Leadership Theories.

A
Literature Review.

Introduction
There are distinct epistemological lineages to the way academics
conceptualise and define Leadership. Some schools of thought view
leadership as a trait in a person, whereas some view it as a process
between the practitioner and the subjects, and there are still others
who view leadership as the coming together of the person and the
practice. There are also varied views on what branch of knowledge
does leadership belong to, there are voices that claim that
leadership is a subject of psychology and others who claim that it is
a discipline within management. This paper attempts to review
available literature on three of the many frameworks or
epistemological lineages in leadership, i.e., The Trait Approach,
Leader-Member Exchange Theory and Transformational Leadership.
As a beginning, a brief review of leading views on the definition of
leadership could be helpful. Peter Drucker who is regarded as the
father of modern management (Flaherty, 1999) suggests that
traditionally, leadership has been viewed as a process in which a
superior person included a group to pursue the goals established by
him. Drucker further suggests that the ethos of such traditional and
somewhat Palaeolithic view on leadership has been preserved and
passed on through the generations even to this day when people
see a leader as the indispensable man (Flaherty, 1999) (Smith,
2006), (Rothschild, 2008). Kruger (1995) sees leadership as the
human factor that leads an institution towards realising goals
through the voluntary co-operation of all people in the business, and
Kotter (1990) suggests that the purpose of leadership is to produce
change and movement in peoples conduct.
Reams of academic work is available on just the way how academics
define leadership, but it emerges that there are two distinct views
where one represents leadership as a phenomenon in social life in
general and the other as a skill or process in the management of an
organisation. Whereas both these views have been argued, what
further emerges after a process of distillation is that leadership or

leaders deal with people and their conduct, which then naturally
progresses us in to the investigation of what makes some people
leaders, and others followers, as also, if what does it take to lead.
The Trait Approach was one of the first systematic attempt to study
leadership (Northouse, 2007) with an intent to answer some of these
questions. Within the Traits framework, leadership is seen as an
outcome of the amalgamation of valued characteristics of peoples
personalities. It rests on the basic premise that with the presence of
some important charecteristics, like intelligence, insight, sociability,
integrity, charisma et.al., in a person, they could become a leader,
as represented in the works of Stogdill (1948), Mann (1959), Lord,
DeVader, &
Alliger (1986), Kirkpatrick & Locke (1991), and others. In contrast to
this personal charateristics based view, the Leader-Member
Exchange (LMX) theroy or approach sees leadership as a process.
Where people in leadership positions interact with other people in
the group based on their mutual roles, influences, exchanges and
interests, and harness the strengths and weakenesses of group
dynamics and individual motivational factors to realise their
objectives (Dansereau, Graen, & Haga, 1975), (Graen & Scandura,
1987), (Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995). Transformational Leadership
interestingly appears to bring the traits and LMX approaches
together, since it defines leadership as an engagement with people
to intrinsically motivate them to come together and join the leader,
and where in the process, the overall level of motivation in both the
followers, as well as interestingly, the leader rises. (Downtown,
1973), (Bass, 1985), (Avolio & Gibbons, 1988), (Jung, Chow, & Wu,
2003).

The three frameworks.

The Traits approach is built upon the premise that certain
characteristics in people make them leaders, where merely the
presence of these characterises puts people who possess them in a
position to lead others. Some such, most important and written
about traits (as mentioned earlier) are Intelligence, Self Confidence,
Determination, Integrity and sociability. Further research and
refinement in the theory during the last 30 years or so have
consolidated these characteristics in to what are called the Big Five

Personality Factors represented in the works of McCrae & Costa

(1987) and Goldberg (1990). These Big Five factors are: Neuroticism,
(the presence of the emotions of anxiety, vulnerability and hostility),
Extraversion (the ability to be sociable enough to strike
conversations, communicate freely without inhibitions, assertiveness
and over all spread of positive vibes), Openness (the ability to lend a
listening ear and be considerate to new ideas, to be well informed
and versed with new developments, and a sense of general curiosity
that leads to investigation and theorising), Agreeableness (the
ability to accept others views and opinions, garner trust, evolve
consensus), and finally Conscientiousness (the ability to make fair
judgements, be thorough, dependable and firmly decisive). In
subsequent research by Judge, Bono, Ilies, & Gerhardt (2002) on the
relationship of the big five factors and the practice of leadership, it
was concluded that having these personality traits was positively
correlated to being an effective leader. The Traits approach creates
a divorce between leadership and circumstances, it tries to
circumvent the idea that a person with some or many or even all of
these characteristics could be an effective leader because of the
presence of congenial circumstances and supporting followers, and
that if such circumstances were altered, then the effectiveness of
such a leader could be jeopardised (as suggested in situational
leadership). Based on the strong presence of the Leader as the
centrepiece of any situation or circumstance, it is applied by many
organisations to the extent that during their recruitment process for
leadership
positions,
some
organisations
use
personality
assessment tests to gauge the presence of these characteristics in
their potential leaders.
The LMX approach on the other hand could be considered as a more
action-centric premise. Dansereau, Graen, & Haga (1975) , and
Graen & Cashman (1975) suggested the presence of two types of
relational dyads between leading managers and their teams based
on expanded and negotiated responsibilities, and, contractual
responsibilities. Where those individauls in the group who were more
favourably disposed to exhibiting their calibur or were more
relatively more motivated by their leaders interactions with them,
took on extra responsibilities beyond the scope of what they were
expected to do as part of their job, and the other group was
represented by those who remained contended with doing as much
they originally agreed to. Later Graen & Uhl-Bien (1995), upon

