magz4
Leadership theory and research in the new millennium:
Current theoretical trends and changing perspectives
Jessica E. Dinh a, Robert G. Lord b, William L. Gardner c, Jeremy D. Meuser d,
Robert C. Liden d, Jinyu Hu c
aUniversity of Akron, United StatesbDurham University, United KingdomcTexas Tech University, United StatesdUniversity of Illinois at Chicago, United States
article info abstract
Article history:
Received 1 August 2013
Received in revised form 18 October 2013
Accepted 31 October 2013
Available online 28 November 2013
Editor: Francis J. Yammarino Scholarly research on the topic of leadership has witnessed a dramatic increase over the
last decade, resulting in the development of diverse leadership theories. To take stock of
established and developing theories since the beginning of the new millennium, we conducted
an extensive qualitative review of leadership theory across 10 top-tier academic publishing
outlets that includedThe Leadership Quarterly ,Administrative Science Quarterly ,American
Psychologist ,Journal of Management ,Academy of Management Journal ,Academy of Management
Review ,Journal of Applied Psychology ,Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes ,
Organizational Science , andPersonnel Psychology . We then combined two existing frameworks
(Gardner, Lowe, Moss, Mahoney, & Cogliser, 2010; Lord & Dinh, 2012) to provide a process-
oriented framework that emphasizes both forms of emergence and levels of analysis as a
means to integrate diverse leadership theories. We then describe the implications of the
findings for future leadership research and theory. Published by Elsevier Inc.
Keywords:
Leadership theory
Levels of analysis
Global compositional and compilational forms
of emergence
Content analysis
1. Introduction
Since its inception in 1988 (first issue in 1990), the mission of The Leadership Quarterly(LQ) has been to sustain and catalyze
the development of innovative, multi-disciplinary research that advances the leadership field. Nearly 25 years later, this goal,
along with many of the journal's other primary objectives, has been reached ( Gardner, Lowe, Moss, Mahoney, & Cogliser, 2010).
As Gardner and colleagues noted in their 20-year review of LQ, leadership research has grown exponentially in the last decade,
attracting the interest of talented scholars and practitioners from around the globe who have revolutionized the way we
understand leadership phenomena. As their review demonstrates, the number of new leadership theories has grown and the field
has advanced from theory that focuses on understanding general leadership processes as they occur over indeterminate amounts
of time to a phenomenon that evolves over different time spans depending on the hierarchical level at which leaders are
investigated ( Kaiser, Hogan, & Craig, 2008 ). Theories have also developed to understand how micro processes, such as
perceptions, emotions, and cognitions (e.g., Bono & Ilies, 2006; Dinh & Lord, 2012; Lee, Aaker, & Gardner, 2000; Trichas & Schyns,
2012 ), and macro processes, such as the social –relational context ( Chang & Johnson, 2010; DeRue & Ashford, 2010; Erdogan,
Kraimer, & Liden, 2007; Gardner & Avolio, 1998; Liden, Sparrowe, & Wayne, 1997 ), dynamically affect follower and leader
outcomes. Over the last two decades, leadership scholars have also developed theories to explain a leader's role within complex
The Leadership Quarterly 25 (2014) 36 –62
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (J.E. Dinh),[email protected] (R.G. Lord),[email protected] (W.L. Gardner),[email protected]
(J.D. Meuser), [email protected] (R.C. Liden),[email protected] (J. Hu).
1048-9843/$–see front matter. Published by Elsevier Inc.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2013.11.005
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
The Leadership Quarterly
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/leaqua systems for instigating organizational change and managing dynamic social networks (Balkundi & Kilduff, 2006; Balkundi, Kilduff,
& Harrison, 2011; Hannah, Lord, & Pearce, 2011; Marion & Uhl-Bien, 2002; Uhl-Bien & Marion, 2009 ).
Although the growing diversity of leadership theory has helped create an academic agenda for leadership research in the new
millennium, we maintain that there are several challenges that accompany the rapid proliferation of new theoretical perspectives.
In this article, we provide a critical review of leadership theory that has emerged since 2000, and we describe the challenges that
scholars and practitioners must address to further advance the leadership field. Our search included theories from nine other
top-tier journals in addition to LQ, allowing us to offer a broader and more comprehensive review of the topics that have captured
the attention of leadership scholars. Rather than provide a detailed summary of the theories that have been identified, this article
focuses on addressing one fundamental process-centered issue that is germane to all theories: how has leadership theory and
research contributed to our understanding of the processes by which antecedent elements affect outcomes pertaining to leaders,
followers, or organizational phenomena ?
We believe that attention to processes is important for the following reasons. First, understanding leadership processes can
help illustrate the limitations of current theory, and it can assist in the development of a more comprehensive agenda for
leadership research in the new millennium with direct relevance to organizational practice ( Langley, Smallman, Tsoukas, & Van
de Ven, 2013 ). This is important because leadership is a complex phenomenon that operates across multiple levels of analysis
( Cho & Dansereau, 2010; Wang & Howell, 2010 ), involves multiple mediating and moderating factors (e.g., DeRue, Nahrgang,
Wellman, & Humphrey, 2011 ), and takes place over substantial periods of time ( Day & Sin, 2011; Lord & Brown, 2004). However,
leadership scholars have more often focused on the isolated effects of leaders or followers at one or another level of analysis and
within short time intervals. Such a static approach is reflected in scholarly work on leadership, which has predominantly relied on
cross-sectional retrospective survey methodologies ( Gardner et al., 2010; Hunter, Bedell-Avers, & Mumford, 2007; Lowe &
Gardner, 2000 ). This approach ignores the cumulated effects of transitory processes, such as emotions, thoughts, reactions, and
embodied cognitions, which can fundamentally alter leader development and behavioral outcomes ( Day & Sin, 2011; Lord,
Hannah, & Jennings, 2011 ).
Second, leadership dynamics involve multiple levels and can produce both top-down and bottom-up emergent outcomes at
higher and lower levels of analysis ( Yammarino & Dansereau, 2011; Yammarino, Dionne, Chun, & Dansereau, 2005 ). For example,
by shaping organizational climates and cultures, leaders can create ethical norms that guide the moral (or immoral) behavior of
groups or collectives in a top-down direction ( Mayer, Kuenzi, Greenbaum, Bardes, & Salvador, 2009; Schaubroeck, Hannah,
Avolio, Kozlowski, Lord, et al., 2012 ). Simultaneously, leaders may also appeal directly to individuals by aligning followers' values
and identities to those of the organization ( Brown & Treviño, 2009), enforcing codes of conduct ( Tyler & Blader, 2005), or by
modeling ethical (or unethical) behavior ( Brown & Treviño, 2006). Although these processes reflect top-down leadership
influences, bottom-up processes, such as the influence of followers and intrapersonal dynamics, are also important in
understanding how leaders influence organizations and how leadership outcomes are achieved ( Dinh & Lord, 2012; Howell &
Shamir, 2005; Marion & Uhl-Bien, 2002; Shamir, 2007 ). For example, research on meta-cognitive processes and self-complexity
describes how dynamic intra-personal constructs can interact over time to increase intrapersonal complexity, which allows
individuals to have greater behavioral adaptability in response to varying situations ( Hannah, Woolfolk, & Lord, 2009; Lord et al.,
2011 ). At higher levels of analysis, individual complexity allows a variety of social networks to develop into valuable
organizational resources ( Balkundi & Kilduff, 2006; Balkundi et al., 2011 ), and it can produce group complexity when team
members interact, thereby creating more complex knowledge structures that guide group behavior ( Hannah et al., 2011). At this
level, group processes can also aggregate to create intangible organizational resources like social capital ( Polyhart & Moliterno,
2011 ). As these examples show, leadership involves the contribution of multiple actors and bidirectional influence (top-down
and bottom-up) that unfolds along different time scales (from minutes to years). Therefore, leadership theory that is narrowly
confined to one level of analysis presents an overly restricted static understanding of leadership phenomena. Third, prior research indicates that we know much less about how leaders make organizations effective than how leaders are
perceived ( Kaiser et al., 2008 ). We believe this dearth of knowledge on how leaders create effective organizations stems from a
focus on leaders and their qualities rather than on how they change processes in other individuals, groups, or organizations. To
address these issues in leadership research and theory, this article expands upon an existing classification scheme that was
developed by Gardner et al. (2010) and the framework developed by Lord and Dinh (2012, described inSection 3), which
maintains that a key aspect of leadership is to structure the way that the inputs of others are combined to produce organizational
outputs. The advantage of these classification schemes is that they offer unique insight for organizing theory based on underlying
leadership processes ( Lord & Dinh, 2012) and have been successful in organizing leadership research ( Gardner et al., 2010; Lowe
& Gardner, 2000 ). By integrating these two classification schemes, we provide several additional contributions to the leadership
literature.
Though abstract, addressing the nature of emergence provides a set of conceptual tools that can be used at any level of analysis,
and it
offers the potential for discovering leadership principles that apply at multiple levels. For example, focusing on each theory's
underlying process enables us to organize the extant literature by identifying commonalities among theories. These commonalities
may then suggest deeper principles that unite disparate leadership theories. In addition, a framework that can organize theory
by levels of analysis is critical because leadership occurs within a social context created by individuals, groups, and larger
organizational systems, and the nature of leadership processes may vary with each level. Hence, attention to both levels and
process can promote a richer understanding of how simultaneously occurring phenomenon at different levels of analysis interact
to influence leadership. Finally, such issues have practical as well as scholarly implications. Currently, practitioners wanting to use
scientific research to improve organizational leadership processes must select from a bewildering array of theories that focus on
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J.E. Dinh et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 25 (2014) 36 –62 competing levels of analysis. Organizing these theories in terms of processes that produce individual, dyadic, group, and
organizational outcomes may help practitioners focus on theories that fit with their organization's core technologies and social
systems, and address pressing organizational concerns.To accomplish our objectives, we partitioned this article into three major sections. In Section 2, we provide an overview of the
trends in leadership theory that have appeared since the beginning of the new millennium, a description of our data collection
method, and conclusions regarding the theories that have remained at the forefront of research and theories that have (re)surfaced
since 2000. In Section 3, we provide a more thorough description of our organizing framework, which classifies theories based on
each theory's level of analysis and underlying process, which we use to organize the leadership literature. In Section 4, we offer our
conclusions regarding the overall literature and make suggestions for the development of more integrative leadership theory and
research, as well as address the practical and theoretical implications of this review to guide future research.
2. Content analysis methods
2.1. Sample
We began by searching the 10 journals identified in Table 1known for publishing leadership research that also have high
impact factors and regularly appear at the top of journal ranking lists in the field of organizational behavior. We performed a
manual search for leadership, restricting our search to articles published between 2000 and September 2012. This search yielded
989 total hits. We downloaded these articles and applied the following two selection criteria. First, the article had to be original
research, whether qualitative, quantitative, theoretical, or methodological, thus eliminating such items as letters, editorials, and
book reviews. Second, the abstract was reviewed to determine whether leadership was the primary, rather than peripheral focus
of the article. Those that failed either or both of these two selection criteria (237 articles) were rejected from inclusion, leaving
752 articles. (A full list of the articles included is available upon request).
Table 1 reports the number of articles found in each journal. LQ, as a specialty journal dedicated to the publication of
leadership research, dominated our dataset (442 articles), which is to be expected. Journal of Applied Psychologyranked second
(125 articles) in terms of the quantity of published leadership research, and amounted to notably more articles than the
remainder of journals we examined. Organizational Science(7 articles) andAcademy of Management Review (8 articles) published
the fewest number of leadership articles of the journals we examined.
2.2. Coding procedure and categories
We coded these articles according to a strict protocol that had been agreed upon by the authors. We also used a Microsoft
Access 2010 database that we designed to accommodate the specific fields that we coded. This eliminated common coding errors,
such as typos and inconsistent nomenclature and provided for consistency between coders. For each article, our database
contains: journal name, year of publication, title, keywords (if available), authors, abstract, type of article, data collection timing
and research method, analytical method, leadership theory categorization, level of analysis, form of emergence, and emergence/
theory match/mismatch. Our coding for type of studyinvolved four categories: qualitative, quantitative, theoretical, or
methodological. Our data collection timing categories included cross-sectional, cross-sectional with time lag intended to reduce
common method variance (e.g., independent variables collected at time 1 and dependent variables collected at time 2), and
longitudinal (where the same variables are collected at multiple time points). Our categorization of research methodrefines and
expands the list of research strategies listed in Gardner et al. (2010). Specifically, we coded for qualitative (case study), content
analysis (the counting of words or phrases in qualitative, interview, or verbatim response data to produce a quantitative dataset
for analysis), diary or experiential sampling (which requires participants to answer questions at periodic or at random times
determined by the researcher), computer simulation (in which real world conditions are modeled and artificial data produced),
lab experiment (which involves the execution of tasks devoid of contextual realities), experimental simulation (similar to a lab
experiment, but with an attempt to model or simulate a context), field experiment (conducting experimental tasks or applied
Table 1
Number of leadership research articles published in 10 top-tier journals (2000 –2012).
