Literary Review of Leadership

Literature Review:

Defining "Leadership" :

Although there is no accepted universal definition of leadership, a few distinctive people have defined leadership in their own ways. According to Yukl (1994), most leaderships are characterized by influencing the society whereby intentional influence is exerted by one person over other groups of people resulting in structuring of activities and relationships in an organization.

In 1982, Smircich and Morgan stated that successful leaderships are characterized by active involvement of the followers. They stated that "Leadership is an obligation or perceived right on the part of certain individuals to define the reality of others."

Traditional Models of Leadership :

Trait approaches which are famous since Hippocrate's construction of personality types say that every leader is characterized by distinct behaviors because of their traits. These traits vary in number and types but can be categorized in : Self-confidence, Empathy, Ambition, Self-control and Curiosity.

‘Charisma' is another trait which is considered very significant in identifying distinct leaders from different fields. Charismatic leaders are easily followed and are characterized by large numbers of followers.

Contingency and Situational approaches say that leaders should act as per the demands of the situation. As per this theory, a leader should always possess a set of skills and styles which are situation specific and hence should use them when those situations arise.

Hersey and Blanchard's Situational leadership theory defined a third dimension to the other approaches – Maturity of the followers. According to them, maturity level of followers are a key to decide the success of a leadership style. Vroom and Yetton also highlighted the role of followers in their