A Critical Review of Leadership Research Development

International Journal of Business and Management

August, 2006

A Critical Review of Leadership Research Development
Jun Liu Business School, Renmin University of China, Beijing 100872, China Xiaoyu Liu School of Labor Relations & Human Resources, Renmin University of China, Beijing 100872, China Abstract Leadership research has gone through several phases of development in the past 80 years or so. The paper identifies the major theories in each phase, and investigates the strengths and weaknesses of the research. Among those theories, transformational/charismatic leadership and leader-member exchange (LMX) are heavily discussed. The paper also discusses the future trend of research in leadership areas. Keywords: Review, Transformational Leadership, LMX Leadership can be defined as a process that an individual influences a group of individuals to implement strategies and achieve the collective goals (Yukl, 2002). Research in the area seeks to find out what types of leaders are likely to be successful and what factors determine leadership effectiveness. Generally, leadership research has gone though four paradigms: trait approach, behavioral approach, situational approach, and the contemporary theories of leadership. The paradigms of leadership theories shift with the progress from static to dynamic view of leadership with the trait and behavioral theories reflecting a personal, the situational theories an interpersonal, and the contemporary theories a relational approach to conceptualizing leadership. That is to say leadership has been examined as intrapersonal competencies, interpersonal processes, and relational dynamics. More specifically, I review those approaches, their strengths and weaknesses as followed: The trait approach The trait theories assumed that leaders were born, not made. In the literature, Stogdill (1948, 1974) completed two comprehensive reviews by synthesizing more than 200 studies of the trait approach. His two surveys identified a group

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