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Concepts of Leadership

A definition is a sack of flour compressed into a thimble.

Rémy de Gourmont (1858-1915)

The evidence is all around us. It is in our daily lives -- in our schools, businesses, social groups, religious organizations, and public agencies. It is in our local community, in our more distant state government and national government, and on the international scene. Leadership makes the difference. Leadership can be good, as when your sales manager calls his department together to point out that last month's quotas have been met but that a new competitor is starting to make inroads. It can be better, as when a political party leader sums up what she and her team feel will be needed to win an election. It can be best, as when a community activist senses and articulates the community's pressing needs and mobilizes the community into effective action.

Leadership has been built into the human psyche because of the long period we need to be nurtured by parents for our survival. Early on, we learned to follow the leadership of parents and their proxies for satisfaction of our needs for food and comforting. Our mothers or their surrogates became our leaders in early childhood. They still are. Fathers came next when they were recognized. With socialization, as we grew, peers and other significant people gradually took the place of parental leadership. How we think and behave as leaders and followers when we reach adulthood is still likely to be affected by our earlier relations with our parents, as well as by our genetic makeup. So it is not surprising that leadership is a universal phenomenon. The importance of parenting for human development and survival makes leadership the world's oldest vocation. Parenthood makes for ready-made patterns of leadership.

During the period of hunting and gathering, leaders had to be independent and strong to defend the sovereignty of their group of followers against marauders and natural disasters (Lipman-Blumen, 1996). The study of leaders advanced with the rise of civilization. All societies have created myths to provide plausible and acceptable explanations for the dominance of leaders and the submission of subordinates (Paige, 1977). The greater the socioeconomic injustice in a society, the more distorted the realities of leadership -- its powers, morality, and effectiveness -- in the mythology.

The patterns of behavior that are regarded as acceptable in leaders differ from time to time and from one culture to another, although we will find some surprising commonalities. Citing various anthropological reports on primitive groups in Australia, Fiji, New Guinea, the Congo, and elsewhere, H. L. Smith and Krueger (1933) concluded that leadership occurs among all people, regardless of culture, be they isolated Indian villagers, nomads of the Eurasian steppes, or Polynesian fisherfolk. Lewis (1974) determined, from an anthropological review, that even when a society does not have institutionalized chiefs, rulers, or elected officials, there are always leaders who initiate action and play central roles in the group's decision making. No societies are known that do not have leadership in some aspects of their social life, although many may lack a single overall leader to make and enforce decisions. Such shared leadership is now representative of many scholarly and practical ideas about organizational life in the twenty-first century, the age of information, when no one member of a group has all the expertise and experience to help the group to reach its goals.

Myths, Legends, and Religious Texts

Myths and legends about great leaders were important in the development of civilized societies. According to Joseph Campbell, early myths about heroic leadership had much in common. The hero went forth and brought back something of great value. Prometheus brought back fire. Moses went up Mount Sinai and brought back God's Ten Commandments. Myths mature into legends. Legendary heroes figure prominently in the HinduUpanishadsand in the Greek and Latin classics. In theIliad,higher transcendental goals were emphasized: "He serves me most, who serves his country best" (Book 10, line 201). TheOdysseyadvised leaders to maintain their social distance: "The leader, mingling with the vulgar host, is in the common mass of matter lost" (Book 3, line 297). Plato's ideal leader was the philosopher-king. Exploits of individual heroes were central to the BabylonianGilgameshand the HinduRamayana.Leadership was of much interest to As´oka, Confucius, and Lao-tzu. Leadership was the focus of certain medieval classics of western literature such asBeowulf,theSong of Roland,and the Icelandic sagas. According to Gemmill and Oakley (1992), the social concept of leadership is a myth that maintains a belief in the need for hierarchies and organizational leaders in society. This myth results in alienated, intellectually and emotionally deskilled employees and the magical desire for an omnipotent leader.

Religions offer many accounts of leaders as prophets, priests, chiefs, and kings. Such leaders served as initiators, symbols, representatives, and examples to be followed. In the Old Testament, Moses led the Hebrews out of Egypt, and Joshua led them to the promised land. Leaders such as Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon, and the Macabees were singled out in the Old Testament for detailed expositions of their behavior and relations with God and their people. God was the supreme leader of his chosen people; he clarified, instructed, and directed what was to be done through the words of his prophets and arranged for rewards for compliance with and punishment for disobedience to the laws and rules he had handed down to Moses. The gospels of the New Testament are filled with stories about how Jesus led his small group of disciples as well as large audiences. Saint Paul was the initiator of a multinational organization of churches. To the leadership of Saint Peter is attributed the founding of the Roman Catholic Church. In Islam, religious law provided the basis for the leadership of the ideal caliphate (Rabi, 1967). The Koran still undergirds the legal systems of Islamic republics. Gautama Buddha led his movement by his precepts and example.

From Myths and Legends to Early Histories of Leaders

From its infancy, much of the study of history has been the study of leaders -- what they did and why they did it. What would the first histories of Herodotus, Thucydides, or Xenophon, written before 400 b.c.e., have been like without discourses about leaders, leadership, and followers? Over the centuries, the effort to formulate principles of leadership spread from the study of history and philosophy to all the developing social sciences. In modern psychohistory, there is still a search for psychoanalytical generalizations about leadership, built on the in-depth analysis of the development, motivation, and competencies of prominent leaders, living and dead.

Early Principles of Leadership

Written principles of leadership go back nearly as far as the emergence of civilization, which shaped its leaders as much as it was shaped by them. Written principles of leadership can be found in Egypt in theInstruction of Ptahhotep(2300 b.c.e.). Confucius and Lao-tzu of the sixth century b.c.e. discussed the responsibilities of leaders and how leaders should conduct themselves. Like J. M. Burns (1978), Confucius said that leaders must set a moral example. Like Argyris (1983), Lao-tzu declared that leaders must participate in and share ownership of developments. In developing their ideas about imperialism and public service, leaders of the British Empire turned for inspiration to the classics, such as the works of Cicero and Marcus Aurelius. Roman and Greek authors such as Caesar, Cicero, Seneca, and Plutarch, to name just a few, wrote extensively on the subject of leadership and administration. For instance, in hisParallel Livesof around 100 C.E., Plutarch (1932) tried to show the moral similarities between 50 Greek and Roman leaders: for each Greek leader there was a Roman counterpart. The mythical founder of Athens, Theseus, was matched with the mythical founder of Rome, Romulus. The lawgiver of Sparta, Lycurgus, was matched with the lawgiver of Rome, Numa Pompilius. Alexander the Great was matched with Julius Caesar.

The classical Greek and Roman writers had considerable influence during the medieval, Renaissance, and early modern periods, when many people looked back to the classics for guidance. The Greeks and Romans influenced Machiavelli inThe Prince(1513), for instance, and Montesquieu inThe Spirit of Laws(1748). In hisTwo Treatises on Government(1690), John Locke wrote that what we would now call leadership had to reach beyond institutional authority to create and maintain a liberal society (Weaver, 1991).

America's founding fathers were well versed in all these texts and were aware of how autocratic and democratic leadership had succeeded or failed in the Roman, Venetian, Dutch, and Swiss republics. Plato'sRepublicand Aristotle'sPoliticsfigured strongly in their deliberations at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. The constitutional checks and balances among executive, legislative, and judicial powers owe much to these writings.

Written Concepts and Principles of Leadership

Written concepts and principles of leadership emerged early. In 2300 b.c.e., in theInstruction of Ptahhotep,three qualities were attributed to the pharaoh: "Authoritative utterance is in thy mouth, perception is in thy heart, and thy tongue is the shrine of justice" (Lichtheim, 1973).

Chinese classics written as early as the sixth century b.c.e. are filled with hortatory advice to leaders about their responsibilities to the people. Confucius urged leaders to set a moral example and to manipulate rewards and punishments for teaching what was right and good. Lao-tzu emphasized the need for a leader to work himself out of his job by making the people believe that success was due to their own efforts.

The Greeks' concepts of leadership were exemplified by the heroes in Homer'sIliad.Ajax symbolized inspirational leadership and law and order; Agamemnon, justice and judgment; Nestor, wisdom and counsel; Odysseus, shrewdness and cunning: and Achilles, valor and activism (Sarachek, 1968). Later, Greek philosophers, such as Plato, in theRepublic,looked at the requirements for the ideal leader of the ideal state. Plato's philosopher-king was to be the most important element of good government, educated to rule with order and reason. InPolitics,Aristotle was disturbed by a lack of virtue among those who wanted to be leaders. He emphasized the need to educate youths for such leadership. Plutarch, concerned with prosocial ideals about leadership, compared the traits and behavior of actual Greek and Roman leaders to support his point of view inParallel Lives(Kellerman, 1987).

A famous Renaissance work was Machiavelli's (1513/1962)The Prince.Machiavelli's thesis that "there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things" is still a germane description of the risks of, and resistance to, leadership. Machiavelli was the ultimate pragmatist. He believed that leaders needed steadiness, firmness, and concern for the maintenance of authority, power, and order in government. It was best if these objectives could be accomplished by gaining the esteem of the populace; but if they could not, then craft, deceit, threats, treachery, and violence were required (Kellerman, 1987). Machiavelli is still widely quoted as a guide to an effective leadership of sorts, and he was the basis for a modern line of investigation using a "Mach scale" (Christie & Geis, 1970). In 1987, a survey of college presidents reported that they still foundThe Princehighly relevant.

Other famous works of the Renaissance include Shakespeare's plays, such asRichard II.As king of England, Richard made many mistakes in judgment, especially in his judgments of people, which alienated his nobles and ultimately led to his forced abdication and imprisonment (Payne, 2000).

Philosophy continued to contribute to principles of leadership. Thus a fundamental principle of leadership at West Point today can be traced back to Hegel'sPhilosophy of Mind(Hegel, 1830/1971), which argued that by first serving as a follower, a leader subsequently can best understand his followers. Hegel thought that this understanding was a paramount requirement for effective leadership.

