Leadership Theory: a Historical Look at Its Evolution
Abstract
Leadership Theory: a Historical Look at Its Evolution SAGE Publications, Inc.1993DOI: 10.1177/107179199300100103 Ronald G.Greenwood INTRODUCTION ` ' . From time to time it is worthwhile to look at the historical evolution of theories. The initial issue of The Journal on Leadership Studies, presents an auspicious time to examine briefly the evolution of leadership theory as it is preached in most textbooks today. Leadership theory traces its roots to trait theory, then moved to the human relations school of thought and its search for the one best way to lead, a movement beginning in the 1960s and continuing in various forms today with contingency and/or situational model, until today there is a marriage of convenience between situational and trait theory. Ralph Stogdill summarized . it best twenty years ago, in the preface of his monumental Handbook of Leadership, "Four decades (to be read six decades today) of research on ' leadership have produced a bewildering mass of findings .... The endless accumulation of empirical data has not produced an integrated understanding of leadership" [Stogdill, p. xvii].~ Stogdill should know. His 1948 article in the Journal of Psychology was the pivotal force in redirecting leadership ' research away from trait