Content uploaded by Richard Bolden
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Richard Bolden
Content may be subject to copyright.
A preview of the PDF is not available
What is Leadership?
Abstract and Figures
Welcome to the first in a series of research reports from Leadership South West, which gives an introduction to some of the key issues in the field of leadership, including what is it, how can it be measured and what impact does it have upon performance? This report does not claim to be the definitive guide to all things leadership, but rather to present some of the most significant concepts and debates to have emerged in recent years. Leadership is currently one of the most talked about issues in business and organisation. It is hard to turn on the television, open a newspaper or attend a conference without coming across numerous references to leaders, leadership and leading. A search of the Amazon.com website in Spring 2003 revealed 11,686 results for the word ‘leadership’ alone and similar searches of the Ebsco business and management publications database reveal an exponential increase in the number of published articles on leadership, from 136 in 1970-71, to 258 in 1980-81, 1,105 in 1990-91, and a staggering 10,062 in 2001-02 (an average of 419 articles per month) (Storey, 2004). The recent focus on leadership is an international phenomenon, as is increased investment in leadership and management development. In the US, for example, Fulmer (1997) estimated an annual corporate expenditure of 10 billion one decade before) and Sorenson (2002) identified 900 college or university leadership programmes (double that of four years earlier), over 100 specialist degrees and a wide range of related activities. Similar trends are occurring in the UK and Europe. Leadership is regarded as the key ‘enabler’ in the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) Business Excellence Model (EFQM, 2000) and has become a central focus for numerous other public, private and voluntary sector development initiatives. Recent years have seen centres of excellence in leadership established for nearly all parts of the public sector, including health, defence, education and police. Leadership, it seems, is increasingly becoming the panacea of the 21st Century. Amidst this flurry of activity, however, a number of concerns arise. There is no widely accepted definition of leadership, no common consensus on how best to develop leadership and leaders, and remarkably little evidence of the impact of leadership or leadership development on performance and productivity. Indeed, most initiatives appear to actively avoid addressing these issues and simply opt for the feel good factor of doing something about it… whatever ‘it’ may be! Whilst action is frequently preferable to inaction, without at least some understanding of the underlying principles and assumptions about leadership and leadership development, it is likely that action may be misguided – at least reducing its possible effectiveness and at worst damaging what was there in the first place. The intention of this report, therefore, is to challenge some of the more popularist and stereotypical notions of leadership and to offer some insights into alternative ways of conceiving and addressing the issue. South West Regional Development Agency
Figures - uploaded by Richard Bolden
Author content
All figure content in this area was uploaded by Richard Bolden
Content may be subject to copyright.
... The issue of leadership has been a matter of concern for hundreds of years and can be traced back to the philosophers of Ancient Greece, but the discussion of leadership and the need for effective leaders has hit the top in today's world, where the achievement of individuals, organizations, and sectors depends substantially on the success of leaders ( Bolden, 2004). Despite its importance, it is difficult to define leadership ( Leithwood and Riehl, 2005). ...
The purpose of this study is to reveal the extent to which different leadership models in education are studied, including the change in the trends of research on each model over time, the most prominent scholars working on each model, and the countries in which the articles are based. The analysis of the related literature was conducted by first employing a bibliometric analysis of the research and review papers indexed in the Web of Science database between 1980 and 2014. Then, a more in-depth analysis of selected papers was done using the content analysis method. The results showed that there has been increasing interest in leadership models in educational research over time. Distributed leadership, instructional leadership, teacher leadership, and transformational leadership are the most studied leadership models in educational research. It was also found that related research increasingly focuses on the effects of leaders on organizational behaviors/conditions and on student achievement. Accordingly, usage of quantitative methodology has significantly increased during the last decade. Possible reasons for these changes, implications, and recommendations for future research are also discussed.
... The requirements for leadership are multi-faceted due to the complex and ever evolving demands that are placed upon individuals who hold leadership positions. It has been noted by others that it can be difficult to arrive at a consensus definition of leadership (Bass and Bass, 2008; Bolden, 2004; Lussier and Achua, 2007). Nahavandi (2009) defines leadership as a goal directed, group phenomenon that is organized hierarchically. ...
This chapter seeks to highlight the prospects of procedural and substantive democracy in Africa, emphasizing the limitation and shortcomings of African countries in their pursuit of democracy, citing a transformational-transactional leadership mix (‘transfor-sactional’) in countering the shortcomings. It achieves this purpose by reviewing literature on democracy, transformational and transactional leadership styles to develop a leadership mixture (transfor-sactional) and further goes on to draw a conceptual framework to show the relationship between transfor-sactional leadership and democracy. This chapter then discusses the concepts in the framework by explaining the relationship between them. The review of literature shows that procedural democracy has good prospects across the continent; however, African countries are lagging behind with reference to substantive democracy. Additionally, this chapter reveals that, the persistent economic hardship, poverty and underdevelopment across the African continent, the role of leaders in mitigating these pertinent human problems cannot be overemphasized. As such, the complementary role of transformational leadership to transactional leadership is shown and thus, leaders who are able to effectively combine attributes of the two leadership styles can achieve effective leadership which is crucial to African countries in achieving growth and development.
p>In a today’s ageing world, where companies are facing an increasing share of older employees, it has become essential to understand the preferences and potential of this emerging group of workers. The focus of this research is to identify the age related preferences of leadership using Theory X and Theory Y developed by Douglas McGregor. The results suggest that the majority of employees prefer Theory Y management style over the Theory X style. Regardless of the age of employees, evidence shows that the results were in favour of Y Theory management style. In addition results capture the reflection of the preferred leadership style in relations to turnover, trust and job satisfaction of employees.</p
To asses six different leadership styles we employed a questionnaire during the development center in a manufacturing firm. Analysing the questionnaire indicates its reliability, scalability, economy, usefulness and fairness. An explorative factor analysis supports the factorial validity. A content analysis provides evidence that the transformational leadership style is perceived as the most positive and the authoritarian leadership style as the most negative one. Furthermore, we found transformational leadership style positively correlated with an aggregated measure for the competence extraversion.
