Leadership Research as a Heuristic Field of Study

Introduction 

It is a common phenomenon to hear people mention the term leadership under different contexts. For instance, the word leadership is used in various contexts such as cultural, social, and institutional contexts. However, being able to use the word leadership in the speech does not necessarily guarantee that the speaker understands its meaning properly. Again, understanding the meaning of the term leadership may not translate to one’s ability to demonstrate the best leadership skills in life. Interestingly, some people have the capacity to display leadership skills naturally while others find it difficult to lead (Anderson, 2012). This has raised the big question on whether leadership is really inborn or made. In order to understand whether leadership is inborn or made, it is important to approach the meaning of leadership from different perspectives. This paper therefore, aims at describing how leadership differs in different contexts; cultural, social, and institutional. 

Definitions 

In order to understand how leadership differs under different contexts, it is good to define leadership under the different contexts. First, the word leadership extrapolates from the word leader. The prime purpose of a leader is to direct and coordinate his or her followers’ activities (Raza, 2017). For leaders to be effective in their duties, their followers must be ready to obligatorily obey their requirements and commands with regard to their respective authorities (Raza, 2017). In any context, leaders must interact with their subjects in order to be successful in fulfilling their purpose in their leadership positions (Day, 2019). The value of leadership is therefore, determined by the position and the context under which it operates. For instance, it is the word’s perception today that the United States presidential leadership is the most prestigious and the most coveted by nearly everybody within the universe. This is simply because the United States president is believed to be under control of the whole world; given that United States is the superpower nation. However, leadership responsibilities under any context are not only difficult, but also multi-faceted (Day, 2019). This implies that the people in charge of the leadership must match certain versatile criteria as well as satisfying critical requirements, such as the ability to influence others authentically. 

This paper uses the term leadership to refer to the ability of a system of leaders to manipulate followers to act towards achieving defined goals (Raza, 2017). A leadership therefore, creates a collection of actions that brings change within a particular context (Raza, 2017). Besides, this paper classifies leadership into two broad categories based on the influence and the change the leadership has in any given context. These are high impactful leadership and the low impactful leadership (Raza, 2017). High impactful leaderships are characterized by their ability to offer satisfying outcomes and high motivation to the subjects of the leadership and it results into greater achievements than expected. The best example of high impactful leadership is the transformational leadership displayed by great people such as the former U.S President Barack Obama, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr. Low impactful leaderships on the other hand is characterized by their inability to satisfy and motivate their followers; and hence they often result into devastating failures (Raza, 2017). This paper further sub-divides leadership into three groups; based on the contexts under which the leadership is demonstrated. These are cultural leaderships, social leaderships, and institutional leaderships. In order to understand how leadership differs under these contexts, it is necessary to first examine the features of the leaderships in each context separately. 

Cultural Leadership 

Different researchers have come up with varying hypotheses to explain the real meaning of cultural leadership, how cultural factors affect leadership, and how leaders of particular organizations influence their respective organizational culture. There is no consensus in terms of defining cultural leadership. Tsai (2011) argues that cultural leadership is defined by the institutional norms, conventional activities of the organization, accepted traditional practices of the organization, the organizational environment, and the organizational policies. Dihn et al. (2014) on the other hand assert that cultural leadership is dynamic and is defined by the type of leaders governing a particular institution. In other words, leaders have the potential to shape the organizational climate, change the organizational cultures, create the cultural ethical norms, and guide the organizational moral values (Dihn et al., 2014). In this regard, high impact leaders have the capacity to influence the organizational cultures positively and consequently create a positive cultural leadership within the organization. 