The Modern Study of Leadership

Among the landmarks in the modern study of leadership are Terman's (1904) investigation of the psychology and development of leadership, Kohs and Irle's (1920) predictions of the promotion of U.S. Army officers, Freud's (1922) work dealing with group psychology, Weber's (1927/1947) introduction of charismatic leadership, Cox's (1926) analysis of the biographies of leaders, Moreno's (1934/1953) invention of sociometry, and Benne and Sheat's (1948) classification of roles in small groups. Leadership assessment centers began in 1923 in Germany (Ansbacher, 1951); they were initiated in Britain during World War II (Garforth, 1945) and by the Office of Strategic Services (1948) in the United States. By 1948, Stogdill (1948) was able to locate 128 studies of leadership, which he classified according to the traits of importance to leadership: capacity, achievement, responsibility, participation, and status. There were 124 articles, books, and abstracts on leadership published in English and four in German up to 1947 in the half-century preceding Stogdill's (1948) review of the literature (see chapter 4). In contrast, 188 articles on leadership appeared in just one journal,Leadership Quarterly,between 1990 and 1999.

In determining the leadership that emerged, Stogdill also found it necessary to consider the situation and the nature of the followers -- their objectives and their need for leadership. After Stogdill, there was a paradigm shift away from research on the traits and personalities of leaders to an emphasis on the situation and context in which the leadership occurred. Stogdill himself maintained that the personal traits associated with leadership were still important, though their effects were modified by the needs of the situation. But most empirical researchers up to 1975 abandoned the search for traits and turned their attention to the situation. Another paradigm shift occurred in the late 1970s, with a rising interest in charismatic, visionary, and transformational leadership (Hunt, 1999) and a perspective that both personal traits and situations (including followers) were important in determining the emergence, success, and effectiveness of leadership. By the 1980s, traits had again become important for research, along with context.

Influence of Leadership Research on Popular Books and Management Techniques

Leadership is a widely discussed and popular topic. In mid-1999, 55,172 publications on leadership could be found in the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC). As of April 14, 2005, Amazon.com listed 18,299 books for sale on leadership in English, French, and Spanish. Google Scholar listed 16,800 books on leadership, 95,500 publications on leadership, and 386,000 citations related to leadership.

In the past, popular books on leadership consisted of hortatory advice to leaders based on a mixture of "armchair analysis" and unproven generalizations. The best sellerHow to Win Friends and Influence Peopleby Dale Carnegie (1937) is illustrative, and is still used for confidence building, especially in workshops for public speaking and salesmanship. Dickson, BeShears, Borys, et al. (2003) selected 30 popular books on business leadership mainly written in the past 30 years such asThe One Minute Manager, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,andFirst, Break All the Rules.Two reviewers prepared a summary of key points in each book. Much in common was found with the academic research literature on leadership. (This was confounded to some extent because some of the authors of the popular books were primarily academics.) Staw and Epstein (2000) looked at the effects during five annual periods on the largest 100 U.S. firms (in sales) of introducing three popular management programs: Teamwork, Total Quality Management (TQM), and Employee Empowerment. The firms' reputations were enhanced in news reports of the programs by the business press. The CEOs' salaries and bonuses also reflected the use of the three programs, but the firms' profitability remained unaffected.

Universality of Leadership

Leadership is a universal phenomenon in humans and is also observed in many species of animals, such as matriarchal elephants and patriarchal gorillas. Allee (1951) maintained that all vertebrates living in groups exhibit social organization and leadership. Koford (1963) observed that the relative dominance of two bands of monkeys encountering each other at an eating place was usually determined by the relative dominance of the leaders of the bands. Zajonc (1969) suggested that primate groups learn norms for the different status of members and their leadership. The norms are learned by group members, are stable but can be changed, and are complied with by the majority of members. Experimentation and observation in natural settings suggest that many groups of mammals learn strongly differentiated status hierarchies, which their members recognize and comply with. In primate groups, leaders obtain privileges that tend to bolster their dominance. Their presence is an advantage to the group in gaining possession of a desired territory and in expanding the area of free movement for the group. Whether these findings and similar results reported for packs of wolves and hyenas, elephant matriarchies, bands of gorillas, and pods of whales are relevant to understanding the human condition remains controversial.

Theory versus Problem Orientation

The earliest social science literature on leadership was concerned predominately with theoretical issues. Theorists sought to identify different types of leadership and to relate them to the functional demands of society. In addition, they sought to account for the emergence of leadership by examining either the qualities of the leader or the elements of the situation. Earlier theorists can be distinguished from more recent ones in that the former did not consider interactions between individual and situational variables. Also, earlier theorists tended to develop more comprehensive theories than do their more recent counterparts. Between 1945 and 1960, students of leadership devoted more of their efforts to empirical research and, as a consequence, ignored various issues that earlier theorists regarded as important. But research on leadership became theory driven again from the 1970s on, although the theories involved tended to focus on a few phenomena and were less ambitious than those of the past. Empirical research increasingly tested hypotheses derived from a theoretical model. By the 1990s, advances in statistical analysis had made possible testing of multivariate models of leadership involving interactions contingent on leaders' and followers' traits and situational variables.

Empirical research on leadership in some segments of the population (students, military personnel, and business managers) was heavy, but sparse in other segments such as leaders of volunteer agencies, police officers, and health administrators. Because of growing employment in health, social services, and protection, there was an upsurge in studies of leadership among nurses, social workers, and the police. In the same way, the increase and upgrading of minorities in the U.S. labor force has resulted in an examination of leadership among women and minorities. Cross-cultural studies of leadership have burgeoned as well.

The emerging propositions about leadership maintain their validity over time in strong cultures. Nonetheless, they also are subject to change because of cultural changes. Thus, over 50% of more than 1,000 students from eight U.S. universities who were surveyed about their attraction to the television series, MASH, dealing with a medical unit in the Korean War, indicated that watching the program had modified their attitudes or behavior about organizational life. All but 5% considered MASH a realistic portrayal of organizational values and processes. The respondents felt an increased desire to work with superiors who treat subordinates with understanding and respect (Dyer & Dyer, 1984). Most of the coercive, tough, autocratic, bullying leaders in organizations of 1905 had been replaced by 2005 with leaders who may still be as highly concerned about getting the work done but also have concern for their followers. Much of the work itself has changed from unskilled labor to the application of knowledge, from repetitive tasks to more meaningful work, from individual work to teamwork, from functional to project-based work, from single-skill to multiskill work. Coordination from above has decreased while coordination among peers has increased (Stein & Pinchot, 1995).

The Need for Leadership

Napoleon expressed his feeling about the importance of leadership in his quip that he would rather have an army of rabbits led by a lion than an army of lions led by a rabbit. Surveys of job satisfaction from the 1920s on illustrated the importance of leadership. They uniformly reported that employees' favorable attitudes toward their supervisors contributed to the employees' satisfaction. In turn, employees' favorable attitudes toward their supervisors were usually found to be related to the productivity of the work group (see, for example, Lawshe & Nagle, 1953). Since then, countless surveys can be cited to support the contention that leaders make a difference in their subordinates' satisfaction and performance. For example, Becker (1992) found that compared with their commitment to the organization, employees' commitment to their supervisors and to top management was more highly related to their job satisfaction, their intention not to quit, and their prosocial behavior. Again, Becker, Billings, et al. (1996) showed that commitment by employees to their supervisors was more strongly associated with the employees' performance than was their commitment to the organization. Leaders also can make the difference in whether organizations succeed or fail. In the public sector, local government managers must be able to lead when angry, single-issue, negative minorities wish to take over public policy making about issues ranging from abortion rights to protective services (Abels, 1996).

Typically, efforts to estimate the number of leaders in the United States use census data on proprietors and officials. But Gardner (1986) noted that although owners, managers, and officials are in a position to do so, they do not necessarily act as leaders. Cleveland (1985) estimated the number of opinion leaders in the United States and how this number grew between 1955 and 1985. In 1955, he estimated that there were 555,000 opinion leaders; in 1971, he guessed that at least one million Americans could be classified as opinion leaders. He considered 7 out of 10 public executives to be opinion leaders -- policy makers in public, philanthropic, voluntary, and large-scale private enterprises. By 1985, he estimated the number to have multiplied to one out of every 200 Americans. In the age of information -- with the ever-present need for change to stay ahead of the competition, for learning from timely feedback, for teamwork, and for the introduction of new technology -- the need for leadership at all organizational levels is apparent. On the basis of a field study of 12 large organizational reengineering attempts. Jaffe and Scott (1998) pointed out that without engaging the firm's leadership, efforts to reengineer, the operations will fail. Large-scale redesign requires leaders' and employees' commitment.

Need and Importance.It was the leadership of Robert E. Lee that enabled the Confederate forces to defeat the larger, better-equipped Union forces in many of the battles of the Civil War. It was the leadership of Henry V and longbow technology that produced the victory at Agincourt of 15,000 Englishmen over the 45,000 more heavily armored Frenchmen (Fiedler & Garcia, 1987). De Vries, Roe, et al. (1998) developed and validated a scale of "need for supervision" that can differentiate between conditions when employees need to be supervised and conditions when they do not. However, the effect of the need for leadership on the outcomes of leadership, though positive, is small (De Vries, Roe, and Taillieu, 2002). Supervisors do make a difference in employees' sense of equity in the workplace and are more important than issues of pay and long working hours (Porter, 1997). Leaders' vision, empowerment, and enabling of subordinates makes possible a highly adaptive, learning organization (Johnson, 1998). The Gallup Organization Workplace Audit, administered to 2 million employees in 61 countries, and supported by focus groups, identified five statistical factors associated with high-quality work environments. Two of these factors were one's immediate supervisor and the overall leadership in the firm (Gallup, 1995, 1998). Leadership was central to the success of Total Quality Management (TQM), which requires the support and commitment of top management (Shea and Howell, 1998). Some of the performance of football teams is beyond the control and ability of the coach's leadership, but the coach can turn a consistently losing team into a consistently winning team -- as Vince Lombardi did with the Green Bay Packers. Around the globe, leadership is widely required because of two antithetical forces: interdependence and diversity (economic, political, and social). But despite the importance of leadership, Conger (1999, p. 145) lamented, "A more competitive world forced many firms to reinvent themselves...(but) rarely did companies possess the courage to change management skills needed to orchestrate large-scale transformations....The leadership talent necessary for such undertakings was...in short supply." Lipman-Blumen (1996) conceived a need for "connective" leaders who can bring divisive parties together by developing a sense of self-sacrifice, community, and common causes. Leadership is needed to change organizations. However, when De Vries, Roe, and Taillieu (2002) questioned 958 Dutch employees about how much theyindividuallyneeded their supervisor to set goals, to decide what work should be done, etc., they found only modest effects on the relationship between the need for leadership and job satisfaction, commitment to the organization, stress of work, role conflict, and self-rated performance.

