Consistency of emergent leadership in groups with changing tasks and members

Individual differences and leadership: Contributions to a third tipping point

“…Since the publication of that paper, there have been a number of other meta-analyses providing similar conclusions (DeRue, Nahrgang, Wellman, & Humphrey, 2011;Hoffmann, Woehr, Maldagen-Youngjohn, & Lyons, 2011;Judge, Bono, Ilies, & Gerhardt, 2002;Judge, Colbert, & Ilies, 2004). Another example was Kenny and Zaccaro (1983) who reanalyzed data from Barnlund (1962) which examined the premise that the same persons emerge as leaders across different situations. Their reanalysis of the original dataset showed greater support for cross situational constancy in leader role occupancy than was suggested by the original study.…”

“…After each session, members rated each other for degree of leadership displayed. Kenny and Zaccaro (1983) reanalyzed data from a previously published study that rotated both group tasks and membership (Barnlund, 1962), and decomposed leadership perceptions into ratee, rater, and rater by ratee effects. The percentage of variance due to ratee effects across situations reflected the influence of a perceived leader's personal attributes.…”

Transformational leadership in context: Face-to-face and virtual teams

“…Studies testing this consistency-specificity hypothesis have produced mixed results, however. Some researchers reported that leadership behaviors are consistent across situations (e.g., Albright & Forziati, 1995;Barnlund, 1962;Bell & French, 1950;Borgatta, 1954;Carter & Nixon, 1949;Geier, 1967;Gibb, 1950;Gordon & Medland, 1965;Schultz, 1974;Zaccaro, Foti, & Kenny, 1991), but others found evidence that leadership behaviors vary by context (Barrow, 1976;Herold, 1977;Hill, 1973;Hill & Hughes, 1974;James & White, 1983).…”

The generalizability of leadership across activity domains and time periods

“…While early empirical studies concluded that leader emergence was situationally determined (Barnlund, 1962;Bell & French, 1950;Gibb, 1947), more recent models of behavioral genetics have reasserted the person effect. These research models accept that the genetic backgrounds of individuals are essentially unchanging and constant over time, and therefore predict that individuals who are leaders in one behavioral domain at a particular time point are more likely to be leaders in the same behavioral domain at a different time point or across different behavioral domains and time periods.…”