Hello, Lesley -

One of the earlier leadership theorists was Galton (1869), whose ideas about leadership were expressed in Hereditary Genius. This treatise was an early formalization of the basic concept of leadership, which succinctly summarized leadership as the ability of unusually gifted individuals to inspire others.

Carlyle (1893) promoted the idea of the natural born leader, and  Rost (1993) documented approximately 221 definitions and concepts of leadership. Downtown (1973), Burns (1978) were theorists who identified leadership styles such as transformational and transactional, and defined their characteristics, and are often quoted in leadership articles – as is another leadership style,  servant leadership (Greenleaf, 1970). There are many more leadership styles that you can explore; what I have described is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. A search of your school’s library will yield valuable results.

Best,

Ruth

Ruth - this is invaluable. A kick start into the subject is what I need and that is precisely what you have given me. Seems that there is no single, 'big influential theory' and that leadership is something of a moving feast. Wonderful!

try:

Bryman, A. (1996). Leadership in organizations. In S. Clegg, C. Hardy, & W. Ward (Eds.), Handbook of organization studies (pp. 276-292). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

A little out of date now, but I remember it giving a good concise overview

Thank you Jonathan - I shall follow that up. Of course, your own paper is also an excellent starting point.

Dear Lesley,

Will point you to our paper on "The Past and Present Influence of Knowledge on Leadership: The Happening Future" downloadable from this site.  Now, the paper itself carries the focus of knowledge; but to develop this paper we use some excellent resources on knowledge, and they are all called out in the references.  So I am pointing you to the references, which I think will serve you well.  There are so many, many volumes on leadership!  We have a 27,000 book research library here at the Mountain Quest Institute, and several thousand of these are on leadership!

This is a wonderful cite to pick the brains of experts; giving a weighting to the large amount of work available.  

Our own focus is on Collaborative Leadership, which is Chapter 9 in our ICAS book (Organizational Survival in the New World: The Intelligent Complex Adaptive System).  We do have a paper on this downloadable from this site:  "Collaborative Leadership: The Role of the Leader in an ICAS Organization"; and a couple of other papers on leadership available on this site:  "Exploring the Military Contribution to KBD through Leadership and Values" and "Leaders, Decisions and the Neuro-Knowledge System" (a fun treatment that looks at DM from the inside out ... also part of our book Decision-Making in The New Reality: Complexity, Knowledge and Knowing, downloadable from this site.  Don't feel you need to read any of ... but the references are excellent resources.

Thank you Alex, this is all most helpful. I will most certainly follow up on the publications you point to. I have also come across the work of Robert Allio, which seems to be very approachable, reasonable and well debated.

There are several leadership classical theories: Trait theory, essentially, represented by the likert's four leadership style (Exploitive authoritative, Benevolent authoritative, consultative); Behavioural theory represented by the managerial Grid of Blake and Mouton, and finally, Situational theory, essentially SMS model of Hersey and Blanchard.

More recent leadership theories are Transactional leadership, transformational leadership and servant leadership.

Thank you for this - a useful summary of the principle theoretical topics. 

Hi Lesley,

I forgot to mention the fourth leadership style of Likert's model. It's the participative style

In addition to the ones noted above Kets de Vries has done a great deal of work that might be relevant, depending on the theoretical tradition you want to include.  There is also a massive amount in the cross-cultural field for organisational leadership.  I have a bibliography I can post if this is an interest

You may be interested in looking at the Journal of Business Ethics. We publish articles in every issue on leadership. We have published a number of studies on transformational and servant leadership.

It would be, also, interesting to look at the article: "Authentic Leadership: Development and Validation of a Theory-Based Measure" , Fred Walumbwa, Bruce Avolio :  (http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1021&context=managementfacpub).

Hello Eugenie,

I would welcome your bibliography. In the meantime, I have followed up on your suggestion to consult works by Kets de Vries. I found what looks like a promising paper called 'The Mystique of Leadership'. I am finding that Leadership as a topic of interest attracts more than its fair share of contrasting and contested perspectives.

Deborah, good of you to point me to the JBE - I have found what looks like a useful article reviewing the Servant Leadership literature. Makes me think that more published literature reviews are needed in all subjects because of their tremendous usefulness. Perhaps PhD students should be mandated to publish their literature reviews as a matter of course?

I will send the bibliography to your email address - on my way to Bahrain to give a guest lecture on various leadership models.  Are you also interested in cross cultural?

That would be very kind. And yes, cross-cultural leadership is very much of interest. I assume that you have access to my email?

I have been trying to find your email address, but it isn't showing up.  Could you email me at [email protected]?

Hello Lesley, there is some of this reviewed in a recent paper http://files.websitebuilder.prositehosting.co.uk/fasthosts17730/file/2016learmonthandmorrelliscriticalleadershipstudiescritical.pdf