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Leadership Theories: Which Are Most Studied? Which Are Most Googled?

9/22/2014

8 Comments

 
Picture
Books on leadership are big business. We read for enjoyment and to be informed by CEOs and other business, military, and government leaders. However, the most informed writings on leadership may be from leadership scholars who conduct research to understand leadership and its processes. Leadership scholars publish their findings in academic journals, journals rarely read by leaders and managers in the workplace. So which leadership theories have been studied the most this century? 

Jessica Dinh, Robert Lord, and their colleagues recently published a most interesting study in The Leadership Quarterly. They examined the top ten academic journals that published leadership research for a ten year period, 2000-2012. The top three journals were The Leadership Quarterly (442 articles), Journal of Applied Psychology (125), and the Academy of Management Journal (45).

The researchers found 752 leadership research articles. They then analyzed each one, categorizing the study as to the leadership theory or theories studied. Their article includes a detailed, comprehensive table identifying 41 established leadership theories and 26 emerging theories, 67 overall. The leadership theories listed most frequently in the studies were:
  • transformational (20%)
  • traits (16%)
  • leader-member exchange (15%)
Among the other theories were:
  • Authentic leadership (4%)
  • Behavioral approaches (OSU/LBDQ) (2%)
  • Servant leadership (1%)
  • Path-goal theory (1%)
  • Contingency leadership theory (1%)
How well does the academic research reflect overall popular interest in particular theories? To gauge this, I entered terms in a Google trend search. Which are the most googled theories? The results are shown in the figure.
  • Yellow –Transformational leadership 
  • Blue – Servant Leadership
  • Green – Leadership Traits
  • Red – Authentic Leadership
  • Purple – Leader-member Exchange
Transformational leadership ranks first in both. Trait approaches are in the top three in both. But servant leadership ranks second in google searches but has very few empirical studies.

My take-aways:

1.  The classic approaches to leadership in textbooks (trait, behavioral, contingency) generate very little research today. Most of the research on these theories is historical.

2.  One of the most popular leadership theories, servant leadership, generated very little research during this period. Studies of authentic leaders fared somewhat better. More research is needed on servant leadership and authentic leadership.

3.  Almost 60% of the leadership studies identified in Denh et al.’s analyses were in The Leadership Quarterly, now celebrating its 25th year of publication. The Leadership Quarterly appears to be required reading for anyone who wants to stay abreast of the latest research on leadership.  

Dinh, J. E., Lord, R. G., Gardner, W. L., Meuser, J. D., Liden, R. C., & Hu, J. (2014). Leadership theory and research in the new millennium: Current theoretical trends and changing perspectives. The Leadership Quarterly, 25, 36-62.

Image of trends for these leadership approaches made using Google Trends™ tool. Google and the Google logo are registered trademarks of Google Inc., used with permission.  http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%22servant%20leadership%22%2C%20%22authentic%20leadership%22%2C%20%22transformational%20leadership%22%5C%2C%20%22leadership%20traits%22%2C%20%22leader-member%20exchange%22&date=1%2F2004%2097m&cmpt=q    

8 Comments
Ron Koller link
10/6/2014 09:34:32 am

John, very informative. I would NOT have expected transformational leadership to be as high as it was on Google trends. How are Google trends similar or different that what you'd expect from what you and/or your students are uncovering in academic work?

Reply
John Ballard
10/6/2014 09:47:17 am

I was surprised by the "transformational leadership" trend on Google also. However, it is the dominant approach in the journals the past two or more decades. The biggest difference is the lack of published peer-reviewed studies on servant leadership.

Reply
Eric Sanders
10/12/2014 02:45:11 am

First, I had to smile when I saw Ron Koller having posted a comment on this topic. I'm not at all surprised. Second, I've seen transformational leadership connected with emotional intelligence (EI) over the past 10 years or so, with EI as an enabling ability. Have you looked at trends or correlations between those topics?

John Ballard
10/12/2014 03:29:47 am

Eric, thanks for the post. I haven't seen the EI/Transformation research but it makes sense. House & Baetz (1979) emphasized that leadership always occurs with respect to others so there are practical implications. High EI makes sense.

House, R. J., & Baetz, M. L. (1979). Leadership: Some empirical generalizations and new research directions. In B. M. Staw (Ed.), Research in Organizational Behavior,1: 341-423. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.

Reply
Ron K.
12/11/2014 10:12:45 am

Eric ... hah ... nice try keeping John's blog a secret! That is all changing b/c I'm telling everyone in OD that I know about it and I know a lot of people!!

Reply
Nicholas Twigg
10/17/2014 03:32:53 am

Transformational Leadership Theory (Bass, et al.,1985 and on) contains many aspects of Servant, Authentic, even Spiritual leadership theories. These "other" leadership Theories are often not tested scientifically (using the techniques covered under Transformational Leadership Theory) and I consider a lot of them as "hand waving". Even some of the most prestigious journals have fallen into the generic transformational leadership discussions which are NOT Transformational Leadership Theory (TL Theory). TL theory maintains a TL leadership style is only transformational to the extent it augments the Transactional Leadership (TA) Style (Bass, 1985). The Leadership Quarterly and AMJ have published studies on transformational leadership which do not even measure TA and therefore do not measure TL Theory. In complete disclosure I have published a few papers which conclude Spiritual Leadership (when measured as a humanistic/psychological construct and not a religious construct) is contained in TL Theory measures (Twigg, 2004, presented at the Academy of Management Annual Meeting in New Orleans; Twigg & Parayitam, 2006, 2007; Twigg, Wyld, & Brown, 2001). Just a thought.

Reply
John Ballard
10/17/2014 04:00:46 am

Great addition to this discussion, Nicholas. I'll take a closer look at this literature.

Reply
Don Currier link
2/28/2017 03:33:52 pm

Recently needed to dive into leadership literature - something I hadn't done since grad school many years ago - and stumbled upon this blog article. THANK YOU! I had a very limited amount of time to conduct a lit review, and your short little article gave me a tremendous amount to work with and your addition of the google search trend made it current. As an empiricist, I greatly appreciate your making this task so easy! I also used other sources, of course, but you helped me sum it all up very nicely.

Reply



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