further research suggested that instead of the presence of

characteristics (as in the Traits approach), the LMX framework was
related to the overall effectiveness of the organisation based on
exchanges between the leader and the group. They suggested that
the effective leader develops relationships with each or select
members in the group to tap in to those individuals. With the
successful establishment of such relationships comes commitment,
meritocracy, better attitude of the employees towards the job, and
increased level of trust of the leader towards their teams, which
further leads to coaching, more attention and more personal support
from the leader. The relationship building process and the contents
and stages of development of these relationships have also been
defined by Graen & Uhl-Bien (1995) within the hypothesis of the LMX
theory (please see table 1.0 below),

Hypothesis: Leader-Member Exchange Theory of Leadership

where in three intangible stages of familiarity, namely, Stranger,

Acquaintance and Partner, the interactions of the leader develop
from interrogative overtures to strategic partnerships and where the
leader and the group through the process of development of the
relationship influence one another in reciprocity, and where the
process may begin with the leaders self interest as the goal in mind,
but through process, turns in to the groups enlightened interest.
The Transformational Leadership model, as the name suggests has a
premise of leadership through the transformation of the subjects,
and in the process, the transformation of the leader also (Northouse,
2007). It suggests engagement with the followers to create a
connection that raises their motivation and morality. The theory first
christened so by Downtown (1973), was further developed by Burns

(1978) where he explained transformation by means of comparing it

to transactional leadership where leadership occurs in the
expectation of a reward, or outcome, whereas, the Transformational
Theory framework capitalises on peoples intrinsic motivation and
their desire to do what is perceived correct and conscientious. The
transformational school saw further explanative work when House
(1976) elaborated transformation through charisma, where charisma
is taken as the idealized influence to translate the leaders persona
in to a role model figure, at times to the extent that the role model
figure takes the extreme form of being a cult. Later, Bass (1985)
provided an even more detailed version of the transformational
leadership model, by concentrating on the followers disposition.
Where he seems to have attempted to explain that the transformed
follower can separate and act on the importance of the principle of
subordination of individual interests to the larger cause, and where
because of the transformation, the followers could deliver even
more than what was expected of them. More recently within the
transformational school, Bass (1998) suggested the idea of
pseudo-transformational leadership which deals with the negative
side of transformation exercised by the likes of Adolf Hitler, Osama
Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and others, suggesting that although
these individuals did transform a large number of people, however,
give the extremely negative and destructive connotations of their
ideologies, such transformation was only a farce, hence the word
pseudo.

Strengths & Criticisms

The Traits approach has over a 100 years of research to back it up,
which becomes its first and foremost strength. Whereas all other
schools of thought in leadership are relatively more recent and do
not have as much depth of data points and varied range of research
populations, the Traits approach is backed by the test of time. It
also is in agreement with the common belief that leaders are born,
and in the absence of any credible data that could disprove the
belief, it is still accepted as relatively true even when it is a
somewhat clichd expression. History stands witness to many
personalities who did not go to prestigious universities, Indira
Gandhi, Bill Gates, or, Hu Jintao, Abraham Lincoln, and many others

who came from humble backgrounds, but still turned out to be great
leaders. The fact that Traits are identifiable and visible strengths,
also proves to be a favourable argument to the Traits approach. It
is clearly identifiable if a person has self-confidence, is high on
integrity, is sociable etc., if compared to the LMX theory of networks
and quality of interactions. On the other hand, as criticisms, the
Traits approach fails to exhaustively list out the traits. Many
researchers have drawn out lists of the traits that make an effective
leader and whereas there are some common characteristics in every
list, however, there are always some additions and exclusions in
comparison to others. This makes the idea of leadership traits to
appear as ever evolving. An even more serious and credible
criticism of the traits approach is that it disregards circumstance
and situations. As mentioned earlier, it attempts to divorce
leadership from circumstances, and the popular belief that most
success comes because people are present at the right place at the
right time which in turn makes it an isolatist and exclusionist
theory based on the un-tested assumption that all leaders will be
effective in all situations. This suggestion of pervasiveness and
omnipresence of effective leadership by the mere presence of
certain personality traits makes it weigh much less in comparison to
other schools that base their conclusions on circumstantial
evidence. For example, a business leader who has an engineering
background is more likely to effectively lead technology based
organisations, the same person if tries to lead a law firm is likely to
do comparatively worse if not completely fail. If the same example is
kept in consideration for the purpose of perspective, another strong
criticism of the Traits approach is that it does not evaluate the
effect of the so called effective leadership on the subjects, i.e., the
followers. If this leader with an engineering background was to start
leading a law firm, in his zeal to acquire knowledge and brig himself
up the curve he may exert undue pressure on his team to bring him
abreast with operational situations that another leader who is
well versed with the operation of a law firm will just know as a
matter of obvious fact. Hence, this leader will do very good for
himself and will learn the new game to be an effective leader,
however, in the process of doing so, his team will be affected
adversely. The Traits approach does not consider such
shortcomings of the person with the required characteristics to be a
leader.