Besides, cultures are nebulous concepts and organizational aspects that are not only hard to define, but also difficult to change (Trimble, 2019). This implies that culture has the power to manipulate the organizational leadership. Leaders are often forced by circumstances to exaggerate their report regarding their organization (Trimble, 2019). This means that the real effect of the organizational culture is felt well within the organization. Leaders have a tendency of reporting the successes of an organization, while leaving the failure of the organizations to be felt within the organization (Denison & Neale, 2016). Thus, the culture of an organization may alter the leaders’ behavior and consequently change the type of the organizational leadership. In overall, this paper establishes that cultural leadership is highly influenced by both the organizational culture and the type of leaders governing the institution. 

Social Leadership 

Juliana Stodd defines social leadership as the power given to a particular governing institution or a person by the community. Social leadership is rooted on personal reputation and social capital (Jodd, 2016). In most cases Social leadership acts as a compliment to the formal leadership and its prime purpose is to reach the community in areas where formal leadership may be less felt within the community (Jodd, 2016). Jodd (2016) goes further to describe the main features of social leadership. For instance, social leadership is granted and recognized by the community in order to make the minority within a community feel included in the leadership setting. 

Social leadership recognizes authenticity and offers a sense of equality to all individuals within the community (Jodd, 2016). It obtains its authoritative power from consensus and rewards its subjects graciously. For social leadership to be effective, it must be recognized by all the followers (Jodd, 2016). This implies that leaders forming the social leadership must entice the community through their good charisma in order to gain commanding power. In other words, whether social leadership is to be termed as either high impactful or low impactful is determined by the moral value of the community because leaders lead in accordance with the acceptable norms of the community. 

Institutional Leadership 

Kivipold and Vadi (2008) define institutional leadership as the joint leadership capability to detect and manage all external environmental changes while preserving all the primary goals of the organization. Institutional leadership is more concerned with the organizational management than the human resource management of the organization (Kivipold & Vadi, 2008). The implication here is that the institutional leadership’s main purpose is to strategize all the institutional assets with the attempt of improving the institutional ability to adapt successfully within the complex environment (Kivipold & Vadi, 2008). However, institutional leadership is also concerned with various approaches to managerial practices, such as knowledge management, cascading leadership, self-organizing systems, organizational learning, and intellectual capital (Kivipold & Vadi, 2008). Therefore, institutional leadership plays the role of laying down strategies that propel the organization towards success. 

In order to maintain the legitimacy of their organization, institutional leaders do three things. First, they ensure that they uphold consistency of the internal operations of the organization (Washington, Boal, & Davis, 2008). Secondly, they establish external supportive structural systems that play the role of expanding its legitimacy (Washington, Boal, & Davis, 2008). Lastly, institutional leaders develop activities that promote the well-being of the organization while overcoming all their external enemies (Washington, Boal, & Davis, 2008). In this way, the institutional leadership works consistently to ensure that the institution is strong enough to resist all external powers, such as competition from similar institutions, are fully suppressed. 

Discussions 

Having looked at the three types of leaderships (cultural leadership, social leadership, and institutional leadership), it is now possible to deduce a summary of how leadership differs in different contexts. For instance, cultural leadership is mainly concerned with the well-being of a particular community, it is dynamic, and is dependent of the norms and moral values of the community (Dragoni, 2019) . The impact that a given cultural leadership has to the followers is thus undefined and relies on the desires of the community. Social leadership on the other hand compliments the formal leadership (Dragoni, 2019) . It is therefore, leadership within another leadership and its prime purpose is to ensure that all the needs of the individuals within the community are satisfied. The impact of social leadership is dependent on the needs of the minority within the society. Finally, institution leadership is concerned with external pressures of a particular institution and its main purpose is to suppress all the institutional enemies while promoting the internal structure of the organization. 

Conclusion 

In conclusion, leadership is a common phenomenon and forms an integral part in people’s life. Based on various contexts, leadership may be classified into three main groups; cultural leadership, social leadership, and institutional leadership. This paper has established that leadership can be both inborn and made. However, inborn leadership may be influenced by the context in which it is being exercised. This paper has clearly described how leadership differs in cultural, social, and institutional contexts. 

References 

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