Caveat -- Leadership is a Figment of the Imagination.Agency theorists (Meckling & Jensen, 1976) argued that an organization is a legal fiction that serves as the connection for contracts among parties. An organization is simply a network of individuals who exchange according to market conditions, rewards, resources, time, and skills. There is no distinction between leaders and followers. If there are no followers, there is no need for leadership (Arnott, 1995). Some critics have argued that all the effects of leadership are a romantic fiction, existing only in the eye of the beholder. Followers attribute to leadership effects that in fact are due to historical, economic, or social forces. Meindl, Ehrlich, and Dukerich (1985) presented five empirical studies of their concept of the "romance of leadership." In the first study, they demonstrated that among a total of 33,248 titles of articles inThe Wall Street Journalbetween 1972 and 1982, 34 business firms in various industries, leadership was more likely to be emphasized in those years when the firms did well but not when they did poorly. Leadership also appeared much more often in the titles in the years that industries performed well rather than poorly. A second study showed that the percentage of leadership topics between 1929 and 1983 in social science doctoral dissertations was greater after poor rather than good economic times. A third study found that the number of articles about leadership in business periodicals was also affected, but in the opposite way. The fourth and fifth studies demonstrated that students given various business scenarios were more likely to attribute large changes, up or down, to leadership rather than to alternative reasons for company success. Middling changes generated the least effect.

Other critics, such as Pandey (1976), have regarded the concept of leadership as useless for understanding social influence. Calder (1977) argued that the objective contributions of the "leader" to outcomes were possibly more interesting than true. Some critics attributed organizational outcomes primarily to other factors, but held that after the fact, leaders were credited with what happened. Organizational leaders who were perceived to be exerting leadership on organizational performance were merely the subjects of misperceptions. That is, organizational outcomes were objectively determined by environmental and organizational factors in which leadership, at best, could play only a minor role. For instance, M. C. Brown (1982, p. 1) concluded that "once other factors influencing effectiveness are accounted for, it is likely that leadership will have little bearing on organizational performance." Pfeffer (1977) took a similar but less extreme position: leadership is a sense-making heuristic to account for organizational performance and is important primarily for its symbolic role in organizations. Leaders are selected or self-selected to fulfill the fate of the organization and are highly constrained by organizational and external factors. Therefore, compared with external factors, they can have only a limited impact on organizational outcomes. Leaders are able only to react to contingencies, to facilitate the adjustment of the organization in its context, and to alter the environment to some limited extent. Also, they have no control over many factors that affect organizational performance. Typically, they have unilateral control over few resources.

Salancik and Pfeffer (1977) showed that the mayors of 30 U.S. cities had real influence on a just a few budgetary issues, such as libraries and parks, that were not in the domain of important special-interest groups, such as the police, firefighters, and highway maintenance personnel. Seemingly influential leaders -- political party officials, lobbyists, and contractors -- often are followers, not leaders. Pfeffer concluded that since people want to feel they are in control of their environment, they find it useful to attribute their group and organizational performance to leaders rather than to the complex internal and external environmental forces that actually are most important. Meindi and Ehrlich (1987) showed that if performance outcomes of firms were attributed to the leadership of top management rather than to the employees, to market conditions, or to the government, evaluators gave better evaluations of the outcomes. Meindl and Ehrlich attributed this finding to the evaluators' assumption that leaders have a reliable and potent impact on outcomes. Even when the true causes of outcomes were logically not determinable, Meindl, Ehrlich, and Dukerich (1985) showed that there was a tendency to view leadership as the likely cause. This study and the one by Meindl and Ehrlich (1987) were thought to demonstrate that leadership is more of a romantic notion than a phenomenon that truly affects group and organizational outcomes. Support for the idea that leadership is a fiction was the evidence that would-be followers, subordinates, and groups of employees are so constrained by technology, rules, job requirements, and organizational policies that there is little discretionary room for a superior or leader to make much of a difference in how things get done (Katz & Kahn, 1966). Furthermore, subordinates may have much more effect on the behavior of their superiors than vice versa (Goodstadt & Kipnis, 1970).

Miner (1975, p. 200), a prominent scholar of leadership, was ready to abandon the concept of leadership, stating that "the concept of leadership itself has outlived its usefulness. Hence, I suggest that we abandon leadership in favor of some other, more fruitful way of cutting up the theoretic pie" (Hunt, 1999, p. 129). Miner (1982a) later recanted this statement but still maintained that the concept had limited usefulness because so much of the empirical research had been on emergent leadership in small groups rather than within more complex organizations. For Miner, the fragile, distressed leadership that arises in the small, temporary group to develop, maintain, and enforce the norms of the group may have little relevance for leadership in the impersonal "task system" of the traditional organization. Cronshaw and Lord (1987) found in a laboratory study that participants used simple cognitive rules of thumb to form their impressions of leadership. Bass (1949) showed that in an initially temporary, initially leaderless group discussion, ratings of members' leadership correlated as high as .90 with how much they talked in the discussion.

Leaders Do Make a Difference.Historians such as Arthur Schlesinger (1999) are mindful of how the course of history might have been changed by chance events in the lives of individual leaders. On a visit to New York in 1931, Winston Churchill was hit by an automobile while crossing Fifth Avenue. Suppose his injuries had been fatal. Would Britain have rallied in 1940 under Neville Chamberlain in the face of impending defeat by the Nazis? What if in 1932, an assassin's bullet intended for Franklin Roosevelt had killed him instead of Mayor Cermak of Chicago, who was beside him on the speakers' platform? Would his more conservative replacement, Vice President John Garner, have launched the New Deal? Would the country have shifted from isolationism to interventionism? Suppose Lenin had died of typhus when he was exiled to Siberia in 1897 or Hitler had been killed on the western front in 1916. Would the twentieth century have been the same?

Although there is some validity in Meindl's proposition that we wrongly attribute to leaders the success or failure of their groups, leaders do make a difference. It is not an all-or-none matter. An experienced expert group has less need for close leadership than a group of inexperienced novices. Posner and Kouzes (1996), after analyzing several thousand cases and surveys over a dozen years, found a consistent pattern of exemplary leadership practices. Leadership is not a "mystical or ethereal concept." Rather, leadership is an observable, learnable set of practices. Certainly leaders make a difference. There is no question about it. But, as noted by Henry Mintzberg, leaders often make a difference because they stimulate others (McCarthy, 2000).

The Role of Followers.Proponents of the follower theory of leadership of social and political movements, such as Rost (1993), argue that leaders find the parade of followers and get in front of it. These critics oversimplify. Social and political leaders discover what their followers need or should need, but the followers have not been able to articulate and mobilize for what they want. Leaders give voice and words to capture what is needed and mobilize others to follow. Despite skepticism about the reality and importance of leadership, all social and political movements require leaders to begin them. As Tucker (1981, p. 87) put it, "In the beginning is the leadership act. A 'leaderless movement' is naturally out of the question." This does not mean thatformal, institutionalizedleadership is required. Informal leaders can stir up a rioting mob. Organized slave revolts were initiated informally by leaders like Spartacus (70 b.c.e.) in Rome and Toussaint-Louverture (1792) in French Haiti. In fact, no leader in an institutional form appeared in the numerous peasant revolts from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century in southern Germany. The same was true of journeymen's strikes during the eighteenth century. Leadership remained informal and egalitarian. Only in the middle of the nineteenth century did definite radical leaders like Ferdinand Lassalle emerge. Lassalle placed himself at the head of the German workers' movement and developed its explicit ideology along with the myth that he had founded the movement (Groh, 1986). This behavior is consistent with most cases of institutional development: Leaders determine the direction they will take. The early historical records of the British Royal Society in the seventeenth century illustrate that its secretaries were responsible for who joined the society and what kinds of science were sponsored (Mulligan & Mulligan, 1981).

Leadership May Be Critical to Organizational Success.Indeed, leadership is often regarded as the single most critical factor in the success of failure of institutions. For instance, T. H. Allen (1981) argued that the principal's leadership is the most important factor in determining a school's climate and the students' success. Sylvia and Hutchison (1985) concluded that the motivation of 167 teachers in Oklahoma depended considerably on their perception of the quality of their relationships with their superiors. And Smith, Carson, and Alexander (1984) found that among the 50 Methodist ministers they studied, some were more effective leaders than others. The effectiveness of these ministers was evidenced by the differential impact that their ministries had on church attendance, membership, property values, and contributions to the church.

In the business and industrial sector, leaders' effectiveness is measured objectively by their organizational units' profit, profit margin, sales increase, market share, return on investment (ROI), unit productivity, cost per item produced, and cost relative to budgeted cost. Objective measures of effectiveness (and employees' satisfaction) also include safety records, absenteeism, voluntary turnover, grievances, complaints, requests for transfers, work slowdowns, and incidents of sabotage. Superiors', peers', subordinates', and customers' ratings and attitude surveys provide subjective measures of the effectiveness of unit leaders and their contribution to the units' processes. Product quality can be gauged by amount of required rework, number of rejects, and customers' complaints or subjective ratings (Yukl, 1998). Maccoby (1979, p. 313) concluded, from his observations of the manager as a game-playing politician, that the need of firms to survive and prosper in a world of increasing competition, technological advances, changing governmental regulations, and changing attitudes of workers requires "a higher level of leadership than ever before." Strong support for this proposition came in a study by Andersen Consulting's Institute for Strategic Change, which found that the stock price of firms seen as well-led increased 900% over a 10-year period. Stock prices of firms seen as poorly led increased only 74% (Bennis, 2000). When an organization must be changed to reflect changes in technology, the environment, and the completion of programs, its leadership is critical in orchestrating the process (Burke, Richley, & DeAngelis, 1985). Mintzberg and Waters (1982) examined the evolution of a retail firm over a 60-year period and found that a senior executive could successfully reorient the firm by intervening to change previous strategies and organizational structures. This finding was corroborated by Thomas (1988), whose data showed that over 60% of the sales and profits of British retail shops were due to changes in the top executive.

