The Big X of Leadership: A Functional Approach to Understand Different Ways to Lead

The leadership field has witnessed a continuous growth of constructs, generating conceptual richness but also substantial overlaps. The overarching theme of this thesis is to understand and organize these differing leadership constructs. Drawing upon a functional leadership perspective, this thesis proposes a “Big X of Leadership” framework which offers a theory-guided lens to understand the influence of leadership for followers. This framework is developed and tested across two interrelated chapters. Chapter 2 begins with the well-used meta-categories of task-, relation-, and change-oriented leadership and argues that the three categories represent non-compensatory requirements for maximizing followers’ autonomous motivation, as each fulfills a distinct basic psychological need rooted in Self-Determination Theory. A multimethod approach – a meta-analysis, a five-month longitudinal field study, an episodic leader-follower conversation, and a vignette-based experiment – provides convergent evidence that the deficiencies in any meta-category would constrain followers’ motivation even when other categories are strong. Chapter 3 expands this functional lens to capture the broader and more diverse ways that people can be motivated. Drawing upon Schwartz’s value framework, this chapter situates 113 multiple leadership constructs based on the values they fulfill for followers. Through construct mapping, expert ratings, and validation with organizational followers, I establish a quasi-circumplex model that organizes the leadership landscape into a coherent structure. This thesis moves beyond existing descriptive taxonomies, offering theoretically grounded explanations for why leadership constructs cluster, and how they differ in their functions in influencing followers.<p></p>

Author dc:creator

• Yaxin Zheng (21043358)

• leadership
• leadership development
• organizational behavior

Statement dc:rights

• All rights reserved
• Open Access after 2027-11-11

Identifier

10779/exe.32178393.v1

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:figshare.com:article/32178393