Abstract:
The introduction to Gardner et al. (2020) is expressed in vivid language, clearly indicating their purpose, methods, findings, and conclusions. The first part of the statement delineates the purpose of the research, which is a comprehensive review of LQ from 2010 to 2019. The statement continues by noting that the research has the sole objective of documenting the leadership field’s evolution during this period.
This abstract briefly describes the methodology applied in the review as it follows the reviews that are over a decade old and also discusses the emerging technologies and theories on leadership research. It briefly covers how LQ journal moved from a niche journal to an essential publication with its in-depth literature reviews. It also discusses the need to reduce construct proliferation and the increased demand for new sophisticated methodological approaches.
The abstract adequately describes the topic by emphasizing the evolution of the leadership field and the continued significance of LQ in leadership research. It just brings together the results, conclusions, and recommendations of the study, making it a compelling tool for those who embark on leadership research and enthusiasts of this specific sphere.
Introduction:
The purpose of the manuscript by Gardner et al. (2020) is to provide a comprehensive review of the research published in The Leadership Quarterly (LQ) from 2010 to 2019. Therefore, the authors of this review will continue and improve upon the previous decade-based reviews and introduce new categories such as a re-defined leadership taxonomy. The latter is developed to echo leadership changes within the past LQ’s third decade. The primary objective of this review is to discuss topics that are important to researchers and readers of LQ journals and across different journals that focus on leadership.
Starting with a focus on the relevance of their review, the authors stress the importance of understanding the evolvement in the leadership research field and its influence on other scientific disciplines and professional practice. As stated, they underline that by following the research published in LQ during the recent ten years, they can identify the key themes, trends, and gaps in the literature, which can serve as helpful sources for continuous perspectives to the development of future research agendas and serve as the basis for leadership practices.
Another crucial contribution of the writing is the presentation of a redo leadership taxonomy that segments leadership research into different areas of study, e.g., leader traits, leader behaviors, and leadership effectiveness. This taxonomy has been designed as a more complex and insightful method of categorizing leadership research, enabling researchers and practitioners to identify patterns and linkages among the literature more conveniently.
Besides revising taxonomy, the article also discussed key points and trends in the leadership literature during LQ’s third decade. These are the growing preference for ethical and authentic leadership, the significant role of leadership development and succession planning, and the increasing use of the paradigms of quantitative and mixed-methods approaches in leadership research.
Gardner et al. (2020) offer an insightful literature review of the manuscripts published in LQ within the timeframe of 2010-2019. They identified the recurrent topics, trends, and gaps in the research. Through such identification of trends, the authors hope to trigger more research and dialogue among scholars to advance the theory and practice of leadership subsequently.
Ode to the Past, Prelude to the Present:
In their article on open-access publishing, Lowe and Gardner (2000) chronicle the origins of The Leadership Quarterly (LQ) in 1988, which has been evidenced as a medium for sharing leadership research across different disciplines and the LQ’s first decade witnessed 188 articles published, with charismatic leadership being (moreover) the manner of it and this period played a crucial role in giving rise to LQ as a leading journal in the field that would serve as a guiding principle for many other researchers, thus shaping the leadership research of many subsequent years.
Gardner et al. (2010) have, in their article, given an account of the second decade of scientific journal evaluation. An increase in the number of published articles and impact factors marked this phase. The growth characterizes the importance of leadership studies and the theoretical inequality that has increased as the field expands. The timeframe between 10 and 20 years of LQ’s history became a phase of immaturity and expansion when researchers started considering new theories and methods to advance our understanding of leadership.
In other words, these two decades have built a fundament for research on how leadership qualification analyses and leads the field. It brings forth the fact that LQ has transformed from just a platform that claims to research leadership from many people in a diverse society to a very prestigious journal that publishes ways of doing it in reality (Norman, 2010). Its first 20 years demonstrate the perspective of LQ as an instrument of leadership research, and the same proves to be a synergy center designed for scholars to exchange their thoughts about the reasons and the nature of leadership.
