2.3 Major theories of leadership
This section of the review is structured according to the trait, style/behaviour and
situational categorisation described by Bryman (1992) in Table 2 - 2. Antonakis et
al.’s ‘major schools’ review is then drawn upon to examine the Relational,
Skeptics, Contextual, Information-Processing and New Leadership approaches to
studying leadership. The discussion of the New Leadership school, which
Antonakis et al. also refer to as the Neo-charismatic/ Transformational/Visionary
schools, provides a lead into the following section specifically discussing
transformational leadership approaches.
Transformational leadership is examined in particular depth owing to the
centrality of its Inspirational Motivation (IM) dimension to this research and
because it is found (in Chapter 3 ) to be the most frequently utilised theoretical
approach in hospitality leadership studies.
2.3.1 Trait theories
The premise of the great man theory is that certain people are born stronger,
more intelligent and more able to lead; leadership was thought to be a personal
quality (based on an individual’s traits) and independent of the environment in
which the leader was operating. A hereditary link was thought to exist, as
Kirkpatrick and Locke (1991: 48) explain, "great men were born, not made". Van
Seters and Field (1990) provide a distinction between the great man and trait
theories, describing how leadership studies moved from the ‘great man’ (focusing
on individuals’ personalities) to ‘trait’ approaches (that focus on traits rather than
personalities):
...attempts were made to remove the links with specific individuals and
simply to develop a number of general traits which, if adopted, would
enhance leadership potential and performance.
(Van Seters and Field 1990: 30)During the early 20th Century, the development of psychological measures led to
the testing of the great man / trait theory of leadership (Vroom and Jago 2007:
18). In order to identify those traits associated with successful leadership, a
variety of aptitude and personality tests were applied, these included:
intelligence, extroversion, dominance, gender, masculinity, class and race.