ABSTRACT
Stogdill (1950, p.3) defined leadership as ‘the process of influencing the activities of an organized group in its efforts toward goal setting and goal achievement’. This identifies leadership as a social process in which goals are achieved through interpersonal influence. If the goals are not achieved, leadership has been ineffective. While most definitions of leadership share these contextual, processual, and evaluative components, there are a number of different perspectives on the nature of the phenomenon. Assuming that leaders are special individuals, researchers initially sought to identify the traits and other characteristics that leaders display. However, such attempts were unsuccessful, and attention switched to identifying contrasting leadership styles. While influential, that work overlooked the significance of context. A leader’s style may be effective in one setting but not in another, and attention shifted to perspectives that tried to find a ‘fit’ between the leaders and the context in which they functioned. In the 1990s, it seemed that the role of the heroic, visionary, charismatic senior (typically male) leader was critical, triggering a fashion for what was variously described as ‘transformational leaders’, ‘super-leaders’, and a ‘new leadership’. However, following a series of highly visible corporate disasters in the opening years of the twenty-first century, a number of commentators began to argue that those visionary, charismatic leaders were dangerous, as they can destabilize an organization and reduce rather than enhance performance. In other words, leadership theory has passed through a series of phases that have been described as trait spotting, style counselling, context fitting, the new leadership, and dangerous leaders (Buchanan and Huczynski, 2004).
