The Social Science Encyclopedia

Authors: Kuper & Kuper
Summary: The entry reviews the principal scholarly perspectives on leadership. Academic interest in leadership has waxed and waned over time, but since the early 1980s there has been a surge in interest, especially in the question of leadership within organizations.
Academic studies of leadership began around 1900, focusing on the traits that distinguished great historical leaders. Research after the Second World War began to emphasize the behavior rather than the traits of leaders. Some approaches have laid so much stress on situational contingencies, in particular the nature of followers or the characteristics of jobs and organizations, that they leave little room for the influence of leaders themselves.
In situation in which the impact of strategic leadership decisions is strongly influenced by popular perceptions of the leader, a perceptual and information-processing framework is especially important for research. Numerous perspectives on strategic leadership are being developed. One increasingly important perspective is concerned with leadership of high-performance teams. Such a perspective considers leadership to be embedded within an organization, and recognizes the importance of such factors as culture and organizational design.