Reviewing Leadership Styles: Overlaps and the Need for a New ‘Full‐Range’ Theory

• Author: Peter Y. T. Sun,Marc H. Anderson
• Published date: 01 January 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12082
• Date: 01 January 2017

International Journal of Management Reviews, Vol. 19, 76–96 (2017)

DOI: 10.1111/ijmr.12082

Reviewing Leadership Styles:

Overlaps and the Need for a New

‘Full-Range’ Theory

Marc H. Anderson and Peter Y. T. Sun1

Department of Management, College of Business, Iowa State University, 2350 Gerdin Business Building, Ames, IA

50011-1350, USA 1Centre for Enterprise & Leadership, Waikato Management School, University of Waikato,

Hamilton 3240, New Zealand

Corresponding author email: mha@iastate.edu

A central topic in leadership research concerns the impact of leadership style – the

pattern of attitudes that leaders hold and behaviors they exhibit. Since the year 2000,

several new leadership styles have been proposed to capture important missing aspects

beyond the dominant charismatic/transformational and transactional framework. The

authors review the emerging literature on these new styles – ideological leadership,

pragmatic leadership, authentic leadership, ethical leadership, spiritual leadership,

distributed leadership, and integrativepublic leadership – as well as the recent work on

servantleadership. They also comment on the Ohio State studies on leadership, and then

discuss the ways in which these many styles overlap with transformational leadership

and each other, and issue a call to leadership researchers to collectively develop a new

‘full-range’ model of leadershipthat encompasses and distills what is unique about these

various styles. The authors argue that such an integrated full-range model is necessary

for research on leadership style to progress.

Introduction

Suddaby (2010) stressed the need for construct clar-

ity in management research and the need to ‘create

precise and parsimonious categorical distinctions be-

tween concepts’ and to ‘show their semantic relation-

ship to other related constructs’ (Suddaby 2010, p.

347). Nowhere is this need more apparent than in the

burgeoning literature on leadership styles.

The ‘dominant conceptualization of leader-

ship in organizational behavior’ is the charis-

matic/transformational style (Judge et al. 2008,

p. 335), a style often contrasted with a trans-

actional style. Our examination of the abstracts1

1These abstracts came from the following journals: The

Leadership Quarterly,Academy of Management Journal,

Academy of Management Review,Journal of Applied Psy-

chology,Journal of Management,Journalof Organizational

Behavior,Journal of Management Studies,Organizational

of articles concerning leadership over the period

2000–2014 found that a staggering 22.7% (275

of 1212 articles) addressed transformational lead-

ership. Research since 2000 has examined a bewil-

dering number of other leadership styles, includ-

ing shared/distributed (37 mentions), authentic (34),

ethical (29), initiating structure and consideration

(24), integrative public (15), spiritual (15), prag-

matic/ideological (14) and servant (12).

Other adjectives used by researchers to modify

the noun ‘leadership’ to describe styles of leader-

ship include: empowering,2responsible, directive,

Behavior and Human Decision Processes,Administration

Science Quarterly,andOrganization Science.

2In reviewing the overlaps of the leadership styles, we have

omitted certain styles of leadership, such as empowering and

responsible leadership. As can be appreciated, it is difficult

to consider all the many styles in a single manuscript. Em-

powering leadership is defined as ‘leader behaviors directed

at individuals or entire teams and consisting of delegating

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Reviewing Leadership Styles 77