Leadership and Various Organizational Outcomes.Management and leadership do seem to have a substantial effect on some organizational outcomes. Thus when Lieberson and O'Connor (1972) examined the effects of top management on the success of 167 firms over a 20-year period, they found that these effects depended on which outcomes were considered. Senior managers had the greatest effect on profit margins but the least effect on sales; they also were of less consequence in capital-intensive industries. In the same way, Day and Lord (1986) noted that when confounding errors are controlled in studies of the effects of executive succession, differences in executive leaders can account for as much as 45% of their organizations' performance. Agreeing with Chandler (1962), they stated that historical analyses of changes of leadership over significant periods, demonstrated that leadership had a profound influence on an organization. Concurrent correlational analyses of a sample of executives and their organizations at the same point in time reach similar conclusions, although the effects are not as strong. Barrick, Day, et al. (1991) analyzed 15 years of data in 132 industrial organizations and found that high-performing executive leaders had a positive impact on their firms' new income, earnings per share, and return on equity. In a review of experiments in the United States on the productivity of workers between 1971 and 1981, Katzell and Guzzo (1983) concluded that supervisory methods seemed particularly effective in increasing output. In Sweden, Westerlund (1952a) observed that the high-quality performance of supervisors improved the attitudes and performance of telephone operators. Also in Sweden, Ekvall and Arvonen (1984) found that leadership styles accounted for 65% of the variance in organizational climate in the 25 units they studied. Virany and Tushman (1986) stated that the senior managers of better-performing minicomputer firms were systematically different from those of firms that performed poorly. The senior managers in the better firms had previous experience in the electronics industry and were more likely to include the founder of the firm, who still served as chief executive officer. Although most attention has been paid to industrial leaders as developers and builders, Hansen (1974) pointed out that the success with which a firm, such as the Ford Motor Company, closed a plant with-out much human dislocation depended on effective leadership.

Leadership has been considered a critical factor in military successes since records have been kept; that is, better-led forces repeatedly have been victorious over poorly led forces. Thus, not unexpectedly, morale and cohesion among Israeli and U.S. enlisted soldiers correlated with measures of the soldiers' confidence in their company, division, and battalion commanders (Gal & Manning, 1984).

Personnel of the Mississippi Cooperative Extension reported that they felt less job stress if they saw their supervisors displaying more leadership in structuring the work to be done and showing concern for the subordinates' needs (Graham, 1982). In a study of 204 innovations in state programs, Cheek (1987) found that the governors came up with 55% of the innovations and the agencies with only 36%.

Effects of Presidential Performance.Studies by Tucker (1981), Hargrove and Nelson (1984), and Hargrove (1987) concluded that the style and performance of a U.S. president makes a big difference in what happens to legislation, policy, and programs. Successful presidents are more sensitive to the inherent politics of policy making. They define and publicize the policy dilemmas facing the country and earn widespread public and congressional support for their positions. They construct their policy agendas with the felt needs of the country in mind and create political support for their agendas; they also realize that timing is important (Tucker, 1981). But, like Jimmy Carter, they can fail if they push for what they deem to be right but what is not politically feasible and if they favor comprehensive integrated solutions, rather than incremental steps (Hargrove, 1987). Presidents can make decisions that are not implemented because they or their assistants do not follow them up. For example, as part of the agreement to resolve the Cuban missile crisis, President Kennedy ordered the removal of U.S. missiles from Turkey on the border of the Soviet Union. Six months later, he was astonished to learn that the missiles were still in place (Manchester, 1988). Although presidents spend relatively little time trying to make major reorientations in policy, they have an important impact on the smaller substantive decisions that affect larger overall strategies (Neustadt, 1980). History may be drastically altered by a sudden change in presidents. Before leaving Washington, D.C., for his fateful trip to Dallas, Texas, where he was assassinated in November 1963, Kennedy signed the first order for a phased withdrawal from Vietnam. On assuming office after Kennedy's assassination, Lyndon Johnson rescinded the order. The war continued for another decade.

According to Richard Nixon's "Silent Majority" speech in 1969, presidents may have to take an unpopular stand, but when they do, they can strengthen acceptance by explaining their reasons, soliciting support, and winning approval (Safire, 1975). Presidents also provide symbolic support for the development of norms, values, and beliefs that contribute to subsequent national and organizational development (Sayles, 1979). As Gardner (1988a) noted, for a society to function, its people must share beliefs and values regarding the standards of acceptable behavior. Bill Clinton, a popular president, was almost removed from office for violating standards of sexual propriety. Leaders can revitalize those shared beliefs and help keep the values fresh. "They have a role in creating the state of mind that is the society" (Gardner, 1988a, p. 18). They conceive and articulate goals that move people from their own interests to unite for higher ends.

Indirect Effects of Leadership.Often, the effects of leadership are indirect. For example, Katzell (1987) showed that although supervisors' direct influence on their subordinates was modest, they exerted indirect influence and improved the employees' morale by providing rewards, relating rewards to performance, and treating employees equitably. By increasing morale, these supervisors improved the employees' performance. Jongbloed and Frost (1985) modified Pfeffer's (1977) reasoning to argue that leaders still have an important general role to play. What leaders really manage in organizations is the employees' interpretation or understanding of what goes on in the organizations. The leaders manage meanings and, therefore, exert a strong impact on organizational outcomes. Jongbloed and Frost compared the laboratory director in one Canadian hospital with another director in a second hospital. The two had the same formal assignments, and neither of them had control over issues; but the first director successfully lobbied for the importance of pathology and persuaded the hospital administrators to allocate more funds for operations and budget than were allocated in the second hospital.

Relation to Development, Training, and Education.The importance of leadership is attested to by academics' and lay people's interest in leadership as a subject for development, training, and education (Campbell, 1977). Although U.S. college presidents believe that our educational institutions are reluctant to incorporate leadership education into their curricula (Cronin, 1984), the college landscape is not bleak. Quite the contrary. Gregory's (1986) survey of all known U.S. degree-granting institutions of higher learning found 53 that offered an academic course on leadership, 70 that made it possible to major or concentrate in the subject, and 181 that incorporated the study of leadership into an academic course or a student-affairs program. These numbers increased during the 1990s. Undergraduate schools of leadership, such as the Jepson School, appeared -- along with concentrations and certifications in leadership and research, such as those offered at Claremont McKenna College and Binghamton University. By the 1990s, leadership research and training centers such as the Center for Creative Leadership, the Center for Leadership Studies, the Kravis Institute, and the Drucker Foundation had appeared, as did journals such as theLeadership Quarterlyand theJournal of Leadership Studies.The Alliance for Leadership Development promotes research on and the teaching of leadership and serves as a clearinghouse of information on leadership programs at universities and secondary schools, leadership development programs in the community, development programs for corporate executives, and continuing education programs for professionals.

Leadership as a Subject of Inquiry

The understanding of leadership has figured strongly in the quest for knowledge. Purposeful stories have been told through the generations about leaders' competencies, ambitions, and shortcomings; leaders' rights and privileges; leaders' roles, duties, and obligations; and leaders' successes and failures.

The importance of leadership is also demonstrated by its place in social science research. According to DeMeuse (1986), leadership has been a frequent subject of empirical research concentrating on the antecedents of leaders' behavior and the factors that contribute to its effectiveness. Leadership is a featured topic in almost every textbook on organizational behavior (McFillen, 1977). Scholarly books on leadership and scholarly articles, reports, and essays form a considerable number of the total publications on leadership, as noted earlier.

Many schools of thought have existed, some simultaneously, since leadership first was studied. The early theorists explained leadership in terms of either the person or the environment. Later theorists viewed leadership as an aspect of role differentiation or as an outgrowth of social interaction processes. More recently, theories of leadership have focused on the mutual influence of leaders and followers. All this is as it should be. Theory and empirical research should move forward together, each stimulating, supporting, and modifying the other. Neither can stand alone. An elegant theory with no prospect of elegant data gathering is likely to be a sketchy theory. Early in a line of investigation, crude data and theory may be useful. Later, as understanding develops and practice improves, more stringent standards for theorizing are required (Bass, 1974).

The subject of inquiry has been changing over the years (Knights & Morgan, 1992). Small-group analysis of leadership has been giving way to organizational and strategic studies. Increasingly, empirical studies are about leaders and their strategies that create particular norms and values affecting organizational performance. The studies discussed in the chapters that follow are based on a wide variety of theoretical assumptions, methods, participants, and venues. Despite differences in the philosophies that guide them and the research methods used, there is considerable convergence of findings on many problems. This convergence, when it occurs, may be regarded as convincing evidence of the validity of the findings.

Caveat -- Too Much Rehashing.An almost unanswerable question is the extent to which we pour old wine into new bottles when we propose "new" theories. For instance, Julius Caesar's descriptions of his leadership style in the Gallic wars in the first century b.c.e. are clear, succinct endorsements of the need for what Blake and Mouton (1964) conceived as 9, 9 style -- a style that Fleishman (1953a) described in terms of strong initiation and consideration, and that some theorist will rename in the year 2050. When does a field advance? Are we beyond Caesar's understanding of how to lead infantry shock troops? In 1975, an unknown scholar of leadership declared, "Once I was active in the field. Then I left it for ten years. When I returned, it was as if I was gone only ten minutes" (Hunt, 1999, p. 129). Shortly after this pessimistic comment appeared, the new paradigms of neocharismatic and transformational leadership were introduced in the seminal publications of House (1977) and J. M. Burns (1978). They proved to be giant leaps forward for the study of leadership, as will be documented in chapters 21 and 22. Contrary to the criticism, according to House and Aditya (1997), the study of leadership has been truly cumulative.

