Content area
Full Text
Introduction
Whether the great recession' has ended, is ending, or is a harbinger of a new normal for contemporary business to manage, has left an imprint on U.S. organizational life. Recent research has linked an inability to effectively handle such contemporary complexities with ineffective leadership (Hitt, et al., 2010), and strategy guru Michael Porter has specified that a better understanding of the CEO job is vital to a better functioning economy (Porter, 2010). Concurrently, practitioner surveys report widespread concern about unemployment in general (Jacobe, 2011; Saad, 2011; Pew, 2011) and the security of the individual's own job in particular (Jacobs, 2010; Saad, 2010). Such concerns can affect worker engagement. Studies also report that workers who are most engaged with their companies - a condition also influenced by their leaders - are more productive and profitable (Gallup, n.d.).
Business school textbooks, including those by Daft (2011), Robbins and Hunsaker (2009), and Schermerhorn et al. (2010, 2008), summarize the trajectory of descriptive findings diat explore leadership traits, behaviors, and application in contingent circumstances. The textbooks continue to update that leadership content to include "new" views of leadership that explore leaders as change catalysts through such factors as charisma, inspiration, instrumentality, purpose, other-direction, and emotional intelligence". Concurrently, many instructors say their management students react with disbelief when first presented with leadership scenarios other than the top-down, command-and-control prototype.
Leadership is not an overlooked field of inquiry. To the contrary, a recent search found 216,026 peer-reviewed journal articles at Academic Search Premier and 315,627 at Proquest with the word "leadership" in their text, 12,194 at Academic Search Premier and 30,406 at Proquest with leadership as their subject, and 8,053 at Academic Search Premier and 14,717 at Proquest with leadership in their title. A search of Harvard Business Review alone found 3,260 articles with leadership in their text, 682 with leadership as their subject, and 122 with leadership in their title.
So the leadership literature is abundant. But Glynn and DeJordy's 2010 meta-analysis concludes that "leadership is one of the most enduring and elusive constructs in the organizational behavior literature. Interest in leadership is keen, but there is little consensus as to what leadership is, how it functions." They pronounce leadership research to be "in a state of confusion." Their...