领导研究中的“情境”——内容、方法与未来展望

“Context” in the Leadership Studies:Content,Method and Direction for Future Research

本文对20世纪80年代以来情境相关的中西方领导研究文献进行了全面的分析和综述。首先对近20年来情境相关的领导研究进行了整体性的归纳与总结;然后从组织结构、组织文化、组织氛围及状态、其它组织内部情境和组织外部情境五个方面对领导研究中涉及的情境内容进行了梳理与具体分析,并从"理论的情境化"和"情境的理论化"两个视角对已有领导研究中的情境处理方法进行了探讨;最后进行了总体性评价与讨论,并对未来的研究给出建议。

Context has been paid more and more attention in leadership studies for its effects on leadership behavior and outcomes. A series of key questions have not been answered clearly. For instance, what is the ＂context＂ of leadership？ Why do scholars must consider context in leadership research？ How do scholars analyze context in existing leadership studies？ What improvement should scholars do in future research？ This article reviews the leadership literature with context consideration in last twenty years in order to clearly answer the above-mentioned questions. This paper firstly discusses different contexts and the necessity of context consideration in leadership research. We define ＂context of leadership＂ as the set of factors surrounding the leadership phenomenon or process that exerts some direct or indirect influence on it. Context contains internal （e. g. , interaction, organizational culture and climate） and external （ e. g. , location, sector, policy） situations. We also give a systematic elaboration for the necessity of context consideration in two aspects： （ 1 ） context is a key element in leadership research, and （2） leadership research should study in-depth the indigenous environment. We then discuss the content and examine methods of studying leadership context in-depth and systematically. The content of leadership context is very extensive in existing studies that include internal context, such as organizational structure, culture, climate, statue, life cycle, mode of governance, policy and goals, and external context, such as religious culture, national culture, social situation and institutional environment. However, there are two major limitations ： （ 1 ） current research pay more attention to the effects of lower-level internal context on leadership phenomenon or process than higher-level external context, and （2） current research is granular and fragmented in which comprehensive consideration of different contexts or different levels of context and their effects on leadership phenomenon or process are not sufficient. We discuss the analytical method of leadership context in two ways： contextualizing theory and theorizing about context, and find that studies with these two methods contain rich information. This study has two major limitations. First, in contextualizing research leadership contexts are usually treated as variables and their moderating effects on the relationship between other variables in leadership phenomenon are tested. Thus, a great deal of proposed leadership theories are tested and modified ceaselessly, and such situation is likely to cause a slow development of leadership theory. Second, in context theorizing research leadership contexts are also usually treated as variables and their direct effects on other variables in leadership phenomenon are tested. Unfortunately, more complex context theorizing studies about the effect mechanism of multiple contextual factors on leadership phenomenon are still somewhat rare.