School Intensity of activity
Trait
Behavioural
Contingency
Relational
Skeptics
Contextual
Information-processing
New Leadership
(Neo-charismatic/Transformational/
Visionary)
(Very active)
(Mostly inactive)
(Moderately active)
(Moderately active)
(Mostly inactive)
(Very active)
(Very active)(Very active)Source: Antonakis et al. (2004a)Table 2-3 Antonakis et al.’s Major schools of leadership
Some recent contributions have developed new perspectives, moving away from
simply thematic and chronological approaches. Table 2 - 4 highlights (i) Northouse
(2004) who reduced the research approaches to four categories by identifying
common themes in the ways researchers have sought to understand leadership
and (ii) Grint (2004) who has identified four ‘problems’ which he sees as
presenting obstacles to achieving a common definition of leadership.
Although approaching the issue from different points of departure, Grint’s and
Northouse’s categorisations share some similarities insofar as they both contain
specific references to the leadership process, how influence is exercised and
group/individual aspects of leadership. Finally, what Grint’s (2004) analysis
highlights is that there remains considerable ambiguity in leadership research.
Yet another approach has been employed by Hunt (1999) who uses Reichers and
Schneider’s (1990) stage model of sequential development of scientific constructs
to examine the evolutionary development of leadership studies. Hunt’s stage
model approach is particularly relevant to transformational leadership and will be
discussed under the relevant section later in this review.