Journal Numbers of articles
Academy of Management Journal 45
Academy of Management Review 8
Administrative Science Quarterly 30
American Psychologist 13
Journal of Applied Psychology 125
Journal of Management 30
Organizational Behavior & Human Decision Processes 30
Organizational Science 7
Personnel Psychology 22
The Leadership Quarterly 442
Total number of articles 752
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J.E. Dinh et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 25 (2014) 36 –62 research), judgment task (which involves participants rating or judging the behavior of others), field survey-primary (data
collected by the researcher directly from participants), field survey-secondary (data used in the study are from archival data),
sample survey (which attempts to obtain a sample representative of the population of interest), meta-analytic quantitative
review, non-meta-analytic qualitative review, and methodology study (in which new methods are described and tested, or
existing methods refined). Ouranalytical methodcoding scheme followed Scandura and Williams (2000) and was also used by
Gardner and colleagues (2010) . Specifically, we coded for: 1) linear regression; 2) analysis of variance (ANOVA/MANOVA);
3) linear techniques for categorical dependent variables; 4) factor analysis (Exploratory Factor Analysis [EFA]/Confirmatory Factor
Analysis [CFA]); 5) Structural Equation Modeling (SEM)/path analysis; 6) multiple-levels-of analysis techniques (e.g., hierarchical
linear modeling [HLM]); 7) meta-analytic techniques (e.g., Hunter & Schmidt, 2004); 8) time series/event history techniques;
9) non-parametric techniques; and 10) computer simulation techniques. The leadership theory categorization scheme we employed to classify leadership theories was based on several factors. First, we
applied the criteria for theory specified by Bacharach (1989)to guide our identification of theories. Second, we adopted as a
starting point the classification scheme that Lowe and Gardner (2000)initially developed andGardner et al. (2010)refined in
their reviews of articles published in LQ's first and second decades, respectively. Note that Gardner et al. (2010)provide a detailed
description of the development of this theory classification scheme (see pages 934– 935 and theAppendix A). Third, we
augmented the thematic leadership categories throughout the early stages of coding, as we encountered leadership approaches
that did not fit the existing category scheme. Our final coding scheme can be found in the Appendix A.Level of analysis andform of
emergence were coded using the scheme found in Lord and Dinh (2012)and described inSection 3. In brief, form of emergence
describes whether the leadership theory implies that constituent sub-units combine to create higher-order unit-level properties
in a way that preserves or alters their fundamental nature. Finally, emergence/theory match /mismatch was a Boolean field
indicating if the methods used in the article corresponded to the level of analysis and the form of aggregation implied by the
theory. In this test of theory, mismatches occurred most often when the underlying processes implied by theory were not
examined at the appropriate level of analysis (e.g., a group-level phenomenon investigated by using individual scores, an
event-level phenomenon investigated by aggregated individual scores), or when dynamic and/or longitudinal processes were
examined using retrospective survey methods or when data sampling occurred at one point in time. It should be emphasized that
theories found within empirical research articles were tested by examining whether the method for capturing the process leading
to a particular leadership phenomenon was appropriate based on the underlying processes implied by the theory used, rather
than whether the article included specific leadership outcomes. Additionally, it should be noted that across all coded fields,
articles often fit more than one category within each coded field. For example, an article may involve meta-analytic and SEM
techniques or involve two leadership theories. This was also the case with forms of emergence where articles described
simultaneously occurring processes.
In order to code this extensive literature, coding was completed by two independent teams. All articles were coded for form of
emergence and emergence/theory match/mismatch by the first or second author, and a random subsample of 14 was coded by
both authors yielding an agreement of 86% percent. The remaining categories were coded by the remainder of the research team
and a random sample of 10% of the coded articles was drawn for blind re-coding by a different member of the research team. We
then computed inter-rater reliability agreement for our coded variables at 82.9%. As this exceeded the commonly accepted
reliability threshold, we discussed and resolved differences in coding, and then proceeded with analysis.
2.3. The status of the established leadership theories
Table 2 contains the leadership theories that emerged from our coding process. We grouped them categorically under
established and emergent theories and thematically within those broader categories. Neo-charismatic theories, which emerged
historically from charismatic leadership theory, received the most attention from scholars in the new millennium (total 294
instances), with transformational leadership and charismatic leadership, respectively, representing the dominant forms of
interest. Leadership and information processing received the second largest quantity of interest (total 194 instances), with leader
and follower cognitions and implicit leadership, highlighted by House and Aditya (1997)as an emerging theory at the time,
dominating that category. Together, this category takes into account the cognitive structures of leaders, followers, and
decision-making. This thematic category also answers questions like “what do I think leadership means?”and “what do I think is
important? ”by suggesting that these mental structures are built up in part from experience. These research questions have been
investigated since the late 1970s (e.g., Lord, Binning, Rush, & Thomas, 1978), and our findings suggest that this thematic category
continues to capture the interest of researchers. Social exchange/relational theories were also quite common (156 instances). Leader –member exchange (LMX), the archetypal
social
exchange leader –follow dyadic approach that investigates the quality of the relationship experienced within the dyad,
appeared in 115 instances. An important LMX advancement during the present millennium can be found in the meta-analysis of
Dulebohn, Bommer, Liden, Brouer, and Ferris (2012) , which offers an antecedents and outcomes model of LMX, responding to the
call of House and Aditya (1997) for just such a model. Dispositional/trait theories comprised another common thematic category
(149 instances). Trait based leadership approaches are still of interest (117 instances) to researchers. However, it is noteworthy
that only in 11 instances were traits solely investigated; the 106 remaining investigated traits in concert with at least one other
leadership approach in our taxonomy. Judge, Piccolo, and Kosalka (2009)offer a thoughtful review of the trait based approach as
well as a trait based model of leadership emergence and effectiveness, including mediators and moderators, which is an example
of the advancements in the trait based approach that integrate with other leadership theories.
39
J.E. Dinh et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 25 (2014) 36 –62 Table 2
Frequency, percentage, and overall rank of leadership theories grouped by thematic category (published in 10 top-tier journals, 2000–2012).
Established theories Frequency % Rank Emerging theories Frequency % Rank
Neo-charismatic theories 294 39 1Strategic Leadership 182 24 1
Transformational leadership 154 20 1 Strategic/top executive 92 12 6
Charismatic leadership 78 10 7 Upper echelons theory 70 9 8
Transactional leadership 35 5 17 Public leadership 20 3 26
Ideological/pragmatic, outstanding leadership 12 2 29
Self-sacrificing leadership 8 1 33
Pygmalion effects 5 b135
Inspirational leadership 2 b138
Leadership and Information Processing 194 26 2Team Leadership 112 15 2
Leader and follower cognition 95 13 5 Leadership in team and decision groups 112 15 4
Implicit leadership 50 7 12
Attribution theories of leadership 29 4 21
Information processing and decision making 20 3 26
Social Exchange/Relational 156 21 3Contextual, Complexity and System Perspectives of Leadership 110 15 3
Leadership Theories
Leader-member exchange (LMX) 115 15 3 Contextual theories of leadership 42 6 14
Relational leadership 32 4 18 Social network theories of leadership 31 4 19
Vertical dyadic linkage (VDL) 8 1 33 Complexity Theories of leadership 23 3 23
Individualized leadership 1 b1 39 Integrative leadership 14 2 28
Dispositional/Trait Theories 149 20 4Leader Emergence and Development 102 14 4
Trait theories 117 16 2 Leadership development 67 9 9
Leadership skills/competence 30 4 20 Leadership emergence 35 5 17
Leader motive profile theory 2 b138
Leadership and Diversity; 81 11 5Ethical/Moral Leadership Theories 80 11 5
Cross-Cultural Leadership
Leadership and diversity 49 7 13 Authentic leadership theory 31 4 19
Cross-cultural leadership 32 4 18 Ethical leadership theory 24 3 22 Spiritual leadership theory 14 2 28
Servant leadership theory 11 1 30
Follower-Centric Leadership Theories 69 9 6Leading for Creativity, Innovation and Change 72 9 6
Followership theories 54 7 11 Leading for creativity and innovation 39 5 16
Romance of leadership 12 2 29 Leading organizational change 22 3 24
Aesthetic leadership 3 b1 37 Leading for organizational learning and knowledge 11 1 30
Behavioral Theories 64 8 7Identity-Based Leadership Theories 60 8 7
Participative, shared leadership; 41 5 15 Social identity theory of leadership 31 4 19
delegation and empowerment Identity and identification process 29 4 21
Behavioral approaches (OSU/LBDQ) 17 2 27 theories of leadership
Leadership reward and punishment behavior 6 1 34
Contingency Theories 55 7 8Other Nascent Approaches 101 13 8
Path-goal theory 10 1 31 Emotions and leadership 59 8 10
Situational leadership theory 10 1 31 Destructive/abusive/toxic leadership 22 3 24
Contingency leadership theory 9 1 32 Biological approaches to leadership 11 1 30
Leadership substitute theory 5 b1 35 E-leadership 4 b136
Adaptive leadership theory 5 b1 35 Leader error and recovery 3 b137
Normative decision model 5 b1 35 Entrepreneurial leadership 2 b137
Cognitive resource theory 4 b136
Life cycle theory 3 b137
Multiple linkage model 2 b138
Flexible leadership theories 2 b138
Power and Influence of Leadership 52 7 9
Power and influence of leadership 31 4 19
Political theory and influence tactics of leadership 21 3 25
Notes:
1. The total frequency exceeds the number of articles because articles often employ multiple theoretical frameworks.
2. Percentage is calculated by using the frequency divided by the total number of articles, i.e., 752.
3. There is a summary frequency and percentage for each paradigm. 40 J.E. Dinh et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 25 (2014) 36 –62 Reflecting a concern with greater social equality, there were many articles that addressed leadership and diversity, and cross-cultural
issues (81 instances). Follower-centric leadership theories (69 insta nces) also reflect this trend, and a concern with shared leadership,
though not a explicit coding category, seems to have flourished in the past decade (e.g., Pearce, Conger, & Locke, 2008).
There are some theories, however, which seem to have attracted less interest during our period of inquiry. While Judge, Piccolo, and
Ilies (2004) called for more research into the behavioral approach consisting of initiating structure and consideration, labeling these
constructs “the forgotten ones,” researchers have not responded in force. We discovered a relatively modest 17 instances, but these were
distributed consistently over our period of inquiry. Another area of dwindling research interest can be found in the classic contingency
theory thematic category. Collectively, we found 55 instances investigating one or more of these theories, but as shown in Table 2,these
were distributed across ten theories ranging from two to ten articles. This is a notable finding as House and Aditya (1997)placed
contingency theories among the dominant approaches in their comprehensive review of the leadership literature at the close of the last
millennium. Further, we note that the reformulated path-go al theory, called the values-based leadership theory (House, Shane, & Herold,
1996 ), seems to have been neglected by researchers. However, the bran ch of path-goal theory that led to the charismatic leadership
theory and the subsequent neo-charismatic thematic category has captured a great deal of interest. Indeed, House and Aditya (1997, p.
464) ,observedthat “[p]ath-Goal Theory led to conceptualization of the 1976 Theory of Charismatic Leadership …”.
2.4. Emerging leadership theories We note that while significant research is still occurring at the dyadic level, interest in strategic leadership approaches is the most
prolific of the emerging leadership theories (182 instances) of any of th e emerging thematic categories. This is a notable shift in research
interest given that prior to the present millennium, this was an under-researched topic (Finkelstein & Hambrick , 1996; House & Aditya,
1997 ). The team literature has been recognized as being relevant given that much strategy formation occurs within top management
teams. Team leadership has seen a significant increase in the quantity of recent research (112 instances), and a team approach was often
combined with more established theories (e.g., 11 with trait, 15 with L MX, and 30 with transformational leadership). This suggests that
leadership researchers are beginning to appreciate the social conte xt in which the leader operates and his or her effect on the team as a
whole, addressing a global shortcoming of leadership research that often operates at the dyadic level ( House & Aditya, 1997). The
systems thematic category consists of contextual, complexity, social network and integrative approaches, each of which attempts to
capture various aspects of the contextual features within which leadership phenomena unfold. The fact that this thematic category is the
third most prolific of the emerging leadership approaches (110 instances, 15% of the total 752 articles coded) might indicate that context
of leadership is no longer the “neglected side of leadership ”(Osborn,Hunt,&Jauch,2002,p.797 ) and that the charge that a“void still
exists in the research literature ”(Porter & McLaughlin, 2006, p. 560 ) with regard to the role of context no longer applies, given the
increased attention to contextual factors we identified. However, while progress has been made, we still consider this to be an
under-researched topic, given the central importance of context to th e emergence and manifestation of leadership processes. A related
thematic category, leading for creativity, innovation, and change is another team- and systems-based approach that has seen significant
research during our period of inquiry (72 instances). It elaborat es on the processes by which teams and systems adjust over time to
dynamic environments. Together, these findings are encouraging and s uggest that leadership researchers are continuing to advance the
study of leadership, addressing shortc omings of the research program identified at the close of the last millennium —e.g., the lack of
attention to contextual, team, and overall organizational effects of leadership —and are doing so at all organizational levels.