Integration of Theories.The study of the dynamics of leadership was dominated by two broad themes. First, leadership was conceived as an exchange between the leader and the followers in which following the leader was rewarded and disciplinary action was avoided. Second, leadership was exerted through the leader's personality. Within this framework, emphasis was placed on traits, behaviors, and contexts. As we shall see, these have been integrated into many modern theories of leadership with practical applications to the assessment, development, and training of effective leaders, as will be described in Chapters 34 and 35.

My hope in this book is to catalog much of what is known about leadership and to suggest some of what we do not know and should try to find out. Although I agree with Burns (1978, p. 2) that "leadership is one of the most observed phenomena on earth," I disagree with Burn's statement that "it is one of the least understood." His position has probably become more optimistic since 1978, with the introduction into a good deal of leadership research of his original concept of transforming leadership.

More on the Meaning of Leadership.The word "leadership" refers to a sophisticated modern concept. In earlier times, words meaning head of state, military commander, princeps, proconsul, chief, or king were common in most societies; these words differentiated the ruler from other members of society. A preoccupation with leadership, as opposed to headship based on inheritance, usurpation, or appointment, occurred predominantly in countries with an Anglo-Saxon heritage. Although theOxford English Dictionary(1933) noted the appearance of the word "leader" in the English language as early as the year 1300, the word "leadership" did not appear until the first half of the nineteenth century, in writings about the political influence and control of the British Parliament. What was considered appropriate leadership changed as a consequence of the industrial revolution, first in the nineteenth century in England, and then in western Europe and America. Before the Industrial Revolution, shops were small and owner-managed, and relations were personal. The owners tended to be paternalistic authority figures. In the large factory system of the Industrial Revolution, the owner might be absent, the manager might be distant from the employees, and power over the employees rested in the shop foreman, who was likely to "rule his little kingdom as a tyrant, hiring, helping, firing and frustrating as he pleased....The owners (and shareholders) were...impervious to the impact of factory life upon their workers, to the alienation and uncertainty, and degradation bred in these impersonal establishments" (Wiebe, 1967, p. 20). Economic rationality provided the rules of management and supervision, eventually softened by organized labor, progressive politics, and the Human Relations Movement. After the Industrial Revolution, in the age of information, concern for followers' interests by the leadership became mandatory in most establishments, large and small, in the developed world.

Defining Leadership

Different definitions and concepts of leadership have been presented in countless essays and discussions. Often, a two-day meeting to discuss leadership has started with a day of argument over the definition. Rost (1993) found 221 definitions of leadership in 587 publications he examined. Furthermore, the distinction between leadership and other processes of social influence such as coordination and control was blurred. Ciulla (2004) argued that Rost confused the issue further by conceiving theories about how leadership works as definitions. The many dimensions into which leadership was cast and their overlapping meanings added to the confusion. Representative of definitions of leadership in the 1920s was impressing the will of the leader on those led and inducing obedience, respect, loyalty, and cooperation. In the 1930s, leadership was considered a process through which the many were organized to move in a specific direction by the leader. In the 1940s, leadership was the ability to persuade and direct beyond the effects of power, position, or circumstances. In the 1950s, it was what leaders did in groups and the authority accorded to leaders by the group members. In the 1960s, it was influence to move others in a shared direction. In the 1970s, the leader's influence was seen as discretionary and as varying from one member to another. In the 1980s, leadership was considered as inspiring others to take some purposeful action. In the 1990s, it was the influence of the leader and the followers who intended to make real changes that reflected their common purposes. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the leader is seen as the person most responsible and accountable for the organization's actions. McFarland, Senn, and Childress (1993) considered six themes of leadership most appropriate for the twenty-first century: (1) Leadership is no longer the exclusive domain of the top boss. (2) Leadership facilitates excellence in others. (3) Leadership is not the same as management. (4) Leadership has a sensitive, humanistic dimension. (5) Leaders need to take a holistic approach, applying a variety of qualities, skills, and capabilities. (6) Leadership is the mastery of anticipating, initiating, and implementing change.

Hughes, Ginnett, and Curphy (1993) attributed the confusion over defining leadership to a lack of agreement about the major questions in the field of leadership and about the answers to them. There is a surfeit of definitions of leadership. Nonetheless, there is a useful body of knowledge about the subject, which can be applied (Church, 1998). Fleishman, Mumford, et al. (1991) identified 65 systems for classifying definitions of leadership, and there is sufficient similarity among definitions to permit such classification. The definitions most commonly used tend to concentrate on the leader as a person, on the behavior of the leader, on the effects of the leader, and on the interaction process between the leader and the led.

"Leadercentric" Definitions of Leaders and Leadership

"Leadercentric" definitions are about one-way effects due to the leader as a person. According to these definitions, the leader has the combination of traits necessary to induce others to accomplish a task (Tead, 1929).

The Leader as a Personality.The concept of personality appealed to several early theorists, who sought to explain why some persons are better able than others to exercise leadership. A. O. Bowden (1926) equated leadership with strength of personality: "Indeed, the amount of personality attributed to an individual may not be unfairly estimated by the degree of influence he can exert upon others." Bingham (1927) defined a leader as a person who possesses the greatest number of desirable traits of personality and character.

Leadership as an Attribution.Leadership may be conceived solely as a romantic figment of the imagination, used to explain why a group, organization, community, or nation has been successful. Or leadership may be conceived solely as the observable reason for outcomes that have occurred. The truth lies somewhere in between. André Maurois noted that the most important quality in a leader was to be acknowledged as a leader. Such acknowledgment is a matching of the traits and behaviors thought implicitly to be the characteristics of leaders (the prototype) and the traits and behaviors observed in the person acknowledged as a leader. Most people carry around in their heads implicit theories about what qualities leaders should have and what behaviors leaders should exhibit. When 378 undergraduates were asked what characteristics were needed for acceptance of a new leader by a group, topping the list were learning the group's goals, taking charge, and being a nice person (Kenney, Blascovich, & Shaver, 1994). For more than 15,000 respondents, the first four of 20 characteristics chosen to describe admired leaders were being honest, being forward-looking, being inspirational, and being competent (Kouzes & Posner, 2002).

Leaders as the Foci of Group Processes.Early on, definitions of leadership tended to view the leader as a focus of group change, activity, and process. Cooley (1902) maintained that the leader is always the nucleus of a tendency, and that any social movement, closely examined, will be found to have such a nucleus. E Mumford (1906-1907) observed that "leadership is the preeminence of one or a few individuals in a group in the process of control of societal phenomena." Blackmar (1911) saw leadership as the "centralization of effort in one person as an expression of power in all." For

M. Smith (1934), "the social group that expresses its unity in connected activity is always composed of but two essential portions: the center of focal activity, and the individuals who act with regard to the center." For Redl (1942), the leader was a central or focal person who integrated the group. As a nation develops, it needs a centralized locus for its operation, which can be achieved only by a single leader (Babikan, 1981). All important decisions and their implementation center on the cult of the leader, even when, as in parliamentary democracies, actual decision making is diffuse. The leader embodies the collective will. This single leader sorts out the essential problems, offers possible solutions, establishes priorities, and launches developmental operations.

J. F. Brown (1936) maintained that "the leader may not be separated from the group, but may be treated as a position of high potential in the field." Following in the same tradition, Krech and Crutchfield (1948) observed that the leader "by virtue of his special position in the group...serves as a primary agent for the determination of group structure, group atmosphere, group goals, group ideology, and group activities." For Knickerbocker (1948), "when conceived in terms of the dynamics of human social behavior, leadership is a function of needs existing within a given situation, and consists of a relationship between an individual and a group." In his bookIf I'm in Charge Here, Why Is Everybody Laughing?David Campbell (1992) suggested that no matter how competent and motivated a group is, it cannot be effective collectively without a central focal leader.

Chapin (1924b) viewed leadership as a point of polarization for group cooperation. According to L. L. Bernard (1927), leaders were influenced by the needs and wishes of the group members; in turn, they focused the attention and released the energies of group members in a desired direction. This emphasis on the leader as the center or focus of group activity directed attention to group structure and group processes in studies of leadership. On the one hand, some of the earliest theorists, such as Cooley and Mumford, were sophisticated in their concept of leadership. On the other hand, several of the definitions placed the leader in a particularly fortuitous, if not helpless, position, given the inexorable progress of the group. Leaders were thought to have to stay one step ahead of the group to avoid being run over. Centrality of location in the group could permit a person to control communications, and hence was likely to place him or her in a position of leadership, but centrality in itself is not leadership.

The Leader as a Symbol.Leaders serve a symbolic function and serve as representatives of their group to outsiders. They provide a way to simplify and find meaning in the group's external environment (Katz & Kahn, 1978). In doing so, leaders invoke symbols to reinforce the meaning of events and circumstances (Gronn, 1995).

Leadership as the Making of Meaning.Leaders provide understanding and meaning for situations that followers find confusing, ambiguous, unclear, vague, indistinct, or uncertain. They define reality for followers. Leaders provide credible explanations, interpretations, stories, parables, and accounts about what has happened, what is happening, and what will happen. They make sense of a situation for their followers. Leaders talk about values that are acceptable to the followers and that can guide their subsequent action (Gronn, 1995).

Leadership of Thought.This leadership is exerted through lectures, writing, or discovery by people like Darwin, Marx, and Einstein, whose original intellectual activities are profound and exciting (Clark & Clark, 1994).

Leadership as Purposive Behavior.One school of theorists preferred to define leadership in terms of activities or behaviors. These are the particular activities in which a leader engages in the course of directing and coordinating the work of group members. They may include acts such as structuring work relations, praising or criticizing group members, and showing consideration for members' welfare and feelings. For L. F. Carter (1953), "leadership behaviors are any behaviors the experimenter wishes to so designate or, more generally, any behaviors which experts in this area wish to consider as leadership behaviors." For Shartle (1956), a leadership act is "one which results in others acting or responding in a shared direction." Hemphill (1949a) suggested that "leadership may be defined as the behavior of an individual while he is involved in directing group activities." Fiedler (1967a) proposed a somewhat similar definition. For Heifitz (1994), leadership is adaptive work, the activity of mobilizing a social system to face challenges, clarify aspirations, and adapt challenges faced.