Literature Review:
The literature review presented by Gardner et al. (2020) in “The Leadership Trilogy: The article “A Review of the Third Decade of The Leadership Quarterly” is a well-written review of the field of leadership, assessing how the theme developed within the last ten years. The review provides an appropriate method of literature review by selecting the most current and significant references for reference support. It marks out such critical places within the literature. It elucidates the possible consequences for future research, noting that the area of leadership research is in a state of constant evolution where the need to continue discovering and developing new approaches is inherent.
One of the strong sides of the literature review is the capacity to synthesize an incredible amount of research data from different sources with one cogent narrative. The authors thoroughly analyze the significant phenomena in leadership science over the last decade, addressing the shift of dialectical perspectives and methodological techniques that have marked this period. Besides, they also deliberate on how these alterations affect the leadership study discipline and highlight those aspects of leadership where more research should be conducted to address gaps in our awareness.
One of the pivotal topics that becomes evident in the examination of the literature review is the characteristic of context in determining leadership. Recent studies have revealed the role of contextual aspects like organizational culture, industry flows, and national culture in leadership traits and effectiveness (Mumford, 2015). In looking at leadership from a perspective of collective effort, instead of emphasizing solely the individual, leadership theory gains a contextualized dimension. Effective leadership may vary from one context to another.
However, another central theme deduced from this review is the rising prevalence of interprofessional approaches in leadership studies. The authors highlight that in the recent past, the research has drawn knowledge from many fields of study, such as psychology, sociology, anthropology, and economics, among others. This approach has enabled a more inclusive approach to leadership. With an interdisciplinary approach, we gain an understanding of leadership by putting new perspectives and techniques into the leadership study, departing from and consolidating from the perspective that leadership is monolithic.
The literature review also underlines some significant research lacunae that must be resolved. For instance, the authors acknowledge that though the gender and diversity dimension of leadership is increasingly attracting attention, the research on this has still not built a solid body that can be looked up to. They also show that such research is crucial because of the wide range of the power of technology and globalization on leadership, which is changing rapidly the context of leadership in multiple ways.
In general, the reviewed literature is comprehensive and provides an adequate summary of the existing research about leadership. It outlines leadership research as dynamic, places context as more critical in studies, and as interdisciplinary approaches become more common in understanding leadership. Another aspect that this review brings to light is the knowledge of several areas of the study where the literature still needs to be improved. This, therefore, presents a variety of promising research areas that future studies can focus on in leadership studies.
Methods:
The methodology of the review article by Gardner et al. (2020) is presented, wherein the parameters of researchers, data collection, study design, and analysis are provided in detail. The main purpose of this examination of articles is to identify current topics and trends of interest to leadership learners and researchers by the content.
The study design of the present investigation is considered a systematic literature review. The authors employed a systematic method to find and assess suitable articles from the LQ database that met their methodological criteria. They set the inclusion criteria, which dictated articles published in LQ between 2010 and 2019. They also included articles that dealt with leadership-related issues. This method is relevant to creating a research question, which is to obtain a systematic review of a large number of articles and then find out the theme and trend of the literature.
The subjects in this study are the authors of the journals from the LQ published from 2010 to 2019. The authors need to provide information on the number of participants in the sample, possibly because the objective of the research is on the content of the articles instead of the authors themselves. This is an appropriate agenda for the investigation since the end goal is to analyze the content information of the articles and not to study the writers themselves.
The data mining process for this research used a detailed search and selection of articles from the LQ database that meet the inclusion requirements. The authors detail how they selected the specific search phrases and strategies to locate relevant articles and screened them for relevant ones that would be included in the review (Poutvaara, 2014). They also describe the coding process used to analyze the content of the articles, which involved identifying key themes and trends in the literature.
The methods of analysis employed in this study are appropriate for the research question since they help the researchers systematically analyze the content of articles and discover trends and themes in the literature. The authors employ a qualitative methodology in which they identify the main discourses and topics in the literature by analyzing the content of the articles. They apply a quantitative method of play counting here, which includes all the themes and topics studied in leadership research.
The research design and the measurements used for this study are suitable to help answer the research question, and they describe clearly and in detail the research plan, participants, data collection processes, and analysis methods. Nevertheless, the authors do not provide any specific details regarding possible confounding of the study methods or any other biases or limitations of the study. Future research could be done to analyze how the methods could have caused biases or limitations in the study and how these limitations affected the study results.