The thoughtful review of leadership by House and Aditya (1997)at the close of the last millennium also identified leadership
training and development as an opportunity for future research, and our findings suggest that researchers have answered this call
as shown by extensive activity in the leader emergence and development thematic category (102 instances). Leadership
development (67 instances), the study of methods by which an organization increases within its membership social capital
resources necessary to engage in leadership activities ( McCauley, Moxley, & Van Velsor, 1998),and
leadership emergence (35
instances), the study of who, and under what conditions, will be recognized as a leader, have together seen an impressive
quantity of research our period of inquiry. While leadership development is not a new concept ( Day, 2000), research continues to
explore its complexities, addressing questions such as who seeks out developmental opportunities ( Dragoni, Tesluk, Russell, & Oh,
2009 ), why individuals who experience the same developmental opportunity emerge with different learning outcomes ( DeRue,
Nahrgang, Hollenbeck, & Workman, 2012 ), and the interaction between traits and experience ( Dinh & Lord, 2012; Van Iddekinge,
Ferris, & Heffner, 2009 ) with regard to leadership development. Day (2000)noted that there had been a great amount of interest
in charismatic and transformational leadership with respect to leadership development, and called for a broadening of leadership
development beyond these two models. However, we found no articles during our period of inquiry that investigated leadership
development with charismatic leadership and only five of the 67 articles that investigated transformational leadership, suggesting
that Day's call for a broadening of interest with respect to leadership development is being answered as the preponderance of
leadership development research in our dataset (62 of 67) investigates other facets of leadership development. Leadership emergence research, similar to research on leadership development, is also concerned with traits ( Foti &
Hauenstein, 2007; Wolff, Pescosolido, & Druskat, 2002 ) and experiences (Avolio, Rotundo, & Walumbwa, 2009 ) that predispose a
person to emerge as a leader. Encouragingly, scholars are even investigating this question using a systems approach ( Lichtenstein
& Plowman, 2009 ) and in novel team contexts, such as shared leadership ( Carson, Tesluk, & Marrone, 2007) and virtual teams
( Balthazard, Waldman, & Warren, 2009 ). Again, it is promising that researchers are taking a broader view of leadership
emergence, investigating traits, behaviors, and experiences in a variety of contexts. Several scholars have noted increased concern with regard to the ethical/moral values-based content of a leader's behavior (80
instances). We noted four leadership theories, which together share common interest in positive, humanistic behaviors address another
41
J.E. Dinh et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 25 (2014) 36 –62 shortcoming of leadership research identified at the close of the last millennium. Most extant theories, even transformational leadership,
failed to (sufficiently) investigate altruistic leader behaviors (Bass, 1999; Brown, Treviño, & Harrison, 2005; Ciulla, 1998; Yukl, 2008).
House and Aditya (1997) suggested that extant theories assumed a hedonistic leader, rather than an altruistic one. Research on altruistic
and deontic theories has shown increased activity over the period reviewed. Authentic leadership ( Avolio & Gardner, 2005; Gardner,
Cogliser, Davis, & Dickens, 2011 ) describes leaders who are self-aware, process positive and negative ego-relevant information in a
balanced fashion, achieve relational transparency with close others, and are guided in their actions by an internalized moral perspective
(31 instances). Though honesty, trust, and integrity are not new concepts within the leadership domain, ethical leadership theory
( Brown & Treviño, 2006 ) builds on social learning theory and highlights the importance of these behaviors embodied within the leader
who reinforces these values through role modeling, rewards and punishments, and communications about ethics in order to set the
organization's moral tone ( Mayer, Aquino, Greenbaum, & Kuenzi, 2012 ). Servant leadership theory (Liden, Panaccio, Meuser, Hu, &
Wayne, in press; Liden, Wa yne, Zhao, & Henderson, 2008 ), while older than transformational leadership theory, did not attract
researcher attention until the present millennium (see Graham, 1991, for one exception). Perhaps servant leadership was slow to attract
researcher interest because the theory was introduced by Robert K. Greenleaf (1970), a retired AT&T manager, rather than a member of
the research community. While there exist many multi-dimension taxonomies and corresponding measures for servant leadership, Van
Dierendonck (2011) argued thatLiden and colleagues (2008 ;Hu & Liden, 2011 )andVan Dierendonck and Nuijten (2011) present the
most promising measures for continued research in this area. Spiritual leadership ( Fry, 2003) encompasses the notion that leaders
embody a vision, practice altruistic love, and instill hope, faith, and perseverance in attaining organizational goals. Fry (2003)suggests
that spiritual leaders convey an organizational vision that is deeply and personally motivating to followers and develop a nurturing
organizational culture of care, appreciation, and support for coworkers that inspires a sense of belonging. Although introduced in the
present millennium, these leadership theories have seen an impressive quantity of research within a short time frame. Identity based perspectives are seeing an impressive increase in interest as the millennium progresses (60 instances). In part,
this thematic category consists of the newly introduced social identity theory of leadership ( Hogg, 2001), which describes the
emergence of a leader as being based on a group member's resemblance to a prototypical leader as determined by other group
members. Given the recent introduction of this theory, it is notable that we discovered 31 instances of this approach. An
alternative stream of research stems from Brewer and Gardner's (1996)articulation of three identity levels (individual, relational,
and collective) that can be emphasized by leaders influencing a variety of organizational outcomes ( Chang & Johnson, 2010). This
area of research has observed comparable growth with 29 identified instances.
We noted a number of other emerging approaches that we could not easily classify into a larger thematic category, as can be seen at
the bottom of Table 2. Three of these deserve special recognition because of their increasing popularity. The emotions and leadership
category encompasses research investigating the relationship between leader and follower emotions and the practice and experience
of leadership. It is notable that of the 59 instances found, 40 occurred during the second half of our period of inquiry (i.e., following the
year 2006). Research into “negative ”supervisors, such as destructive or abusive supervision and toxic leadership, investigates leaders
who, by their treatment of subordinates, discourage and do harm to the subordinate and the organization. It is notable that of the 22
instances that emerged from our search, 21 of them were found during the second half of our period of inquiry, suggesting that this is
a very new, but a very strong area of emerging research. Finally, we noted a modest 11 instances of leadership using biological or
neuroscience approaches, a trend in its infancy ( Lee, Senior, & Butler, 2012). This line of research utilizes genetic, biological, or
neurological (e.g., electroencephalography) data, asking questions about the inheritability of leadership or how brain activity is
associated with the memory of, or exercising of leadership behaviors. Exemplifying the contribution of LQto the advancement of
leadership research, 10 of those 11 instances can be found in LQ, and seven of those are in a 2012 a special issue dedicated to this topic.
While assuming that all behavior can be explained using genetic and neurological data is a reductionist trap ( Evans, 1977; Lee et al.,
2012; Polanyi, 1959 ), it is important to recognize the complexity of human interaction in a social context, and the value that leveraging
the advances in cognitive neuroscience can bring to the study of leadership.
2.5. Summary
Continuing from Gardner et al. (2010) , leadership theory and research form an important cornerstone of organizational
science, and this field has continued to grow in many top-tier publication outlets including LQand others. Our review of the
leadership literature shows that several theories continue to spark scholarly interest for understanding specific leadership
phenomena (e.g., neo-charismatic leadership theories, leadership and information processing), while interest in other theoretical
domains has waned in more recent years (e.g., contingency theory, behavioral approaches). We have also identified several
research domains that have grown in popularity over the past five years, suggesting growth of new emergent theories (e.g.,
destructive leadersh
ip, leadership emergence). Together, our review demonstrates the enormity of the leadership field that has
proliferated since the new millennium, which we foresee will continue to grow in the coming decades. It is also important to recognize that there are critical voices examining both dominant theories and emerging theories. For
example, Yukl (1999) critiqued the conceptual weaknesses of charismatic leadership theory, such as construct ambiguity and lack
of description of explanatory process. In a more recent assessment, Van Knippenberg and Sitkin (2013)continued to question the
ambiguity of the multi-dimensional definition of charismatic-transformational leadership, its construct validity, and the
insufficient specification of causal processes. In an attempt to avoid these pitfalls of theory development and advancement, more
vigilant efforts are needed to address these issues early on in the development of emerging theories. For instance, Cooper,
Scandura, and Schriesheim (2005) andGardner et al. (2011) provided comprehensive assessments of the construct development
of authentic leadership and offered suggestions for future research. However, continued growth in theory and research also
42 J.E. Dinh et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 25 (2014) 36 –62 increases urgency for a method of organizing the extant literature. In the following sections, we present a process framework that
focuses on forms of emergence and levels of analysis as a means for organizing theories of leadership.
3. A process framework for organizing theories of leadershipAlong with others, we believe that significant contributions to leadership theory can be realized when research jointly
considers the levels of analysis and the underlying processes described by leadership theories ( Dansereau, Alutto, & Yammarino,
1984; Klein, Dansereau, & Hall, 1994 ). With regards to levels of analysis, leadership scholars have traditionally explored the
effects of leadership at the person, dyadic, group, and/or organizational levels. Although attention to these levels of analysis is
most common to leadership research, recent arguments have also highlighted the importance of eventsas an additional level of
analysis ( Dinh & Lord, 2012; Hoffman & Lord, 2013 ). In general, events refer to time-bounded episodes that happen in a specific
place and time, and can be characterized by features such as being ordinary or unique (e.g., Ballinger & Rockmann, 2010). We
maintain that attention to this finer-grained level of analysis, in addition to more commonly researched levels, is important
because it allows scholars to capture the impact that momentary details have on dynamic structures (e.g., the structure of
personality) and systems. For example, event-level methodologies have enabled leadership researchers to understand how the
manifestations of personality may vary in response to different events ( Fleeson, 2001; Read, Monroe, Brownstein, Yang, Chopra,
et al., 2010 ), and how specific, timely leadership actions can affect leadership ratings of performance ( Morgeson, 2005) or the
momentum of complex organizational change processes ( Plowman, Baker, Beck, Kulkarni, Solansky, et al., 2007; Tushman &
Romanelli, 1985 ).
However, leadership scholars have recognized that leaders can be organizational architects who can influence the way inputs
are combined across different levels of analysis to produce unit outputs, often by influencing the actions of others ( Lord & Brown,
2004 ). In this regard, Lord and Dinh (2012) developed a process approach that addresses the nature of emergent processes as a
means to understand an important aspect of many leadership theories. Though originally conceived to explain how leaders
influence the combination of inputs to produce outputs such as group performance, this system is much more general and can be
applied to leadership processes at multiple levels, from explaining how traits are combined to explain leadership perceptions, to
explaining how group member attitudes are combined to produce group climates, to understanding the combination of group
structures to create organizational structure. Although there are many aspects of leadership and social processes as shown by
these examples, we focused specifically on the implications associated with how aspects of lower-level units can be combined to
produce higher-level unit qualities. We believe attention to this issue addresses the core of what is important about leadership in
organizations, which involves systems for combining various forms of inputs to create outputs with higher value. Many
leadership articles discuss such issues, but do not test them explicitly. When that was the case we classified articles by their
underlying theory. For empirical articles, we focused primarily on the presented theory because data handling and statistical
procedures often presented a confusing picture when researchers did not explicitly focus on level of analysis issues. We maintain that there are three types of emergent processes relevant to leadership, and these are global, compositional, and
compilational forms of emergence. Briefly, globalcharacteristics describe processes that are static, level-specific in nature, and do
not apply to lower levels (e.g., a group's size and demographic diversity are constructs that do not apply to individual group
members). That is, they reflect a wholes level of analysis where the primary focus is between units. In contrast, theories classified
as having compositional or compilational characteristics describe alternative effects of emergent processes. In level of analysis
terms, this is a question of how a parts perspective at a lower level becomes a whole or unit level characteristic at a higher level.
Specifically, compositional characteristics reflect an aggregation of individual components that does not change its fundamental
aspect or quality as a result of aggregation ( Kozlowski & Klein, 2000). That is, lower and higher-level constructs are isomorphic.
For example, individual members' emotions in a group may aggregate to group-level affective tone in a manner that preserves but
amplifies the same emotion. As noted by Whetten, Felin, and King (2009), such aggregation maintains the same function for the
sub-unit at higher and lower levels. In contrast, compilationalforms of emergence reflect a fundamental change in qualities and
functions of the sub-unit as aggregation from lower to higher levels occurs ( Kozlowski & Klein, 2000). For example, a synergistic
aggregation of group member ideas may spark innovation, and as this occurs, relevant functions of individual contributions may
change as the collective solutions emerge. Because many of the newer leadership theories described in the previous sections
involve emergent processes, this compositional/compilational distinction is important because it distinguishes between two key
potential consequences of leadership processes. A description of emergent unit properties at each level of analysis is provided in Table 3. As this table shows, organizational
phenomena can be classified as having global unit-level properties (ULP) at many levels of analysis. For example, affective events,
individual traits, group demographics, and organizational structures, each describe global aspects of organizational units and each
of these properties are relatively stable over time ( Lord & Dinh, 2012). Additionally, organizational phenomena can be classified
as having compositional ULP when individual factors function independently to produce additive or pooled outcomes at a higher
level. For instance, the process of developing knowledge structures or self-efficacy through the gradual accumulation of facts and
interpersonal experiences each can be classified as compositional (e.g., DeChurch & Mesmer-Magnus, 2010; Judge & Bono, 2001).
