What the Full Range of Leadership Model is Missing and How to go About it

Leadership is one of the most important topics in the social sciences as it is the key to organizational effectiveness (Hogan & Kaiser, 2005). Accordingly, scholars have proposed various models in seeking to identify the characteristics of effective leadership. The most researched model to date is the “Full Range of Leadership Model” (Bass & Avolio, 1994) consisting of transformational, transactional, and laissez faire leadership. However, it has been criticized in recent years. Going beyond previous criticisms (e.g. van Knippenberg & Sitkin, 2013) this talk uncovers three important aspects of leadership the Full Range Model has been missing and presents current research in these areas. In particular, first, it presents evidence pointing to the importance of integrating context into the study of leadership by including aspects of the particular situation (Peus, Braun & Frey, 2013) and the national culture (Peus, Braun & Knipfer, 2013) leadership takes place in. Second, it proposes the extension of current leadership research to include more negative aspects of leadership, such as exploitative leadership (Schmid, Pircher Verdorfer & Peus, 2014). Finally, the talk calls for more investigations into leadership that sincerely considers the legitimate interests of employees and other stakeholders (cf. Peus, 2011) and presents respective research.