ABSTRACT

Gary Yukl in a review of leadership theory and research observed that “most of the research on leadership during the past half century has been conducted in the United States, Canada and Western Europe.” In brief, the leadership task varies across levels in the organization and is related to the nature and purpose of the team. This, in turn, is relevant to an analysis of the most useful approaches to the study of team leadership. The Australian Research Council provided support for a project titled “Effective R&D Project Leaders,” a longitudinal study of 29 new leaders and 29 experienced leaders, together with their teams. The tradition of defining leadership and classifying leader and manager roles according to the tasks and activities performed stems from Henry Mintzberg, R. E. Quinn, and Gary Yukl. This approach is about what leaders actually do. Senior leaders devise plans, make strategy, allocate resources, monitor organizational performance, handle disputes, and so on.