Last, organizational outcomes that emerge from the interaction among different sub-units to produce new phenomena are
classified as having compilational ULP. These may include the combined effects that cognitions and emotions have on perceivers
when constructing their perceptions of a leader or the combination of divergent group members' ideas to create a new group
output (e.g., Hannah, Uhl-Bien, Avolio, & Cavaretta, 2009; Hannah, et al., 2009; Hogue & Lord, 2007 ). Here, the composition versus
compilation distinction is particularly important because it differentiates between emergent processes that involve complicated
43
J.E. Dinh et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 25 (2014) 36 –62 systems with many relatively independent units that are functionally similar (compositional aggregation) to those that involve
complex systems, where the many interdependent units interact as outputs are created (compilational aggregation;Page, 2007).
Increasing complexity is widely believed to increase the capacity of the higher level system to adapt to changing unit
environments, so we expect that compilational aggregation offers adaptive advantages compared to compositional aggregation or
stable global unit qualities. These three emergence forms provide one way to group and link theories with potentially similar consequences. For example,
the development of mental models and homogeneous organizational identities may involve similar compositional processes that
are gradual and strengthen over time with employee experience and development ( Day, 2011; Day, Harrison, & Halpin, 2009). In
contrast, the processes that enable leader flexibility and shared leadership may be more dynamic and compilational, changing
from one instance to the next as individuals experience different affective states and cognitive cues ( DeRue & Ashford, 2010; Lord
et al., 2011 ). An intriguing possibility is that different leadership skill sets and systems may be needed to effectively manage these
different processes. As these examples show, attention to underlying processes is important because it demonstrates the potential
diversity in requirements within specific levels of analysis as well as the continuity of phenomena occurring across different
organizational levels.
3.1. Forms of emergence re flected in leadership theory and research
To shed more light on these forms of emergence, we examine the leadership literature to ascertain the forms of emergence for
which leadership processes have been conceptualized and operationalized in this section. Specifically, we apply the framework
described in Table 3to indicate those theories that have most frequently been conceptualized using global, compositional, and
compilational forms of emergence, and we apply this distinction across multiple levels ranging from events to organizations. Fig. 1
presents a graphical depiction of the trends over time regarding the form of emergence reflected in leadership theories. As Fig. 1
indicates, each form of emergence has shown an overall increase in terms of representation within the literature, although
compositional processes have not dramatically increased in recent years. This reflects a trend toward increasingly complex
theories of leadership that may overshadow the potential for using relatively simple rules and principles to explain complex
behavior ( Yammarino & Dansereau, 2011 ).
Table 3
Basis for formulation of emergent Unit Level Properties (ULP) by level of analysis.
Levels of
analysis Global ULP: Descriptive characteristic
of unit does not apply to lower levels. Compositional ULP: Property emerges from
composition of lower-level unit properties. Compilational ULP: Property emerges from
compilation of lower-level unit properties.
Event 1. Affective events theory 1. Knowledge structures expanded by accumulation of facts1. Conscious understanding emerges from
interaction of different events
2. Adaptive response to events 2. Perfecting skills & abilities by learning from previous errors 2. Self-complexity increases by self- reflective
processing of emotional events
3. Event-related motivational
processing
Individual 1. Trait theory 1. Global self-efficacy1. Increased self-complexity via CAPS & hot/cool
networks
2. Chronic self-regulatory processes &
leadership behavioral styles 2. Self-regulation from hierarchically organized
motivational elements
3. Genetic determinants of leadership 3. Effects of default & affective networks on use of
cognitive resources
Dyad 1. Leader–follower relationship quality 1. Development of mutual affective and
cognitive trust from repeated interpersonal
experiences 1. Affective and cognitive trust
2. Affective construal of an interactional partner’
s
emotional expressions and behavior
3. Leadership and followership perception due to
implicit leadership or followership schema
activation
Group 1. Group demographic diversity as
resources for leadership complexity 1. Team mental models & team
performance through addition of individual
skills, actions & thoughts 1. Team transactive memory & specialized
group-member functions that require frequent
member-to-member interaction
2. Group affective tone, task knowledge, &
motivation 2. Strong collective identities result in emergent
group processes via cooperation (e.g., team
efficiency)
Organization 1. Punctuated equilibrium (e.g., mergers, spinoffs, strategic choices
made by leaders) 1. Attraction
–selection –attrition models of
organizational climate 1. Development of organizational ethical culture
2. Theory of organizational structure &
culture 2. Collective values, goals & human
resources 2. Organizational complexity & identity development
Common thread
among
theory Stable attributes are important
antecedents to processes at each level
Individuals function independently;
individuals fulfill similar functions. Outcomes emerge from interactions of different
units; individuals & groups perform different
functions
Notes: Replicated from Lord and Dinh (2012).
44
J.E. Dinh et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 25 (2014) 36 –62 Our findings from the application of our categorization scheme to leadership research are summarized further inTables 4
and 5 . The empirical results indicate that leadership theories have been predominantly conceptualized using global and
compilational forms of emergence, whereas prior theoretical work ( Lord & Dinh, 2012) also emphasized compositional forms of
emergence. Additionally, we identify the level of analysis that is commonly associated with each theory within each table. It is
important to recognize that different researchers may conceptualize a theory differently and so a specific theoretical category,
such as trait theories of leadership, might be classified as being global for one article but compositional or compilational for
another. In addition, researchers may focus on different levels of analysis for different articles. Nevertheless, there are some clear
trends. First, a significant number of thematic leadership theory categories have been conceptualized using global properties. In
fact, out of the 66 disparate leadership theory categories that had been identified, 29 (approximately 44%) emphasized a global
ULP (see Table 4for the top 20 global-oriented theories). Interestingly, an overwhelming majority of thematic leadership theory
categories with a global ULP were also conceptualized at the individual, rather than event, dyad, group, or organizational level of
analysis.
Notes: Data collection ended in September of 2012, resulting in a propor\
tionally smaller number
of coded articles. This is represented in the decline observed for 2012.\
0
10 20 30 40
50
60
70
80
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
Number of Articles
Year
Global
Compositional
Compliational
Fig. 1. Trends in form of emergence between the years 2000 and 2012.
Table 4
Percentage of global leadership theories at event (E), individual (I), dyad (D), group (G), and organizational (O) level of analysis.
Theory (percent coded as global) % at each level of analysis
EI DGO
1. Normative decision model (100) 1000000
2. Multiple linkage model (100) 0 100000
3. Inspirational leadership (100) 33 67000
4. Entrepreneurial (100) 0 5000 50
5. Idiosyncratic leadership theory (100) 0 100000
6. Leader motive profile theory (100) 0 670033
7. Pygmalion effect (86) 0 8020 0 0
8. Aesthetic leadership (83) 50 50000
9. Destructive/abusive supervision (80) 5 5321 5 16
10. Neuro-biological theory (63) 20 700100
11. Ideological and pragmatic leadership (58) 29 5714 0 0
12. Cross-cultural leadership (56) 5 509036
13. Self-sacrificing leadership theory (55) 20 80000
14. Trait (dispositional) theories (52) 11 68759
15. Behavioral approaches (52) 8 598025
16. Leadership reward and punishment behavior (50) 0 6020 0 20
17. Servant leadership theory (50) 0 6010 20 10
18. Leadership skills/competence (49) 10 7001010
19. Public leadership (48) 14 570029
20. Political theory of leadership influence (48) 0 720721
aTheories appearing in this table were predominantly conceptualized using global, rather than compositional or compilational forms of emergence. However,
each theory varied with respect to level of analysis used in research and theory. Percentages in bold indicate the level of analysis that was predominantly used for
each theory. 45
J.E. Dinh et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 25 (2014) 36 –62 The literature's emphasis on individual levels is not surprising, as leaders are often understood as having direct influences on
important individual and organizational level outcomes, such as performance ( Lord & Dinh, in press). In contrast, thematic
leadership theory categories that emphasize compilational processes are shown in Table 5. Although leadership theories with a
compilational ULP are not often investigated at organizational levels of analysis, they are widely represented at event, individual,
dyad, and group levels of analysis. As Tables 4 and 5show, theories with a global or compilational ULP differ with regard to the
underlying process used to explain a particular leadership phenomena. Whereas theories with a global ULP are often understood
at a single level of analysis as processes are considered to be stable (see Table 4), theories with a compilational ULP are more likely
multi-level, as processes are viewed to be dynamic and fluid across time (see Table 5). Indeed several theories in Table 5 are
frequently conceptualized at many different levels of analysis, such as complexity theory, integrative leadership, and leading for
creativity and innovation. Rather than describe each theory in Tables 4 and 5, we show how describing the underlying processes associated with the
form of emergence for a thematic theory category can help us understand how certain leadership processes emerge. We also use a
finer grained analysis, which separates quantitative and theoretical works in Table 6. Often this distinction produced surprising
results. For example, 60% of the quantitative studies of trait theories reflect global conceptualizations of leadership traits, whereas
61% of the analogous theoretical articles reflected compilational approaches to leadership traits. Thus, quantitative approaches
seemed to be a bit less sophisticated than theoretical analysis with respect to trait theory. Further, this quantitative/theoretical
difference is common in Table 6, with the percentage of theoretical articles reflecting compilational aggregation processes being
higher than the corresponding percentage for quantitative articles for everycomparison in Table 6. Attention to potential
differences in how theoretical domains are conceptualized and investigated can help ascertain whether the methods used to test
theory are appropriate for examining underlying processes.
3.1.1. Thematic leadership theory categories re flecting global forms of emergence
A vast majority of thematic leadership theory categories identified from Gardner et al. (2010)emphasize global forms of
emergence, which also concentrate primarily on the individual level of analysis. Importantly, these theories describe leadership
phenomena as using stable processes, such as dispositional factors to predict leadership outcomes. As shown in Table 4, they
include trait theories, research on leadership skills and competence, and leadership style (e.g., transformational/transactional
leadership, destructive leadership and ethical leadership), which identify specific leadership traits, behaviors, and characteristics
that generally predict leader perceptions and effectiveness across many different contexts. Dispositional factors may be
emphasized in other theories, such as entrepreneurial and cross-cultural leadership when they focus on individual factors (e.g.,
intelligence) to influence interpersonal outcomes. This perspective suggests that in order for leaders to influence individual and
organizational outcomes, they must possess, or can influence, many of the characteristics described by these theories.
Consequently, thematic theory categories with a global ULP are descriptive and offer parsimonious explanations of leadership
( Lord & Dinh, 2012 ); however, they offer limited insight into the processes by which leaders affect organizational outcomes and
they create difficulties for understanding how different thematic theory categories relate or affect one another.
Table 5
Percentage of compilational leadership theories at event (E), individual (I), dyad (D), group (G), and organizational (O) level of analysis.
Theory (percent coded as compilational) % at each level of analysis
a
EIDGO
Adaptive leadership (100) 27 2710 18 18
Outstanding leadership (100) 1000000
Complexity theory of leadership (90) 19 2816 2314
E-leadership (87) 29 14 14 430
Leadership flexibility (86) 16 3317 17 17
Leadership for organizational learning and knowledge (82) 0 3323 3311
Vertical dyad linkage (VDL) (78) 18 14 23 2718
Cognitive resource theory (68) 17 3317 330
Integrative leadership (67) 6 6 19 38 31
Situational leadership theory (63) 10 3020 3010
Implicit leadership (62) 19 4122 18 0
Path-goal theory (61) 23 15 8 3123
Attribution theories of leadership (60) 12 4420 24 0
Leading for creativity and innovation (60) 10 2712 3219
Decision process theory (60) 3400 3333
Leader error and recovery (59) 0340 3333
Participative, shared leadership (58) 102217 44 7
Followership theory (57) 222332 194
Life cycle theory (57) 133226 263
Identity and identification process theory (55) 50250 250
aPercentages in bold indicate the level of analysis that was predominantly used for each theory.
46
J.E. Dinh et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 25 (2014) 36 –62 Table 6
Form of emergence implied by theoretical and quantitative leadership research in top-tier publications, 2000–2012.
