organizational context components. Suggestions are included for improving the breadth and depth of empirical knowledge about the interaction of leadership and the organizational context. © 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Leadership; Organizational context

1. Introduction In the past 15 years or so, there have been increasing calls in the literature for the necessity to give more attention to the role of the organizational context as a major factor affecting leadership behavior and outcomes. Consistent with those calls, the basic premise of this article is: Leadership in organizations does not take place in a vacuum. It takes place in organizational contexts. The key issue, therefore, is whether, and to what extent, the organizational context has been front and center in recent leadership literature. That is, does a relative void still exist in the research literature on the impact of the organizational context on leadership? If it does, the situation would seem to be like the weather: many talking about it, but very few doing much about it insofar as empirical research is concerned. Progress in filling this void, to the extent that it exists, would seem to be essential for a better understanding of

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