Literature Review on Leadership
Review the literature review guide. Using the overview that you completed in the Module 4 Case, you will now write a brief literature review. In a 5- to 7-page paper, write a literature review on the topic that you identified. Incorporate the topics discussed in your overview and use a mix of Qualitative and Quantitative research articles. Review the literature review guide.
Leadership: A Literature Review
World over, the mention of leadership elicits a sense of influence, guidance, direction and servititude. The subject forms an important research topic in the academic and corporate sectors, owing to its impact on performance. As such, the subject of leadership evokes intensive interest in these fields, making tremendous progress in the past years. Aside from this, it plays a crucial role in the growth and development of individuals through the ability to make sensible decisions. Leadership entails various approaches and theories developed by different scholars, which entail integral features. This paper provides a literature review on leadership, gender contexts and applicable theories.
Leadership has been a subject of study for significant period. According to Kumar (2018), the study of leadership traces back to the ancient Egyptians and Greek. Although it is still not well understood due to the numerous variables associated with this concept that encompasses the entire social process, leadership is presumed a complex art. Hence, its understanding emerged in the early 20th century. Some schools of thought believe that leaders are made while others believe that they are born, which further complicates this social aspect (Kumar, 2018). Leadership captures the essentials of being prepared and inspiring people, and influencing them in embracing a particular direction to implement a cause of action (Kumar, 2018).It describes the integration of ideas and communicating them effectively to others to engage them in acting in accordance with the leaders’ opinions.
Leadership is linked to performance in a business setting and entails the managers influencing the employees to achieve organizational goals. Besides, it entails various approaches and theories. The style adopted by an organization should encapsulate the individual and team members’ perspectives, besides yielding healthy benefits to the organization (Kumar, 2018). Leadership theories and styles affect organizational and employee performance significantly. It affects the followers’ commitment and satisfaction explicitly, which influences performance. As such, an effective leadership style induces the followers socially to participate intentionally in achieving a given target.A study by Korotov (2016) suggested that leadership is a continual process since leaders are developed through experience and coaching. Thus, leadership focuses on enhancing the followers’ ability to utilize skills and talents to achieve higher goals. Such follows the current need for organizations to incorporate various skills and talents owned by individuals regardless of their ethnic, gender, cultural, and social status to realize maximum performance.
The Role of Leadership
Leadership plays a crucial role in influencing various social constructs through initiating desired impact and dynamism. While leadership describes the ability to modify behaviors by exercising some control, it is essential to achieve organizational goals, efficiency, and performance (Uljens&Ylimaki, 2017). Every organization needs the efforts of an effective leader to maximize efficiency and drive performance. Thus, leadership is essential to influence followers’ behavior, perception, and opinions towards a common direction.
Through effective leadership, employees harness their potentials. They become capable of managing their weaknesses by incorporating ideas and abilities with other team members to achieve high goals (Bush & Glover, 2016).Besides, leadership enables to developmentof mutual relationships between leaders and subordinates hence achieving job satisfaction. Peopledevelop the interest to follow a leader who provides them opportunities for earning wealth, right to work, security, and understand their concerns. Therefore, the art of leadership plays a critical role in coordinating the organizational junior and senior staff, enhancing good workflow, hence high performance. In other words, it acts as the driving force or motivation power to the group’s efforts.
Notably, the business environment is dynamic; hence,the organizational change is inevitable. Correspondingly, the need to introduce alteration in the organizational processes and practices is consistent. Effective change requires leadership’s art to influence the followers to embrace a needed change for higher performance (Kumar, 2018). Suggestively, human beings are prone to resist change due to the challenges involved thereof. Hence, it is through practical leadership skills and abilities that significant changes are implemented in an organization. Besides, employees’ personal outcomes such as well-being and life meaning have become integral concerns in the current business world (Bellibaş&Gümüş, 2019). Employees focus on developing their lives socially and career-wise, besides earning income in their workplaces. Such imposes a significant leadership role to fulfill this concern in an organizational setting while competing healthily to attract and retain top-notch talents.
The essence of life underscores its purpose and supportsthe general well-being, which individuals expect work organizations to achieve. Leadership ensures that these prospects are considered and implement strategies to achieve the desired personal outcomes. Correspondingly, leadership’s role is to motivate employees to higher levels of performance by developing strong human attachments and relations (Al-Malki & Juan, 2018). This manifests a gesture of care and concern by the leaders to the followers, a matter that enhances their commitment to achieving the intended goals. It is the driving force to achieve any goals through developing talents and influencing action.