The Leader Member Exchange (LMX) theory by the propagation of

distinction between high performing and not so high performing
members in the group clearly establishes potential areas for the
person in the leadership position to work on, which is seen as a
strength. Since the LMX framework recognises that effective
leadership is contingent on the quality of leader member
exchanges, therefore it brings in the desired level of pragmatism to
the hypothesis that does not claim an omnipresent effect regardless
of the circumstances (unlike the Traits approach), which is seen as
another definite strength of this framework. It is interesting to see
that whereas, the Traits model suggests sociability as one of the
characteristics of an effective leader, the LMX framework, highlights
the importance of communication. It clearly suggests that in the
absence of communication, the exchange networks breakdown, and
hence leadership as a process of facilitating people to perform
better ceases. This can be explained with an example of
organisations that have a blind top-down approach to operating
processes and procedures. In such organisations, since there is lack
of high quality exchanges, either directly or through channels,
therefore, the leadership operates in a cocoon where they keep
designing processes and procedures that do not consider the
requirements and realities of the people who have to enact them.
This can potentially cause a loss of operational efficiency, and hence
losses, along with definite loss of employee morale and job
satisfaction. Apart from the strengths of the LMX framework
summarised above, the hypothesis also alerts practitioners to be
conscious of subjective influences when creating LMX networks,
these could be based on prior familiarity with individuals,
conforming personality type, religion, race, ethnicity, gender and so
on, and hence takes in to account the potential human weaknesses
(in the leader) that are very possible to jeopardise the idea. As in
most cases, the criticisms of the LMX framework also stem as
corollaries to its strength, where the most credible criticism is seen
as the leaders inability to be objective when developing the Leader
Member exchange networks. Such lack of objectivity leads to the
second criticism of the LMX theory, where even if the leader is
consciously objective, some team members may feel left out and
hence discriminated towards. This occurrence of perceived unfair
behaviour seems to be the beyond the zone of influence of the
practitioner after a certain extent.

The framework therefore seems to need further research to be able

to suggest strategies and means to help curtail the chances of such
error and reducing such perception biases.
The Transformational Leadership Approach is also widely researched
from different perspectives which includes qualitative investigations
with business leaders in prominent organisations, with 34% of all the
articles published in a respected journal like Leadership Quarterly in
the last 10 years being on topics related to Transformational
Leadership (Lowe & Gardner, 2001). The Transformational Approach
possesses a widely intuitive appeal when it propagates the leader to
assume the role of a model who showcases not just a way of life but
provides motivational and moral direction to the followers. Another
strength of the transformational model is that it treats leadership as
a continuous process of evolution between the leader and the
follower, and hence creates an impression and environment of
empowerment and responsibility amongst the followers. From this
stems what appears to be the most credible strength of the
transformational model, which is that it augments and brings
together other models in leadership like for example, the
transformational leader to be able to lead people is supposed to
have characteristics and skills like oratory, charisma, intelligence
et.al., but these are combined with dialogue and participation of the
leader with the followers. Having said that, the criticisms of the
Transformational Model also stem from its strengths like in the case
of the other models. Firstly, since the transformational model makes
mention of concepts such as motivation, morality, hard work, etc.,
all these concepts sound and are accepted to be desired and noble,
however, they bring extreme subjectivity to the model. Especially
with the talk of morality, because different people in different
circumstances within different societies have varying moral
standards. Similarly, Because the leader is seen to be a role model
in this school of thought, therefore, some critics may view the model
as elitist, and leading to cult like situation. Hence there seems to be
a need for further research to investigate the psychological effects
of transformational leadership on the followers.
In conclusion, it can be inferred that leadership remains an issue of
constant and on going investigation among the academia and
intelligentsia. Whereas a lot of research has been conducted in the
areas of developing leadership skills and traits and of practicing

leadership by the use of methods like LMX, from the above

criticisms, it appears that the present body of knowledge
regardless of the framework, is somewhat deficient, so far as
investigating the effects of leadership are concerned.

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