Established Leadership Theories Type of research
Quantitative only % Theoretical only %
Dispositional (Trait) Theories Trait (dispositional) theories –traits & attributes Global 60 Compilational 61
Leadership skills/competence Global 61 Compilational 58
Leader motive profile theory Global 100 Global 100
Behavioral Theories Behavioral approaches (OSU/LBDQ) Global 63 Compilational 100
Participative, shared leadership, delegation and empowerment Compilational 51 Compilational 94
Leadership reward and punishment behavior Global 50 - -
Contingency Theories Leadership for organizational learning and knowledge Compilational 67 Compilational 90
Contingency leadership theory Compilational 50 Compilational 57
Situational leadership theory Global 75 Compilational 82
Path-goal theory Global 50 Compilational 62
Cognitive resource theory Global 50 Compilational 100
Normative decision model ––Global 100
Life cycle theory Compilational 100 Global 100
Leadership substitute theory Global 86 ––
Social Exchange (Relational) Leadership Theories Vertical dyad linkage (VDL) Compilational 75 Compilational 100
Leader –member exchange (LMX) Global 52 Compilational 54
Relational leadership Global44Compilational 69
Individualized leadership –––
Leadership and Informational Processing Leader and follower cognitions Global46Compilational 65
Implicit leadership Global47Compilational 82
Information processing and decision making theories of leadership Global47Compilational 82
Attribution theories of leadership Compilational54Compilational 72
Neo-Charismatic Theories Transformational leadership theory Global50Compilational 60
Transactional leadership Global100Compilational 81
Charismatic leadership Global52Compilational 64
Inspirational leadership Global100Global 100
Self-sacrificial leadership theory
a Global 62Compilational 100
Ideological and pragmatic leadership Global67––
Power and Influence Theories Power and influence of leadership Global69––
Political theory of leadership/influence tactics of leadership Global53Global 50
Follower-Centric Theories Followership theory Global53Compilational 77
Romance of leadership Compilational50––
Idiosyncratic leadership theory ––Global100
Leadership of Diverse and Cross-Cultural Relationships Leadership and diversity [gender (dis)advantages] Global63Compilational 75
Cross-cultural leadership (GLOBE) Global61Compilational 70
Team Leadership
Leadership in teams and decision groups Compilational42Compilational 73
Strategic Leadership Strategic/top executive leadership Global53Compilational 73
Upper echelons theory Global51Compilational 86
Public leadership (e.g., presidential, professional politician) Global75Global 50
Ethical/Moral Leadership Theories Authentic leadership Global22Compilational 54
Ethical leadership theory Global38Global 58
Servant leadership theory Global64Compilational 50
Spiritual leadership theory Compilational33Compilational 48
Leadership Emergence and Development Leadership development Global43Compilational 59
Leadership emergence Global61Compilational 80
Identity-Based Perspectives Social identity theory of leadership Global41Compilational 61
Identity and identification process theory of leadership Compilational43Compilational 68
Contextual, Complexity, and Systems Perspectives of Leadership Contextual theory of leadership Global46Compilational 47
Complexity theory of leadership Compilational86Compilational 94
Social network approaches to leadership Global43Compilational 67
Integrative leadership Global100Compilational 69
Adaptive leadership ––Compilational100
Multiple linkage model
b Global 100––
(continued on next page) 47
J.E. Dinh et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 25 (2014) 36 –62 3.1.2. Thematic leadership theory categories reflecting compositional forms of emergence
Theories with a compositional ULP are those that emphasize the aggregation of units that preserve the same lower level aspect
or quality at higher levels of analysis. Although we coded compositional forms of emergence, and found 159 leadership articles
emphasizing this form of emergence, there were no levels of analysis or specific thematic categories for which this form of
emergence predominated. Consequently, it seemed inappropriate to classify any theory as compositional when either global or
compilational forms of emergence were more commonly discussed. For this reason, we do not present a separate table for
leadership theories with a compositional ULP, although we do discuss compositional forms of emergence at various points in this
review, frequently contrasting it to compilational forms of emergence. We also discuss theoretical and methodological
implications associated with the general absence of compositional forms of emergence in Section 4.2.
3.1.3. Thematic leadership theory categories re flecting compilational forms of emergence
An examination of Table 5reveals that theories with a compilational ULP are well represented at each level of analysis. This is
not surprising, given that a key characteristic of compilational forms of emergence is that phenomena at one level of analysis
affects another level of analysis in such a way that a fundamental change in the nature of the phenomenon occurs ( Lord & Dinh,
2012 ). In this way, leadership theories with a compilational ULP are inherently multi-level and reflect dynamic system processes.
It is also informative to see that attention has been fairly evenly divided across the various levels of analysis among thematic
theory categories with a compilational ULP. An examination of Table 5indicates that many thematic theory categories, including adaptive leadership ( Hannah, Uhl-Bien,
et al., 2009 ), complexity theory of leadership ( Marion & Uhl-Bien, 2002), e-leadership (including leadership within virtual
teams; Avolio, Kahai & Dodge, 2001; Purvanova & Bono, 2009 ), and leadership for organizational learning and knowledge
( Berson, Nemanich, Waldman, Galvin, & Keller, 2006 ) address interactive compilational processes that operate across multiple
levels of analysis. Therefore, thematic theory categories that adopt a compilational perspective on emergence go much further
than traditional perspectives by acknowledging the complexity that realistically defines modern organizations. To illustrate the types of insights that accrue from adopting compilational perspectives, we focus on two streams of research
that exemplify these approaches: the complexity theory of leadership ( Marion & Uhl-Bien, 2002), and leadership for
organizational learning and knowledge ( Berson et al., 2006; Vera & Crossan, 2004 ). With respect to the complexity theory of
leadership, the focus on emergent processes within complex systems ( Lichtenstein & Plowman, 2009; Plowman et al., 2007) casts
the leader's role as one of enabling rather controlling the organization's future. Indeed, a central assertion of complexity
leadership approaches is “that leadership is multi-level, processual, contextual and interactive ”(Uhl-Bien & Marion, 2009, p. 631),
reflecting compilational rather than compositional types of processes. Moreover, Uhl-Bien and Marion assert that event-level
activities produce emergent innovations and learning that are introduced into complex adaptive systems and become entangled
with formal structures. Within such a system, leaders perform administrative, enabling, and adaptive functions to facilitate the
emergence of organizational processes that lead to goal attainment. However, the effects of leadership are never certain as they
are continuously affected by evolving social –environmental constraints ( Lord, Dinh, & Hoffman, in review ). Thus, micro- and
macro-level factors converge to impact leadership, and this presents a more complex view that is ignored by more simplistic
perspectives.
Table 6 (
continued )
Established Leadership Theories Type of research
Quantitative only%Theoretical only %
Leading for Creativity, Innovation, and Change Leading for creativity and innovation Compilational54Compilational 63
Leading change in organizations/change Compilational46Compilational 100
Other Established Theories Pygmalian effect Global80Global 100
Leadership flexibility ––Compilational86
Emotions and leadership Compilational48Compositional 61
Destructive/abusive supervision/toxic leadership Global67Global 50
Neuro-biological approaches Global73Global 67
E-leadership (effects of task, technology, distance and virtuality) Compilational75Compilational 100
Aesthetic leadership ––Global80
Leader error and recovery Global100Compilational 100
Decision process theory Global40––
Entrepreneurial leadership Global100Global 80
Outstanding leadership Compositional100––
Cumulative Percentages Across Theories Global 6624
Compositional 72
Compilational 2774
Notes: Percentages were computed for quantitative and theoretical articles separately. Indicated form of emergence was predominantly used for quantitative and
theoretical articles. Dashes indicate that no articles were identified for a theory. OSU = Ohio State University; LBDQ = leader behavior description questionnaire.
aIndicates an emergent theory classified under a larger group of established perspectives.bIndicates an established theory classified under a larger grouping of nascent perspectives.
48
J.E. Dinh et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 25 (2014) 36 –62 Compilational forms of emergence are also evident in thematic leadership theory categories that describe the emergence of
organizational learning ( Berson et al., 2006). This is because organizational learning can occur compilationally when it results from
interactive multi-level processes. For example, Hannah and Lester (2009, p. 34)advance a multilevel model that proposes
“ organizational learning is an interdependent system where effective leaders enact intervention strategies at the individual (micro),
network (meso), and systems (macro) levels. ”Their central argument is that leaders support organizational learning by establishing
the structure and conditions for learning to accrue, while shielding organizational members from interference with creative
processes. In the process of enhancing the developmental readiness of followers, leaders can raise their follower's motivation, ability
to learn, and refine their mental models. Leaders also engage in system-level activities to facilitate the diffusion and
institutionalization of knowledge across the organization. However, the direct effects of leadership on organizational learning are
complicated by additional factors, such as the influence of followers and social –relational networks. In fact, followers' positioning
within networks allow certain individuals to catalyze information and influence resource diffusion within and across social networks
( Balkundi & Kilduff, 2006 ), and this affects collective learning. Additionally, organizational learning may be affected by temporal
factors, such as employee absenteeism and social network reconfigurations, which impact the types of resources that are available to
organizational members ( Smith-Jentsch, Kraiger, Cannon-Bowers, & Salas, 2009; Zaheer & Soda, 2009 ).
3.2. Strengths and limitations of theory with global, compositional, and compilational ULPs Our review of the leadership literature shows that leadership theories can be classified by form of emergence and by level of
analysis. In this framework, attention to process is important and reveals possible limitations of a theory based on how processes
are conceptualized. As we have described, theories with a global ULP are descriptive and parsimonious. However, by emphasizing
stable aspects of leaders and organizational units, such theories may oversimplify and romanticize leadership, and they may draw
too heavily on naïve, common-sense understanding of processes that are encoded into natural language ( Uher, 2013).
Typically, theory provides a foundation that guides research methods. Therefore, another issue with focusing on global
processes is that it may perpetuate methods that stress stability in phenomenon by aggregating over many events. Indeed, the use
of cross-sectional methods that include retrospective questionnaires and field surveys, was common in empirical works across
top-tier journal outlets, making up roughly 62% (334 cases) of the coded research (see Table 7). Such operationalization can also
introduce a variety of rating errors (e.g., primacy or recency effects, an overemphasis on salient behaviors and outcomes, halo or
liking effects, etc.; Brown & Keeping, 2005; Shondrick, Dinh, & Lord, 2010 ), as well as create difficulty for understanding how
different theoretical domains relate or affect one another. In fact, one common problem is that theories with a global ULP ignore
event-level processes that provide insight into the observed variability that occurs in leader and follower decision-making and
behavior (e.g., Johnson, Venus, Lanaj, Mao, & Chang, 2012; Kuppens, Oravecz, & Tuerlinckx, 2010 ). Indeed, research using
experience sampling has shown that people experience a wide range of affective experiences and trait behaviors during a normal
day ( Fleeson, 2001; Kuppens et al., 2010 ). Also, seemingly stable intrapersonal constructs, such as semantic schemas for personal
and team work routines ( Dionysiou & Tsoukas, 2013 ) and self-perceptions (Slotter, Lucas, Jakubiak, & Lasslet, 2013 ), can change
in response to interpersonal social cues, thereby affecting subsequent decisions and choices. At higher levels, event-level
variability is also reflected in interpersonal team dynamics ( Crawford & LePine, 2013; Smith-Jentsch et al., 2009), group processes
( Klein, Ziegert, Knight, & Xiao, 2006; Morgeson, 2005 ), and organizational systems (Gulati, Sytch, & Tatarynowicz, 2012; MacKay
Table 7
Summary of methodology for quantitative articles.
Frequency%
Time Cross-sectional 33462
Cross-sectional w/CMV time lag 377
Longitudinal 20638
Data source Field survey (primary data) 36567
Field survey (secondary data) 12223
Laboratory experiment 9818
Content analysis 7414
Review (non-meta-analytical review) 5310
Field experiment 234
Meta-analysis (quantitative review) 153
Sample survey 92
Observation 61
Diary study/experiential sampling 5b1
Experimental simulation 5b1
Computer simulation 4b1
Judgment task 3b1
Methodology study (e.g., psychometric methods) 3b1
Notes: 1. The total frequency exceeds the number of quantitative articles because articles often employ multiple studies and data
sources.
2. Percentage is calculated by using the total quantitative article count, 542, as denominator. 49
J.E. Dinh et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 25 (2014) 36 –62 & Chia, 2013) that require leaders (and followers) to continuously adjust to environmental uncertainty. Hence, narrowly focusing
on global forms of emergence runs the risk of codifying lay theories that overemphasize the stability in processes by using
language that masks the dynamics of organizational phenomenon. Specific to individual global perspectives of leadership, which dominated the literature, these types of theories assume away
both the influence of the event-level and contextual influences to produce a more simplistic, outcome-oriented perspective of
leadership. By positing direct relationships between leadership and outcomes, such as performance (i.e., L →P), these
leader-centric theories overemphasize the role of leaders by attributing the success and failure of organizations to the agency of
specific individuals as depicted by fundamental attribution theories ( Kelley, 1973).
In contrast, theories that conceptualize leadership processes as compilational are better able to address the nonlinear dynamics
that characterize organizational phenomenon through which higher-level outcomes emerge from the cyclical interaction of
lower-level units. In fact, theories with a compilational ULP are inherently multi-level and evolve over many temporal orders. As such,
leadership theories with this ULP advance an understanding of leadership that is much more consonant with the complexity that
defines real people and organizations by considering the importance of time ( Bluedorn & Jaussi, 2008; Langley et al., 2013; Sonnentag,
2012 ), the interactive nature of social –relational systems ( Kahn, Barton, & Fellows, 2013; Valcea, Hamdani, Buckley, & Novicevic,
2011 ), and how environmental contexts shape leadership ( MacKay & Chia, 2013). This perspective invites scholars to consider how
seemingly independent processes may operate together to affect leadership and organizational outcomes, and so it offers a way to
unify multiple thematic theory categories by encouraging the development of more integrative leadership theory. Critically, leadership theories that stress compilational forms of emergence help scholars to see leadership as operating with
social –relational systems that define modern organizations ( Kahn et al., 2013). Within this context, leaders may achieve their
goals indirectly through followers ( Lord & Dinh, in press), and followers may have reciprocal effects on leadership and leader
development ( Day et al., 2009; Hoyt, Price, & Poatsy, 2013 ). Additionally, because the influence of leadership may require weeks,
months, to years to fully manifest, it cannot be evaluated within short spans of time ( Jaques, 1990; Kaiser et al., 2008). Hence,
theories with a compilational ULP invite scholars to step outside of leader-centric perspectives by considering the impact that
simultaneously occurring processes operating at higher and lower levels, such as followership ( Valcea et al., 2011; Van
Knippenberg, van Knippenberg, De Cremer, & Hogg, 2004 ) and group and system dynamics (Crawford & LePine, 2013; Gulati et
al., 2012; Polyhart & Moliterno, 2011 ), have on the emergence of leadership phenomena.
