ABSTRACT
Leadership has been a central concern for industrial and organizational psychology since its inception. This is because both common sense theories (Calder, 1977; Pfeffer, 1977) and careful empirical analyses (e.g., Day & Lord, 1988; Oeth, 1996; Thomas, 1988) show that leadership can have a substantial impact on organizational performance. Consequently, the assessment of qualities or behaviors of leaders has been a continuing interest of researchers, in part, because it is viewed as a means to understand a leader’s impact on organizational performance. Leadership assessment is also a continuing process performed by organizational members as they seek to understand their social and political context and who is likely to exert influence or affect organizational performance. This informal, intuitive assessment of leadership has immediate practical consequences for organizational members. It is the basis of social power (Hollander & Offerman, 1990), and it influences the amount of discretion accorded a leader (Hambrick & Finklestein, 1987).
