Journal Name:
- İstanbul Üniversitesi İşletme Fakültesi Dergisi
| Author Name | University of Author | Faculty of Author |
|---|---|---|
Abstract (2. Language):
Leadership, the ability of a person to influence another vvithout using force, is a very important
construct İn organizational behavior and has been researehed for decades. Leaders are found to
influence the performance tevel of the organization and the specific outeomes such as sates
performance (Barlİng, VVeberS Kellovvay, 1996), organizational performance (Fiedler, 1986, Smith,
Carson & Alexander, 1984), Emproyee commitment, role ambiguity, employee performance and
employee attendance (Podsakoff, Niehoff, MacKenzie 8< Willians, 1993). However, inspite of the
vasi amount of research about leadership, there are stili unknovvns about the mechanisms that
make leaders successful.
Understanding the personafity of successful leaders is important because of its practical
implications for employee seleetion, training and development. If there are certain personaüty
characteristics that make. some people more successful in leadership, identifying these characteristic
will be very important. Therefore, starting from the beginning of the century, aimost afi the
traits are analyzed in terms of their impact on leadership. Two revievvs of the literatüre coneluded
that personality traits were not important in explaining leadership. (Mann, 1959, Stogdill, 1948).
After these revievvs, researehers turned their attention to situational factors and leader behaviors
that make leaders succesful. Hovvever until recently, research in this period almost completely
disregarded the fact that leaders are rational human beings have personalities and personal
mechanisms that result in certain behaviors. The newest developments in the field inelude the
charismatic leadership, taransformational leadership, leader member exchange theory, implicit
leadership theory and some other, vvhich have common sense appeal but somevvhat contradici
with one amother. So, despite ali the research efforts there is no theory or mechanism that simply
and direetiy explains what makes leaders successful. Practitioners or students of leadership are
presented with different models among which they can choose. There is a need to put ali the
existing theories into a perspeetive and add the leaders into the study of leadership, as human
beings who are part of thes process. in order to do this, two aspects of leadership study need to be analyzed. One aspect of
leadership is the emergence of individuals as leaders. Being perceived as a leader is important İn
conditions where the leader has little chances of directly interacting with the subordinates, such as
presidents of companies or political leaders. (House, Spangler& vVoycke, 1991). The other types
of leaders are those individuals who actually interact with their subordinates to achieve certain
outcomes, such as middle level and first level supervisors. This distinction isn't spelled out clearly
in the literatüre but this needs 'to be done, because the personality characteristics and mechanisms
that influence each type will be different.
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