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While the Ohio State leadership approach had been forgotten for several decades, scholars in the field of leadership have begun revisiting the validity and the role of leader consideration and initiating structure. Building on self-expansion theory, this study suggest the effects of leader consideration and initiating structure on employee task performance. Also, integrating self-expansion theory and regulatory fit theory, the purpose of this paper is to propose and examine the moderating role of employee regulatory focus on the relationship between the Ohio State leadership behaviors and employee task performance, which was mediated by emloyees’ creative behavior as well as citizenship behavior.

To test the hypothesized model of this study, cross-sectional data were collected using questionnaires. Pairs of survey packages, which included group-member surveys and a group-leader survey, were handed out to employees in organizations. The authors collected data from 47 groups and 143 group members in 25 private companies in the Republic of Korea, including from financial, technology, manufacturing, and research and development organizations.

The results showed that leader consideration exerts significant effects on employee task performance. Also, the authors found the moderating role of employee regulatory promotion focus on the relationship between leader consideration/initiating structure and employee task performance, which were mediated by creative behavior and citizenship behavior.

This study contributes to the advancement of the Ohio State leadership approach by integrating self-expansion theory and regulatory fit theory to investigate the distinct mechanisms and boundary conditions of its leadership process. The current study also contributes to the literature on extra-role behavior that the Ohio State leadership behavioral dimensions can be considered as one of the antecedents of employees’ creative and citizenship behavior.

This study aims to test the following three assertions underlying the Situational Leadership® II (SLII) Model: all four leadership styles are received by followers; all four leadership styles are needed by followers; and if there is a fit between the leadership style a follower receives and needs, that follower will demonstrate favorable scores on outcome variables.

For the first and second assertions, a proportional breakdown of the four leadership styles observed within a sample of working professionals is presented and discussed. Regarding the third assertion, for ten outcome variables, multiple one-way analyses of variance tested mean differences between followers who experienced leadership style fit (i.e. a fit between received and needed style) and followers who did not experience fit (n = 573). Subscale scores from the Leader Action Profile, the Work Intention Inventory, the Positive and Negative Affect Scale and an adapted form of the Affective/Cognitive trust scale (McAllister, 1995) were used as study measures.

Three of the four leadership styles of the SLII framework were reported as frequently received. All four of the leadership styles were reported as needed. This study also found that follower-reported fit between one’s needed and received leadership style at work resulted in more favorable scores on nine of the ten employee outcomes, as compared to follower-reported misfit.

As human resource development practitioners seek to educate and train their leaders on how to be more effective with their direct reports, this research provides evidence that all four styles are needed and received, although there were lower instances of reporting the S1 style to be needed or received. Also, the findings demonstrated that when followers view a fit exists between the leadership behaviors they need and the leadership behaviors they receive, greater positive job affect, lower negative job affect, increased cognitive and affective trust in the leader and higher levels of favorable employee work intentions were evident.

This paper builds on the resurgence of studies examining initiating structure and consideration as leader behaviors. This is one of very few recent studies that, by combining initiating structure and consideration, reinvestigates the four leadership styles established by past contingency theories. Specifically, the authors used the SLII framework as a foundation for analysis. Overall, the study supports three of the major assumptions of the SLII framework.

This paper examines the relationship between chief executive officers' (CEOs') leadership behaviors (consideration and initiating structure) and firm and individual performance (i.e. profitability, affective commitment and employees' willingness to change) in small and medium-sized firms (SMEs) that need to adapt to changing environments.

Survey data was collected from SMEs (28 firms, 235 employees) in the accounting industry along with objective performance register data (profit and return on assets). The predicted model was tested with multilevel structural equations modeling (MSEM) using a maximum likelihood estimator.

The CEO leadership behavior of initiating structure was positively related to firms' profitability, while the CEO leadership behavior of consideration was positively related to employees' willingness to change and affective commitment.

Small accounting firms typically offer standard services that are now being replaced by digital solutions. These firms have an incentive to offer new services, such as business advisory services. Therefore, leaders should embrace the duality of consideration and initiating structure to gain employees' willingness to change and optimize overall firm performance.

The paper contributes to leadership literature by examining a novel context (CEO consideration and initiation of structure in SMEs in uncertain environments) using a combination of firm performance measures (e.g. objective outcomes at the firm level and employees' willingness to change as a new measure at the individual level). In addition, it reports a comprehensive test of the full model using MSEM, the findings of which demonstrate the importance of dual leadership behaviors for CEOs.

The theoretical and practical significance of the concept of subordinate loyalty to immediate superior is developed, and then, an empirical exploration of administration behavior that best predicts subordinate loyalty to elementary and secondary principals is undertaken. Data were collected from the principals and faculties in eighty public schools. Those characteristics of principal behavior accounting for the greatest explanation of loyalty are Thrust, Consideration, Initiating Structure, and Nonauthoritarianism; however, somewhat contrasting profiles emerge in predicting teacher loyalty in elementary and secondary schools. While Initiating Structure of the principal has high value in the secondary schools, it is Consideration, not Initiating Structure, which is most salient in elementary schools.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive examination of different leadership constructs investigated extensively, namely transformational and transactional leadership, laissez-faire, consideration, and initiating structure, as well as leader-member-exchange. The theoretical overlap as well as the empirical correlations between these constructs is explored.

Overall, 735 correlations were analyzed to generate a meta-analytical correlation matrix.

The meta-analyses revealed highly interrelated leadership constructs (0.26<∣ρ∣<0.74). Results of confirmatory factor analyses suggest a one factor solution of leadership.