Results:
The review results are presented in an easily understood and organized way. The report gives an overview of those areas of leadership research that are regarded as highly important nowadays, including contextual variables, ethical leadership, and leadership for creativity and innovation. Such findings also indicate that knowledge is power, as well as the crucial role played by empirical research in leadership theory and practice. Gardner et al. (2020), in their review paper, outline a detailed review of the main themes of leadership articles published in “The Leadership Quarterly” (LQ) from the years 2010 to 2019. The authors arrange the outcomes in a very precise and structured manner by highlighting some of the emerging leadership topics that trace their roots to this period.
The evidence from this survey gives rise to an important conclusion: the trend is toward contextual factors being studied in leadership research. The authors mention that a number of the reported articles in LQ in this period concentrated on the effects of various environmental issues such as organizational culture, industry sector, and national culture on leadership behaviors and consequences. The trend as such shows researchers realizing the fact that a study without context is incomplete.
The second is the rising popularity of ethical leadership. A report showed many LQ papers that dealt with ethical leadership, which means that ethics in leadership theory and practice plays an important role (Piccolo et al., 2012). Such behavior patterns denote the widening awareness of our society on ethical standards in the corporate world and the necessity of leaders with integrity and responsibility in making decisions. Those results give credence to creativity as one of the lifelines for leadership in leadership research.
Discussion:
The part of the article titled “Discussion” that Gardner et al. (2020) provide offers a detailed interpretation of the results in light of the research question and the previous literature. The authors conclude on the findings and significance of the results for the field of leadership research and practice, paying attention to the identified trends like the relevance of the contextual nature of leadership and the importance of ethical leadership. In addition, the authors acknowledge that they have depended on the journal LM and that there could have been some degree of bias in the process of selecting articles. Aside from this, they propose some research efforts, such as the demand for a longitudinal study to look into the long-term effects of leadership intervention. Overall, the discussion section does answer the main points: a specific interpretation of the results from the perspective of the research question is presented, also the importance and relevance of the outcomes are shown, the limitations are recognized, and finally, suggestions for future research are made.
Conclusion:
The critical points of review and their practical significance for the leader’s research and operation were highlighted in the conclusion of the paper by Gardner et al. (2020). It restates the research problem, which concerns the review of The Leadership Quarterly’s research for 2010-2019, and answers it based on the study of the journal empirical studies from that time period.
Our conclusion also addresses the transformation of the Leadership Quarterly in the past three decades. Leadership research has different ways of thinking, and the methodology is also evolving. It projects ahead possible lines of research on leadership, in the frame of study may continue exploring contextual dimensions, ethical leadership, and vision for creativity and innovation.
The conclusion marks the end of the study, presenting an integrated picture of what was proven and its importance. It informs us about the most prominent themes and the questions to be answered by empirical research, where we should strive to improve future studies. The conclusion implies that The Leadership Quarterly has a considerable role in advancing leadership research and practice and must be supported as a critical resource to researchers and practitioners.
References
Gardner, W. L., Lowe, K. B., Meuser, J. D., Noghani, F., Gullifor, D. P., & Collier, C. C. (2020). The Leadership trilogy: A review of the third decade of the Leadership Quarterly. The Leadership Quarterly, 31(1), 101379.
Mumford, M. D., Watts, L. L., & Partlow, P. J. (2015). Leader cognition: Approaches and findings. The Leadership Quarterly, 26(3), 301-306.
Norman, S. M., Avolio, B. J., & Luthans, F. (2010). The impact of positivity and transparency on trust in leaders and their perceived effectiveness. The Leadership Quarterly, 21(3), 350-364.
Piccolo, R. F., Bono, J. E., Heinitz, K., Rowold, J., Duehr, E., & Judge, T. A. (2012). The relative impact of complementary leader behaviors: Which matters most? The Leadership Quarterly, 23(3), 567-581.
Poutvaara, P. (2014). Facial appearance and leadership: An overview and challenges for new research. The Leadership Quarterly, 25(5), 801-804.
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