A Network Analysis of Leadership Theory
By Jeremy D. Meuser, W. Gardner, Jessica E. Dinh, Jinyu Hu, R. Liden, R. Lord. 2016
163 citations recorded by the source corpus.
We investigated the status of leadership theory integration by reviewing 14 years of published research (2000 through 2013) in 10 top journals (864 articles). The authors of these articles examined 49 leadership approaches/theories, and in 293 articles, 3 or more of these leadership approaches were included in their investigations. Focusing on these articles that reflected relatively extensive integration, we applied an inductive approach and used graphic network analysis as a guide for drawing conclusions about the status of leadership theory integration. All 293 articles included in the analysis identified 1 focal theory that was integrated with 2 or more supporting leadership theories. The 6 leadership approaches most often appearing as the focal theory were transformational leadership, charismatic leadership, strategic leadership, leadership and diversity, participative/shared leadership, and the trait approach to leadership. On the basis of inductive reflections on our analysis, we make two key observations. First, the 49 focal leadership theories qualify as middle-range theories that are ripe for integration. Second, drawing from social network theory, we introduce the term “theoretical neighborhood” to describe the focal theoretical networks. Our graphical inductive analyses reveal potential connections among neighboring middle-range leadership theories that merit investigation and, hence, identify promising future directions for achieving greater theoretical integration. We provide an online supplement with 10 additional leadership theory graphs and analyses: leadership in teams and decision groups, ethical leadership, leader and follower cognitions, leadership emergence, leadership development, emotions and leadership, implicit leadership, leader-member exchange, authentic leadership, and identity and identification process theories of leadership.
Subfields: General Health Professions, Management Science and Operations Research, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/acc6caf6d5f3fd521b188534a583c4f5bbc6c80c
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In General Health Professions
In Management Science and Operations Research
In Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management
- Karolina W. Nieberle
- John Antonakis
- J. Dietz
- Susanne Braun
- Thomas Fischer
- Jens Rowold
- Andromachi Athanasopoulou
- S. Dopson
Citations in the corpus
- Authentic leadership extends beyond work: A multilevel model of work-family conflict and enrichment (2017, background): “Furthermore, Meuser et al. (2016) located authentic leadership (but not ethical or servant leadership) in a leadership and emotions network.”
- Shared leadership: A state-of-the-art review and future research agenda (2018, unknown): “Compared with a leadership structure in which leadership is centralized around one leader, shared leadership entails the view that leadership influence is “broadly distributed” across team members (Carson et al., 2007; Meuser et al., 2016).”
- Leadership Process Models: A Review and Synthesis (2017, result): “Similarly, in an analysis of middlerange leadership theories (Meuser et al., 2016), transformational and trait approaches emerged as focal theories.”