ABSTRACT
While there exist many different conceptualizations of leadership, and almost as many different measures of effectiveness, little research has focused on the underlying processes a person must engage in to enact the social role of leadership. Current leadership theories represent three main emphases. The first emphasis asks, What do leaders do? That is, how do they behave in order to influence followers’ performance? These include transformational (Bass, 1985; Avolio & Bass, 1988) and charismatic theories (Conger & Kanungo, 1988; House, 1977) of leadership. This category may also include how leader personality characteristics might influence the tendency to behave in a particular way. The second category of leadership theories represents a more reciprocal or dyadic view of leadership and covers leadership from the leader and follower perspectives. For example, Leader Member Exchange (LMX; Dansereau, Graen, & Haga, 1975; Graen, 1976; Graen & Scandura, 1987) suggests that it is the reciprocal nature of the relationship that develops over time between a leader and follower that affects performance. A final category of theories asks the question, How does the situation determine the appropriateness of leader behavior or style? These theories include Fiedler’s Contingency Model (Fiedler, 1967); and Hersey and Blanchard’s (1982) Situational Leadership Theory.