self-sacrificial, Pygmalion, paternalistic, heroic,

despotic, egotistical, altruistic, relational, e-

leadership and functional. Even the list presented

thus far is not exhaustive, as still other terms are

used in such a way that it is unclear whether they

are describing leadership styles or merely contexts

where leadership is required: project leadership,

cross-cultural leadership, global leadership, female

leadership and political leadership. We confine this

review to the most frequently studied newer styles

– ideological, pragmatic, servant, authentic, ethical,

spiritual, integrative public and shared/distributed –

and comment on the classic consideration and initiat-

ing structure styles. We also briefly review the most

widely researched transformational, charismatic and

transactional leadership styles.3

Although there are reviews of several of

these leadership styles individually (e.g. charis-

matic/transformational – van Knippenberg and Sitkin

(2013); authentic – Gardner et al. (2011); servant –

van Dierendonck (2011)), this reviewdiffers by exam-

ining each of these nine styles, including an examina-

tion of the dominant transformational/transactional

paradigm, which then sets the stage for discussing

the hugely important question of whether and how

these styles differ from each other. This leads us to

authority to employees, promoting their self-directed and au-

tonomous decision making, coaching, sharing of informa-

tion, and asking for input’ (Sharma and Kirkman 2015, p.

194). Arnold et al. (2000) reported correlations between the

dimensions of empowering leadership (i.e. leading byexam-

ple, coaching, participatory decision making, informing, and

showing concern) and initiating structure and consideration

that were all high and significant (the minimum value was

0.62, and all correlations were significant at p=0.001). We

direct readers to the recent review of empoweringleadership

by Sharma and Kirkman (2015), who note overlaps that it

has with transformational leadership, though they argue that

transformational leaders may not necessarily transfer control

and powerto followers, which is central to empowering lead-

ership. Wedo not review responsible leadership in this paper

because the bulk of the literature on this style is found in one

recent issue of the Academy of Management Perspectives

(August 2014), and this falls outside the journals reviewed.

We believe it is premature to assess whether this leader-

ship style is simply ‘good’ leadership that is seen across all

other leadership styles, or is unique and transcends the styles

we discussed. We note, however, that Waldman and Balven

(2014, pp. 231–232) mention the conceptual overlapbetween

responsible leadership and the transformational, ethical and

servant leadership styles.

3Wedo not examine leader–member exchange (LMX) theory,

as this is not a style of leadership, but rather a concept that

describes the strength and the type of relationship between

leader and follower.

conclude in the Discussion section that it is time

for a new ‘full-range’ conceptualization of leader-

ship style that encompasses what is distinctive about

these newer styles, in order to bring some integra-

tion to the chaos that characterizes the existing lit-

erature on leadership styles. We begin with a brief

review of charismatic/transformational leadership

style.

Charismatic and transformational

leadership

Charismatic leadership

The first models of charismatic leadership styles ap-

peared in the late-1970s (see Conger 1999, for a

history). Charismatic leadership is characterized by

leaders who articulate an inspirational vision of a

desirable future that motivates followers to sacrifice

their self-interests and devote exceptional effort to

the causes advocated by the leader. Studies by Con-

ger and Kanungo (1994) support a five-factor model

consisting of being sensitive to constraints, threats

and opportunities in the external environment, artic-

ulating an appealing strategic vision, taking personal

risks, exhibiting unconventional behavior, and being

sensitive to follower needs. House (1977) and House

and Podsakoff (1994) argue that charismatic leaders

exude passion and self-confidence, engage in self-

sacrificial behavior and promote a collective identity,

role model desirable behavior,establish high expecta-

tions for followersand express confidence that follow-

ers can achieve them. These behaviors help explain

the inspirational influence on followers that charis-

matic leaders have. They are seen by their followers

as having extraordinary abilities and qualities. Their

personal magnetism and visionary appeals cause fol-

lowers to identify personally with their leaders, and

internalize their leaders’ goals, values and beliefs, re-

sulting in followers desiring to emulate their leaders

(House 1977).

A crucial question is how morality factors into

charismatic leadership. Many are disturbed by the

fact that some charismatic leaders engage in un-

ethical behavior – what scholars have termed the

‘dark side’ of charisma. Such concerns are addressed

in what has become the most influential distinc-

tion between types of charismatic leaders: socialized

vs personalized (Howell and Shamir 2005). Social-

ized charismatic leaders transcend their own self-

interests, empowering and developing their follow-

ers and articulating visions that serve the collective

C2015 British Academy of Management and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.