They then go on to describe how emergent texts (compendia) contribute to
the advancement of theory through each author’s (or authors’) attempts to
valorise their own synthesis of leadership theories and paradigms:
Each compendia creates a synthesizing narrative to establish a story
line for the author's particular approach. Each new approach is similar
to an invention. The invention attracts followers. Eventually, followers
beget dissenters. Divergence grows between the argued leadership
approach and the accumulating opinion. Next, new typologies are
invented to reduce and organize the divergence. This leads to a new
convergent synthesis.
(Mackenzie and Barnes 2007: 99)
House and Aditya (1997: 409) also argue that “...the development of knowledge
concerning leadership phenomena has been truly cumulative”. We can see then
that not only are definitions of leadership contested, the nature of the
development of leadership as an area of study is also contested. Accordingly, the
following section briefly examines some prominent perspectives on the
development of leadership studies. The thesis then moves on to critically
examine the major leadership studies approaches and theories.
studies 2.2 Reviewing the reviews: complexity and contestation in leadership
studies
A number of reviews of leadership research have been published during the
‘modern leadership era’ (i.e. post 1970s, following the emergence of the
new/charismatic/transformational approaches). Some of these employ a thematic
categorisation while others combine thematic with chronological methods of
categorisation.
The different reviews each tend to emphasise certain aspects of leadership
research and employ more or less nuanced categorisations. For example: Bass,
writing in 1981 lists 10 separate sets of leadership theories containing a further
11 discrete ‘sub-theories’ (1981: 26-37); Yukl (1989) provides a detailed review
emphasising trends and developments during the 1980s (situational and
transformational approaches); Van Seters and Field (1990) propose ten ‘eras’ of
leadership research and illustrate the evolutionary linkages between the various
theories which emerged during these eras; Bryman (1992) offers a pared-down