Interestingly, research that emphasizes compilational processes is more common to theoretical rather than quantitative
articles, which concentrate on global processes. Theoretical and quantitative articles were compared separately for each thematic
theory category in Table 6. This table shows that approximately 66% of theories examined by quantitative research emphasized
global forms of emergence, whereas 27% focused on compilational processes. In contrast, 74% of purely theoretical research
stressed compilational forms of emergence, while 24% focused on global processes. These findings illustrate a fundamental
difference between quantitative and theoretical articles with respect to their attention to processes and outcomes. Because
quantitative research stresses global, stable processes, this type of research may be more focused on understanding outcomes.
However, theoretical articles are more process oriented as they explicate how underlying processes contribute to emergent
leadership phenomena. We discuss this implication in greater detail in Section 4.1.
We should also comment on the tendency for compositional forms of emergence to be underemphasized in the literature.
They were not the predominant focus for any thematic theory category, with the percentage of compositional theories ranging
between 0 and 40% across all theories. However, this result does not mean that compositional theories are unimportant. They still
characterized 159 articles in the leadership field and help describe how complex multi-level processes unfold over time
( Ashforth, Rogers, & Corley, 2011 ). In addition, compositional processes were part of the data we used to calculate the
percentages in Tables 4–6.
We suspect that the under-emphasis of compositional theories reflects a general bias in the leadership literature to focus on
issues with closer relations to compilational forms of emergence such as adaptation and change, which are associated with the
most popular research stream, transformational leadership theory. In contrast, efficiency issues, that may be more closely related
to transactional leadership theories and may be more reflective of compositional forms of emergence, tend to be underemphasized
in the leadership literature. It should also be recognized that each article reflects the authors' own interpretation of theory and
processes, and there may be a bias toward noticing and discussing compilational forms of emergence rather than compositional
forms of emergence, even though many organizational phenomena have both compositional and compilational aspects. There was also another curious aspect related to compositional forms of emergence that is discussed in the following section.
Specifically, many empirical articles started with theory that emphasizes compilational forms of emergence, but treated the data
as having a global or compositional ULP where individual responses and variables were aggregated to a group level or were
combined linearly using multiple regression without concern for potential interactions among variables. Yet, dynamic interactive
processes are a fundamental feature of compilational theories. Consequently, in many instances we found that theory and
measurement or analytic procedures were mismatched.
3.3. Form of emergence emphasized by journal and emergence match/mismatch
After describing the forms of emergence that have been predominantly implied by theory, we examined whether certain
forms of emergence were emphasized across the 10 journals as shown in Table 8. This table shows that of the three forms of
emergence, global processes were commonly emphasized in half of the journals. However, compilational processes were
investigated at a frequency that equally or exceeded global processes in the remaining journals. In addition, compositional
50 J.E. Dinh et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 25 (2014) 36 –62 processes were not commonly addressed by theory and research in any of the 10 top-tier publication outlets. Interestingly, the
form of emergence emphasized by a journal can reflect the journal's focus or interest. For example, nearly half of the research
published inPersonnel Psychology investigated leadership phenomenon as global processes, which may reflect the journal's
emphasis on individual dispositions, strategy, and behaviors. In contrast, 58% of the research published in American Psychologist
emphasized compilational processes, and this may be due to the fact that articles in this journal are theoretical, rather than
quantitative, and examined dynamic multilevel processes. We also examined the types of leadership theories that had the highest percentage of studies with matches or mismatches in
terms of correspondence between form of emergence/level of analysis and methods within a specific study. As described
previously, matches occurred when processes implied by the theory of an article were investigated at the theorized level of
analysis and used methods that appropriately captured the process described by theory. Using a 25% cut-off score, we identified
those theories with the highest mismatches in Table 9. This table shows that mismatches were common in research investigating
certain theories, and especially for the leading for the creativity and innovation thematic category. In fact, the use of
cross-sectional field surveys that aggregated within-person processes was common to research investigating this leadership
phenomenon (57%), which may be inappropriate for investigating dynamic intrapersonal and interpersonal processes responsible
for creative insight as implied by theory. Mismatches also occurred in research on relational leadership, ethical leadership, and
transformational leadership theory that predominantly used cross-sectional field surveys at one point in time (41– 65%) to
understand leadership phenomena that likely involve multi-level compilational processes ( Crawford & LePine, 2013;
Schaubroeck et al., 2012 ).
4. General discussion Our critical review of the leadership literature that included LQand nine other top-tier publication outlets demonstrates the
continued growth and interest in leadership theory and research in the new millennium. In this review, we have identified 752
articles that focused on the topic of leadership, which include and extend beyond the 353 articles that had been identified by
Gardner et al. (2010) inLQ alone between the years 2000 –2009. Moving forward, leadership scholars and practitioners now face
Table 8
Frequency (instance) and percentage of form of emergence emphasized by journal.
Journal Form of emergence
Global % Compositional % Compilational %
Academy of Management Journal 31 61 8 16 12 23
Academy of Management Review 4 44 1 11 4 44
Administrative Science Quarterly 14 36 10 26 15 38
American Psychologist 4331 87 58
Journal of Applied Psychology 61 45 25 19 49 36
Journal of Management 9 29 4 13 18 58
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 18 45 6 15 16 40
Organizational Science 1 10 3 30 6 60
Personnel Psychology 12 50 4 17 8 33
The Leadership Quarterly 244 46 62 12 219 42
Note: Articles can have more than one form of emergence. As such, data reflects the number of instances a form of emergence was implied.
Table 9
Frequency and percentage of match/mis-matched quantitative research to form of emergence within established theories.
Theory Emergence-LoA/theory (mis)-match
Match Mis-match % mis-match
Behavioral approaches (OSU/LBDQ) 9 3 25%
Leadership skills/competence 15 7 32%
Transformational leadership theory 80 32 29%
Transactional leadership 17 8 32%
Authentic leadership 8 4 33%
Contextual theory of leadership 18 9 33%
Emotions and leadership 27 9 25%
Ethical leadership theory 8 5 38%
Leader and follower cognitions 51 18 26%
Leadership in teams and decision groups 64 22 26%
Leading change in organizations/change 12 5 29%
Leading for creativity and innovation 13 13 50%
Relational leadership 10 6 37%
Social identity theory of leadership 13 6 32%
Note : OSU = Ohio State University; LBDQ = leader behavior description questionnaire. 51
J.E. Dinh et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 25 (2014) 36 –62 the challenge of integrating this diverse body of knowledge to explain how leaders shape organizational processes and systems. In
this article, we argued that this challenge can be approached by focusing on the forms of emergence that influence, or are
influenced by, leaders. Specifically, by classifying leadership theory into broad thematic categories using a framework advanced
byGardner et al. (2010) , with a process framework proposed by Lord and Dinh (2012), we provide a structure that organizes the
leadership literature based on how leadership phenomena occur at different levels of analysis can combine to influence the
emergence of phenomena at higher or lower levels. Although there are many other useful frameworks that can organize leadership theory (e.g., Hernandez, Eberly, Avolio, &
Johnson, 2011 ), this framework stands apart by emphasizing the continuity among disparate leadership phenomenon by focusing
on process. In doing so, this framework can facilitate the development of more integrative research agendas that explore how
leaders, followers, and larger social systems jointly influence the unfolding of organizational events. In many instances, it is the
combined effects of intrapersonal and interpersonal processes that produce emergent phenomena in organizations. For example,
cognitions, emotions, and aspects of physical embodiment simultaneously operate within individuals ( Damasio, 1994; Dinh, Lord,
& Hoffman, 2013 ) to produce emergent phenomenon such as decisions. Similarly, social obligations and contractual norms
operating at more interpersonal levels ( Crawford & LePine, 2013; Kahn et al., 2013 ) work together to influence the emergence of
collective resources, knowledge, and skill that constrain an organization's adaptive potential ( Gulati et al., 2012; Zaheer & Soda,
2009 ). However, this dynamic systems perspective is largely unexplored in leadership theory and research that tends to be
cross-sectional rather than longitudinal, as shown in Table 7. Yet skilled practitioners must address these intertwined processes
when they are leading. In addition, this framework has an advantage over traditional narrative reviews of the literature in that it provides an empirically
based approach that groups theories using a particular form of emergence. This helps to identify a common process-related thread
linking otherwise divergent theories. For example, a common thread among global theories is that they emphasize stable processes
that exist at the level of wholes. That is, theories such as inspirational leadership, leader motive profile theory, aesthetic leadership,
neuro-biological theory, and destructive/abusive leadership are those that emphasize enduring aspects of individuals. Perhaps
leadership theory could be advanced by consolidating or integrating such theories. Other global theories, although framed as wholes
in terms of the level of analysis, seem to reflect differences in contexts (entrepreneurial, cross-cultural leadership, public leadership,
political influence), even though they are conceptualized at the individual wholes level. In contrast, theories that adopt a parts perspective and describe emergent processes may differ depending on whether they
emphasize compositional or compilational forms of emergence. For example, theories that emphasize compositional processes
share a common thread that focuses at the unit level (e.g., events, individuals, dyads, groups, organizations) and assumes that
each unit fulfills a similar function across relevant levels. Although this approach reflects a parts perspective, the fundamental
characteristics of units do not change as processes emerge to higher relevant levels. Therefore, it suggests that theories operating
at different levels use the same functional processes. For instance, theories focusing on transformational leadership theory,
leadership in teams and decision groups, and top management team leadership, sometimes emphasize compositional forms of
emergence. Finally, theories that emphasize compilational processes are similar in that they focus on how processes occurring at one level of
analysis can create an emergent construct at the next highest level. These theories show considerable heterogeneity in terms of the
level at which they are formulated. For example, complexity theories are fairly evenly distributed across events, individual, dyad,
group, and organizational levels of analysis, but at each level they imply that lower level constructs interact (across time or across
units) as they are combined to create higher-level constructs. That is, events may interact as they are remembered and combined to
create leadership skills or identities, and individual contributions interact as they are combined to create group products. Importantly,
this form of emergence emphasizes the cross-level aspects of leadership, and it suggests that the leadership processes that span
multiple levels may operate in a different fashion for lower and higher level constructs even though they may not explicitly address
such differences. A more careful specification as to how leadership influences such integrative processes might help advance theories
such as adaptive leadership, outstanding leadership, and complexity leadership theories. Organizing leadership research by the nature of emergent processes also signifies the need to understand how leadership
occurs within social systems that continually change. Importantly, emergent processes are not bounded within a particular level
of analysis as our framework has shown. Additionally, aggregation processes take time, such that processes can have cascading
effects that extend into the future ( Wickham & Knee, 2013). These findings have important implications for advancing leadership
theory in the new millennium in a manner that is both context and time sensitive. To provide a guide for the development of
future research, we discuss several notable findings that have been obtained from this extensive review.
4.1. Implications for theory and practice
We argue that advancing leadership theory and research will require that scholars critically examine several foundational
assumptions that have defined leadership and organizational research in the last century. As our review has shown, global
processes, which emphasize stability in seemingly stable structures (e.g., personality, semantic knowledge, social networks)
provided the thrust for much of the theory. As a reviewer astutely noted, the emphasis on global processes may have been
perpetuated by early authoritative reviews in the literature (e.g., Mann, 1959), thereby blocking efforts to reconceptualize
leadership theory to consider more dynamic processes. However, changing perspectives in the recent literature have shown that
changing contexts ( Ryan, Haslam, Hersby, & Bongiorno, 2011; Sy, Shore, Strauss, Shore, Tram, et al., 2010 ), and the temporal
dynamics that occur within individuals (e.g., Kuppens et al., 2010; Read et al., 2010), teams (Crawford & LePine, 2013;
52 J.E. Dinh et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 25 (2014) 36 –62 Smith-Jentsch et al., 2009), and social systems (Zaheer & Soda, 2009) vary over time. This perspective differs from leader-centric
approaches that instill a false sense of certainty for understanding how leaders affect the performance of individuals and
organizations. At a minimum, this perspective suggests that leadership theory that is built on retrospective constructs and data
tends to overestimate the direct effects of leadership. In addition, it raises concerns related to the utility of retrospective measures
that use past judgments or events to predict future outcomes if the underlying goal is to understand howleaders influence (or are
influenced) by environments that are complex, variable, and continually changing ( Langley et al., 2013; MacKay & Chia, 2013;
Uhl-Bien & Marion, 2009 ). Instead, this perspective highlights the need for theory and research to consider how the dynamics
among multi-level processes lead to outcomes of interest by imposing constraints on the manifestation of leadership. Here a
critical issue is that leadership, particularly top-level leadership, may be a relatively distal cause of organizational adaptation or
change as a leader's influence is affected by intermediate social –environmental processes. As such, future leadership theory needs
to better link aspects of leadership with intervening processes that ultimately create outcomes of interest, and it needs to do this
in a manner that does not confuse leadership perceptions with the effects of leaders or unit performance ( Kaiser et al., 2008; Lord
& Dinh, in press ).
