The context of leadership
The editors of Human Relations intend to publish a special issue of the journal on the subject of the context of leadership.
Co-editors: Robert C. Liden (University of Illinois at Chicago), John Antonakis (University of Lausanne), Gail T. Fairhurst (University of Cincinnati).
Within the vast mainstream leadership literature, the overarching interest has been in the characteristics and behaviours of leaders and to a lesser extent, contextual factors that might affect the nature of the influencing process (e.g., the characteristics and behaviours and followers, situational forces, national culture, etc.). In addition, a substantial body of research has been established on dyadic relationships between leaders and followers. Although studied sporadically over the past several decades, recently interest has increased in the investigation of the context surrounding leadership and relationships between leaders and followers. For example, as more interpretive, critical, cultural, and methodologically-sophisticated quantitative views are applied to the study of leadership, a contextual orientation appears to be sine qua non especially as issues of power are addressed. Such an orientation usually differs from that of the mainstream leadership literature, which may favor more immediate contextual concerns. The purpose of this special issue is to further encourage research focusing on the context in which leadership occurs and to understand the variety of ways in which context and setting can be taken into account when studying leadership dynamics.
Potential contextual influences that may be addressed in studies for the special issue include the following as they relate to leadership relationships (see for example Johns 2001; Rousseau & Fried, 2001):
- the larger constellation of social network relationships within the organization
- organizational culture
- national culture and influences such as individualism, collectivism, social and hierarchical distance, and so on
- socio-historical influences and prevailing discursive formations surrounding leadership, management, quality, performance management, diversity, and so on
- larger economic and political structures such as capitalistic economies
- follower characteristics (and how follower information processing is affected by contextual factors)
- socio-technical systems
- virtual work arrangements
- varying information technologies and methods of communications
- full-time versus contractual employment
Regardless of the specific methods utilized, a strong emphasis on theory development must be evident. Although the emphasis in this special issue is on empirical research, conceptual papers that make clear contributions to our thinking about the context of leadership and have the potential to stimulate future empirical work will be given full consideration.
Contributors should note:
- This call is open and competitive, and the submitted papers will be blind reviewed in the normal way.
- Submitted papers must be based on original material not under consideration by any other journal or outlet.
- For empirical papers based on data sets from which multiple papers have been generated, the editors must be provided with copies of all other papers based on the same data.
- The editors will select five papers to be included in the special issue, but other papers submitted in this process may be published in other issues of the journal.
The deadline for submissions is 31 December 2007. The special issue is intended for publication at the end of 2008/ beginning 2009.
Papers to be considered for this special issue should be submitted online. Please direct questions about the submission process, or any administrative matter, to Alice Gilbertson at editorial@humanrelationsjournal.org.
The editors of the special issue are very happy to discuss initial ideas for papers, and can be contacted directly:
Robert C. Liden bobliden@uic.edu
John Antonakis john.antonakis@unil.ch
Gail T. Fairhurst fairhug@ucmail.uc.edu
References:
Johns, G. (2001). In praise of context. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 22, 31-42.
Rousseau, D. M., & Fried, Y. (2001). Location, location, location: Contextualizing organizational research. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 22, 1-13.
