The social scientific study of leadership: quo vadis?

Journal of Management, May-June, 1997 by Robert J. House, Ram N. Aditya

Introduction

Although the phenomenon of leadership has been around since antiquity (Bass, 1990), the systematic social scientific study of leadership did not begin until the early 1930s. As we shall show, the resulting contributions have been cumulative, and a great deal is known about leadership phenomena. However, there remain many unanswered questions. In this article, we attempt to specify some of the more important of these questions and some of the deficiencies in the present store of knowledge concerning leadership. For example, to this day, the dominant proportion of the more than 3,000 studies listed by Bass (1990) is primarily concerned with the relationship between leaders and their immediate followers, and largely ignores the kind of organization and culture in which leaders function, the relationships between leaders and superiors, external constituencies, peers, and the kind of product or service provided by the leader's organization.

The leadership literature is based on a limiting set of assumptions, mostly reflecting Western industrialized culture. Almost all of the prevailing theories of leadership, and about 98% of the empirical evidence at hand, are rather distinctly American in character: individualistic rather than collectivistic, stressing follower responsibilities rather than rights, assuming hedonism rather than commitment to duty or altruistic motivation, assuming centrality of work and democratic value orientation, and emphasizing assumptions of rationality rather than asceticism, religion, or superstition. Further, a number of important topics are largely ignored or only very recently addressed in the leadership literature.

In this article, we present brief overviews of the research paradigms that have been most prominent in the leadership literature historically, and the more prominent extant theories. We discuss the major foci of these paradigms and theories, their assumptions, their limitations, and some of the problems remaining to be resolved. We then discuss a number of issues and topics relevant to the exercise of leadership which we believe warrant serious attention, but have been largely unexplored or ignored. The outcome of this article is a specification of research issues intended to provide some new directions for the development of future leadership theory and empirical research.

The Leadership Trait Paradigm

Systematic research concerned with leadership first focused on the search for individual characteristics that universally differentiate leaders from nonleaders. This research was largely atheoretical. A large number of personal characteristics were investigated such as gender, height, physical energy and appearance as well as psychological traits and motives such as authoritarianism, intelligence, need for achievement, and need for power. The dominant part of this literature was published between 1930 and 1950.

In influential reviews of the trait literature, Gibb (1947), Jenkins (1947), and Stogdill (1948) identified several studies in which traits were associated with measures of leader effectiveness, with correlations as high as .50. Unfortunately, such findings were seldom replicated in multiple studies, and it appeared to scholars of the time that there were few, if any, universal traits associated with effective leadership. Consequently, there developed among the community of leadership scholars a near consensus that the search for universal traits was futile. It should be noted, however, that the most influential author to address this issue (Stogdill, 1948) did not call for an abandonment of the study of traits, but rather for an interactional approach in which traits would be considered as interacting with situational demands facing leaders. Substantial progress in the development of personality theory and in the operationalization of traits has been made since the early 1980s. As we shall show, trait theory has re-emerged and is alive and well. Not only have several defensible theoretical trait-related propositions been introduced in the last decade and a half, there is a modest amount of empirical evidence in support of these propositions.

Problems with the Early Trait Paradigm

In hindsight, it is easy to criticize earlier research. However, one needs to appreciate the limitations associated with early investigation of the phenomena. One problem with early trait research was that there was little empirically substantiated personality theory to guide the search for leadership traits. Consequently, there were few replicative investigations of the same traits. Also, test-measurement theory was not well developed during the time when trait studies dominated leadership research. As a result, even when common traits were studied in two or more investigations, they were usually operationalized differently. Very little information about the psychometric properties of the trait measures were reported; thus, it is possible that many of the measures had limited validity. As a consequence of the lack of theory and valid measurement instruments, both the traits studied and the way they were operationalized varied widely among investigators. Further, neither specific situational demands of leaders nor the degree to which the situation permitted the behavioral expression of personality inclinations were taken into account. Finally, trait studies were almost entirely based on samples of adolescents, supervisors and lower-level managers, rather than individuals in significant positions of leadership, such as high-level managers and chief executives with overall responsibility for organizational performance.