Organizational processes also operate on multiple levels and time scales (i.e., some occurring faster or slower than others),
making it difficult for leaders to foresee how processes may interact and evolve over varying periods of time ( Kaiser et al., 2008).
Further, leadership may be qualitatively different at different organizational levels, requiring multiple ways to think about
leadership processes. As research on leadership and teams has shown, the duration of leadership processes and the temporal
ordering for when and how leadership occurs affects leadership effectiveness ( DeChurch et al., 2011; Morgeson, 2005).
Organizational scholars have also noted that individual, group, and organizational processes unfold differently across time spans
of seconds, minutes, days, months, and years ( Bluedorn & Jaussi, 2008; Langley et al., 2013; Sonnentag, 2012 ). In fact, research on
self-managing teams ( Klein et al., 2006; Morgeson, 2005 ) and organizational change (Klarner & Raisch, 2013) have identified
distinct temporal phases, each with specific kinds of leadership interventions and behaviors that would help optimize group and
organizational performance outcomes. For example, leaders can control the pace and speed at which organizational processes
occur; the synchrony among similar or different work activities (entrainment); worker's temporal focus (attending to the past,
present, and future); and the duration of work processes ( Bluedorn & Jaussi, 2008; Sonnentag, 2012). In addition, leaders can
influence others instantaneously (within seconds) through processes of emotional contagion ( Bono & Ilies, 2006; Sy, C té, &
Saavedra, 2005 ), or after a period of months or years as leadership actions cascade downwards in hierarchically structured
organizations ( Jaques, 1990). Hence, continuously evolving intra- and interpersonal processes can exhibit non-linear change
when the consequences of leadership (or external processes) are combined over time ( MacKay & Chia, 2013; Plowman et al.,
2007 ). This perspective presents a critical examination of cross-situational methods for investigating leadership, and it suggests
that attention to time and level of analysis are needed for the development of compositional and compilational leadership theory.
4.2. Advances in methodological approaches
Attention to process is important as it affects how leadership is researched. For instance, conceptualizing leadership phenomenon
as reflecting stable, global processes invites the use of methods (e.g., questionnaires, surveys) that are event non-specific as measures
aggregate within person and across different contexts and situations. While the use of retrospective questionnaires and surveys offer
a summary evaluation of leadership outcomes, these types of measures also overlook the significance of dynamic event-level
processes that create the uncertainty and variability that characterize leadership behavior and organizational phenomenon ( Dinh &
Lord, 2012; MacKay & Chia, 2013; Plowman et al., 2007 ). As findings from our review had shown (Table 6), there is an important
disconnect between quantitative and theoretical research. Quantitative research typically conceptualizes leadership processes
globally and so investigates leadership cross-situationally and within a single level of analysis. However, theoretical frameworks more
often advance compilational forms of emergence that consider how different leadership phenomenon evolve as a result of dynamic
interactive social processes that span multiple levels of analysis. Hence, quantitative research frequently tests leadership
phenomenon in a piece-meal fashion, and it often does so without attention to the importance of temporal ordering or the effect
that time has on leadership and organizations ( Lord et al., 2013; Langley et al., 2013; Sonnentag, 2012 ).
We also suspect that this issue reflects the way science progresses, such that the pace at which theory and methodological
approaches are developed can occur asynchronously depending on the perspectives and technology that are available at the time.
But it also likely that for most researchers, taken-for-granted methodological approaches reflecting common practices receives far
less scrutiny than the theoretical issues guiding hypotheses and interpretations of results. We should stress, however, that there
can be substantial gains from adopting methods that better align with theory. For example, categorization theories of leadership
perception were developed in the 1980s ( Lord, Foti, & De Vader, 1984) and posited that perceivers responded to patterns of
characteristics, yet it took 15 years to empirically investigate the effects of actual patterns ( Smith & Foti, 1998). Recent research
shows that including patterns increased the ability to predict leadership perception from an R
2of .21 to anR 2of .38 (Foti &
Hauenstein, 2007 ). As we described, discrepancies between theory and methods have also occurred in several areas of research
such as leading for creativity and innovation. Thus, we would encourage researchers to think more carefully about whether their
methodological approach adequately reflects underlying theory and to explore alternative methodological approaches. Table 6 also shows that very few quantitative and theoretical articles were characterized with a compositional ULP, which describe
processes that emerge isomorphically from lower to higher organizational levels (e.g., the emergence of shared team mental models
from individual procedural knowledge; see Table 3). However, the absence of compositional forms of emergence is perhaps
unsurprising given that isomorphic forms of aggregation occur gradually over time. For example, the emergence of unethical
53
J.E. Dinh et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 25 (2014) 36 –62 organizational climates from the actions of“bad apples ”(Ashforth, Gioia, Robinson, & Treviño 2008 ) may take months and years to
emerge, where isomorphic changes from individual to group to organizational level practices appear gradually, and thereby, are
imperceptible to observers ( Gino & Bazerman, 2009). Similarly, the emergence of organizational climates and cultures may involve
compositional processes that emerge through socialization processes ( Morrison, 2002), repeated enactment of leadership behaviors
( Dragoni, 2005 ), collective sensemaking ( Balogun & Johnson, 2004), and the sharing of stories and narratives within larger social
networks ( Zohar & Tenne-Gazit, 2008 ). As these examples show, compositional processes require time and may not be easily
captured by research that ignores the longitudinal, multi-level processes that are inherent within leadership.
In light of these findings, efforts to advance leadership theory and research by moving from global to compositional and
compilational perspectives will require methodological approaches that enable the testing of dynamic processes that span
multiple levels of analysis and over different periods of time. As Weinhardt and Vancouver (2012)suggest, one viable approach to
understanding dynamic multi-level processes associated with leadership and organizational systems is to use computational
modeling, which are mathematical models that can be specified to simulate the evolution of complex, non-linear systems.
Computational models have been employed to understand how interactive processes among intrapersonal variables affect the
dynamics of person construal ( Freeman & Ambady, 2011), personality (Read et al., 2010 ), and leadership perception ( Dinh & Lord,
2013 ). Computational modeling has also been used to investigate the emergence of leadership learning and development ( Black,
Oliver, Howell, & King, 2006 ) and a leader's role in facilitating team dynamics ( Dionne & Dionne, 2008; Dionne, Sayama, Hao, &
Bush, 2010 ). Because computational modeling can simulate the changing dynamics among simultaneously occurring processes in
real time, it can account for the uncertainty that characterizes real organizational systems ( MacKay & Chia, 2013), and thereby,
explain how leadership processes and contexts interact to create unintended consequences in the present and future ( Lord et al.,
in review ). In this way, computational modeling offers a means to incorporate context into leadership theory and its analytical
capacities can advance findings offered by event-level methodological approaches and more typical statistical analyses.
Additionally, the use event-level methodologies (e.g., Fleeson, 2001; see alsoDinh & Lord, 2012; Morgeson, 2005 ) and
network analysis (e.g., Balkundi et al., 2011; Fowler & Christakis, 2008; Zohar & Tenne-Gazit, 2008 ) can offer additional
technologies for understanding dynamic individual and group processes. In fact, by sampling specific points in time, scholars can
clarify how specific contexts, events, and processes that occur internally (e.g., emotions, embodiment) and interpersonally (e.g.,
emotional contagion) impact how leadership relates to phenomena like leader flexibility ( Lord et al., 2011), leader perception and
influence ( Giessner & Schubert, 2007; Sy et al., 2005, 2010 ), and performance in dynamic team and organizational contexts
( Crawford & LePine, 2013; Klein et al., 2006; Plowman et al., 2007 ). Examining event-level processes may help separate
leadership performance and leadership perception processes, which have heretofore been confounded in much leadership
research ( Kaiser et al., 2008 ). Although these methodological approaches depend on measures that are assessed explicitly or
reflectively, recent leadership research has employed implicit measures that capture processes occurring automatically, operating
below the level of conscious awareness (e.g., Johnson & Lord, 2010; Leavitt, Reynolds, Barnes, Schilpzand, & Hannah, 2012;
Randolph-Seng & Gardner, 2013 ). Importantly, the use of implicit and explicit measures can provide insight on how interactive
processes occurring within relatively short temporal time scales (milliseconds to minutes) affect leadership decision-making and
organizational behavior (e.g., Kleiman & Hassin, 2011; Verplanken & Holland, 2002 ).
Researchers can implement techniques more common in neurological and social-cognitive studies to explore how rapidly
occurring individual and interpersonal processes can create cascading effects on leadership outcomes. For example, visualization
techniques have been employed to explore how affective experiences affect memory and cognition ( Naidoo, Kohari, Lord, &
DuBois, 2010 ); verbal patterns and voice quality have been analyzed using computer technology, predicting historians' ratings of
U.S. presidents and Canadian prime ministers ( DeGroot, Aime, Johnson, & Kluemper, 2011); and research that creatively
manipulates subtle environmental cues (e.g., Ashton-James, van Baaren, Chartrand, Decety, & Karremans, 2007; Giessner &
Schubert, 2007 ) has begun to explore how physical embodiment affects leadership emergence and social influence. Other
methodological approaches might include neuroimaging technology, which has unraveled the neurological basis for leadership
complexity in decision-making and influence ( Hannah, Balthazard, Waldman, Jennings, & Thatcher, 2013
). It is also likely that
greater use
of EEG and fMRI technologies will allow future research to test theories in more sophisticated ways. Neuroscience has
made impressive progress in understanding emotional and self-relevant circuits, and it may be possible to understand reactions
to leadership in terms of relevance to such circuits. Despite our recommendations for dynamic research designs that capture events occurring across time, we do not intend to
argue that well-designed cross-sectional research should be abandoned. Such designs, especially at initial stages of inquiry on
specific research topics, may be very beneficial. Indeed, before pursuing refined longitudinal research on a topic of interest, it is
useful to determine if a specific research topic offers promise for better understanding leadership. For example, if a new approach
to leadership is found to explain no incremental variance in outcomes beyond existing approaches, it may not be worth pursuing.
Cross-sectional research employing multiple sources of data and adequately controlling for established leadership approaches
could certainly serve such purposes. If such research does in fact reveal potential for a new approach to leadership via the
discovery of non-redundant relationships to salient outcomes, then longitudinal research methods using varying time intervals
advocated in the current article may be employed. Indeed, the use of multiple methods for testing hypotheses is a hallmark of
solid scientific research. Additionally, it is not within the realm of possibility to test entire theories in a single investigation.
Although doing so may be valuable for addressing some hypotheses, it certainly should not be a requirement for all leadership
research. Thus, our recommendations for creative new research designs for the study of leadership are not meant to suggest that
there no longer remains value in cross-sectional field research. Instead, we contend that the methods recommended complement
cross-sectional designs by providing an enhanced level of detail and incorporation of contextual variables.
54 J.E. Dinh et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 25 (2014) 36 –62 4.3. LimitationsIn this article, we developed a framework that emphasizes the importance of process, which we used to organize and describe
a vast array of leadership theories. Although the framework's underlying structure could be applied towards the classification of
any leadership theory, there are several limitations that apply to how this framework was described and applied within the
context of this article. First, due to the extensive reach of the leadership literature, it is impossible to thoroughly describe how this
framework could be applied to each leadership theory. As such, we note that the select leadership theories that we used to
illustrate each form of emergence represent areas of research that are especially familiar to the authors and serve only to illustrate
the application of our framework rather than to signify the relative importance of one theory to the next.
Another limitation worthy of mention is that we focused on classifying leadership theories in top-tier research outlets, which
may have excluded theory and research on leadership domains that are flourishing in other publication journals. For example,
leadership research can also be found in many educational journals and those that focus on management in the public sector (e.g.,
Human Relations ,Journal of Management Studies ). Hence, although our review makes an effort towards unifying leadership theory
and offers general conclusions on the state of the field, we note that a far more comprehensive understanding of the field and its
development can be obtained by including perspectives provided by both academic and organizational practitioners. This
approach can offer a more balanced perspective for understanding the kinds of processes that impact leaders or are used by
leaders to affect organizations, organizational members, and societies. One final limitation of our approach is that we often compare the recent growth of leadership research to trends identified by
prior scholars who utilized a traditional non-quantitative review approach (e.g., House & Aditya, 1997), rather than our data
driven approach. It may be the case that some different conclusions would be drawn if we employed a comparison using a data
driven approach over a longer period of time, rather than comparing traditional reviews to our data driven review method.
