humans as autonomous drivers of change (Existential Headship) or humans as
responding mechanisms (Strategic) paradigm.
Pittaway et al. themselves had recognised this difficulty in delineating between
the two paradigms, writing that:
...research in this paradigm [Strategic Headship] may not need to be
completely separated from the ‘existential headship’ paradigm. It is
evident that the two paradigms apply different assumptions but in
many ways the paradigms are two heads of the same coin.
(1996: 419)To overcome this difficulty, in Figure 3 - 3 Existential and Strategic Headship have
been joined at the ontological level (i.e. no difference in assumptions about
human nature). It was not possible to compare the hospitality leadership studies
which fit within the Existential and Strategic Headship paradigms with the generic
studies which Pittaway et al. used to generate these domains. In a rather
significant failing of Pittaway et al.’s paper, none of the source studies from which
the taxonomy was generated were cited by the authors – the authors simply state
that the studies were taken from “A cross section of literature...” (1998: 408).
The second issue relates to Pittaway et al.’s leadership type dimension (which is
concerned with the organisational level at which the research has been applied).
Specifically seven of the papers (Shortt 1989; Worsfold 1989; Cichy and
Schmidgall 1996; Nicolaides 2006; Marnburg 2007; Scott-Halsell et al. 2008;
Zopiatis and Constanti 2010) focussed on executive and lower level leadership.
Because of this, those papers could not faithfully be placed in either of the
Headship paradigms (both of which relate to studies which focus solely on
executive level leadership). Of course, the reciprocal problem with these six
papers is that they can neither be placed faithfully in the Situational Leadership
paradigm, as they do not focus solely on leadership in organisations.
The third and final problematic issue is that the majority of hospitality leadership
papers (77 per cent) are concerned with establishing causal relationships at the
leadership in organisations level and therefore fit within the Situational Leadership
paradigm. By placing so many (34 of 44) papers in one paradigm, the model
masks the variance of aims, theoretical approaches, analytical methods and, of
course, findings which are to be found amongst these 34 studies.