Gender and Leadership
The literature around the impacts of gender on leadership and the difference between leadership styles adopted by different genders continues to popularize. Admittedly, the role of gender in leadership is more complex than the simple comparison dichotomy (Eklund, Barry & Grunberg, 2017). Hence, leadership is perceived as a process that occurs within a social construct. Such is because the leadership settings vary based on the task characteristics, shifting standards, and gender composition in a given social construct. Assertively, leadership is exercised within the domains of gender (Eklund, Barry & Grunberg, 2017). Hence, it is only meaningful to assess leadership effectiveness void of gender inclinations.
Leadership has also delved into and remained a gender-related concern in today’s society. Studies on gender role and leadership bias remains at the center-stage in today’s business world. Eklund, Barry and Grunberg (2017) asserted that female leaders remain the minority despite the relentless efforts to acquire gender parity in the workplace. However, Eklund et al.(2017),suggests that male leaders outpace women leaders across many economic sectors in the world. In this regard, men occupy the most significant number of executive positions in most organizations which makes the research about leadership performance based on gender a complex topic to explore(Eklund et al., 2017). In other words, the scarcity of women in leadership positions makes it difficult to research the impacts of gender on leadership effectiveness. However, research by Eklund et al. (2017), suggests that most female leaders embrace transformational leadership theory while men prefer transactional and lasser-faire leadership theories. It is noteworthy that the current business world regards identifying a leader based on ‘what they accomplish’ rather than ‘who they are’(Eklund et al., 2017). Therefore,the norm of assessing the effectiveness of leadership based on gender is slowly losing meaning in the business context.
Theories of Leadership
The patterns of leadership are conceptualized to envisage into stylistic and theoretical approaches. Theories of leadership have been developed by various scholars. Among them is Cote, (2017), who asserted that in ancient descriptions of leadership theories, the distinction between leaders and followers was through their qualities, while current literature focuses on other variables such as skill-level and situational factors. The concept of leadership is mostly discussed through three critical theories. These include transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire, leadership models.
Transformational leadership describes the kind of leader that intellectually stimulates the followers through appealing vision and appreciative perspective to achieve goals while considering individual needs (Cote, 2017). Transformational leaders seek to inspire and encourage creativity and innovation among the followers for higher productivity. Puranik (2017),suggested that transformational leadership avoids the formal or directive concepts and focuses on implementing new initiatives that drive success. In other words, these leaders tend to act as role models and focus on unleashing their followers’ full potential by activating their self-efficacy. Therefore, transformational leaders derive their authenticity from character behavior rather than formal traditions, rules, and positions. Generally, transformational leadership seeks to inspire and motivate workers to explore their potential and hence, it is highly applauded for its flexibility and ability to incorporate different skills for effective performance.
On the other hand, Al-Malki& Juan (2018), asserted that transactional leadership focuses on supervision, group performance, and organization. In other words, transactional leadership emulates a defined system of operations whereby a set of rules and regulations is used to guide these operations. Resultantly, this theory is deemed inappropriate in aspects where creativity and innovation are mandatory or crucial (Nawaz & Khan, 2016). Therefore, transactional leadership depends on self-driven individuals structured to work in a directed environment.
Additionally, lasissez-faire is the other form of leadershipwidely implemented in organizations. Laissez-faire leaders maintain a low profile and believe that people are uncontrollable and unpredictable, hence embracing any structure available without criticizing or suggesting (Al-Malki& Juan 2018). The leaders tend to allow the followers to make decisions independently by remaining hands-off, although open and available for consultation and feedback. A critical benefit of laissez-faire is that it encourages innovation, fast decision-making, and individual growth. As the followers rely on their initiatives to derive decisions, they develop the art of thinking critically to make viable decisions that drive effective performance in their duties. However, this could be disastrous in the case of the followers’ incompetent skills who may fail to consult with the leaders and hence make unproductive decisions.
Conclusion
Retrospectively, leadership is a both a broad and interesting topic. The dimensions of leadership have evolved since the emergence of this concept, and new perspectives emerge depending on the context. However, transformational, transactional, and laisser-faire theories of leadership dominate the numerous kinds of leadership adopted by various organizations. The paper discussed literature by various scholars which suggests that gender is a sensitive aspect in determining leadership effectiveness and yet a complex concept to draw conclusions. Such makes it difficult to compare leadership effectiveness based on gender construct. The role of leadership in achieving any goals is paramount since teams and followers require a leader’s direction to implement concepts. Therefore, literature about leadership continues to evolve, and while different styles are appropriate for different settings, the probability of determining the most appropriate style remains a challenge.
References
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Bellibaş, M. Ş., & Gümüş, S. (2019). A systematic review of educational leadership and management research in Turkey. Journal of Educational Administration. https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JEA-01-2019-0004/full/html
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