5. Conclusion
AsKaiser et al. (2008) acknowledged in their review, leaders are influential in determining the fate of their organizations
through their decisions, strategies, and influence on others. This sentiment has been shared by many scholars across multiple
disciplinary fields, which has contributed to the rapid proliferation of leadership research over the last decade. As our review of
the leadership field has shown, leadership theory and research, while primarily published in LQ(59% of the coded articles), has
extended beyond LQand into the purview of other top-tier publication outlets over the last decade. Our review has also shown
that since the start of the new millennium, we have witnessed the growth of emerging leadership theories such as neurological
perspectives on leadership, and the continued proliferation of theories relating to leading for creativity and innovation, toxic/dark
leadership, and strategic leadership. Several established leadership theories continue to capture the interest of the field including
neo-charismatic, information processing, trait, and leader– follower exchange theories. However, other leadership theories have
not witnessed significant growth, including behavioral approaches, contingency theory, and path-goal theory. Overall, the growth
and development of the leadership field presents both exciting new possibilities and challenges that confront scholars as they
navigate the complexities of a field that has become increasingly diverse and rich in theoretical insight.
Our review also shows how much the leadership field has developed in recent decades. To date, we have identified a total of 66
different leadership theory domains. Although this diversity has brought forth novel perspectives that enrich our knowledge of
leadership, it also presents several challenges that future research must address. Notably, future research needs to develop
integrative perspectives that consider how disparate leadership theories relate or operate simultaneously to influence the
emergence of leadership phenomena. We have argued that attention to these dynamic processes as they unfold over time and
across different levels of analysis is critical because it helps capture the complexity that defines real individual, group, and
organizational systems. However, efforts to advance leadership theory and research will require that we pay attention to the
processes that underlie phenomenon and occur at multiple levels of analysis. By understanding how leaders influence underlying
processes that lead to organizational outcomes , scholars can also develop integrative perspectives that unify diverse theories and
stimulate novel leadership research in the new millennium. Yet, attention to non-linear forms of emergence may also require that
our technologies and methodologies advance in order to capture or simulate the dynamics postulated by compositional and
compilational theories.
As a field, we have amassed an extensive body of research and theory that has solidified the importance of leadership in
organizational science. However, we also know much more about the outcomes of leadership than the processes that affect the
emergence of these outcomes. For example, these processes include followers, as well as momentary (e.g., active identities) and
more enduring structures (e.g., goal orientation climate, ethical culture), that are influenced by leaders. Additionally, leaders are
embedded within organizational systems that are continually evolving, creating a more complex picture for understanding how
individuals think,feel , and behave in response to changing events. Leadership may also involve collaborative team processes,
bottom-up follower-based processes, as well as more typical hierarchical, top-down influences. This view challenges the stability
and certainty that is typically found within the dominant leader-centric, global, trait-oriented thematic category that have defined
the field. By inviting scholars to consider how processes change and evolve as they are influenced by context, as well as by
leadership occurring from multiple sources within organizations, leadership theory can move closer to the outcomes we seek to
explain. Linking processes to outcomes can advance theory, and it will also provide a firmer basis for leadership interventions. Finally, it is important to recognize the reasons no unified theory of leadership currently exist. Leadership theory emphasizes
many outcomes, from how leaders are perceived to how leaders affect unit performance; it involves actions of group members
55
J.E. Dinh et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 25 (2014) 36 –62 (Day, 2000 ) as well as those of formal leaders; it has been applied to levels that include events, individuals, dyads, groups,
organizations, and political systems; it has focused on immediate and delayed effects; and it often incorporates contextual
differences. Thus, it is not surprising that leadership involves 66 different theoretical domains and a wide variety of
methodological approaches. A unique aspect of LQis that it welcomes this diversity in conceptualization and approaches to
leadership, helping to create a vibrant, developing, and relevant scientific domain. We have provided a summary of the field in the
first 12 years of this millennium, along with a variety of assessments and recommendations. We hope that it will provide a useful
cornerstone for future developments in leadership in the years to come.
Thematic category
number Thematic category title Leadership theories & content within thematic category
1 Neo-charismatic theories These articles discussed transformational and/or charismatic leadership topics, e.g., concepts of
charisma, consequences of charismatic leadership. Sometimes the focus was on transformational
leadership; at other times the only focus was charismatic leadership. Frequently, both
transformational and charismatic leadership were mentioned, resulting in a category that combined
these two. This thematic category also includes inspirational, Pygmalion effects, visionary,
self-sacrificing and ideological/pragmatic, full-range and outstanding leadership theories.
(Representative articles:Antonakis, Avolio, & Sivasubramaniam, 2003 ; Bono & Judge, 2004;Judge et
al., 2004; Mumford, Antes, Caughron, & Friedrich, 2008 )
2 Information processing theories This thematic category includes articles which pertained to cognitive approaches to information processing and decision making processes in leadership including attribution
theories, leader and follower cognitions (e.g., perceptions), the connectionist approach, and
implicit leadership theories.
(Representative articles:Lord & Hall, 2005; Lord & Shondrick, 2011; Martinko, Harvey, &
Douglas, 2007 )
3 Social exchange/relational leadership theories This thematic category includes leadership theories with a relational focus, including Leader
–
Member Exchange Theory (LMX), individualized leadership, vertical dyad linkage and related
relational leadership theories.
(Representative articles: Uhl-Bien, 2006; Brower, Schoorman, & Tan, 2000; Shin & Zhou, 2003 )
4 Dispositional/trait theories This thematic category includes articles that looked at individual differences in leaders and investigated specific traits, abilities or clusters of abilities that contribute to leadership
effectiveness. It includes the traditional trait approach, as well as other newer approaches, i.e.,
nature of managerial traits, managerial attributes, skills and competence, situational relevance
of skills, and leader motive profile theory (LMP).
(Representative articles:Judge & Bono, 2000; Zaccaro, 2007 )
5 Diversity & cross-cultural leadership theories The focus of this thematic category is on domestic and cross-cultural issues of leadership. Diversity
theories investigate the experiences of women and minorities in leadership positions, and of
diverse followers within domestic borders, e.g., the benefits of more women leaders, the
challenges facing women in leadership roles. The cross-cultural thematic category includes articles
comparing the leadership processes of one culture to another, or looking at leadership in non-US
populations to discern if European/US leadership theories applied in such settings/culture, country
& attributes of leadership, universality, cultural & institutional changes, differences in Leadership
across cultures, leadership in the multinational firm, and the GLOBE Project.
(Representative articles:
Eagly & Chin, 2010; Kirkman, Chen, Farh, Chen, & Lowe, 2009;
Walumbwa, Lawler, & Avolio, 2007 )
6 Follower centric theories Theories that prioritize the follower in the leader –follower pairing comprised this thematic
category. Specifically, it includes articles investigated follower attributes related to the
leadership process (e.g., identity, motivation, and values), the active roles follower play in
leader –follower dynamics, romance of leadership (RoL), and follower outcomes. Articles with
aesthetic perspectives in leadership that investigated follower's subjective evaluation of leader
qualities through aesthetic senses were included in this category.
(Representative articles: Bligh, 2011; Hansen, Ropo, & Sauer, 2007; Howell & Shamir, 2005 )
7 Behavioral theories This thematic category focuses on research using the leadership behavior frameworks of The Ohio
State University Leadership Studies (OSU/LBDQ), and Michigan Leadership Studies, nature and
consequences of participative, shared leadership , delegation, empowerment of leadership, studies
on task-oriented behavior and initiating stru cture, and people or relations-oriented and
individualized consideration behavior, critical incidents, the high-high leader, leadership behavior
taxonomies, and specific task behaviors. Studies that focused on leadership punishment or reward
behaviorswereincludedaswell.
(Representative articles: Carson et al., 2007; Podsakoff, Bommer, Podsakoff, & MacKenzie, 2006 )
8 Contingency theories This thematic category includes articles where the leader adjusted to the situation, or adjusted
the situation to fit him- or herself. This included the Lease Preferred Coworker (LPC)
contingency model, path-goal theory of leadership, leadership substitution theory, situational
leadership theory, multiple linkage model, cognitive resources theory, applications for
adaptive leadership, life cycle theory of leadership, and normative decision model, and flexible
leadership theory.
(Representative articles:Keller, 2006; Vroom & Jago, 2007; Yukl, 2008 )
9 Power and influence theories The focus of this thematic category is on the concepts of power and influence, power types and
sources, consequences of position and personal power, impression management and influence
Appendix A. Leadership theory coding scheme
56 J.E. Dinh et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 25 (2014) 36 –62 Appendix A(continued )
Thematic category
number Thematic category title
Leadership theories & content within thematic category
tactics, and political skills. The focal level of analysis for these influence and political tactics is
dyadic, group and organizational as opposed to institutional, regional, and societal.
(Representative articles:Ammeter, Douglas, Gardner, Hochwarter, & Ferris, 2002; Treadway,
Hochwarter, Ferris, Kacmar, Douglas,
et al., 2004 )
10 Strategic leadership This thematic category addresses leadership phenomena at the highest levels of organizations
and how executive leaders influence organizational performance. The focal level of analysis
involves CEO or other top leader and/or top-management teams (TMT) at the upper echelon
levels of the organization. Topics include constraints on executives, top management teams
and leadership succession, upper echelon theory, conditions affecting the need for strategic
leadership, and effects of CEO leadership. This category also includes research on public
leadership, e.g., president, professional politicians, as these individuals direct large bureau-
cracies, determine strategy, and are commonly viewed as reasons for success or failure of
public initiatives in parallel with their corporate counterparts.
(Representative articles:Boal & Hooijberg, 2001; Vera & Crossan, 2004 )
11 Contextual leadership theories This thematic category addresses leadership in specific arenas, such as the military or
education setting and how leadership practices often are constrained by contextual variables
(i.e., period of time in organizational processes), or environmental characteristics (i.e., whether
conflict pervades). Articles dealing with the contextual theory of Osborn et al. (2002)were also
placed in this category. To contribute to this thematic category, authors must explicitly indicate
that the primary article focus is on contextual factors.
(Representative articles: Osborn et al., 2002; Porter & McLaughlin, 2006 )
12 Complexity and systems
leadership theories Articles in this thematic category encompass catastrophe or complexity theory, with the
concept of complex adaptive systems (CAS) and encompassed how complexity theory was
useful in describing how leaders can be successful in turbulent environments. Social network
and integrative perspectives of leadership were also included.
(Representative articles:
Avolio, 2007; Balkundi & Kilduff, 2006; Marion & Uhl-Bien, 2002;
Schneider & Somers, 2006; Uhl-Bien, Marion, & McKelvey, 2007 )
13 Team leadership This thematic category includes articles where teams were the primary focus, or the articles
attempted to apply one or more leadership theories to team settings in a novel fashion. The
focal level of analysis involves teams and groups at the mid- and lower-level echelons of the
organization. Topics include the nature of leadership in different types of teams, determinants
of team performance, procedures for facilitating team learning, guidelines for team building,
and leadership function in decision making in groups.
(Representative articles:Mehra, Smith, Dixon, & Robertson, 2006; Zaccaro, Rittman, & Marks,
2002 )
14 Leadership emergence
& development Articles that prescribed or described pathways or processes by which leaders came to possess
leadership capacity, follower recognition of leadership status, and a systems perspective of
leadership development defined this thematic category. Specific topics include leadership
training programs, designing effective training, specific techniques of leadership training,
learning from experience, developmental activities, self-help activities, facilitating conditions
for leadership development, development and identification of leaders, and leadership
assessment, appraisal and selection.
(Representative articles:
Day, 2001; Wolff et al., 2002 )
15 Ethical/moral leadership
theories This thematic category encompasses leadership theories that have in common a core focus on
altruistic behaviors. These theories of ethical leadership investigate leader moral priorities,
including how an ethical orientation toward leadership is developed; how an ethical approach
to leadership is important; the consequences of ethical leadership and how it can be sustained.
Authentic servant and spiritual leadership theories are also classified in this thematic category.
(Representative articles:
Avolio & Gardner, 2005; Brown et al., 2005; Fry, 2003; Liden et al., 2008 )
16 Leading for creativity & change Articles in this thematic category investigated creative leadership processes from a variety of
perspectives, covering topics like innovation and organizational learning. Articles in this
thematic category also dealt with leader's roles in organizational change, or larger social
changes in society or government, e.g., developing a vision, implementing changes, and
influencing organizational culture. These changes were spurred by direct or indirect actions of
leaders.
(Representative articles:Denis, Lamothe, & Langley, 2001; Jaussi & Dionne, 2003; Mumford,
Scott, Gaddis, & Strange, 2002 )
17 Identity-based leadership theories This thematic category includes self-concept and social identity approaches to leadership, i.e.,
studies adopting the work of Hogg and colleagues on leader categorization theory and studies
adopting other social identity and self-concept frameworks.
(Representative articles:Hogg, 2001; Van Knippenberg et al., 2004 )
18 Emotions and leadership Articles in this thematic category encompass leaders' and followers' affect, and a variety of
influences that emotions, positive and negative, have at all levels of leadership both on the
leader and follower.
(Representative articles:Bono & Ilies, 2006; Dasborough & Ashkanasy, 2002; Humphrey, 2002 )
19 Destructive leadership This thematic category encompasses cases where leaders misbehaved, acted in ways contrary
to the well-being of followers and/or the organization, and the setting where they were
leaders, including abusive leadership, toxic leadership, and followers' susceptibility and
(continued on next page)57
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Appendix A (continued )
Thematic category
number Thematic category title
Leadership theories & content within thematic category
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20 Biological approaches to leadership This thematic category includes articles using a biological approach to examine the genetic and
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