Abstract
This study addresses the inconsistency of contemporary literature on defining the link between leadership styles and personality traits. The plethora of literature on personality traits has culminated into symbolic big five personality dimensions but there is still a dearth of research on developing representative leadership styles despite the perennial fascination with the subject. Absence of an unequivocal model for developing representative styles in conjunction with the use of several non-mutually exclusive existing leadership styles has created a discrepancy in developing a coherent link between leadership and personality. This study sums up 39 different styles of leadership into five distinct representative styles on the basis of similar theoretical underpinnings and common characteristics to explore how each of these five representative leadership style relates to personality dimensions proposed by big five model.
Highlights
Leadership-personality literature has witnessed a new resurged attention (Johnson et al [1]; Anderson [2]; De Hoogh et al [3])
This study endeavors to identify if symbolic personality trait variants proposed by big five personality framework can be linked with leadership, by using the representative leadership styles derived from the long list of styles presented in the contemporary literature on leadership
Dilemma of profuse leadership styles having overlapping areas is similar to what researchers of personality traits confronted in the beginning years when large number of personality traits were identified among which only few were found consistent in different cases
Summary
Leadership-personality literature has witnessed a new resurged attention (Johnson et al [1]; Anderson [2]; De Hoogh et al [3]). This is because, despite an end to the chapter of trait studies in determining the effectiveness of leaders in 1960’s, divisiveness about whether leadership is an innate phenomenon or learned behavior has always remained a noteworthy debate in the anthology of leadership (e.g. Kirkpatrick and Locke [4]; Johnson et al [1]; Rowley [5]; Ruvolo et al [6]; Marques [7] ). Linking the existing leadership styles with big five representative personality traits has given inconsistent results due to the absence of those leadership styles which can epitomize the several styles present in the leadership literature. Instead of selecting one or two leadership styles and linking them to big five personality traits like previous studies, this study has amalgamated the much discussed existing leadership styles in five distinguished clusters each representing a distinct leadership style and analyzed how each style relates to the personality trait variants of the big five model
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