A meta-analytic review of leadership impact research: Experimental and quasi-experimental studies

By Bruce J. Avolio, R. Reichard, S. Hannah, Fred Walumbwa, A. Chan. 2009

494 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract In this study we set out to conduct a comprehensive quantitative research analysis of literature reporting results on the causal impact of leadership by focusing on examining what we refer to as ‘leadership interventions.’ We defined leadership interventions as those studies where the researcher overtly manipulated leadership as the independent variable through training, assignment, scenario or other means. Our focus included both examining experimental and quasi-experimental as well as lab and field studies conducted in public and private organizations. Our goal was to address a simple question: do leadership interventions have the intended impact and if so to what degree? We conducted a comprehensive review of the published and unpublished literature and uncovered 200 lab and field studies that met our criterion as leadership intervention studies. We report here the findings of a series of meta-analyzed effects comparing the relative impact of leadership interventions across intervention types, leadership theories, and several common dependent variables. Overall, leadership interventions produced a 66% probability of achieving a positive outcome versus a 50–50 random effect for treatment participants, but this effect varied significantly when assessing moderators such as type of leadership theory.

Subfields: General Health Professions, Management Science and Operations Research, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7af43cef6bea0ba77a7f99747a4e58d6cf35bf4b

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In General Health Professions

In Management Science and Operations Research

In Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

Citations in the corpus

Can Charisma Be Taught? Tests of Two Interventions (2011, result): “Our results compare favorably with a recent meta-analysis, which for broad classes of leadership models found a medium effect size too (D .60; Avolio et al., 2009).”
Am I a Leader? Examining Leader Identity Development Over Time (2017, result): “Other studies used substantially shorter time frames (i.e., 3–6 h) but still found significant effects (see Avolio et al., 2009), which supports our confidence in the seven-week timescale.”
Transformational leadership and employee voice behavior : a Pygmalion mechanism. (2017, unknown): “We therefore highlight a Pygmalion mechanism that originates inherently from the intention of transformational leadership (Avolio et al., 2009; Bass & Avolio, 1994; Eden, 1984; Podsakoff et al., 1990), which has been neglected in voice behavior research when the role of transformational leadership…”
Estimating return on leadership development investment (2010, background): “Avolio et al. (2009) reported that the interventions included in their meta-analysis lasted from one to seven days.”
Talent management and organisational justice: employee reactions to high potential identification (2014, background): “Moreover, research on the effects of feedback has shown that positive feedback has a strong positive impact on employees’ behaviours and attitudes (Avolio et al., 2009).”
Mentoring Impact on Leader Efficacy Development: A Field Experiment (2011, background): “…or manager development initiatives varies widely across the nature of the intervention (e.g., length, focus, support, follow-up, etc.), and the theoretical framework supporting the in- 410 SeptemberAcademy of Management Learning & Education tervention (Avolio et al., 2009; Burke & Day, 1986).”
Advancing the social identity theory of leadership: A meta-analytic review of leader group prototypicality (2020, background): “Finally, a sign of the robustness of the evidence is that the research that has examined the social identity theory of leadership is characterized by a large proportion of experimental studies that can shed light on causality—something which is not the case for the general evidence base in leadershi”