The Nature Of Organizational Leadership

The quality of an organization's top leaders is a critical influence on its overall effectiveness and continuing adaptability. Yet, little current research examines leadership within the context of organizational structure, such as how leaders influence organizational performance in those key moments when an executive's action is critical to driving the organization forward. This book represents a significant contribution to the literature of leadership, combining a contextual approach to organizational leadership with an in-depth treatment of the cognitive, social, and affective dynamics underlying that leadership. The Nature of Organizational Leadership, using an interdisciplinary approach that draws from the work of scholars in both management and psychology, provides a much-need organizational perspective on the problems to confronted by top executive leaders and the requisite behaviors, attributes, and outcomes necessary to lead organizations effectively.

In The Science of Leadership, Julian Barling takes an evidenced-based approach, relying primarily on the knowledge generated from research on organizational leadership conducted around the world and personal reflections based on two decades of involvement in leadership research and leadership development with executives. While leadership has been studied within all the major social sciences, Barling mainly focuses on findings from psychological research. The first part of the book explains the nature of organizational leadership, responds to the question of whether leaders "matter," and explains how leadership works. A longstanding issue is whether leadership can be taught. Barling explores the debate over whether leadership is "born or made" as well as the effectiveness of leadership development interventions in organizations. He gives consideration to what can be learned from leadership in other contexts such as sports, the political arena, and schools, and devotes individual chapters to topics that include gender and leadership, destructive leadership, and followership.

With contributions by leading scholars in the field, The Nature of Leadership, Third Edition begins with an overview of the major schools of leadership, examining individual differences, followership, relational leadership, and team leadership. The text then delves into important and timely topics such as social cognition, gender, power, identity, culture, and entrepreneurial leadership. Editors John Antonakis and David Day conclude by exploring philosophical and methodological issues in leadership, including ethics and corporate social responsibility. The fully updated new edition is more accessible and student friendly than ever with new vignettes, examples, statistics, and recommended case studies and videos.

Written by a team of leading experts in leadership studies, The Nature of Leadership provides compelling answers to the most vexing questions surrounding leadership: Is leadership measurable? Are there traits that reliably distinguish leaders from nonleaders? Does the situation matter? Are there differences in women′s and men′s leadership styles? Is ethical leadership effective leadership? Are elements of leadership culturally bounded whereas other elements are universal? Does vision really matter? Can leadership be developed? The new volume includes 16 chapters divided into five parts: Introduction, Leadership: Science, Nature, and Nurture; The Major Schools of Leadership; Special Topics in Leadership; and Conclusion. Topical coverage within these parts include research methods, leader and leadership development, evolutionary and biological perspectives of leadership, individual differences, situational and contingency theories, transformational, charismatic, and shared leadership, followership, gender, identity, culture, and ethics.

Organizational Leadership provides an accessible, critical and engaging analysis of what constitutes ‘leadership’ today. Demonstrating leadership as an interconnected process between leaders, followers and context, the book ensures a rounded understanding of theory and practice to support students throughout their course and future career. Part 1: Contextualising Leadership examines the internal and external forces influencing leadership, addressing issues such as ethics, power, culture and innovation. Part 2: Leadership Theories reviews and analyses traditional and contemporary theories of leadership. Part 3: Managing People and Leadership builds on the idea of leadership as a human process and considers how complementary aspects of HRM can inform leadership practice and its outcomes on employees and organizational performance. Part 4: Contemporary Leadership considers topical issues including the shift of leadership studies towards followership, gender and leadership and pro-environmental leadership. Bringing complex theories and concepts to life through a range of case studies and examples, the book is further supported by a series of fascinating expert video conversations with those in leadership roles. From small social businesses to major multi-nationals, from the NHS to the frontline military teams, the videos offer a unique insight into the diverse reality of leadership in practice today.

This book focuses on the effect of leadership on organizational outcomes and summarizes the current research findings in the field. It addresses the need for inclusive and interpretive studies in the field in order to interpret leadership literature and suggest new pathways for further studies. Appropriately, a meta-analysis approach is used by the contributors to show the big picture to the researchers by analyzing and combining the findings from different independent studies. In particular, the editors compile various studies examining the relationship between the leadership and thirteen organizational outcomes separately. The philosophy behind this book is to direct future research and practices rather than addressing the limits of current studies.

Today, there are a growing number of business schools, law schools, and continuing education programs in executive development and management training that offer leadership classes. Despite the growing curricular recognition of this area, there is a shortage of strong college-level texts. Leadership, second edition—a completely up-to-date anthology of key writings by well-known contributors—meets this need for a textbook that encompasses the major theories in the field of leadership. Leadership is divided into six sections. Part I provides an overview of the subject with readings that examine what leaders actually do, as well as the many myths surrounding the notion of leadership. Part II focuses on the fundamentals of leadership by taking a close look at the specific tactics people use to get their own way. These readings analyze the political games people play and the two-way nature of leader-subordinate influence. Part III considers problems that can arise from leadership gone wrong—when power and influence are abused. The major formal models of leadership that have been offered over the years are reviewed in Part IV. The next section looks at contemporary views of leadership, emphasizing reliance on maturity of subordinates for success, including leadership in the context of self-directed work teams, entrepreneurial leadership, the notion of the leader as servant, and examples of leaders who are recognized for having empowered others or for providing moral leadership. The final section examines the roles of societal and organizational cultures as they pertain to leadership. Robert P. Vecchio has updated the second edition with six new articles. Aimed at upper-level undergraduate and graduate-level courses, Leadership continues to provide classic essays by the major figures in the field of leadership along with topical essays on current and emerging issues.