The purpose of this empirical study was to explore the perceptions of Argentinean managers and non-managerial employees about managerial and leadership effectiveness, and the extent to which the findings are generalized to other countries. The central research question addressed was as follows: How do people employed in Argentinean companies behaviourally distinguish effective managers from ineffective managers, and to what extent are the findings culture-specific or context-general? A total of 42 employees from private and public sector organizations in Cordoba, Argentina, were interviewed using critical incident technique. The interviews generated 302 critical incidents of which 155 were examples of positive (effective) managerial behaviour, and 147 of negative (ineffective) managerial behaviour. The findings suggest that Argentineans perceive as effective those managers who are supportive, considerate, motivating, caring, good decision makers, approachable, participative, fair-minded, communicative, actively involved, and who act as role models. This challenges the widely held belief that Argentineans prefer authoritarian managers over democratic ones.
Achieving high quality health care against a background of continual change, increasing demand, and shrinking financial resource is a major challenge. However, there is significant international evidence that when clinicians use their voices and values to engage with system delivery, operational efficiency and care outcomes are improved. In the UK National Health Service, the traditional divide between doctors and managers is being bridged, as clinical leadership is now foregrounded as an important organizational priority. There are 60,000 doctors in postgraduate training (junior doctors) in the UK who provide the majority of front-line patient care and form an “operating core” of most health care organizations. This group of doctors is therefore seen as an important resource in initiating, championing, and delivering improvement in the quality of patient care. This paper provides a brief overview of leadership theories and constructs that have been used to develop a raft of interventions to develop leadership capability among junior doctors. We explore some of the approaches used, including competency frameworks, talent management, shared learning, clinical fellowships, and quality improvement. A new paradigm is identified as necessary to make a difference at a local level, which moves learning and leadership away from developing “leaders”, to a more inclusive model of developing relationships between individuals within organizations. This shifts the emphasis from the development of a “heroic” individual leader to a more distributed model, where organizations are “leader-ful” and not just “well led” and leadership is centered on a shared vision owned by whole teams working on the frontline.
The objective of this article is to examine the conceptual, theoretical and empirical literature, drawing from an extended literature review on the subject of leadership in communities of practice, in order to identify the gap, the key arguments, my stand point and areas for further investigations. The paper highlights the main elements which affect the practice of leadership in communities of practice, and proposes a potential path for future exploration, including a new model of leadership: "distributed leadership". It is summarised that overlooked descriptive and conceptual perceptions of the topic should be supplemented by more field observation studies – a shift from pure conceptual to more evidence-based quantitative/qualitative research -to support the theoretical literature.
It is no longer news that over the past five years, Sears, Roebuck and Company has radically changed the way it does business and dramatically improved its financial results. But the Sears transformation was more than a change in marketing strategy. It was also a change in the logic and culture of the business. Led by CEO Arthur Martinet, a group of more than 100 top-level Sears executives spent three years rebuilding the company around its customers. In rethinking what Sears was and what it wanted to become, these managers developed a business model of the company - the employee-customer-profit model - and an accompanying measurement system that tracks success from management behavior through employee attitudes to customer satisfaction and financial performance. The basic elements of the model are not difficult to grasp. In retailing, there is a chain of cause and effect running from employees' behavior to customers' behavior to profits, and it is not hard to see that behavior depends primarily on attitude. Still, implementing the model is not easy. One problem is measuring such soft data as customer and employee "satisfaction." Not surprisingly, many companies do not have a realistic grasp of what their customers and employees actually think and do. By means of an ongoing process of data collection, analysis, modeling, and experimentation, Sears does. Moreover, the work of creating the model and the measures has made such demands on managers that it has changed the way they think and behave. And now that cultural change is spreading throughout the company.
Managers and leaders are two very different types of people. Managers' goals arise out of necessities rather than desires; they excel at defusing conflicts between individuals or departments, placating all sides while ensuring that an organization's day-to-day business gets done. Leaders, on the other hand, adopt personal, active attitudes toward goals. They look for the opportunities and rewards that lie around the corner, inspiring subordinates and firing up the creative process with their own energy. Their relationships with employees and coworkers are intense, and their working environment is often chaotic. In this article, first published in 1977, the author argues that businesses need both managers and leaders to survive and succeed. But in the larger U.S. organizations of that time, a "managerial mystique" seemed to perpetuate the development of managerial personalities-people who rely on, and strive to maintain, orderly work patterns. The managerial power ethic favors collective leadership and seeks to avoid risk. That same managerial mystique can stifle leaders' development - How can an entrepreneurial spirit develop when it is submerged in a conservative environment and denied personal attention? Mentor relationships are crucial to the development of leadership personalities, but in large, bureaucratic organizations, such relationships are not encouraged. Businesses must find ways to train good managers and develop leaders at the same time. Without a solid organizational framework, even leaders with the most brilliant ideas may spin their wheels, frustrating coworkers and accomplishing little. But without the entrepreneurial culture that develops when a leader is at the helm of an organization, a business will stagnate and rapidly lose competitive power.