The uniqueness and construct validity of leadership constructs is challenged, calling for a revision of the respective leadership theories. Ultimately, an integrative theory of leadership should be developed which accounts for similarities as well as differences between leadership constructs. An integrated theory of leadership would help: researchers to combine their forces and, consequently, organizations across the globe to better select and develop leaders for the future.

By taking a critical, cross-theoretical compare and contrast approach, the present study yielded a comprehensive picture of the interrelationship and partial redundancy of several of the currently researched leadership constructs.

New insights into the overlap between leadership constructs were generated and confirmed by meta-analyses.

The purpose of this paper is to test the theoretical proposition, put forward by Yukl et al. (2002), that the leadership constructs of transformational and transactional leadership, laissez-faire, consideration, and initiating structure can be arranged into three meta-categories of leadership, namely, relations, task, and change-oriented leadership.

After a comprehensive literature search, 1,402 correlations from 286 sources were obtained which referred to the above mentioned leadership constructs and outcome criteria of effective leadership.

It was found that three meta-categories of leadership (i.e. relations, task, and change-oriented leadership) were sufficient to explain the leadership constructs of transformational and transactional leadership, laissez-faire, consideration, and initiating structure. Moreover, it was also found that change-oriented leadership was most effective in predicting the job satisfaction of followers. In contrast, relations-oriented leadership accounted for most of the variance in both commitment and job performance.

In combination, these results allow for a more comprehensive, integrative description of effective leadership behavior.

The results have implications for leadership assessment and development as well as leader selection and feedback.

Applying Occam’s razor, and in contrast to the majority of prior leadership studies, the present meta-analytical study provided evidence that three categories of leadership behaviors allow for a precise and comprehensive description of effective leadership behavior.

Borrowing the ideas from the theories of adult organizations, investigates how teacher leadership style is related to use of power, social climate, student‐affective performance in a sample of 678 classrooms in 190 Hong Kong primary schools. Finds that class teacher′s leadership and use of power are interrelated in process of leading a class of students. Leadership style was found to be strongly related to social climate and student‐affective performance. The leadership style of “high initiating structure and high consideration” should be preferable and effective in terms of nearly all of the climate and affective measures. The findings support the importance of balanced leadership style not only in adults organizations, but also in classrooms. The profiles of the four leadership styles provide a useful pattern for developing teacher leadership as well as classroom environment for better students′ outcomes. The findings support the possibility of generalization of the concepts of organization and management that were developed from adults organizations to a context of classrooms in primary schools.

The aim of this study is to contribute to the construct validity of leadership styles. Although several theories of leadership emerged in the past decades, integrative research on leadership constructs is rare. Thus, for the first time, the present study critically tests whether the leadership constructs of transformational and transactional leadership, consideration and initiating structure, and leader‐member‐exchange are convergent, or whether they exhibit discriminant validities, as hypothesized by theory.

Applying hierarchical structural equation modeling to the multitrait‐multimethod (MTMM) approach, the present study explored the convergent and discriminant validity of leadership constructs based on data from multiple sources. Altogether, N=148 dyads of leaders and subordinates from various industries in Germany participated in the present study.

Results demonstrated evidence for the convergence of the leadership constructs.

In leadership feedback projects in organizations, practitioners should utilize multiple rating perspectives for adequate descriptions of leadership behaviors.

Interestingly, approximately the same amount of variance in the data was due to the rating sources as it was to the leadership constructs, suggesting strong method effects in leadership research. The present study was among the first MTMM approaches that addressed the construct validity of several leadership constructs simultaneously and thus, allows new insight into the overall network of leadership theories.

In today's organizations, the heterogeneity of work teams is increasing. For example, members of work teams have different ages, genders, and/or cultural backgrounds. As a consequence, team leaders have to face the challenge of taking into account the various needs, values, and motives of their followers. However, there has been very little empirical research to test whether the influence of leadership behaviors on performance is moderated by facets of team heterogeneity. This paper aims to address this issue.

The leadership behaviors of transactional and transformational leadership, laissez‐faire, consideration, and initiating structure, as well as three facets of heterogeneity (i.e. age, gender, and culture) were assessed in an empirical study based on a sample of n=283 members of German fire departments. These team members also provided self‐ratings for their performance.

The results revealed that the relationship between three leadership behaviors (i.e. transformational leadership, laissez‐faire, and consideration) and performance was being moderated by facets of team members' heterogeneity.

Both transformational leadership and consideration work best when the work team is heterogeneous with regard to gender.

The importance of the contextual influences of team members' heterogeneity for effective leadership processes was explored theoretically, and subsequently, demonstrated empirically for the first time.

In a recent investigation undertaken in Western Canada, it was found that school personnel, particularly those at the administrative level, who strongly desired promotion placed a significantly higher emphasis in their role perceptions on Initiating Structure (the organization‐oriented dimension of leader behaviour), and a significantly lower emphasis upon Consideration (the person‐oriented aspect of leader behaviour), than those who possessed low levels of promotional aspiration. Tills impersonal, procedural, and task‐oriented emphasis was evident not only in the administrators' perceptions of the leader behaviour deemed most appropriate for their own present role, but also in their perceptions of the actual leader behaviour exhibited by their immediate superiors. If such highly ambitious individuals gain advancement, it appears likely that the type of administrative climate which they would induce, with such a pronounced emphasis on Initiating Structure allied with a de‐emphasis of Consideration, would lead to future conflict and dysfunctional effects for the educational organization, as teachers become more professional, and newer approaches such as team teaching, collegial organization, and consensual decision‐making—all of which demand rapport and consideration for people—become more widespread.