The Big X of Leadership

The field of leadership research has the problem of construct redundancy, both conceptually and empirically. While the importance of integrating the bewildering number of leadership constructs seems to be unquestioned, the current state of science leaves us in the dark as to which common framework is sufficient to capture the essence of leadership behaviors and is theoretically sound. Addressing this challenge, this symposium focuses on research that uses a taxonomic approach to develop a reduced set of leadership behaviors (i.e., the Big X of Leadership). The four papers included in this symposium present new theoretical concepts and empirical evidence offering a clear path forward for mapping the basic ingredients of leadership. Further to this, they also provide novel perspectives which serve to extend previous leadership hyper-taxonomies (e.g., DeRue et al., 2011; Yukl et al., 2002, 2012). We believe this symposium will stimulate the discussion among leadership researchers who are intrigued by the idea of developing a higher-order level of leadership framework and will contribute to future research, as well as the professional standards of leadership development in practice. Re-envisioning a Hierarchy of Leadership Behaviors Using Insights from Personality Trait Literature Author: Marc H. Anderson; Iowa State U. Author: Peter Yih-Tong Sun; U. of Waikato A Big Three Model of Positive Leadership Through Natural Language Processing Author: Hao Zhao; China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) A Value-Lens on Hyper-taxonomy for Leadership: Three Explorative Studies Author: Hannes Leroy; Erasmus Research Institute of Management Mapping Fundamental Psychological Needs to Fundamental Leadership Behaviors: A Latent Growth Model Author: Yaxin Zheng; U. of Exeter Business School Author: Ilke Inceoglu; U. of Exeter Author: Alison Legood; U. of Exeter Business School Author: Anja Van Den Broeck; KU Leuven Author: Josh Howard; Monash U., Australia