Who Cares About Leadership Scholarship Anyways?

My working title for this post was, “A Tale of Two Theories.” However, while discussing my recent posts with a colleague over lunch she asked, “Who really cares about the theories though?” It was a fair point. Theory can be esoteric and difficult to apply directly for the practicing leader. The popularity of “five things” posts on the web speaks to the interest in practical approaches to leadership. That said, the popular dialogue on the web also leans heavily on leadership theory as well. This brings me back to my tale of two theories, namely transformational and transactional leadership.

Transformational leadership, an inspirational, supportive, and individual approach has been identified as one of the most promising theories of leadership. It has been positively associated in numerous studies with exceptional performance, engagement, and retention in teams. It is almost always presented in relationship with transactional leadership, or a style based on exchanges of rewards and punishment based on performance. The two modes of leadership have an interdependent relationship. At the most basic level transformational leadership requires trusting relationships. Transactional leadership can help build that trust. It also reinforces the changes wrought by transformational leadership. Scholarship on these theories has increased significantly since the 2006 peak I previous identified. On the web there was a peak of interest in 2010. Since then popular discussion of these two theories has declined significantly.

A random sample of the popular discussion on these two theories revealed a problem. While many of the postings captured the nuanced relationship, some described an opposing relationship. Transformational leadership is good. Transactional leadership is bad. Misunderstandings such as these and the difference in the intensity in the popular and scholarly discussions highlights Harry Collins’ argument on expertise, namely that in order to be an expert you need to be engaged in the evolving dialogue of the discipline. Without the insight this provides it can be very challenging to discriminate between opinions and ideas in the popular dialogue.

So who should care about leadership scholarship? I believe as leaders we need to care. It allows us to make better decisions regarding how we will act and grow as leaders. Engineers, project managers, doctors, business analysts, and lawyers must keep their skills and knowledge current. Given that our decisions and actions as leaders affect so many should we expect anything different from ourselves?

What do you think?

Leadership Scholarship: Finding the Focus

Since I wrote regarding the significant decrease in scholarly leadership articles since 2006 some interesting possibilities arose in the feedback. While the expansion of the grey literature, web publication, and self publication are indeed on the rise, evidence that they are the smoking gun is not apparent.

With one exception articles related to the theories identified in Avolio, and Walumbwa, and Weber’s 2009 survey, “Leadership: Current Theories, Research, and Future Directions” increased significantly. While publication related to global leadership peaked in 2012, as a whole these topics have expanded by an order of magnitude from 2% in 2006 to 20% today. When the hot topics of the neuroscience and gender were included the portion rose to 30%. Clearly there is an increase in the focus of scholarly attention on these topics.

A random sample of the articles being considered did not reveal any victims of this focus that may have resulted in the decline. However, the question of strategy wove its way through them all. Strategy recurred so frequently it was impossible to analyze it as a distinct category. This led me to consider it as an overarching theme. My expectation was that articles related to strategy and leadership would show the same increasing trend, and the decline in scholarly publication would remain a mystery.

I could not have been more wrong! In 2006 over 120,000 articles were published representing 35% of the total publications. The surprise was that articles related to strategy had dropped approximately 80,000 articles! There was 25% of the overall decrease in one place! However, a closer look revealed that while the total may have dropped, the question of strategy appears in over 60% of the scholarly leadership articles published. So while there is a significant decrease in numbers, it is clear that the question of strategy lies in the focus of the lion’s share of scholarly publication.

Considering the data holistically it seems reasonable to argue that the increase in attention on these theories is related to their role in enabling strategy. Upon reflection this seems appropriate. What is our purpose as leaders if it is not to define a vision of a better future, and engage others in a strategy that will achieve it?

What do you think?