The Potential of Leadership: differences between mental models of leadership in the 20th and 21st centuries

Abstract

The central aim of this chapter is to verify the extent to which the orientation of scientific research on the topic, leadership follows classical or contemporary approaches, according to analysis of the main databases of publications on the topic in the period 2014–2021, in English and Portuguese. A Focus Group with experts on leadership define 28 descriptors responsible for revealing the incidence and content of publications of different natures with academic, technical, technological or scientific orientations, whether classical or emerging. A quantitative approach followed, through bibliometric research, in which the descriptors were investigated in three selected prestigious databases and two non-prestigious ones. The main conclusions were: (i) the low scientific production and the need for more prestigious publications in Portuguese on the topics of leadership and management; (ii) recognition that the traditional mental model of the twentieth century was massively disseminated in explicit communications in English, in all databases, when compared to the contemporary mental model, with inverse behavior for publications in Portuguese, a phenomenon that has increased over the last few years, contrary to the research expectations.