For Jacobs and Jaques (1987), leaders give purpose to others to expend and mobilize energy to try to compete. Outcomes are attributed more readily to the leader: thus when things go wrong, the leader is likely to be blamed and even removed (Hollander, 1986).

Leadership as Persuasive Behavior.Presidents Eisenhower and Truman emphasized the persuasive aspect of leadership. According to Truman (1958, p. 139), "a leader is a man who has the ability to get other people to do what needs to done and what they don't want to do, and like it." According to Eisenhower, "leadership is the ability to decide what is to be done, and then to get others to want to do it" (Larson, 1968, p. 21). And for Lippmann (1922), such persuasiveness is long-lasting: "The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on."

Several theorists defined leadership as successful persuasion without coercion. Followers are convinced by the merits of the argument, not by the coercive power of the arguer. Neustadt (1960) concluded, from his study of U.S. presidents, that presidential leadership stems from the power to persuade. Schenk (1928) suggested that "leadership is the management of men by persuasion and inspiration rather than by the direct or implied threat of coercion." Merton (1969) regarded leadership as "an interpersonal relation in which others comply because they want to, not because they have to." According to Cleeton and Mason (1934), "leadership indicates the ability to influence men and secure results through emotional appeals rather than through the exercise of authority." Copeland (1942) maintained that leadership was the art of influencing a body of people by persuasion or example to follow a line of action. It was never to be confused with drivership -- compelling a body of people by intimidation or force to follow a line of action. Odier (1948) differentiated between the value and the valence of a leader.

Valence is the power of one person to strengthen or weaken the values of other persons -- the influences exerted on others. Koontz and O'Donnell (1955) regarded leadership as "the activity of persuading people to cooperate in the achievement of a common objective."

Persuasion is one form of leadership. Much of what has been learned from studies of persuasion can be incorporated into an understanding of leadership. Persuasion is a powerful instrument for shaping expectations and beliefs -- particularly in political, social, and religious affairs. The definition of leadership as a form of persuasion tended to be favored by students of politics and social movements and by military and industrial theorists who were opposed to authoritarian concepts. It was also the province of rhetoricians and communications theorists. Research on persuasion, persuasability, and communications paralleled research on leadership (W. Weiss, 1958).

Leadership as the Initiation of Structure.Several commentators viewed leadership not as passive occupancy of a position or as acquisition of a role but as a process of originating and maintaining the role structure -- the pattern of role relationships. M. Smith (1935a) equated leadership with the management of social differentials through the process of providing stimuli that other people respond to integratively. Lapiere and Farnsworth (1936) observed that situations may be distinguished from one another by the extent to which they are organized by one member of the group. Such organizing is usually spoken of as leadership, with its nature and degree varying in different social situations.

Gouldner (1950) suggested that there is a difference in effect between a stimulus from a follower and one from a leader. A stimulus from a leader has a higher probability of structuring a group's behavior because the group believes that the leader is a legitimate source of such stimuli. Gouldner disagreed with C. A. Gibb (1947) regarding the notion that once the group's activity is dominated by an established and accepted organization, leadership tends to disappear. Thus Bavelas (1960) defined organizational leadership as the function of "maintaining the operational effectiveness of decision-making systems which comprise the management of the organization."

Homans (1950) identified the leader of a group as a member who "originates interaction." For Hemphill (1954), "to lead is to engage in an act that initiates a structure in interaction (pattern of relations) as part of the process of solving a mutual problem." And Stogdill (1959) defined leadership as "the initiation and maintenance of structure in expectation and interaction." Hemphill and Stogdill defined leadership in terms of the variables that give rise to the differentiation and maintenance of role structures in groups. Such a definition has greater theoretical utility than definitions that are more concrete and descriptive to a layperson: it leads to the basic processes involved in the emergence of the leadership role. Again, what must be kept in mind is that leadership is more than just the initiation of structure. As Gouldner (1950) noted, we need room for acts of leadership in the completely structured group. Stogdill's (1959) inclusion of maintenance of structure is important. Furthermore, if structure is a consistent pattern of differentiated role relationships within a group, we must also be sure to consider persons, resources, and tasks within the differentiated roles. Much of chapter 20 is dedicated to initiation of structure.

Leadership as the Exercise of Influence.The concept of influence was a step in the direction of generality and abstraction in defining leadership. J. B. Nash (1929) suggested that "leadership implies influencing change in the conduct of people." Tead (1935) defined leadership as "the activity of influencing people to cooperate toward some goal which they come to find desirable." Stogdill (1950) described leadership as "the process of influencing the activities of an organized group in its efforts toward goal setting and goal achievement." The influence may be direct or indirect (Hunt, 1991). Shartle (1951a, b) proposed that the leader be considered an individual "who exercises positive-influence acts upon others" or "who exercises more important-influence acts than any other members of the group or organization." Similarly, Tannenbaum, Weschler, and Massarik (1961) defined leadership as "interpersonal influence, exercised in a situation and directed, through the communication process, toward the attainment of a specified goal or goals." This definition was expanded by Ferris and Rowland (1981), who conceived of the influence process in leadership as contextual influence that has an impact on subordinates' attitudes and performance through effects on their perceptions of their jobs.

The interactive aspect became apparent as leadership was linked by definition to influence processes. Haiman (1951) suggested that "direct leadership is an interaction process in which an individual, usually through the medium of speech, influences the behavior of others toward a particular end." According to Gerth and Mills (1953), "leadership...is a relation between leader and led in which the leader influences more than he is influenced: because of the leader, those who are led act or feel differently than they otherwise would." For Cartwright (1965), leadership was equated with the "domain of influence." Katz and Kahn (1966) considered "the essence of organizational leadership to be the influential increment over and above mechanical compliance with routine directions of the organization." They observed that although all supervisors at the same level of an organization have equal power, they do not use it with equal effectiveness to influence individuals and the organization. In the same way, Hollander and Julian (1969) suggested that "leadership in the broadest sense implies the presence of a particular influence relationship between two or more persons."

According to Hemphill (1949a), an individual's effort to change the behavior of others is "attempted" leadership. When the other members actually change, this outcome is "successful" leadership. If the others are reinforced or rewarded for changing their behavior, this evoked achievement is "effective" leadership. The distinctions between attempted, successful, and effective leadership are important because the dynamics of each are quite different.Effective leadershipissuccessfulinfluence by the leader that results in the attainment of goals by the influenced followers. Defining effective leadership in terms of attaining goals is especially useful because it permits the application of reinforcement theory to understand leader-follower behavior (Bass, 1960). "Emergent" leadership is a more widely used catch-all term for what occurs when leadership is attempted but may or may not be successful or effective.

The concept of influence recognizes the fact that individuals differ in the extent to which their behaviors affect the activities of a group. It implies a reciprocal relationship between the leader and the followers, but one that is not necessarily characterized by domination, control, or induction of compliance by the leader. It merely states that leadership, if successful, has a determining effect on the behaviors of group members and on activities of the group.

There is reciprocal influence between leaders and followers. In a dyad, if A influences B more than B influences A, A is leading B and B is following A (Bass, 1960). With regard to a larger group, Simonton (1994) suggests that the leader is the member whose influence on the group's attitudes, performance, or decision making greatly exceeds that of the average member. The definition of influence also recognizes that by their own example, leaders can influence other members of a group. The Israeli lieutenant leads with the call, "Follow me." Leaders serve as models for the followers. As Gandhi suggested, "Clean examples have a curious method of multiplying themselves" (Paige, 1977, p. 65).

Leadership as Discretionary Influence.Numerous theorists have wanted to limit leadership to influence that is not mandated by the leader's role. As noted before, Katz and Kahn (1966) defined leadership as an influential increment over and above compliance with the routine directives of an organization. J. A. Miller (1973a) saw leaders as exerting influence "at the margin" to compensate for what was missing in a specified process and structure. Jacobs and Jaques (1987) conceived of and viewed leadership in complex organizations as "discretionary action directed toward dealing with unanticipated events that otherwise would influence outcomes of critical tasks at the actor's level." Osborn, Hunt, and Jauch (1980) focused attention on discretionary leadership as influence over and above what is typically invested in a role and typically required of a position. It is influence beyond what is due to formal procedures, rules, and regulations. Thus managers are leaders only when they take the opportunity to exert influence over activities beyond what has been prescribed as a requirement of their role.

Leadership as the Art of Inducing Compliance.Munson (1921) defined leadership as "the ability to handle men so as to achieve the most with the least friction and the greatest cooperation....Leadership is the creative and directive force of morale." According to F. H. Ailport (1924), "leadership...is personal social control." B. V. Moore (1927) reported the results of a conference at which leadership was defined as "the ability to impress the will of the leader on those led and induce obedience, respect, loyalty, and cooperation." Similarly, Bundel (1930) regarded leadership as "the art of inducing others to do what one wants them to do." According to T. R. Phillips (1939), "leadership is the imposition, maintenance, and direction of moral unity to our ends." Warriner (1955) suggested that "leadership as a form of relationship between persons requires that one or several persons act in conformance with the request of another." For Bennis (1959), "leadership can be defined as the process by which an agent induces a subordinate to behave in a desired manner." According to Barker (1994), this definition is traceable to Machiavelli's ideas about leadership as a matter of controlling others.

The "compliance induction" theorists, perhaps even more than the personality theorists, tended to regard leadership as a unidirectional exertion of influence and as an instrument for molding the group to the leader's will. They expressed little recognition of the rights, desires, and necessities of group members or of a group's traditions and norms. This disregard for the followers and the group was rejected by various other theorists, who sought to remove, by definition, any possibility of legitimating an authoritarian concept of leadership. Yet, regardless of the sentiments of some behavioral scientists, one cannot ignore that much leadership is authoritarian, directive, and even coercive. Its effects are seen in public compliance but not necessarily in private acceptance. Nonetheless, compliance with the leader's point of view may be reinforced by identification with the leader and internalization of the perspective by the followers.

