Leadership - Is That What We Study?

Abstract

Leadership is a key issue in the development of groups, organizations and nations. The study of leadership plays a crucial role in the behavioral and management sciences. It receives a lot of attention and is intensively explored. However, leadership is different from headship or appointmentship. This study set itself the task of investigating whether studies on leadership really focus on this very phenomenon or do they refer to appointmentship instead. Recent research in the area of leadership is examined and analyzed, covering 113 papers published during the fifteen years between 1981-1995. Four leading journals in the behavioral studies were chosen, which have a specific interest and regularly publish papers in the area of leadership. The findings indicate that in most cases, papers which attempted or puported to study leadership are in fact focusing on "appointmentship". This is more apparent in empirical field studies. Implications are discussed and ideas are suggested for future research.