Contextual view on leadership

It has been stated that leadership is not produced in a vacuum, but rather influenced by outside actors, situational factors, and the context the leadership process occurs in (e.g. Johns 2006; Liden & Antonakis 2009; Oc 2018). Leadership should be understood as a co-created, incremental process that is constructed in and from the surrounding context (Osborn, Hunt & Jauch 2002). The influence of context on leadership is not a novel stream of research, and the earliest notions of situational context and leadership were dissected through the development of contingency theories. However, the main emphasis of those theories was on finding the perfect fit or congruence between leader traits, behaviours, and certain situations (Fiedler 1978; Fiedler & Garcia 1987). More recently, the interest of scholars has turned towards understanding leadership as being embedded in its context, and to explaining the leadership process through contextual elements (e.g.

Johns 2006; Oc 2018; Osborn et al. 2002). Therefore, contextual elements may have an effect on what kind of leadership is influential in a given context (Liden &

Antonakis 2009), and can be seen as either explaining or influencing the leadership process and the relationships between variables (Liden et al. 2016; Oc 2018). Context has also been used to explain the varying outcomes of leadership (Johns 2006), although the influence context has on leadership is seen as an understudied area (Porter & McLaughlin 2006). Moreover, there is no uniformed consensus on what actually constitutes the leadership context (Ayman & Lauritsen 2017; Oc 2018).

In previous literature, the leadership context has been described as “situational opportunities and constraints that affect the occurrence and meaning of organizational behaviour as well as functional relationships between variables.

Context can serve as a main effect or interact with personal variables such as disposition to affect organizational behaviour” (Johns 2006: 386). Moreover, context has been synonymized with the terms of situation and contingency (Ayman

& Lauritsen 2017). Therefore, the context can be seen as being a situation of some sort, but the importance of individual actors that construct the social reality (context included) should be more thoroughly studied (Grint 2005). On an abstract level, the context might constitute the national culture, legislative decisions, or the business environment of the organization. On an organizational level, the context may compose of physical structures of the organization, or the organizational culture and climate (Oc 2018; Johns 2006). However, it has also been proposed that one facet of context is the occurrence of particular events (Johns 2006: 401), for example an organizational crisis or a new CEO taking charge (Johns 2006). However, investigating this aspect of context is challenging since studies are seldom timely enough to capture such events.

The context of leadership can be studied on different analytical levels, for example national, organizational, team-level or individual. However, as leadership is often seen to be produced on a dyadic level, the context of leadership should be viewed from the viewpoints of the respective dyads (Liden et al. 2016). The leader-follower relationships can be seen as highly relational, and thus should be examined in their social contexts (e.g. Wech 2002). For example, successful socialization is often linked to relationship development within the social context (e.g. Jokisaari 2013).

The development process of dyadic relationships has also been seen as being influenced by contextual elements (e.g. the behavioural differences of actors) stemming from the social context (Nahrgang, Morgeson & Ilies 2009). In addition to behavioural differences shaping the social context of the relationships, elements such as group cohesion or demographic characteristics of the members are seen as elements of the social context. Therefore, social contexts and the leader-follower relationships they are embedded in are important, and previous studies have considered the role of, for example, the parallel dyadic relationships the parties have (Vidyarthi, Erdogan, Anand & Liden 2014), and the consideration of one’s own standing through social comparison among the work group (Hu & Liden 2013) in predicting different outcomes. However, the influence of the social context the leader-follower relationships are embedded in (Regts et al. 2018), as well as the complex contexts surrounding the leader-follower relationship should be further studied (Liden et al. 2016). In addition, the role of the dyadic relationships in different contexts (e.g. the quality of the LMX relationship neutralizing or strengthening the influence of some conditions) should be studied more closely (Day & Miscenko 2015).

In the research of leadership contexts, one dimension that has been recognized is the context of change. This might constitute major changes at an organizational level or in the business environment of the organization, but also constitutes inter-organizational changes such as CEO or leader succession (i.e. new leaders taking

charge) (Johns 2006). However, on a dyadic level, the change context created by middle and lower managers’ transitions might be more significant, and these elements should be given more research attention (Lam et al. 2018), especially given that these situational contexts have been seen as uncertain, complex, and challenging (Lam et al. 2018).

One context that has been seen as challenging for leadership is the context of crisis (Johns 2006). This might be explained as an organizational level crisis, but it should be noted that the crisis might also take place within the dyad, for example, in form of shocks or disputes. This context can be seen as being constructed through interactions, and, for example, negative events (e.g. Endrissat & von Arx 2013; Korsgaard et al. 2002). In previous literature, a context of negative events has been identified, and the leader’s attributes (e.g. open communication and showing concern) has been seen as influencing on how trust towards the leader was perceived within those contexts (Korsgaard et al. 2002). Moreover, in the face of negative events, the social context should be considered as it might influence the perceived severity of the incidents (Ballinger & Rockmann 2010). For example, in contexts of negative events, the individuals are often reflecting their perception about the events within the social context, and through a social comparison of the fairness of the leader’s actions. Furthermore, the perception of the just or disrespectful conduct of the leader can be seen as shaping the justice climate of the social context (Liden et al. 2016).

The physical context within which the leadership occurs can be seen as important.

The elements of the physical context can be, for example, elements related to the physical environment the work is conducted in (e.g. décor, lighting), or the actual physical distance between parties (Oc 2018). The influence of physical distance on leadership has been seen to influence the leadership process to a great extent, even creating a situation in which effectively leading people is demanding. For example, it has been shown that a physical distance between leaders and followers might neutralize the positive influence of leader behaviour (e.g. Howell & Hall-Merenda 1999).

In previous literature, the presence of different leadership contexts has been recognized. For example, leadership in extreme contexts that constitute one or more extreme events, contexts involving extensive or intolerable magnitudes of consequence (Hannah, Uhl-Bien, Avolio & Cavarretta 2009: 898), or a context of war (Grint 2005) have been studied. However, not all challenging situations and contexts are extreme. Leaders and subordinates might face situations and contexts that challenge their usual way of working and the effectiveness of leadership.

Following the logic of Grint (2005), there is often some sort of problem to be solved

in the process of leadership. However, while the problem might be simple to solve, in some cases, the context provides a challenging element through its uncertainty or complexity. For example, contemporary organizational life often presents challenges for the leadership process due to changing roles and tasks, complex social networks, and new forms of leading people that are emerging due to virtualization and globalization (e.g. Liden et al. 2016). In the next section, the dyadic process of leadership is examined through the lens of leader-member