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Leadership Theories Taxonomy Final Essay

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Taxonomy of Leadership Theories
Yvette Primous-Flowers
Walden University
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Taxonomy of Leadership Theories
The term “leadership” has been inflated for many years by countless scholars from various disciplines such as sociology or philosophy, psychology or business. Extensive research has been done revealing new and innovative theories explaining the sensation of “leadership”. As with any new theory or science solving the task to identify or justify ones, opinion takes on a life of its own. This taxonomy is intended to provide an overview of four leadership theories beginning with the earliest, mentioning influential authors of the particular theory.
I. Trait Theory
II. Year Introduced 1904-1948
III. …show more content…

The outcome of this constructive conservation was a list of 1,800 items describing various facets of leader behavior. Afterward, the different items were assigned, and a questionnaire was composed consisting of 150 questions for describing leader behaviors, the so-called “Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire (LBDQ)”, (p. 76).
Researchers at the University of Michigan identified two types of leadership behaviors: employee orientation and production orientation. The two concepts were built on clusters of characteristics, which showed a positive correlation with each other and criteria associated with effectiveness. Employee orientation behavior can be observed, when employees are essential to the leader, when he is considering their feelings in decision situations, when he is working on positive relationships between him and his employees. On the opposite side, the production orientation behavior displayed by a leader is only concerned with the production and technical aspects of it. Employees are only factors of the production, and not seen as individuals (Bosers and Seashores, 1966).
A third line of research was begun by Blake and Mouton in the early 1960’s; it explored how managers used task and relationship behaviors in the organizational setting (Northouse, 2013). The creation of the Managerial Grid was designed to explain how leaders help organizations to reach their purposes through two factors: concern for production and

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