Defining Leadership as an Effect

The Leader as an Instrument of Goal Achievement.Numerous theorists have included the idea of goal achievement in their definitions. Several have defined leadership in terms of its instrumental value for accomplishing a group's goals and satisfying needs. According to Cowley (1928), "a leader is a person who has a program and is moving toward an objective with his group in a definite manner." Bellows (1959) defined leadership as "the process of arranging a situation so that various members of a group, including the leader, can achieve common goals with maximum economy and a minimum of time and work." For Knickerbocker (1948), "leadership exists when a leader is perceived by a group as controlling [the] means for the satisfaction of their needs."

Classical organizational theorists defined leadership in terms of achieving a group's objectives. R. C. Davis (1942) referred to leadership as "the principal dynamic force that motivates and coordinates the organization in the accomplishment of its objectives." Similarly, Urwick (1953) stated that the leader is "the personification of common purpose not only to all who work on the undertaking, but to everyone outside it." K. Davis (1962) defined leadership as "the human factor which binds a group together and motivates it toward goals." Cattell (1951) took the extreme position that leadership is whatever or whoever contributes to the group's performance. To measure each member's leadership, Cattell noted, remove him or her from the group, one at a time, and observe what happens to the group's performance. In a similar vein, as noted earlier, both Calder (1977) and Pfeffer (1977) stated that leadership is mainly influence and is even attributed to participants after the fact. The attributions may be based on implicit theories of leadership (Rush, Thomas, & Lord, 1977). Implicit theories of leadership are what we expect leaders to say and do, the traits and behaviors we attribute to the stereotype of a leader. Offerman, Kennedy, and Wirtz (1994) reviewed the content, structure, and generalizability of implicit leadership theories.

For Burns (1978), Bennis (1983), Bass (1985a), and Tichy and Devanna (1986), leadership can transform followers, create visions of the goals that may be attained, and articulate for the followers the ways to attain those goals. Luis Muñoz Marin, former governor of Puerto Rico, said; "A political leader is a person with the ability to imagine non-existing states of affairs combined with the ability to influence other people to bring them about" (Paige, 1977, p. 65).

Envisioning goals involves intuition, fantasy, and dreaming, not just analytical, systematic, conscious thought processes. For Jack Sparks, the chief executive officer who transformed the Whirlpool Corporation, "the vision came after years of mulling over the kind of organization that Whirlpool could be, and after his constant interaction with people in other organizations and academics. The vision was his; and the strategic planning process became the vehicle for implementing that vision, not its source" (Tichy & Devanna, 1985, p. 138). Tucker (1981) observed that most current politicians must focus the attention of their constituents on short-term goals and programs. More statesmanlike opinion leaders are necessary to arouse and direct a democracy toward achieving longer-term goals, such as stabilization of the population, improvement of the environment, and arms control.

Leadership as an Effect of Interaction.Several theorists have viewed leadership not as a cause or control but as an effect of group action. Bogardus (1929) stated that "as a social process, leadership is that social inter-stimulation which causes a number of people to set out toward an old goal with new zest or a new goal with hopeful courage -- with different persons keeping different places." For Pigors (1935), "leadership is a process of mutual stimulation which, by the successful interplay of individual differences, controls human energy in the pursuit of a common cause." For H. H. Anderson (1940), "a true leader in the psychological sense is one who can make the most of individual differences, who can bring out the most differences in the group and therefore reveal to the group a sounder base for defining common purposes." The theorists in this group were important because they called attention to the fact that emergent leadership grows out of the interaction process itself. It can be observed that leadership truly exists only when it is acknowledged and conferred by other members of the group. Although these authors probably did not mean to imply it, their definitions suggested that this quality amounts to little more than passive acceptance of the importance of one's status. An individual often emerges as a leader in consequence of interactions within the group that arouse expectations that he or she, rather than someone else, can serve the group most usefully by helping it to attain its objectives.

Defining Leadership in Terms of the Interaction between the Leader and the Led

Leadership as a Process.This definition of leadership as a process is becoming increasingly popular. It concerns the cognitions, interpersonal behaviors, and attributions of both the leaders and the followers as they affect each others' pursuit of their mutual goals. For Northouse (2001), leadership is a process in which an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal. Leadership is not one-way but rather an interactive two-way process between a leader and a follower.

Homans (1950) and Dansereau, Graen, et al. (1975) among many others, conceived the process as an exchange or transaction between the leader and the led. Such leadership can be enacted by any member of the group, not only the formally elected or appointed leader. Leaders and followers can exchange roles during the process. Yukl (1994) defined leadership in organizations as influence processes that interpret events for followers, the choice of objectives for the group or organization, the organization of work to accomplish the objectives, the motivation of followers to achieve the objectives, the maintenance of cooperative relationships and teamwork, and the enlisting of outsiders to support and cooperate with the group or organization.

Leadership as a Power Relationship.Most political theorists, from Machiavelli through Marx to the academic political scientists of the twenty-first century, conceived of power as the basis of political leadership. For Machiavelli, leaders had to concentrate on what was under their control, not on what was controlled by others. Leadership was an effort to create and maintain power over others (Barker, 1996). The social psychologists J. R. P. French (1956) and Raven and French (1958a, b) defined leadership in terms of differential power relationships among members of a group. Power may be referent, expert, reward-based, coercive, or legitimate (see chapter 11). Power is "a resultant of the maximum force which A can induce on B minus the maximum resisting force which B can mobilize in the opposite direction." Similarly, Janda (1960) defined "leadership as a particular type of power relationship characterized by a group member's perception that another group member has the right to prescribe behavior patterns for the former regarding his or her activity as a member of a particular group."

M. Smith (1948) equated leadership with control of the interaction process. Thus, "the initiator of an interaction, A, stimulates a second participant, B. A asserts control by interfering with B's original course of action." The use of power is regarded as a form of influence relationship. Some leaders tend to transform any opportunity for leadership into an overt power relationship. In fact, the very frequency of this observation, combined with the often undesirable consequences for individuals and societies, induced many theorists to reject the notion of authoritarian leadership. Nevertheless, many of those, like Bennis (1970), who were most committed at one time to openness, participatory approaches, and building trust, faced the world as it is, not as they would like it to be, and came to acknowledge the importance of power relations in understanding leadership. The power relationship may be subtle or obscure: "a power relation...may be known to both leader and led, or unknown to either or both" (Gerth & Mills, 1953). Myths and symbols about the master-slave relationship may unconsciously influence superior-subordinate relationships in modem organizations (Denhardt, 1987).

Leadership as a Differentiated Role.According to role theory, each member of a society occupies a position in the community, as well as in various groups, organizations, and institutions. In each position, the individual is expected to play a more or less well-defined role. Different members occupying different positions play different roles. Birth and class may force the differentiation of roles. According to the leader of Ponape, Heinrich Iriarte, some Micronesians are born to rule while others are born to serve (Paige, 1977, p. 6R).

Leadership may be regarded as an aspect of role differentiation. H. H. Jennings (1944) observed that "leadership appears as a manner of interaction involving behavior by and toward the individual 'lifted' to a leadership role by other individuals." Similarly, C. A. Gibb (1954) regarded group leadership as a position emerging from the interaction process itself. For T. Gordon (1955), leadership was an interaction between a person and a group or, more accurately, between a person and the group members. Each participant in this interaction played a role. These roles differed from each other; the basis for their difference was a matter of influence -- that is, one person, the leader, influenced; and the other persons responded.

Sherif and Sherif (1956) suggested that leadership is a role within the scheme of relations and is defined by reciprocal expectations between the leader and other members. The leadership role, like other roles, is defined by stabilized expectations (norms) that, in most matters and situations of consequence to the group, are more exacting and require greater obligations from the leader than do those for other members of the group. The recognition of leadership as an instrument of goal attainment, as a product of interaction processes, and as a differentiated role adds to the development of a coherent theory that fits most of the facts available to date. Leadership as a differentiated role is required to integrate the various other roles of the group and to maintain unity of action in the group's effort to achieve its goals. Newcomb, Turner, and Converse (1965) observed that members of a group made different contributions to the achievement of goals. Insofar as any member's contributions were indispensable, they could be regarded as "leader-like"; and insofar as any member was recognized by others as a dependable source of such contributions, he or she was leader-like. To be so recognized was equivalent to having a role relationship to other members. Much of the research on the emergence and differentiation of roles pertains equally to leadership. As Sherif and Sherif (1956) indicated, roles are defined in terms of the expectations that group members develop in regard to themselves and other members. Thus the theory and research pertaining to the reinforcement, confirmation, and structuring of expectations applies also to leadership. Of all the available definitions, the concept of leadership as a role is most firmly buttressed by research.

Recognition of the Leader by the Led.Matching of the leadership prototype of traits and behaviors with face-to-face contact is required for a more controlled cognitive process. The matching is based on socially communicated processes (Lord & Maher, 1991). These implicit theories or social representations of leadership vary in different professional groups, as was shown when 257 French professionals were asked to define a person they thought best suited to lead a work group (Francois, 1993). Lord and Maher (1991) found a correlation of .83 between prototypes of leadership in business and finance but a correlation of only .18 between prototypes of leadership in business and sports. Similarly, they found a correlation of .80 between religious prototypes and educational prototypes but no correlation between religious prototypes and prototypes of leadership in the media.

Identification with the Leader.There is an emotional connection between the leader and the led. The leader provides an example to be imitated by followers. The aspirations of the leader become the followers' own aspirations (Shamir, 1991).

Leadership as a Combination of Elements.Naturally, some scholars combine several definitions of leadership to cover a larger set of meanings. Bogardus (1934) defined leadership as "personality in action under group conditions....not only is leadership both a personality and a group phenomenon, it is also a social process involving a number of persons in mental contact in which one person assumes dominance over the others." Previously, Bogardus (1928) described leadership as the creation and setting forth of exceptional behavioral patterns in such a way that other persons respond to them. For Jago (1982), leadership is the exercise of noncoercive influence to coordinate the members of an organized group in accomplishing the group's objectives. Leadership is also a set of properties attributed to those who are perceived to use such influences successfully. Other definitions, such as Barrow (1977), have combined interpersonal influence and collective efforts to achieve goals into the definition of leadership. Dupuy and Dupuy (1959) added to this combination of definitions that leadership also involved obedience, confidence, respect, and loyal cooperation from followers. Still others defined leadership as a collection of roles that emerge from an interactional process. For Tichy and Devanna (1986), the combination of power with personality defined the transformational leader as a skilled, knowledgeable change agent with power, legitimacy, and energy. Such a leader was courageous, considerate, value-driven, and able to deal with ambiguity and complexity.

