No abstract

We investigated the status of leadership theory integration by reviewing 14 years of published research (2000 through 2013) in 10 top journals (864 articles). The authors of these articles examined 49 leadership approaches/theories, and in 293 articles, 3 or more of these leadership approaches were included in their investigations. Focusing on these articles that reflected relatively extensive integration, we applied an inductive approach and used graphic network analysis as a guide for drawing conclusions about the status of leadership theory integration. All 293 articles included in the analysis identified 1 focal theory that was integrated with 2 or more supporting leadership theories. The 6 leadership approaches most often appearing as the focal theory were transformational leadership, charismatic leadership, strategic leadership, leadership and diversity, participative/shared leadership, and the trait approach to leadership. On the basis of inductive reflections on our analysis, we make two key observations. First, the 49 focal leadership theories qualify as middle-range theories that are ripe for integration. Second, drawing from social network theory, we introduce the term “ theoretical neighborhood” to describe the focal theoretical networks. Our graphical inductive analyses reveal potential connections among neighboring middle-range leadership theories that merit investigation and, hence, identify promising future directions for achieving greater theoretical integration. We provide an online supplement with 10 additional leadership theory graphs and analyses: leadership in teams and decision groups, ethical leadership, leader and follower cognitions, leadership emergence, leadership development, emotions and leadership, implicit leadership, leader-member exchange, authentic leadership, and identity and identification process theories of leadership.

A significant body of research has described effective leader behaviours and has connected these behaviours to positive employee outcomes. However, this research has yet to be systematically integrated with organizational justice research to describe how leader behaviours inform justice perceptions. Therefore, we conduct a meta‐analysis (k = 166, N = 46,034) to investigate how three types of leader behaviours (task, relational, and change) inform four dimensions of organizational justice (procedural, distributive, interpersonal, and informational) referenced to the leader and to the organization. Further, we examine the joint impact of leader behaviours and justice perceptions on social exchange quality (i.e., leader–member exchange), task performance, and job satisfaction. Our results suggest that leader behaviours differentially inform leader‐ and organization‐focused justice perceptions, and the joint effect of leader behaviours and justice perceptions offer more nuanced explanations for outcomes.

In response to both internal and external expectations and pressures, companies increasingly consider corporate social responsibility (CSR) as an essential factor in their strategic planning, but in a very diverse manner. To help synthesize the flourishing research in CSR variation across firms, we propose a three-orientation framework to map out a wide range of CSR strategies in current literature. Furthermore, we emphasize the importance of executive leadership and suggest that differences in leader’s values are the key drivers of CSR heterogeneity. This study offers a parsimonious model that maps out three primary pathways between leadership values and CSR strategic configurations. Drawing from charismatic leadership theory, we argue that three distinct types of leader power motives define three modes of leader’s strategic decision frames, which, in turn, influence corresponding CSR orientations. Specifically, socialized charismatic leaders favor prosocial decision frame that results in integrative CSR orientation; neutralized charismatic leaders embrace instrumental decision frame leading to strategic CSR mode; and personalized charismatic leaders tend to adopt self-serving CSR strategies driven by the self-serving decision frame. This holistic view advances the knowledge about the micro-foundations of CSR drivers and the essential role of leader values.

To address the question of why corporate executives adopt diverse corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategies, this conceptual paper proposes a decision-frame model to explain how differences in executives’ information-processing templates can lead to different strategic choices concerning CSR. Drawing on managerial cognition research and CSR literature, the CSR decision frame is conceptualized as a three-dimensional configuration. Each dimension depicts a continuum of responses to each of the three fundamental issues related to CSR (i.e., corporate’s objectives, corporate’s stakeholders, and leader’s responsibilities). The key premise is that the specific content and structure of a CSR decision-frame configuration define a leader’s unique stance on environmental and social issues, which, in turn, influence their sense-making process and shape CSR responses and strategies. This CSR decision-frame approach provides a process lens that highlights the cognitive mechanisms of how executives make critical CSR strategic decisions. Furthermore, this paper advances the understanding of the diversity in CSR strategy with a nuanced mental-configuration perspective: CSR means many different things to different leaders depending on the unique content and structure of his or her CSR decision frame; these varying subjective representations of CSR principles contribute to the diverse CSR responses across firms.