(v) (1970s- ) the ‘new’ leadership approaches (e.g. transformational and
charismatic leadership) which emphasise the importance of leader charisma and
influence and followers’ concomitant willing co-operation in achieving
organisational goals.
As noted above, all of these theories and approaches can be regarded as extant.
Underlining the contested nature of debate surrounding the charting of the
development of leadership studies, while Vroom and Jago (2007: 18) have
described ‘most early research on leadership’ (referring to the trait theory
approaches) as ‘largely discredited’, Antonakis et al. (2004a: 7) suggest that trait
theory research has re-entered a period of relatively intense activity. Borgatta et
al. (1954: 756) describe how the ‘great man’ approach is underpinned by a belief
that organisational outcomes (such as performance or effectiveness) can be
significantly influenced by a “single person in the top position”. Regardless of the
current volume of scholarly effort going into the trait/great man approach, during
the course of this doctoral study, it has been observed that in conversations with
tourism and hospitality academics and practitioners (and indeed with non-
leadership experts in general) that the majority of individuals immediately relate
to the ‘great man’ paradigm when leadership is mentioned. That is, when
leadership is mentioned, many people tend to think of executive-level leadership
and a ‘single person in the top position’. Responses such as this can be
understood using the lens of the Implicit Leadership Theory (ILT), which examines
the roles of individuals preconceptions of leadership. ILTs are discussed later in
Section 3.3.3.
The empirical work in this thesis focuses, however, on leadership in organisations
(rather than leadership of organisations) - the remainder of the review of generic
leadership research provides an overview of the major leadership theories from
the great man, executive-level conceptualisations of leadership through to the
‘new leadership’ approaches that underpin more contemporary approaches to
leadership studies. more contemporary modes of more ‘distributed leadership’
(such as transformational) where leaders are to be found at all levels of an
organisation.