To summarize, the search for the one and only proper and true definition of leadership seems to be fruitless. Rather, the choice of an appropriate definition should depend on the methodological and substantive aspects of leadership in which one is interested. For instance, if one is to make extensive use of observation, then it would seem important to define leadership in terms of activities, behaviors, or roles played; its centrality to group processes; and its compliance with observed performance -- rather than in terms of personality traits, perceived power relations, or perceived influence. But if an extensive examination of the impact of the authority of leadership is the focus of attention, then it would seem more important to define leadership in terms of perceived influence, control, and power relations. Nonetheless, 84 social scientists from 56 countries meeting in Calgary, Canada, in 1994 for the Globe Project (House, Hanges, Javidan, et al., 2004), despite their linguistic and cultural diversity, could agree on a combination of elements regarded as universal and elements more specific to cultures. They concluded thatleadership was the ability to influence, motivate, and enable others to contribute to the effectiveness and success of the organizations of which they are members.

Leadership, Headship, and Management

The concepts of leadership, headship, and management need to be distinguished from each other although the same person may be a department head and a leader of his or her department. The head or manager who is not a leader will plan but won't envisage an attractive future for the department. The head or manager who is not a leader will organize and structure the department, but won't enable its members to improve their performance. The head or manager will control what happens in the department but won't empower employees to make decisions. In 1950, a major complaint about leadership studies was that they concentrated on student leaders; in 2000, the complaint was that too many leadership studies focused on CEOs, managers, and administrators who were heads but might not be leaders.

Holloman (1986) conceived headship as being imposed on the group but leadership as being accorded by the group. C. A. Gibb (1969a, p. 213) distinguished leadership from headship as follows: (1) Headship is maintained through an organized system, not by group members' spontaneous recognition of an individual's contribution to group progress. (2) The group goal is chosen by the head person. (3) In headship, there is little sense of shared feeling in pursuit of the given goal. (4) In headship, there may be a wide social gap between the group members and the head. (5) The authority of the head derives from some power, external to the group, which he or she has over the members of the group. (6) The leader's authority is spontaneously accorded by fellow group members and particularly by followers.

Managers, executives, and agency officers must be both leaders and heads (Kochan, Schmidt, & de Cotus, 1975). In its conception, leadership can include headship. Defined more broadly, leadership includes the many ways it is exerted by leaders and heads and the various sources of power that make it work (Bass, 1960). With the broader definition,headslead as a consequence of their status -- the power of the position they occupy. Without such status,leaderscan still gain a commitment to goals and can pursue arbitrary coercive paths with their power if their esteem -- their accorded value to the group -- is high. But then their esteem is likely to suffer. Status and esteem are not all-or-none qualities. In any group, members are likely to vary in both. Therefore, leadership may be distributed among them in similar fashion. Although there is usually one head of a group, we cannot ordinarily attribute all leadership that occurs in a group to just its head.

An Evolving, Expanding Conceptualization of Leadership

It is not surprising that concepts and definitions of leadership have been evolving and expanding. In the first several decades of the twentieth century, leadership was considered a matter of impressing the will of the leader and inducing obedience. Currently, in the age of information, leadership is seen more as consulting and shared decision making. House (1995) noted a progressive broadening of the definition of leadership to include "contributing to social order, introducing major change, giving meaning and purpose to work and to organizations, empowering followers, and infusing organizations with values and ideology" (Clark & Clark, 1994, pp. 355-356).

Definitions can be used to serve a variety of purposes. The appropriate definition for a study of leadership depends on the purposes of the study (Bass, 1960). Yukl (1981, p. 2) concluded that "leadership research should be designed to provide information relevant to the entire range of definitions, so that over time it will be possible to compare the utility of different conceptualizations and arrive at some consensus on the matter." Either by explicit statement or by implication, various investigators have developed definitions to serve different purposes: (1) to identify the object to be observed, (2) to identify a form of practice, (3) to satisfy a particular value orientation, (4) to avoid a particular orientation or implication for a practice, and (5) to provide a basis for the development of theory. (The hope is that the definitions will provide critical new insights into the nature of leadership.)

The definitions indicate a progression of thought, although historically many trends have overlapped. The earlier definitions identified leadership as a focus of group process and movement -- personality in action. The next definitions considered it the art of inducing compliance. The more recent definitions conceive of leadership in terms of influence relationships, power differentials, persuasion, influence on goal achievement, role differentiation, reinforcement, initiation of structure, and perceived attributions of behavior that are consistent with what the perceivers believe leadership to be. Leadership may involve all these things. Ciulla (1998, p. 11) noted that "...the problem of definition is not that scholars have radically different meanings of leadership. Leadership does not denote radically different things for different scholars. One can detect a family resemblance between the different definitions. All of them discuss leadership as some kind of process, act, or influence that in some way gets people to do something. A roomful of people, each holding one of these definitions of leadership, would understand each other....The definitions differ...in their implications for the leader-follower relationship...[and] how leaders get people to do things...and how what is to be done is decided."

Applicability.Leadership research faces a dilemma. A definition that identifies something for the production supervisor or an agency director is not necessarily the most useful one for the development of a broad theory. Thus a definition that enables the researcher to identify a group leader -- the person whose behavior exercises a determining effect on the behavior of other group members -- may not provide much insight into the processes and structures involved in the emergence and maintenance of leadership in specific situations and conditions. But if the results of research are to be applied by the production supervisor, the agency director, or the military officer, then the definitions must be as close as possible to their ways of "wording the world" (Van de Vail & Bolas, 1980). A definition should do more than identify leaders and indicate the means by which they acquire their positions. It should also account for the maintenance and continuation of leadership. Thus few groups engage in interaction merely for the purpose of creating leaders and dropping them as soon as they emerge. For the purposes of this handbook, leadership must be defined broadly.

The introduction of the concepts of goal attainment and the solution of problems in certain definitions recognizes the fact that leadership serves a continuing function in a group. But the definitions do not account for the continuation of leadership. The concepts of role, position, reinforcement of behavior, and structuring expectation serve better to account for the persistence of leadership. For the purposes of theory development, it would seem reasonable to include variables in the definition of leadership that account for the differentiation and maintenance of group roles. Finally, room is needed for a conception of leadership as an attribution that is consistent with the implicit theories about it that are held by the individuals and groups who are led.

Manz and Sims (1980, 1987) expanded the concept of leadership to "super-leadership" and "self-leadership." Super-leaders lead others to lead themselves. Teams are organized for production or service, and the former supervisors and technical staff serve as outside consultants to these teams. The teams decide what is to be done and how it is to be done. Leadership is shared among team members.

Finally, room is also needed for a concept of leadership as an attribution that is consistent with the implicit theories about it that are held by the individuals and groups who are led. As Ciulla (1991) suggests, definitions of leadership can be regarded as more like theories. Some of these, such as servant leadership, leadership as shared vision, and transformational leadership, will be introduced in the discussions of theories of leadership in later chapters.

As we will see, some principles of leadership are universal. They have been validated across different tasks, groups, organizations, and countries. Others depend on circumstances. A definition that is relevant for research on a broad theory may not be applicable to specific leadership -- say, that required by a factory manager, prison warden, or priest.

Summary and Conclusions

The study of leaders and leadership is coterminous with the rise of civilization. Leadership is a universal phenomenon. It is not a figment of the imagination, although there are conditions in which the success or failure of groups and organizations will be incorrectly attributed to the leaders, rather than to environmental and organizational forces over which the leaders have no control. In industrial, educational, and military settings, and in social movements, leadership plays a critical, if not the most critical, role, and is therefore an important subject for study and research.

The years during and since World War II have seen increasing numbers of empirical studies of formal organizational leaders, in contrast to studies of informal leaders of small groups. Also, there has been less dependence on students as subjects. The period began with a primary focus on first-line supervisors. The focus then moved up to middle managers and administrators; and the twentieth century ended with substantially increased studies of senior executives. Again, as woman and minorities were increasingly appointed, elected, or self-selected to positions of leadership, studies of their performance as leaders increased, as did studies in health care, protective services, and other services in the past half century.

How to define leadership can generate long-drawn-out discussions, and such discussions have dominated the opening deliberations at many a scholarly meeting on the subject of leadership. Until an "academy of leadership" establishes an accepted standard definition, we must continue to live with both broad and narrow definitions, making sure we understand which kind is being used in any particular analysis.

Leadership is an interaction between two or more members of a group that often involves a structuring or restructuring of the situation and of the perceptions and expectations of the members. Leaders are agents of change, whose acts affect other people more than other people's acts affect them. Leadership occurs when one group member modifies the motivation or competencies of others in the group. Leadership can be conceived as directing the attention of other members to goals and the paths to achieve them. It should be clear that with this broad definition, any member of the group can exhibit some degree of leadership, and the members will vary in this regard.

There are many possible ways to define leadership. However, the definition of leadership should depend on the purposes to be served. Leadership has been conceived as the focus of group processes, as a personality attribute, as the art of inducing compliance, as an exercise of influence, as a particular kind of activity, as a form of persuasion, as a power relation, as an instrument in the attainment of goals, as an effect of interaction, as a differentiated role, and as the initiation of structure. Definitions can be broad, including many of these aspects; or they can be narrow.

A distinction may be made between headship and leadership. One complex definition that has evolved, particularly to help us understand a wide variety of research findings, delineates effective leadership as the interaction among members of a group that initiates and maintains improved expectations and the competence of the group to solve problems or to attain goals. Types of leaders can be differentiated according to some of these definitions, more often on the basis of role, function, or context.

Copyright © 1974, 1981, 1990, 2008 by The Free Press

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Excerpted from The Bass Handbook of Leadership: Theory, Research, and Managerial Applications by Bernard M. Bass, Ruth Bass
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.