leadership and motivation in hospitality

Contextual and New Leadership 2.3.5 Antonakis et al.’s Schools: Skeptics, Information-Processing,

Contextual and New Leadership

In describing the skeptics school of leadership research Antonakis et al. (2004:
8) are referring to the crisis of validity faced by leadership research during the
1970s and 1980s. This crisis of validity was embodied by three separate and
significant critiques of leadership studies: (i) that questionnaire ratings were
biased by the implicit leadership theories^2 held by raters; (ii) that notions of
leadership were simply conceptual artefacts created by employees to explain and
provide a causal basis for organisational outcome; and (iii) that understanding
leadership was actually irrelevant to the performance of organisations. Rather
than folding in the face of these criticisms, however, Antonakis et al. suggest that
the field of studies has benefitted from and been strengthened by the challenges
mounted during this period. They cite: the adoption of more rigorous methods;
the differentiating of supervisor and top-level leadership; and the emergent
increased focus on followers’ perceptions (2003: 8) and describe how the
followers’ perceptions of work gave rise to the theoretically fruitful information-
processing perspective.

The information-processing perspective is described by Antonakis et al. as
focusing on:

understanding why a leader is legitimized by virtue of the fact that his

or her characteristics match the prototypical expectation that followers

have of the leader

(Antonakis et al. 2004a: 9)

The ‘prototypical expectation’ dimension of this definition is reminiscent of the
implicit leadership theories (ILTs) described in the skeptics section above; in fact,
Lowe and Gardner (2000: 476) directly link these two branches of research in
their classification of articles which appeared in the Leadership Quarterly journal
between 1990 and 1999. Lowe and Gardner go on to credit Lord et al. (1984) for
developing this area of research and also note that its popularity amongst
leadership scholars suggests that it is a theory of substantial significance.

2

Implicit leadership theories (ILTs) refer to people’s everyday ideas about traits
and behaviour of leaders (Schyns et al. 2008: 774)