Literature Review on Leadership Effectiveness and Followership

Definitions Of Leadership And Leadership Effectiveness

According to Burns (1978: 2) “leadership is one of the most observed and least understood phenomena on earth”. As leadership has a long, rich history in management, it is also among the most researched topics in organisational behaviour and one of the least understood social processes in organisations (Avolio, 2002). According to Bass (1990) a universal agreed definition of leadership still remains elusive. Leadership effectiveness on the other hand also appears to be a significant term in the leadership study area (Fiedler, 1981; Yukl, 1998; Yukl, 2002). The term leadership effectiveness seems to be an important part of today’s organisations although a lot of people have tried to define leadership or even effectiveness but it seems no one have succeeded to provide an accepted solution.

The difficulties of defining leadership was illustrated by Stogdill (1974) who suggested “there are almost as many different definitions of leadership as there are persons who have attempted to define the concept”. Northouse (2001) also highlighted leadership as an ill-defined phenomenon. He however did clearly differentiate between the leader and leadership. The former is a position; the latter is a process. Fisher (1985) writes, “Leadership is probably the most written about social phenomenon of all time”, and it is still not well understood due to its complexity. Despite the differences, according to Popper and Lipshitz (1993: 24) leadership is “a complex task in which the outcomes are often neither immediate nor concrete”. According to Nahavandi (2009), the various definitions of leadership share three common elements: 1) group phenomenon; 2) goal directed; and 3) some form of hierarchy within a group. Mixing this aspect of leadership is the difficulty in determining cause and effect relationship between leadership actions and effectiveness. However, the basic notion of leadership as influencing others is reflected in the following definitions: