r Academy of Management Annals

2023, Vol. 17, No. 1, 331–372.

https://doi.org/10.5465/annals.2020.0340

LEADERSHIP STYLES: A COMPREHENSIVE

ASSESSMENT AND WAY FORWARD
THOMAS FISCHER
University of Geneva

SIM B. SITKIN
Duke University

We systematically review eight positive (authentic, charismatic, consideration and initi-

ating structure, empowering, ethical, instrumental, servant, and transformational leader-
ship) and two negative leadership styles (abusive supervision and destructive leadership)
and identify valence-based conflation as a limitation common to all ten styles. This limi-
tation rests on specifying behaviors as inherently positive or negative and leads to mixing
the description of the content of leadership behaviors with the evaluation of their under-
lying intentions, quality of execution, or behavioral effects. We outline how this confla-
tion leads to amalgamation, construct redundancy, and most problematically, causal
indeterminacy, which calls into question the entire evidence base of leadership style
research. These weaknesses are not limited to the ten leadership styles but are inherent in
the valenced research logic that has been dominant for seventy years. Thus, the common
finding that positive leadership styles lead to positive outcomes and negative styles lead
to negative outcomes might be an artifact of conflation rather than a reflection of reality.
To address these concerns, we suggest distinguishing between intended and displayed
leadership styles, as well as their realized effects. We also call for utilizing a configura-
tional approach. These recommended actions would provide a strong foundation for
future research on leadership styles.

Leadership is an ever-growing field of research in
management and applied psychology. Leadership
scholars have noted that research has “made tremen-
dous progress in uncovering some of the enduring
mysteries associated with leadership” (Avolio,
Walumbwa, & Weber, 2009: 442), including estab-
lishing the widely shared consensus that “positive”
styles of leadership cause desirable outcomes and
“negative” styles of leadership cause undesirable
outcomes. According to many leadership scholars,
evidence has shown that people become more effec-
tive when they engage in such positive styles as
authentic, charismatic, empowering, ethical, instru-
mental, servant, or transformational leadership, and
less effective when they engage in such negative
styles as abusive supervision or destructive leader-
ship (e.g., Cheong, Yammarino, Dionne, Spain, &
Tsai, 2019; Krasikova, Green, & LeBreton, 2013;
Lemoine, Hartnell, & Leroy, 2019; Tepper, Simon, &
We thank John Antonakis and J€ org Dietz for their valu-
able feedback on early versions of the article. Correspon-
dence concerning this article should be directed to
Thomas Fischer.
331
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Park, 2017). For instance, Lemoine et al. (2019: 177)
stated that their “comparative review of the three
dominant moral approaches (i.e., authentic, ethical,
and servant leadership) clearly indicates that moral
leadership behaviors positively impact a host of
desirable organizationally relevant outcomes.” Like-
wise, Tepper et al. (2017: 125) concluded that
“exposure to abusive supervision is associated with
a broad range of dysfunctional outcomes that are
observed at both the individual and team levels.”
The implications for practice would be significant if
these conclusions rested on solid evidence—one
could just follow the “do-good logic” (which we
define as the belief that engaging in “positive” styles is
generally effective) and the “don’t-do-bad logic” (the
belief that engaging in “negative” styles is generally
ineffective) to achieve positive leadership outcomes.
In contrast with this widespread and enthusiasti-
cally advocated conceptualization, an increasing
amount of scholarship has challenged popular leader-
ship style constructs and the validity of their evidence
base. For instance, Antonakis, Bendahan, Jacquart,
and Lalive (2010) identified large parts of empirical
leadership research as being limited by statistical
332 Academy of Management Annals
misspecifications, stating that such misspecifica-
tions undermine the trustworthiness of research find-
ings. On conceptual grounds, Van Knippenberg and
Sitkin (2013) delineated confusion in construct defini-
tion and measurement in research into charismatic
and transactional-transformational leadership styles.
More recently, similar critiques have been articulated
for other leadership styles (e.g., Banks, Fischer, Gooty,
& Stock, 2021a; Fischer, Tian, Lee, & Hughes, 2021).
Moreover, scathing critiques have called much leader-
ship research fundamentally tautological (Alvesson,
2020; Alvesson & Einola, 2019) and its evidence “BS”
(i.e., bullshit) because it fails to accurately represent
organizational reality (Pfeffer, 2015).
In our systematic review, we map the research
landscape and systematically assess the conceptual
and empirical validity of 10 of the most influential
leadership style research programs. We assess the
leadership styles using a framework that distinguishes
four behavioral aspects: behavioral content (“what a
leader does”), underlying intentions (“why the leader
does it”), quality of execution (“how well they do it”),
and effects (“how effective” in terms of contributing to
organizational performance, normative achievements
or compliance or other outcomes). The first behavioral
aspect is descriptive (i.e., behavioral content), while
the other three aspects are evaluative. We find that
the definitions and measures of leadership styles fre-
quently conflate two or more of the four aspects, nota-
bly behavioral content with at least one evaluative
aspect. More generally, leadership styles are com-
monly studied as patterns of informal and interactive
behaviors that are believed to foster certain desir-
able or undesirable follower-, team-, or organization-
related objectives or consequences. However,
asserting that a pattern of behaviors (i.e., a leadership
style) exists simply because they include all-positive
or all-negative attributes is problematic. This problem
is exacerbated when the asserted pattern of behaviors
includes not only behaviors but also intentions, out-
comes, and assessments of the quality (e.g., execution
excellence or effectiveness) of the behaviors. Items
from academically popular questionnaires of leader-
ship styles serve as an illustration. For instance,
whether a leader acts with the primary intention of
promoting ethical conduct (i.e., ethical leadership)
cannot be judged solely based on behavioral descrip-
tions but requires an evaluation of positive intentions
too. Similarly, whether a leader provides autonomy
from bureaucratic constraints (i.e., empowering lead-
ership) or is intellectually stimulating (i.e., transfor-
mational leadership) cannot be judged solely based
on behavioral descriptions either but also requires an
January
evaluation of the quality of execution or effects. Thus,
well-executed behaviors or behaviors with autonomy-
enhancing and inspirational effects are more likely to
be classified as instances of a positive leadership style
than are behaviors that are poorly executed or have
negative effects.
We have found that all 10 reviewed leadership styles
study valenced and conflated bundles of behaviors
that are supposed to constitute either good or bad lead-
ership. This approach is problematic because it makes
the research prone to conflating leadership behaviors
with underlying intentions, quality of execution, and
realized effects. To overcome these concerns and to
advance leadership style research, we define and call
for disentangling intended and displayed leadership
styles as well as their realized effects.
We use the term valenced leadership styles in a
broad sense to refer to patterns of leadership behaviors
that are specified as good or bad. The basis for judging
a behavior’s goodness or badness can be based on
whether presumed underlying intentions, quality of
execution, or behavioral effects are good or bad. This
goodness or badness can manifest, for instance, in
effectiveness (e.g., contribution to organizational effec-
tiveness) or normativity (e.g., normative compliance or
normatively laudable achievements). Valence-based
conflation refers to situations in which otherwise quite
distinct behaviors are clustered and labeled as being
part of a style simply because of shared valence. This
issue is illustrated in the case of the ethical leadership
style, as defined by Brown, Trevi~ no, and Harrison
(2005), which includes normatively laudable inten-
tions, effective execution of leadership behaviors,
and the realization of normatively desirable effects.
The main commonality among the elements of this
leadership style is that all of the elements are deemed
positive.
Building upon our systematic review, we can
explain how valence-based conflation increases
the risk of amalgamation and construct redun-
dancy in the conceptualization of leadership styles
and consistently leads to causal indeterminacy.
First, valence-based conflation makes leadership
style constructs prone to amalgamation in the sense
that they are bundling behaviors that are conceptu-
ally unrelated except for shared valences. Constructs
involving valenced leadership styles tend to be amal-
gamated because they lack a clear conceptual ratio-
nale for bundling behaviors, and bundle behaviors
merely based on whether intent, quality of execu-
tion, or effects are positive or negative.
Second, valence-based conflation makes leader-
ship styles prone to construct redundancy in the
2023 Fischer and Sitkin
sense that these styles overlap not only in terms of
describing leadership behaviors (see Banks, Gooty,
Ross, Williams, & Harrington, 2018) but also in posi-
tive or negative evaluations of intent, execution,
and effects. For instance, both empowering and ser-
vant leadership overlap in positive evaluations,
such that both leadership styles produce the effect
of increased follower engagement and participation
at work.
Third, and most problematically, valence-based
conflation necessarily leads to causal indeterminacy.
We define causal indeterminacy as the impossibility
of determining whether a leadership style–outcome
link is due to leadership behaviors or other factors.
Valenced leadership styles are causally indeterminate
because they conflate behavioral content with under-
lying intentions, quality of execution, or behavioral
effects. Consequently, it is unclear whether empirical
findings for positive and negative leadership styles
rest on a behavioral grounding, or if there are alterna-
tive explanations for style–outcome relationships. The
entire existing evidence base claiming that positive
leadership styles cause positive outcomes and negative
leadership styles cause negative outcomes might
be erroneous, and empirical findings supporting
the do-good logic and the don’t-do-bad logic of
leadership styles might be artifacts of causal inde-
terminacy. For instance, a positive link between
transformational leadership and positive outcomes
(e.g., follower performance, satisfaction) and a nega-
tive link between abusive supervision and negative
focal outcomes (e.g., stress, turnover) is causally inde-
terminate because transformational leadership and
abusive supervision conflate leadership behaviors
with their effects (see also Fischer et al., 2021; Van
Knippenberg & Sitkin, 2013).
This causal indeterminacy can happen in two
ways: (a) if the focal outcome is defined by transfor-
mational or abusive effects, there is a tautology; (b)
even when the outcome is not defined in transforma-
tional or abusive terms, a style–outcome link could
be mistaken for a causal effect when the focal out-
come (e.g., follower performance) is caused by or
is cooccurring with another outcome (e.g., posited
transformational or abusive effects, which are con-
flated aspects of leadership style constructs) rather
than being caused by leader behaviors (i.e., behav-
ioral content). Take the example of a manager with
a hard-hitting behavior targeted at employees to
improve customer service processes (e.g., by pushing
for process improvements with an aggressive voice).
If the manager is successful in implementing
their change initiative—also, for instance, due to
receptive employees and favorable organizational
333
circumstances—their hard-hitting behaviors are
likely evaluated as having positive transformative
effects. If they fail, though—due to, for instance,
resisting employees—their hard-hitting behaviors
are likely to be evaluated as having abusive effects.
In the first case, positive transformative effects coin-
cide with success, and in the second case, negative
abusive effects coincide with failure; transforma-
tional leadership seems to cause success and abusive
supervision seems to cause failure. The first case
affirms the do-good logic of leadership, and the sec-
ond case affirms the don’t-do-bad logic of leadership.
However, both cases rest on identical content of
leadership behaviors. There is only variation in the
evaluative aspects of leadership that have also non-
behavioral antecedents, and these evaluative aspects
account for a causally indeterminate link between
leadership behaviors and effects.
Our systematic review and the assessment show
how valence-based conflation leads to amalgam-
ation, construct redundancy, and causal indetermi-
nacy. After the systematic review, we broaden the
perspective beyond the 10 leadership styles and
assess the field overall by tracing the evolution and
basic underlying logic of leadership style research
that has led to the problems found in each of the
leadership styles we examine. We find that over
seven decades valence-based conflation has mani-
fested in four different sublogics, but that the over-
arching logic of valenced specifications of leadership
styles are a lasting characteristic of the whole field
of research. In addition, causal indeterminacy is also
a constant and inherent part of the whole field,
given that valence-based conflation leads to causal
indeterminacy.
Based on this insight, we call for rethinking—
but not abandoning—leadership style research.
For rethinking leadership style research, we outline
in the final section of our article how distinguishing
intended and displayed leadership styles, as well as
their realized effects, could help avoid valence-based
conflation and causal indeterminacy. In addition, we
argue why such deconflation reduces the risk of amal-
gamation and construct redundancy. Moreover, we
sketch how studying leadership styles configuration-
ally further contributes to raising conceptual clarity
in leadership style research and, in this way, contrib-
utes to reducing amalgamation and construct redun-
dancy. Put differently, there is a need to go beyond
leadership styles as valenced catch-all concepts in
order to avoid conflation while still ensuring concep-
tual integration.
334 Academy of Management Annals
PLAN FOR THE SYSTEMATIC REVIEW:
RATIONALE, SCOPE, AND APPROACH
Rationale of the Review
In our broad, meta-level review of 10 leadership
styles that academics often study, we pay particular
attention to the risk of valence-based conflation and
the resulting risks of amalgamation, construct redun-
dancy, and causal indeterminacy. We believe that
such a meta-level review is more appropriate as a
next step for addressing the limitations of conflation,
amalgamation, construct redundancy, and causal
indeterminacy when compared with yet another the-
ory article, commentary, or review of a single leader-
ship style. Our call for a fundamental reorientation
of research practice is admittedly a very strong claim,
which is why we have documented the prevalence
of the limitations for all 10 leadership styles. Such a
wide claim and review is barely feasible within the
scope of a traditional theory article or commentary.
However, because we believe such a strong reorien-
tation is necessary, our meta-level review is designed
to carefully document these limitations for the whole
field of leadership style research.
In addition, reviews of a single leadership style
have already been conducted and have documented
conflation, amalgamation, construct redundancy, and
causal indeterminacy (e.g., Banks et al., 2018; Fischer
et al., 2021; Hoch, Bommer, Dulebohn, & Wu, 2018;
Van Knippenberg & Sitkin, 2013), but have missed
the overall pattern. In other words, the focus on single
style assessments and the absence of a broad, meta-
level review has had the consequence of problem per-
petuation because the limitations and shortcomings
identified for one or a few leadership styles have been
unknowingly replicated in research that has simply
moved on to another leadership style with the very
same issues. For instance, Yukl (1999) criticized ambi-
guity in whether a behavior is transformational, and
Van Knippenberg and Sitkin (2013) criticized transfor-
mational leadership for confounds between behaviors
and their hypothesized effects. Following these cri-
tiques, scholars moved to studying alternative leader-
ship styles such as authentic or ethical leadership
(Lemoine et al., 2019). At first glance, the shift in
scholarly activity could be interpreted as indicating
that researchers have learnt from the two critiques and
started using better concepts. With a closer look,
however, we have to acknowledge that authentic
and ethical leadership in fact replicate the previ-
ously identified issues as they continue to confound
behaviors with their effects (see Alvesson & Einola,
2019; Banks et al., 2021a) and, as our systematic
January
review shows, also conflate the content of behaviors
with good quality of execution, and, to some degree,
even good intentions. Constructs and labels change,
but the research logic and its shortcomings remain
the same. Our meta-level review of multiple leader-
ship styles and the assessment of their common
research logic and common limitations avoids per-
petuating the same limitations in another disguise
and allows us to outline a way forward. Such a meta-
level review builds on previous reviews but goes
beyond and extends them.
First, our work uncovers valence-based conflation
as a common weakness across research on leadership
styles. This finding synthesizes previous review-based
critiques and expands their relevance for all leadership
styles. For instance, Van Knippenberg and Sitkin
(2013) lamented that charismatic and transactional-
transformational leadership confound behaviors with
effects. Alvesson and Einola (2019) noted that there is
“excessive positivity” in the definition and measure-
ment of authentic leadership, and Banks et al. (2021a)
and Fischer et al. (2021) found that there is conflation
of leader behaviors with positive or negative follower
evaluations for ethical leadership and abusive supervi-
sion, respectively. All these previous reviews have
pointed to some form of valence-based conflation.
Extending such work, we distinguish three types of
valence-based conflation—namely behavior–intent,
behavior–execution, and behavior–effect conflation—
and we show that all reviewed leadership styles are
limited by at least one such type of conflation. We con-
clude that valence-based conflation is a defining fea-
ture of leadership style research to date.
Second, we show that valence-based conflation
makes leadership style constructs prone to amalgam-
ation. Yukl (1999) lamented that there is ambiguity
in whether a behavior is charismatic or transforma-
tional, and Van Knippenberg and Sitkin (2013)
highlighted the absence of causal models specify-
ing how different dimensions of transformational
leadership relate to each other to represent a single,
coherent construct. While these works identified
amalgamation for charismatic and transactional-
transformational leadership, we extend their in-
sights and sketch how valence makes all reviewed
leadership styles—actually all possible valenced
conceptualizations of leadership styles—prone to
amalgamation. Thus, we concur with and go beyond
Carton’s (2022) review, which indicated that lead-
ership constructs lump together multiple distinct
behaviors. Our review shows that valenced specifi-
cations of leadership are the source of grouping
2023 Fischer and Sitkin
conceptually unrelated behaviors into amalgams.
Future work needs to avoid valenced specifications
of behaviors.
Third, narrative reviews (e.g., Anderson & Sun,
2017; Banks et al., 2018), as well as meta-analyses
(e.g., Banks, McCauley, Gardner, & Guler, 2016;
Hoch et al., 2018), have identified construct redun-
dancy in leadership styles. Our review uncovers
valence-based conflation as a major source of this
previously identified construct redundancy.
Fourth, we note that conceptual conflation leads
to causal indeterminacy in the relationship between
leadership styles and focal outcomes. Given the
identified conflation problems, we show that it is
impossible to infer the effects of leadership behav-
iors on outcomes (e.g., follower performance or satis-
faction). In the case of behavior–effect conflation,
causal indeterminacy is obvious because one out-
come (e.g., follower performance) is explained by
another outcome (e.g., empowering or transforma-
tive effects), instead of explaining an outcome by
its causes (e.g., nonconflated content of behaviors).
Causal indeterminacy is also apparent in the case of
behavior–execution conflation, which characterizes
all 10 reviewed styles. Evaluations of the quality of
executing leadership behaviors are sometimes also
called leadership performance (cf. Campbell, 2012;
Campbell & Wiernik, 2015). That is, positive leader-
ship styles are specified by good performance (i.e.,
high quality execution) and negative leadership styles
by poor performance (i.e., poor quality execution). It
is causally indeterminate to say that good or bad per-
formance is related with good or bad outcomes. In
addition, even for behavior–intent conflation, causal
indeterminacy is present. While intentions are an
antecedent of behaviors, intentions are unobservable.
Only a leader’s claims about leadership intentions
and (other) people’s expressions of attributions
concerning such intentions are observable. Making
one’s intentions explicit is a leadership behavior,
whereas attributions concerning leadership inten-
tions are partially leadership outcomes (Martinko
et al., 2018; Meindl, Ehrlich, & Dukerich, 1985). That
is, insofar as leadership intentions are captured by
attributions, behavior–intent conflation specifies
leadership by its outcomes too. Because all valenced
leadership styles are specified by outcomes of lead-
ership, it is unsurprising to note that good leadership
styles seemingly relate to good outcomes, and bad
leadership styles relate to bad outcomes. Yet such a
do-good and don’t-do-bad logic of leadership rests
on causally indeterminate grounds.
335
Scope of the Review
For each of the 10 leadership styles we review—
eight positive and two negative ones—we searched in
Web of Science for articles published between 2000
and 2020 in widely cited journals publishing such
research.1 We chose the year 2000 because after Yukl’s
(1999) critique of charismatic and transactional-
transformational leadership, scholars suggested a
number of alternative styles, including some of
those covered in this review.
For each leadership style, we review 20 articles
that reflect the state of the science.2 Inclusion of
articles was based on the following criteria in
descending order of priority: (a) review articles, (b)
articles marked as highly cited in Web of Science
(i.e., top 1% per year), and (c) articles with the highest
absolute number of citations (for more details, see
Appendix A). Including review articles allows us
to integrate insights from previous scholarly work,
while including highly cited articles allows us to
review the most influential work that has shaped
research on leadership styles while still keeping
the sample size manageable for a narrative review.
Together, this approach yielded a set of 17 concep-
tual, 87 empirical, and 31 review articles. In addition,
we included 22 articles that met either of the two cri-
teria: (a) review articles, meta-analyses, or critical
assessments published outside of our review period;
or (b) articles suggesting a definition or measure of the
leadership style that other articles in our review have
built on. Examples are the conceptualizations of char-
ismatic leadership by Antonakis, Bastardoz, Jacquart,
and Shamir (2016) and empowering leadership by
Kirkman and Rosen (1999).
1
Widely cited journals in management and applied
psychology that were included in the review are: Academy
of Management Annals, Academy of Management Journal,
Academy of Management Review, Administrative Science
Quarterly, Annual Review of Organizational Psychology
and Organizational Behavior, Annual Review of Psychol-
ogy, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Manage-
ment, Leadership Quarterly, Organization Science, and
Strategic Management Journal.
2
Exceptions are consideration-initiating structure lead-
ership, destructive leadership, and instrumental leader-
ship, because there are fewer than 20 articles fitting the
search criteria. In case of consideration and initiating
structure leadership, the likely reason for the lower num-
ber of articles is the relatively old age of these concepts
because much research was conducted before the 2000s. It
is the opposite for instrumental leadership as a relatively
new concept.
336 Academy of Management Annals January

Approach of the Review and the Four Behavioral
Aspects Framework
To assess valence-based conflation in leadership
style research, we utilized a self-developed frame-
work that we call the four aspects of leadership
behaviors. As we noted in the introduction to this
article, the four aspects framework distinguishes one
descriptive and three evaluative aspects of leader-
ship behaviors: behavioral content (“what a leader
does”), underlying intentions (“why the leader does
it”), quality of executing behaviors (“how well they
do it”), and behavioral effects (“how effective” in
terms of contributing to organizational performance
or normative achievements or compliance).
This framework is grounded in existing research.
First, studying behavioral content has commonly
been regarded as the heart of leadership research
(Banks, Woznyj, & Mansfield, 2021b; Yukl, 2012).
Second, leader intentions and attributions of such
intentions are a central part of the longstanding attri-
butional school of leadership (e.g., Martinko, Harvey,
& Douglas, 2007; Meindl et al., 1985). Third, the qual-
ity of executing behaviors refers to “how well” a per-
son performs a behavior. The distinction between
content and quality of executing behaviors resembles
the distinction that industrial-organizational psychol-
ogists make between the descriptive (“what”) and
evaluative (“how well”) component of behavior (note
that the evaluative component is also called (leader-
ship) performance [see Campbell, 2012; Campbell
& Wiernik, 2015]). Fourth, scholars have already
warned about conflating leadership behaviors with
their effects (e.g., Banks et al., 2021b; Van Knippen-
berg & Sitkin, 2013). The four aspects framework is
also similar to the typology of prosociality at work by
Bolino and Grant (2016) that distinguishes prosocial
motives, prosocial behaviors, and prosocial effects.
Our framework refers to intentions instead of motives,
and, more substantively and in line with industrial-
organizational psychology, we further split behavioral
content and quality of behavioral execution (Borman &
Brush, 1993; Campbell & Wiernik, 2015). As such,
each of the components of the four aspects framework
have been already discussed extensively in leader-
ship or organizational behavior research, and we have
drawn them together in one framework to assess lead-
ership style research more systematically. We sum-
marize the four aspects framework in Table 1.
The four aspects framework allows us to assess
valence-based conflation because three of the four
aspects—intentions of behaviors, the quality of
executing behaviors, and effects of behaviors (i.e.,
except behavioral content)—are evaluative and point
to goodness or badness. See Table 2 for more details
about the evaluative aspects of the framework and
how they lead to conflation.

TABLE 1
The Four Aspects of Leadership Behaviors
Descriptive Aspect Evaluative Aspects
Intent Quality Outcome
Content “Why” a leader does what “How well” a leader “How effective” the
“What” a leader does they do executes the behavior behavior is

Construct space Content of behaviors Intentions underlying Quality of execution Effectiveness with
behaviors respect to relevant
and normatively
acceptable goals
Representation of the Observation of Unobservable (often assessed Assessment of behaviors Indicators of
construct behaviors with a proxy such as with respect to quality outcomes or
attribution of intentions, standards achievements
which is a judgment)
Potentially underlying Mix of person and Leader character Leader competency Leader success
root cause situation
Example: Giving Content (e.g., use (Self-)Attribution of Quality of execution (e.g., Effects (e.g., feedback
feedback or number of intention (e.g., feedback clarity and specificity that is helpful or
laudatory words in to help or harm the of feedback) harmful for follower
the feedback talk) follower’s development) development)

Notes: Behavioral content and quality of execution are the descriptive and evaluative aspects of behaviors, respectively. Underlying
intentions and behavioral effects are further aspects related to behaviors, but obviously not part of behaviors as such.
2023
TABLE 2
An Overview of the Three Subtypes of Valence-Based Conflation
Definition of Conflation
Subtype
Behavior–intent Classifying behaviors by
conflation positive or negative
underlying intentions
(“why”)
Behavior–execution Classifying behaviors by the
conflation degree to which their
execution is of high quality
(“how well”)
Behavior–effect Classifying behaviors by
conflation positive or negative effects
(“how effective or moral”)
Notes: We identify valence-based conflation of leadership styles with the four-aspects framework of leadership behaviors such that
mixing the descriptive aspect (i.e., content) with at least one evaluative aspect (i.e., intention, quality of execution, effects; see also Figure 1)
constitutes conflation.
MAPPING THE TERRAIN AND ASSESSING
CONFLATION: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF 10
LEADERSHIP STYLES
In this section, we map, review, and assess the
10 leadership styles across the four behavioral
aspects of leadership framework (see also Table 1).
For each leadership style, we start by assessing its
conceptual evolution. Then, we revisit the domi-
nant conceptualization of the leadership style. Next,
we map the dominant conceptualization according
to the four aspects framework to assess whether there
is valence-based conflation. Subsequently, if appli-
cable, we assess alternative views or review previous
critiques of the conceptualization of that style.
Finally, we summarize key insights derived from
reviewing the leadership style, which highlights a
nascent deconflated view of leadership. We summa-
rize key findings in Table 3.
We start our systematic review with consideration
and initiating structure leadership and transforma-
tional leadership because the conceptualization and
measurement of these two approaches served as
starting points for the definition of other well-
studied leadership styles that are part of our system-
atic review. We continue with authentic, empower-
ing, ethical, and servant leadership (in alphabetical
order) as typical positive leadership styles. Then, we
review charismatic and instrumental leadership,
which share key features of positive leadership
styles yet are characterized by more idiosyncrasies
in conceptualization. Finally, we review abusive
supervision and destructive leadership as negative
leadership styles.
Fischer and Sitkin 337
Illustration for
Implications for Interpreting Empowering Leadership
Causal Links (EmpL)
Indeterminate whether If EmpL presupposes the
behaviors or (attributions intention to foster
of) underlying intentions autonomy
account for the causal link
Indeterminate whether EmpL presupposes good
content of the behavior or execution of behaviors
its competent execution for fostering autonomy
accounts for the causal link
Tautological because the EmpL presupposes
behavior (as the cause) is increased levels of
defined by its effect follower autonomy
Consideration and Initiating Structure Leadership
Conceptual evolution. The root concepts of mod-
ern leadership style research are consideration and
initiating structure leadership, which basically
refers to relationship-oriented (“consideration”)
and task-oriented (“initiating structure”) leadership
behaviors. Conceptualization and measurement of
these styles date back to the Ohio State Leadership
Studies that aspired to describe leader behaviors rel-
evant for problem solving in organizations (Fleish-
man, 1953; Fleishman, Mumford, Zaccaro, Levin,
Korotkin, & Hein, 1991). This research provided an
academic foundation for leadership frameworks that
are popular in leadership training, such as Blake and
Mouton’s (1964) managerial grid, which suggests a
combination of high relations- and task-orientation,
and Hersey and Blanchard’s situational leadership
model, which suggests that leaders should vary their
display of relations- and task-oriented behaviors,
contingent on the follower’s maturity level (Blan-
chard, Zigarmi, & Nelson, 1993).
Notwithstanding the impact of research into consid-
eration and initiating structure leadership, in recent
decades research attention shifted toward other con-
structs. Accordingly, Judge et al. (2004: 36) referred to
consideration and initiating structure as the “forgotten
ones,” even though scholars reported meta-analytic
support for their effectiveness (e.g., DeRue, Nahrgang,
Wellman, & Humphrey, 2011a; Judge et al., 2004).
Reviewing the dominant conceptualization. Con-
sideration is, according to Judge et al. (2004: 36) “the
degree to which a leader shows concern and respect
338 Academy of Management Annals January

TABLE 3
Mapping the Terrain of Contemporary Leadership Style Research
Behavioral Aspects of Leadership Behaviorsa
Leadership Dominant Definition or Quality of
style Dimensions Content Intention execution Effect Classical Reference(s)

Consideration-initiating (1) Consideration   () Stogdill (1962), Judge,

structure leadership (2) Initiating structure   () Piccolo, and Ilies
(2004)
Transformational (1) Idealized influence    Bass (1985), Bass and
leadership (attributes and behaviors) Avolio (1995)
(2) Inspirational motivation   
(3) Intellectual stimulation   
(4) Individualized consideration   ()
Authentic leadership (1) Self-awareness () () Walumbwa, Avolio,
(2) Relational transparency   Gardner, Wernsing,
(3) Internalized moral () () and Peterson (2008)
perspective
(4) Balanced processing  
Empowering leadership (1) Enhancing the   Ahearne et al. (2005)
meaningfulness of work
(2) Fostering participation in   
decision making
(3) Expressing confidence in  
high performance
(4) Providing autonomy from   
bureaucratic constraints
Ethical leadership Demonstrating and promoting     Brown et al. (2005)
normatively appropriate
conduct
Servant leadership (1) Conceptual skills  Liden, Wayne, Zhao, and
(2) Empowerment    Henderson (2008)
(3) Helping subordinates grow  ()  
and succeed
(4) Putting subordinates first  
(5) Behaving ethically    
(6) Emotional healing  ()  
(7) Creating value for the ()  
community
Charismatic leadership Charisma is a subconstruct of    Bass (1985), Bass and
transformational leadership Avolio (1995)
Instrumental leadership (1) Environmental monitoring   Antonakis and House
(2) Strategy formulation and   () (2014)
implementation
(3) Path–goal facilitation   
(4) Outcome monitoring   
Abusive supervision Sustained display of hostile,  ()   Tepper (2000)
nonphysical behavior
Destructive leadership Systematic and repeated    Einarsen, Aasland, and
behavior that violates the Skogstad (2007)
legitimate interest of the
organization by undermining
or sabotaging subordinate- and
organization-level factors and
outcomes

Notes: The table shows that all leadership styles and their single dimensions are valenced because they cover intentions or quality of
execution or effects, and thus do not objectively describe the behavioral content of leadership behaviors.
a
A tick in parentheses indicates that the aspect of leadership is only present in the measurement tool but not the conceptualization.
2023
for followers, looks out for their welfare, and expresses
appreciation and support.” In contrast, initiating
structure is “the degree to which a leader defines and
organizes his role and the roles of followers, is ori-
ented toward goal attainment, and establishes well-
defined patterns and channels of communication”
(Judge et al., 2004: 36). The most popular operation-
alization of consideration and initiating structure
leadership is the Leadership Behavior Description
Questionnaire (LBDQ) in its version LBDQ-XII (Judge
et al., 2004; Stogdill, 1962). Judge et al. (2004) and
DeRue et al. (2011a) synthesized decades of research
on consideration and initiating structure leadership
and offered meta-analytic support for its effective-
ness. More recently, Keller (2006), Lambert, Tepper,
Carr, Holt, and Barelka (2012), and Neubert, Kacmar,
Carlson, Chonko, and Roberts (2008) found positive
effects as well.
Mapping the dominant conceptualization accord-
ing to the four aspects framework to assess valence-
based conflation. The definition of initiating struc-
ture behaviors explicitly spans two behavioral aspects
of leadership: behavioral content (“defines and organ-
izes his role and the role of followers” [Judge et al.,
2004: 36]) and quality of execution (“establishes well-
defined patterns and channels of communication”
[Judge et al., 2004: 36]). Thus, there is behavior–
execution conflation. The definition of consideration
behaviors is a less clear-cut case of valence-based con-
flation. Yet if behaviors are more likely to be classified
as showing concern or respect for followers when they
are executed well or produce positive effects (e.g., fol-
lower’s feeling of respect), then such classifications
rest on behavior–execution and behavior–effect con-
flation too.
Indeed, behavior–execution and behavior–effect
conflation characterize LBDQ-XII (Judge et al., 2004;
Stogdill, 1962). For instance, “makes accurate deci-
sions” in LBDQ-XII rests as much on an evaluation of
accuracy as it rests on the description of decision-
making. The qualifier “accurate” leads to conflating
behavioral content with the quality of executing
these behaviors—thus, scholars who develop mea-
surement tools should abstain from using such quali-
fiers. Likewise, “persuades others that his ideas are
to their advantage” refers to persuasion behaviors
but also evaluations of their effectiveness. Further-
more, some items are only evaluative, even though
they are part of a measure that is supposed to
describe leader behaviors. Illustrative items are “can
reduce a madhouse to system and order” and “is
friendly and approachable.” Items that capture
Fischer and Sitkin 339
positive judgments about a leader, and that are con-
ceptually closer to effects of leadership behaviors
than to being leadership behaviors themselves, are
thus mistakenly used to measure leadership behav-
iors; they do not measure what they are supposed to
measure. In fact, some items cannot be characterized
accurately as behavior descriptions because they
refer to unobservable characteristics or intentions
(“speaks from a strong inner conviction”) or attitudes
(“remains calm when uncertain about coming even-
ts”). In addition, several items confound behaviors
with their effects (e.g., “arguments are convincing,”
“settles conflicts in the group when they occur”). For
example, LBDQ-XII fails to fully describe the use of
leader behaviors in part because it mixes behavioral
description with evaluation of the quality of the execu-
tion of those behaviors. While the definitions of consid-
eration and initiating structure are only limited by
behavior– execution conflation, measurement items
are also limited by behavior–effect and behavior–
intent conflation.
Reviewing previous critiques. Generally, the valid-
ity of the meta-analytic findings concerning this lead-
ership style is conditional on the conceptual and
empirical rigor of the LBDQ. This rigor has been ques-
tioned on psychometric grounds (Schriesheim &
Kerr, 1974). Perhaps even more importantly, Lord,
Binning, Rush, and Thomas (1978) found that
responses to the LBDQ depend on performance infor-
mation such that high-performing leaders are reported
to score higher on consideration and initiating struc-
ture, irrespective of actual behaviors. Because per-
formance information can influence evaluations of
execution quality and effectiveness and do not reflect
the impact of behavioral content, this finding provides
additional support for our argument that consider-
ation and initiating structure are limited by valence-
based conflation.
Summary. The formulation of leadership in terms
of consideration and initiating structure is a modern
classic in leadership style research; task-oriented
(“initiating structure”) and relation-oriented
(“consideration”) behaviors are key parts of leader-
ship research. Unfortunately, both the definition and
the measurement of the two dimensions are inher-
ently valenced. Because behaviors are specified by
their contribution to follower and work group func-
tioning—that is, behavioral content is only classified
as consideration and initiating structure behaviors if
they foster respective goals—behavior–execution and
behavior–effect conflation is the consequence.
340 Academy of Management Annals
Transformational Leadership
Conceptual evolution. The concept of transforma-
tional leadership dates back to the work of the politi-
cal scientist Burns (1978). In management research,
Bass (1985) suggested conceptualizations and mea-
surement of transformational leadership that have
become classics in the field. The basic idea of trans-
formational leadership is that leaders should not
limit themselves to fair relations-oriented and useful
task-oriented behaviors with followers, which would
represent transactional leadership (and also resemble
consideration and initiating structure behaviors).
Instead, Bass (1985) proposed that transformational
leaders appeal to values to induce performance that
goes beyond expectations. Thus, transformational
leadership research has put people’s values center-
stage in leadership research, and is probably the most
highly cited stream of research in the field. More
recently, though, research on transformational
leadership has declined, following Van Knippenberg
and Sitkin’s (2013) critique of its conceptual and
measurement-based underpinnings.
Reviewing the dominant conceptualization. In
its currently most popular version, transformational
leadership rests on five dimensions: idealized
influence attributes, idealized influence behav-
iors, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimu-
lation, and individualized consideration (Bass &
Avolio, 1995). Typically, transformational leadership
has been studied in conjunction with and distin-
guished from the three-dimensional transactional lead-
ership construct plus the one-dimensional laissez-faire
leadership construct, which together constitute the
so-called “full range of leadership” (Antonakis, Avo-
lio, & Sivasubramaniam, 2003).
Mapping the dominant conceptualization accord-
ing to the four aspects framework to assess valence-
based conflation. When assessing transformational
leadership using the four aspects framework, we
find that the construct not only includes behavioral
content but also includes effects and points to high
quality of execution. For instance, intellectual stimu-
lation specifies a positive effect on followers, and the
successful realization of such a positive effect makes
it more likely that the behavior was executed well.
The most popular measure of transformational
leadership is the Multifactor Leadership Question-
naire (MLQ), which has been broadly applied in the
studies reviewed here. There are different versions of
the MLQ, but MLQ Form X is the most widely used
one (see Antonakis et al., 2003). The instrument
reflects the positive valence of its underlying construct
January
and is thus limited by both behavior–execution and
behavior–effect conflation. The original measure and
its refinements (e.g., Avolio, Bass, & Jung, 1999; Bass &
Avolio, 1995) have generally found meta-analytic sup-
port for leading to a variety of positive outcomes (Judge
& Piccolo, 2004), but have not taken valence-based
conflation into account.
Some scholarly work has gone beyond positivity
to study the downsides of transformational leader-
ship (Kark, Shamir, & Chen, 2003; Lin, Scott, &
Matta, 2019). However, these approaches have still
defined transformational leaders in terms of their
effects (i.e., based on the degree to which they are
influential on followers). As such, research on the
downside of transformational leadership has consid-
ered negative effects of highly influential leaders (cf.
the distinction between authentic and pseudo trans-
formational leadership [Bass & Steidlmeier, 1999])
but has remained positively valenced by conflating
the content of behaviors with high-quality execution
of these behaviors and social influence effects on
followers.
Reviewing and assessing alternative conceptual-
izations according to the four aspects framework.
Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Moorman, and Fetter (1990)
introduced an alternative conceptualization of trans-
formational leadership that rests on the dimensions
of vision articulation, providing an appropriate
model, fostering acceptance of goals, setting high
performance expectations, providing individualized
support, and offering intellectual stimulation. This
version of transformational leadership shares two
dimensions with the Bass (1985) model: individual-
ized support and intellectual stimulation. In this
way, the models by Bass (1985) and Podsakoff et al.
(1990) share valence-based conflation inherent in
these dimensions. In addition, the dimension of fos-
tering acceptance of goals conflates behavioral con-
tent with high-quality execution and positive effects
in fostering goals. The questionnaire items of Pod-
sakoff et al. (1990) also reflect these conflated con-
ceptual dimensions.
Reviewing previous critiques. The conceptualiza-
tion of transactional-transformational leadership as
the “full-range model” sounds comprehensive, but
our review is consistent with Van Knippenberg and
Sitkin’s (2013) critique that the dimensions of trans-
formational leadership confound behaviors with
their effects. Consequently, there is inherent confla-
tion, which undermines confidence in the empirical
evidence of primary studies (e.g., Gong, Huang, &
Farh, 2009; Wang, Law, Hackett, Wang, & Chen,
2005) and meta-analyses of transformational
2023 Fischer and Sitkin
leadership (Judge & Piccolo, 2004). A recent review
by Siangchokyoo, Klinger, and Campion (2020)
raised some of these concerns too, suggesting that
transformational leadership research rests on prob-
lematic conceptual underpinnings.
Summary. Transformational leadership is argu-
ably the most widely studied leadership construct.
The values-based notion that transformational lead-
ers go beyond relations and tasks is appealing. How-
ever, both the review by Van Knippenberg and
Sitkin (2013) and the more recent review by Siang-
chokyoo et al. (2020) identified important flaws in
the conceptualization and operationalization of the
transformational leadership construct. Our review
points to valence-based conflation as accounting for
these previously noted flaws. A positive trend, how-
ever, is that research on the flawed construct seems
to be waning. Only one empirical paper published
after Van Knippenberg and Sitkin’s (2013) critique of
transformational leadership—that by Lin et al.
(2019)—has been influential enough to qualify for
inclusion in our sample for the review.
Authentic Leadership
Evolution of the concept. Authentic leadership
has been put forward to distinguish sincere and
pseudo forms of transformational leadership (Bass
& Steidlmeier, 1999). The notion of authenticity
quickly gained popularity among researchers and
helped put the importance of ethics center-stage
in leadership research (Gardner, Cogliser, Davis, &
Dickens, 2011). The conceptual evolution of authen-
tic leadership research can be broken down in three
phases. First, there was a phase of conceptual hetero-
geneity, in which authentic leadership was seen as a
root construct, combinable with different leadership
styles (Avolio & Gardner, 2005). Subsequently, there
was a period of conceptual consensus around the
definition and measure proposed by Walumbwa
et al. (2008) that established authentic leadership
as a distinct leadership style focusing on moral
self-concordance (Lemoine et al., 2019). Finally, in
recent years scholars have started challenging both
the conceptual consensus and the very idea of
authentic leadership (Alvesson & Einola, 2019).
Reviewing the dominant conceptualization.
Walumbwa et al. (2008) put forward a definition and
measure of authentic leadership that has dominated
the field of research and had received nearly 4,500
Google Scholar citations as of February 2022. Draw-
ing on Luthans and Avolio (2003), Walumbwa et al.
(2008: 94) specified that authentic leadership “draws
341
upon and promotes both positive psychological
capacities and a positive ethical climate, to foster
greater self-awareness, an internalized moral per-
spective, balanced processing of information, and
relational transparency on the part of leaders working
with followers, fostering positive self-development.”
This definition is four-dimensional, including leader
self-awareness, relational transparency, internalized
moral perspective, and balanced processing. The
dimensionality is also reflected in the measurement
items of the Authentic Leadership Questionnaire
(ALQ), and a recent review and a meta-analysis
(Hoch et al., 2018; Lemoine et al., 2019) have argued
that authentic leadership leads to a host of posi-
tive outcomes.
Mapping the dominant conceptualization ac-
cording to the four aspects framework to assess
valence-based conflation. Two of the four authentic
leadership dimensions—leader self-awareness and
internalized moral perspective—are cognitive and
hence do not clearly map onto any of the four behav-
ioral aspects of leadership. In contrast, the other two
dimensions of authentic leadership—balanced proc-
essing and relational transparency—describe behav-
ioral content (i.e., information processing, relational
activity) and also evaluate how well the behavior is
executed (i.e., balanced, transparency). Therefore, two
dimensions of authentic leadership are nonbehavioral
and two dimensions map onto multiple aspects of
leadership and exhibit behavior–execution conflation.
Conflation also characterizes the ALQ-based mea-
surement of all four dimensions of authentic leader-
ship, including for those dimensions that were defined
nonbehaviorally. For instance, there is behavior–
intent conflation in measuring the dimension of self-
awareness (e.g., “says exactly what he or she means”).
Likewise, there is behavior–intent conflation for rela-
tional transparency (e.g., “makes decisions based on
his or her core values”). To assert that a leader really
says what they mean or whether they act upon core
values, respondents compare observed behaviors
with attributions of presumed intentions and values.
There is also behavior–execution conflation for
measuring what Walumbwa et al. (2008) referred
to as an “internalized moral perspective” (e.g.,
“listens carefully to different points of view before
coming to conclusions”) and as “balanced proc-
essing” (e.g., “accurately describes how others view
his or her capabilities”). Listening and describing
refer to the content of behaviors, whereas carefulness
and accuracy refer to evaluating whether this content
was executed well. Building on the conceptualization
of Walumbwa et al. (2008), an alternative measure
342 Academy of Management Annals
of authentic leadership is the Authentic Leadership
Inventory (ALI). The ALI seeks to address psychomet-
ric shortcomings of the ALQ (Neider & Schriesheim,
2011), yet draws on the same conceptualization as the
ALQ. Thus, the ALI is prone to the same operational
shortcomings as the ALQ. Indeed, items such as “My
leader expresses his/her ideas and thoughts clearly to
others” and “My leader uses his/her core beliefs
to make decisions” (Neider & Schriesheim, 2011:
1149) exemplify conflation via evaluative qualifiers
(“clearly”) and unobservable elements requiring an
inference (“core beliefs”).
Reviewing and assessing alternative conceptual-
izations according to the four aspects framework.
There are a variety of alternative conceptualiza-
tions preceding the work of Walumbwa et al.
(2008). For instance, Bass and Steidlmeier (1999)
popularized the idea of authenticity in leadership
research when distinguishing “authentic trans-
formational” from “pseudo-transformational” lead-
ership based on whether the forms of leadership are
“ethical” (i.e., authentic) or “unethical” (i.e., pseudo)
(for a critique, see Price, 2003). Subsequently, Luthans
and Avolio (2003: 243) defined authentic leadership
as “a process that draws from both positive psycholog-
ical capacities and a highly developed organizational
context, which results in both greater self-awareness
and self-regulated positive behaviors on the part
of leaders and associates, fostering positive self-
development.” Additional work on authentic leader-
ship built on this conceptualization (e.g., Avolio,
Gardner, Walumbwa, Luthans, & May, 2004; Gard-
ner, Avolio, Luthans, May, & Walumbwa, 2005).
This initial definition is also positively valenced and
maps on to the content and quality of executing
behaviors (“process that draws from [ … ] positive
psychological capacities”) as well as effects (“results
in [ … ] greater self-awareness and self-regulated pos-
itive behaviors”). There are other approaches that we
do not discuss here because they have regarded
authentic leadership as a root construct rather than a
leadership style, and hence are beyond our scope.
Examples are an embodiment perspective on
authentic leadership (Ladkin & Taylor, 2010), life
story– and narration-based approaches (Shamir &
Eilam, 2005; Sparrowe, 2005), and popular science
applications (George, 2003).
Reviewing previous critiques. Recent reviews
and critiques have focused primarily on work in the
tradition of Walumbwa et al. (2008) because it pro-
duced the largest and most coherent body of research.
A review by Lemoine et al. (2019) criticized some parts
of authentic leadership research, such as certain ques-
tionnaire items, but largely affirmed the effectiveness
January
of authentic leadership. By contrast, Hoch et al. (2018)
and Banks et al. (2016) questioned incremental valid-
ity vis-a-vis other leadership constructs. More funda-
mentally, Alvesson and Einola (2019) criticized the
conceptual underpinnings of authentic leadership
and warned about using authentic leadership and
other leadership constructs that have excessively posi-
tive labels. In a letter exchange, proponents and critics
discussed whether authentic leadership is useful
(Gardner, Karam, Alvesson, & Einola, 2021). Our
review does not take a stance on whether it is good
or bad to be authentic, but we have identified that
authentic leadership maps on to multiple aspects (i.e.,
descriptive and evaluative) of leadership. Such map-
ping constitutes valence-based conflation and causal
indeterminacy, which calls into question the existing
evidence base. In this way, our review critiques the
current authentic leadership concept because we
uncover conflation as the root cause of limitations in
authentic leadership without suggesting that leaders
should be inauthentic (as done, e.g., by Pfeffer, 2015).
Summary. Authentic leadership research helped
to raise scholarly awareness about ethical concerns
in leadership and led to much empirical research on
the topic affirming its positive consequences. We
find it plausible that authentic leadership causes
positive outcomes because authenticity can improve
credibility, which in turn can help in wielding social
influence (see also Lind & Sitkin, 2015). However,
our review recognizes that the dominant conceptuali-
zation of authentic leadership research is limited by
behavior–execution conflation. Its measurement tool
is, in addition, limited by behavior–intent conflation.
These forms of valence-based conflation raise con-
cerns about the validity of the evidence base. Decon-
flating the authentic leadership construct will be
an important step toward producing more rigorous
research and knowledge concerning authentic leader-
ship in the future.
Empowering Leadership
Evolution of the concept. The idea of empow-
ering leadership dates back to classical works on par-
ticipative management (Likert, 1961) and supportive
leadership (Bowers & Seashore, 1966). It is attractive
because of its promise to simultaneously foster
employee performance and satisfaction. However,
in contrast to authentic leadership, there is not one
consensual definition and measure of empowering
leadership. Articles in our sample draw on four
competing conceptualizations (see Ahearne, Mathieu,
& Rapp, 2005; Amundsen & Martinsen, 2014; Arnold,
Arad, Rhoades, & Drasgow, 2000; Kirkman &
2023 Fischer and Sitkin
Rosen, 1999). The work of Ahearne et al. (2005) has
received slightly more traction than the other three
approaches, yet all four approaches continue to be
regularly used. Notwithstanding conceptual differ-
ences, all four approaches share a critical commonal-
ity: that empowering leaders are supportive and
increase followers’ autonomy in a nonburdening way.
Reviewing the dominant conceptualization. The
most influential conceptualization of empowering
leadership is that by Ahearne et al. (2005). They
defined and measured empowering leadership
behaviors around four dimensions: enhancing the
meaningfulness of work, fostering participation in
decision-making, expressing confidence in high per-
formance, and providing autonomy from bureaucratic
constraints. The effectiveness of this version of empow-
ering leadership has been associated with increased
creativity (Zhang & Bartol, 2010) or decreased cynicism
(Lorinkova & Perry, 2017). In addition, meta-analytic
evidence has shown that various versions of empower-
ing leadership improve task performance and organiza-
tional citizenship behavior (Lee, Willis, & Tian, 2018;
see also Cheong et al., 2019).
Mapping the dominant conceptualization ac-
cording to the four aspects framework to assess
valence-based conflation. Ahearne et al.’s (2005)
four dimensions of leadership behaviors have an
inherently positive valence and map onto not only
the content aspect of leadership behaviors but also
good execution and effects. For instance, enhanced
meaning and removed constraints are effects of leader-
ship behaviors. Thus, only behaviors that are either
executed well or intended to enhance meaning
or remove constraints at work qualify as empowering
and meet definitional standards. Taken together,
Ahearne et al.’s (2005) definition conflates behavioral
content with effects and quality of execution or inten-
tions (see also Table 3).
Reviewing and assessing alternative conceptual-
izations according to the four aspects framework.
Arnold et al. (2000: 1240) defined empowering lead-
ership as “behaviors whereby power is shared with
subordinates and that raise their level of intrinsic
motivation.” Power sharing specifies behavioral and
decisional content (“shared”), while raising intrinsic
motivation is an effect (“raise their level”) and pre-
supposes that the behaviors are executed well. Thus,
the definition maps onto multiple behavioral aspects
and suffers from behavior–execution and behavior–
effect conflation.
Amundsen and Martinsen (2014: 489) defined
empowering leadership as “the process of influenc-
ing subordinates through power sharing, motivation
343
support, and development support with intent to
promote their experience of self-reliance, motiva-
tion, and capability to work autonomously within
the boundaries of overall organizational goals and
strategies.” The definition spans behavioral content
(e.g., “power sharing”), intentions (“with the intent
to”), and quality of execution to produce certain
effects (“promote their experience [ … ] to work auton-
omously”). The consequence is behavior–intent and
behavior–execution conflation.
A number of studies have used the measure of exter-
nal team leader behaviors based on a definition pro-
posed by Kirkman and Rosen (1999) to operationalize
empowering leadership (e.g., Chen, Sharma, Edinger,
Shapiro, & Farh, 2011; Harris, Li, Boswell, Zhang, &
Xie, 2014; Li, Chiaburu, Kirkman, & Xie, 2013). Specif-
ically, Kirkman and Rosen (1999: 59) defined team
empowerment as having four dimensions: “potency,
meaningfulness, autonomy, and impact,” and external
team leader behaviors are seen as antecedent to such
team empowerment.
Summary. Despite variation between the four dif-
ferent versions of empowering leadership, they all rest
on leader support and follower autonomy, and are all
supposed to cause positive outcomes (Cheong et al.,
2019). While the idea of empowering leadership is
laudable, all four conceptualizations are limited by
valence-based conflation and span behavioral content,
as well as good execution. Furthermore, one version
of empowering leadership is defined such that it pre-
supposes empowering intentions (Amundsen &
Martinsen, 2014) and two versions presuppose
empowering effects (Ahearne et al., 2005; Arnold
et al., 2000). There is a need for nonconflated con-
ceptualizations in the future.
Ethical Leadership
Conceptual evolution. Ethical leadership emerged
as a research topic in response to an alarming num-
ber of corporate scandals (Trevi~ no, Hartman, &
Brown, 2000), and has sparked broad research
interest (Lemoine et al., 2019). Empirical ethical
leadership research is characterized by strong con-
sensus around the definition and measure proposed
by Brown et al. (2005), which rests on interpersonal
behaviors and compliance with normative stand-
ards. In our sample, all but one empirical article (i.e.,
Kalshoven, Den Hartog, & De Hoogh, 2011) built on
the Brown et al. (2005) conceptualization. Neverthe-
less, there is conceptual controversy about whether
ethical leadership is a leader behavioral or follower
perceptual phenomenon (Den Hartog, 2015;
344 Academy of Management Annals
Eisenbeiss, 2012), and Banks et al. (2021a) have
taken the position that ethical leadership as pro-
posed by Brown et al. (2005) conflates both views.
Reviewing the dominant conceptualization.
Brown et al. (2005: 120) defined ethical leadership as
“the demonstration of normatively appropriate con-
duct through personal actions and interpersonal rela-
tionships, and the promotion of such conduct to
followers through two-way communication, reinforce-
ment, and decision-making.” They operationalized
this definition with the 10-item Ethical Leadership
Scale (ELS). This measure has been used, for instance,
by Mayer, Aquino, Greenbaum, and Kuenzi (2012)
who studied both antecedents and consequences of
ethical leadership. In addition, a meta-analysis (Ng &
Feldman, 2015) and a narrative review (Lemoine et al.,
2019) both reported positive effects of ethical leader-
ship, but their findings did not take into account
valence-based conflation and causal indeterminacy.
Mapping the dominant conceptualization ac-
cording to the four aspects framework to assess
valence-based conflation. Brown et al.’s (2005) defi-
nition maps onto behavioral content (“conduct”),
and it is ambiguous whether it covers not only ethi-
cal intentions but also effects (“promotion of such
conduct”). To the extent that a behavior is more
likely to be classified as promotion of normatively
appropriate conduct if the behavior was intended to
or has the effect of producing such follower-level
behavior, the definition of ethical leadership is lim-
ited by behavior–intent and behavior–effect confla-
tion. In the case of behavior–effect conflation, there
is also behavior–execution conflation because achiev-
ing ethical goals presupposes good execution of the
behaviors. Thus, the risk of all three types of valence-
based conflation is present for the definition of ethical
leadership (see also Table 3). The three types of confla-
tion are present in a clearer form in the questionnaire
measure (ELS). Some items specify the behavior by its
underlying intentions (e.g., “Has the best interests of
employees in mind”), other items by high-quality exe-
cution (e.g., “Makes fair and balanced decisions”).
Additional items also implicate presumed effects
(e.g., “Can be trusted”). Thus, past research has offered
empirical evidence based on a conflated measure.
Reviewing and assessing alternative conceptual-
izations according to the four aspects framework.
The work of Trevi~ no et al. (2000) was a predecessor
of Brown et al. (2005) and studied the development
of a reputation for ethical leadership. Thus, the same
authors conceptualized ethical leadership once in
behavioral (i.e., conduct-based) and once in evalua-
tive (i.e., reputation-based) terms. Reflecting these
January
different views, behavioral and evaluative views exist
in parallel. On one hand, most empirical research has
conceptualized ethical leadership in terms of leader-
ship behaviors (e.g., Ng & Feldman, 2015). On the
other hand, several scholars have explicitly theorized
and tested an evaluation-focused approach to ethical
leadership (Jordan, Brown, Trevi~ no, & Finkelstein,
2013; Stouten, van Dijke, Mayer, De Cremer, &
Euwema, 2013), which was also reflected in a recent
review (Den Hartog, 2015).
Reviewing previous critiques. One advantage of
perceptual or evaluative views of ethical leadership
is that they can be applied to very different contexts
and cultures. Eisenbeiss (2012), by contrast, criti-
cized such views as relativistic. Indeed, defining
ethical leadership by follower perceptions causes
ambiguity of underlying behaviors because even
objectively abhorrent behaviors might be classified
as ethical depending on the norms of followers.
Banks et al. (2021a) identified conflation between
behaviors and evaluations as a fundamental impedi-
ment for producing rigorous evidence about ethical
leadership. These critiques raise the concern that,
although meta-analyses and reviews have affirmed
positive effects of ethical leadership (Lemoine et al.,
2019; Ng & Feldman, 2015), such findings might be
an artifact of conflation. In other words, the percep-
tual legacy of ethical leadership makes the concept
prone to valence-based conflation because it shifts
the focus from the behavior to how the perceived
behavior is evaluated—and such evaluation can
unfold along presumed intentions, quality of execu-
tion, and produced effects.
Summary. Ethical leadership might be a solution
to moral wrongdoing in organizations, and indeed
scholars have found that it is linked to many positive
outcomes (Ng & Feldman, 2015). It is unclear, how-
ever, whether the existing evidence base about ethi-
cal leadership is valid because, as a valenced
concept, ethical leadership is prone to conflating
leader behaviors with follower evaluations (Banks
et al., 2021a). To produce a more rigorous evidence
base, future research needs to build on deconflated
concepts that distinguish behavioral descriptions
and evaluations.
Servant Leadership
Conceptual evolution. The concept of servant
leadership dates back to the early work of Greenleaf in
the 1970s. Despite the decades-long history, there is a
lack of consensus in studying servant leadership (Eva,
Robin, Sendjaya, van Dierendonck, & Liden, 2019).
2023 Fischer and Sitkin
Among the various definitions and measures of the
construct, our review uncovered two particularly
influential ones: those of Ehrhart (2004) and Liden,
Wayne, Zhao, and Henderson (2008). Notwithstand-
ing conceptual differences, both views center around
patterns of interpersonal behaviors, enacted with a
consequentialist focus on creating valued outcomes
for followers and other stakeholders (Lemoine et al.,
2019).
Reviewing the dominant conceptualization. The
conceptualization and measurement tool proposed
by Liden et al. (2008) sparked most research interest.
Liden et al. (2008: 162) argued that servant leaders
focus “on developing employees to their fullest
potential in the areas of task effectiveness, community
stewardship, self-motivation, and future leadership
capabilities.” Instead of a more formal definition,
they put forward an operational conceptualization of
servant leadership along seven dimensions that
are also reflected in the questionnaire measure (i.e.,
SL-28; four items for each of the seven dimensions,
hence 28 items overall): conceptual skills, empower-
ment, helping subordinates grow and succeed, put-
ting subordinates first, behaving ethically, emotional
healing, and creating value for the community. There
is also a shortened 7-item questionnaire (SL-7), which
includes one item of the SL-28 for each of its seven
dimensions (Liden et al., 2015). Scholars have reported
empirical support for the effectiveness of the servant
leadership construct (e.g., Chiniara & Bentein, 2016;
Lemoine & Blum, 2021; Liden, Wayne, Liao, & Meuser,
2014). However, the presence of valence-based confla-
tion raises questions about the foundation for claims
about its validity, which we assess next.
Mapping the dominant conceptualization ac-
cording to the four aspects-framework to assess
valence-based conflation. The seven dimensions of
servant leadership span multiple aspects of leader-
ship behaviors (see also definitions of these dimen-
sions in Liden et al., 2008: 162). The conceptual
skills dimension is not behavioral but is indirectly
linked to the quality of executing behaviors. The
dimensions empowerment, helping subordinates
grow, and emotional healing span behavioral con-
tent, quality of execution, and effects because
empowerment, subordinate growth, and health are
leadership outcomes. Moreover, putting subordi-
nates first refers to both prosocial intention and
behavioral content, and behaving ethically mixes the
content of behaviors with laudable intentions (if deon-
tological) and the quality of execution plus effects (if
consequentialist). Furthermore, creating value for the
community specifies effects and presupposes good
345
execution. Multiaspect conflation also manifests in
questionnaire items. For instance, “My leader gives
me the freedom to handle difficult situations in the
way that I feel is best” (Liden et al., 2015: 256) specifies
both behavioral content and quality of execution;
“My leader makes my career development a priority”
(Liden et al., 2015: 256) refers to both what a leader
does and the idea that the behavior is executed well;
and “I would seek help from my leader if I had a per-
sonal problem” (Liden et al., 2015: 256) is an effect of
leadership behaviors. By implication, Liden and col-
leagues’ (Liden et al., 2015; Liden et al., 2008) concep-
tualization and measurement of servant leadership is
limited by valence-based conflation.
Assessing an alternative conceptualization ac-
cording to the four aspects framework. Ehrhart
(2004) developed another variant of the servant lead-
ership construct that rests on recognizing moral
responsibility beyond contributing to organizational
performance and considering various stakeholders,
including subordinates. Without offering a formal
definition, Ehrhart (2004) developed a 14-item mea-
sure that reflects the additional focus on moral
responsibility but remains limited by valence-based
conflation because the measure spans all four as-
pects of leadership: intention (e.g., “makes the per-
sonal development of department employees a
priority”), content (e.g., “my department manager
does what she or he promises to do”), quality of exe-
cution (e.g., “balances concern for day-to-day details
with projections for the future”), and effect (e.g.,
“creates a sense of community among department
employees”) (Ehrhart, 2004: 93). Conflation thus
calls into question the validity of empirical support
for the effectiveness of Ehrhart’s (2004) servant lead-
ership concept (e.g., for studies by Neubert, Hunter,
& Tolentino, 2016; Neubert et al., 2008; Walumbwa,
Hartnell, & Oke, 2010).
Summary. There seems to be broad empirical sup-
port for the positive consequences of servant leader-
ship (Lemoine et al., 2019), yet both dominant
conceptualizations are limited by valence-based
conflation. It should be noted that one article in our
sample pointed toward a promising alternative
approach. Sun (2013) conceptually examined the
identity-based underpinnings of servant leadership,
arguing that a multiattribute servant identity influen-
ces cognitive dispositions that, depending on the
organizational context, influence behavioral disposi-
tions and servant leadership. Such work can help in
dissecting servant leadership into its nonvalenced
antecedents and constituent components, foresha-
dowing a deconflated research approach.
346 Academy of Management Annals
Charismatic Leadership
Conceptual evolution. Charismatic leadership is
the oldest concept that we review and predates the
modern study of leadership, for example in Max
Weber’s (1922/2002) work characterizing charisma as
one source of authority. Building on, yet also deviating
from Weber’s sociological premises, House (1977) sug-
gested a psychological theory of charismatic leadership
that popularized the notion of charisma among man-
agement scholars. Over the last two decades, two
research streams have been particularly popular: (a)
studying charismatic leadership as a subconcept of
transformational leadership, and (b) studying charis-
matic leadership as leader rhetoric. During the period
covered by this review, the most common approach has
been to study charisma as part of transformational lead-
ership. However, in recent years rhetorical approaches
to charismatic leadership have gained popularity.
Reviewing the dominant conceptualization.
Scholars have commonly conceptualized charismatic
leadership as “idealized influence” and “inspirational
motivation,” which are to have two dimensions of
transformational leadership and are typically measured
with the MLQ (Antonakis et al., 2016). This conceptual-
ization is identical to the conceptualization of these two
dimensions of transformational leadership that we
reviewed previously. A meta-analysis (Banks, Enge-
mann, Williams, Gooty, McCauley, & Medaugh, 2017)
showed that charismatic leadership predicts positive
outcomes, including individual and group perfor-
mance. However, Banks et al. (2017) noted that the
MLQ-based primary studies have suffered from concep-
tual and empirical limitations—notably lack of clarity
as to whether the measures capture behaviors, and
endogeneity bias—that put in doubt the validity of
the findings.
Mapping the dominant conceptualization ac-
cording to the four aspects framework to assess
valence-based conflation. The conceptualization of
charisma as idealized influence and inspirational
motivation, like transformational leadership research,
is characterized by valence-based conflation (see also
our previous mapping of transformational leadership
and the two charisma dimensions). This conflation
manifests by spanning multiple aspects of leadership
behaviors (for further review-based critiques, see
Antonakis et al., 2016; Banks et al., 2017; Van Knip-
penberg & Sitkin, 2013).
Reviewing and assessing alternative conceptual-
izations according to the four aspects framework.
The most popular alternative approach to studying
charismatic leadership is based on the leader’s
January
rhetoric. Building on earlier work by House (1977),
Shamir, House, and Arthur (1993) argued that charis-
matic leaders influence followers by affecting their
self-concept. Shamir, Arthur, and House (1994)
applied this view in suggesting that charismatic lead-
ers use seven rhetorical techniques (e.g., “More refer-
ences to the collective and to collective identity, and
fewer references to individual self-interest” [Shamir
et al., 1994: 29]) to influence followers’ self-concept.
Following this approach, Bligh, Kohles, and Meindl
(2004) and Baur et al. (2016) used computer software
to content-analyze speeches. Offering an example of
promising ways to move forward more rigorously,
Baur et al. (2016) identified regularly cooccurring
patterns of rhetorical techniques as configurations,
which they examined to assess the differential suc-
cess of these configurations in wielding influence.
This rhetoric-based research approach does not suf-
fer from valence-based conflation because it focuses
on “what” a leader says—not necessarily in terms of
substance but in terms of rhetoric and words—and
hence does not mix the description of behaviors with
the evaluation of underlying intentions, quality of
execution, or effects.
More recently, Antonakis, d’Adda, Weber, and
Zehnder (2021) and Jacquart and Antonakis (2015)
measured charisma with different rhetorical tactics,
such as anecdotes, contrasts, expressing moral con-
victions, metaphors, or setting ambitious goals, and
defined charisma as “values-based, symbolic, and
emotion-laden leader signaling” (Antonakis et al.,
2016: 304). Their approach avoids conflation, as
does other recent empirical research outside our
sample (Meslec, Curseu, Fodor, & Kenda, 2020; Tur,
Harstad, & Antonakis, 2021). Whereas the seven rhe-
torical strategies by Shamir et al. (1994) share a focus
on evoking a more collective self-concept, the set of
rhetorical tactics by Antonakis and colleagues is
broader and more eclectic because the tactics are so
general that some of them are not specific to leader-
ship (e.g., use of anecdotes, contrasts, metaphors).
Still, the approach is promising for future research
because it overcomes all three types of valence-based
conflation by capturing only what leaders say, and
avoiding confusion with intentions, execution, or
effects.
There are also alternative conceptualizations of
charismatic leadership that are neither MLQ- nor
rhetoric-based, but these have received less academic
traction. Thus, we do not include them in this review.
Examples are charismatic leadership as part of the
so-called CIP model distinguishing charismatic, ideo-
logical, and pragmatic leadership (Lovelace, Neely,
2023 Fischer and Sitkin
Allen, & Hunter, 2019; Strange & Mumford, 2005);
charisma based on media descriptions (Flynn & Staw,
2004); and studying antecedents of charisma in terms
of affective events (Walter & Bruch, 2009).
Reviewing previous critiques. A set of articles
criticized the MLQ-based dominant conceptualiza-
tion of charismatic leadership and its valence-based
conflation, including the above-discussed works by
Yukl (1999) and Van Knippenberg and Sitkin (2013).
In addition, Antonakis et al. (2016: 306) spoke of the
“MLQ problem,” arguing that the MLQ used for mea-
suring charisma does not measure an independent
variable but an outcome. Banks et al. (2017) lamented
similar conceptual and empirical limitations. These
critiques cast doubt on the validity of research on
charismatic leadership in the tradition of the MLQ
and serve as foundations for the scholarly shift toward
studying charisma rhetorically.
Summary. The notion of charismatic leadership
has a long history, yet the heterogeneity of approaches
makes it impossible to characterize charismatic lead-
ership research in a monolithic way. Still, there is a
clear trend in our sample. Over the entire review
period, studying charismatic leadership as a subcon-
cept of transformational leadership has been the most
popular approach; however, this focus has shifted in
recent years toward studying charisma as leader rhe-
toric. Scholars are apparently beginning to heed the
calls of Van Knippenberg and Sitkin (2013) and Anto-
nakis et al. (2016) to avoid confounding behaviors
with effects, and the study of charismatic leadership
is a positive exemplar for studying leadership styles
in a deconflated manner. A remaining challenge for
future research, though, is to ensure theoretical inte-
gration. We will outline later how a configurational
approach can be helpful for addressing this concern.
Instrumental Leadership
Conceptual evolution. Instrumental leadership is
a recently formulated leadership style (Antonakis &
House, 2014) that has its roots in path–goal theory,
another classic in the study of leadership (House,
1971; House & Mitchell, 1975). Path–goal theory,
which holds that effective leaders “engage in behav-
iors that complement subordinates’ environments
and abilities in a manner that compensates for defi-
ciencies and is instrumental to subordinate satisfac-
tion and individual and work unit performance”
(House, 1996: 323), has received meta-analytic sup-
port based on 120 studies (Wofford & Liska, 1993).
The idea of instrumental leadership is that a leader
not only has to engage in fair exchange (i.e.,
347
transactional) relationships and appeal to followers’
values and ideals (i.e., transformational) but also has
to ensure that followers contribute to the organiza-
tion’s strategy (Antonakis & House, 2014). In this
way, instrumental leadership has been suggested as
extending transactional-transformational leadership
to reflect more than the so-called “full range of lead-
ership” (Bass & Bass, 2008: 879)—to reflect the
“fuller full range of leadership” (Antonakis & House,
2014: 746). Please note that we review only the ver-
sion proposed by Antonakis and House (2014)
because it is the only conceptualization of instru-
mental leadership in our sample.
Reviewing the dominant conceptualization.
Antonakis and House (2014: 749) defined instrumen-
tal leadership as “the application of leader expert
knowledge on monitoring of the environment and of
performance, and the implementation of strategic and
tactical solutions”; they built on this definition to
observe that, “strategically, leaders monitor the exter-
nal environment and identify strategies and goals.
From a follower work facilitation point of view, lead-
ers provide direction and resources, monitor perfor-
mance and provide feedback.” Following current
terminology, this definition refers to management
more than to leadership (Ashford & Sitkin, 2019;
Kotter, 1990), yet this explanation captures the four
dimensions of instrumental leadership: environ-
mental monitoring, strategy formulation, path– goal
facilitation, and outcome monitoring. Environmen-
tal monitoring rests on “knowing the strengths and
weaknesses of the organization and identifying
opportunities,” while strategy formulation refers to
“leader actions focused on developing policies, goals,
and objectives to support the strategic vision and mis-
sion” (Antonakis & House, 2014: 750). In addition,
path–goal facilitation refers to “leader behaviors tar-
geted towards giving direction, support, and
resources, removing obstacles for goal attainment
and providing path–goal clarifications,” and outcome
monitoring “entails leader provision of performance-
enhancing feedback useful for goal attainment”
(Antonakis & House, 2014: 750).
Mapping the dominant conceptualization ac-
cording to the four aspects framework to assess
valence-based conflation. The four dimensions of
instrumental leadership specify what a leader does,
and hence they capture the content of leadership
behaviors. In addition, the dimensions of path–goal
facilitation (e.g., “removes obstacles”) and outcome
monitoring (e.g., useful and “performance-enhancing
feedback”) span quality of execution and effects. Envi-
ronmental monitoring and strategy formulation also
348 Academy of Management Annals
span quality of execution insofar as behaviors are
more likely to be classified as belonging to the
two dimensions when the behaviors are helpful for
fostering the respective goals (e.g., “identifying oppor-
tunities” or “support[ing] the strategic vision”).
The questionnaire for measuring instrumental
leadership reflects the mix of multiple behavioral
aspects too (see Antonakis & House, 2014: 753). For
instance, the items “ensures that his/her vision is
understood in specific terms” (strategy formulation
and implementation) and “removes obstacles to my
goal attainment” (path–goal facilitation) conflate
behaviors with effects because follower understanding
and removed obstacles are outcomes of leadership
behaviors. Likewise, “provides me with constructive
feedback about my mistakes” (outcome monitoring)
conflates behavioral content (“feedback”) with good
execution (“constructive”) because the item not only
describes that a leader gives feedback but asks for eval-
uating whether the feedback was given well to be con-
structive. In addition, “understands the constraints of
our organization” (environmental monitoring) does
not specify a behavior but a high-quality sense of
judgment.
Summary. The idea of instrumental leadership is
appealing: leaders also have to foster contributions
to the organization’s strategy (Antonakis & House,
2014). Whereas we concur with this general idea and
find it a valuable addition to leadership research, we
raise concerns about the inherent positive valence of
instrumental leadership for fostering organizational
goals and its resulting conceptual conflation.
Abusive Supervision
Conceptual evolution. The concept of abusive
supervision is the most influential approach to
studying negative forms of leadership and has
helped draw attention to the downsides of leader-
ship influence. Abusive supervision research is
characterized by a strong consensus around the
definition and measure provided by Tepper (2000).
Furthermore, all empirical articles on abusive
supervision in our sample have built on Tepper’s
conceptualization. Integrative reviews and meta-
analyses (Mackey, Frieder, Brees, & Martinko, 2017;
Zhang, Liu, Xu, Yang, & Bednall, 2019) have sug-
gested that abusive supervision leads to negative
workplace outcomes, yet a recent review identified
conflation in abusive supervision research, raising
concerns about the validity of this conclusion
(Fischer et al., 2021).
January
Reviewing the dominant conceptualization. Tep-
per (2000: 178) defined abusive supervision as
“subordinates’ perceptions of the extent to which
supervisors engage in the sustained display of hos-
tile verbal and nonverbal behaviors, excluding phys-
ical contact.” He specified that this definition
characterizes abusive supervision as a subjective
assessment. The same individual could view a
supervisor’s behavior as abusive in one context and
as non-abusive in another context, and two subordi-
nates could differ in their evaluations of the same
supervisor’s behavior (Tepper, 2000: 178). Several
corresponding questionnaire items, by contrast, are
formulated as descriptions of behaviors (e.g., “Breaks
promises he/she makes” [Tepper, 2000: 190]). The
response scales used in abusive supervision ques-
tionnaire items are also behavioral (e.g., response
option “He/she uses this behavior very often with
me” [Tepper, 2000: 189]).
Generally, there is ambiguity as to whether abu-
sive supervision rests on leadership behaviors and is
a leadership style or is a subjective evaluation of fol-
lowers. On one hand, the definition proposed by
Tepper (2000) refers to abusive supervision as a sub-
jective evaluation, and Tepper et al. (2017: 126) reaf-
firmed that the abusive supervision construct does
not “capture supervisors’ behavior in an objective
sense.” On the other hand, a recent systematic
review has shown that abusive supervision is still
predominantly referred to and studied as a set of
leader behaviors, including in work by Tepper him-
self (see Fischer et al., 2021). For instance, scholars
have described the behavioral domain of abusive
supervision (Yu, Duffy, & Tepper, 2018), and meta-
analyses have included the hypothesized conse-
quences of abusive supervision (Mackey et al., 2017;
Zhang & Liao, 2015). Thus, notwithstanding the con-
ceptual debates about whether abusive supervision
is behavioral or evaluative, we include abusive
supervision in this review because it has been com-
monly used as a construct capturing patterns of lead-
ership behaviors that are evaluated and believed as
fostering undesirable consequences, and, in this
way, has been characterized as a leadership style.
Mapping the dominant conceptualization accord-
ing to the four aspects framework to assess valence-
based conflation. In mapping abusive supervision
according to the four aspects framework, we find
that the abusive supervision construct conflates the
descriptive with evaluative aspects of leadership
behaviors. Some items explicitly commingle behav-
iors with underlying intentions (“Blames me to save
himself/herself embarrassment” [Tepper, 2000: 190]),
2023 Fischer and Sitkin
constituting behavior–intent conflation. Other items
conflate descriptions with negative evaluations of
leadership behavior more ambiguously (“Gives me
the silent treatment”: [Tepper, 2000: 189]). Because
precisely the same behavior can be interpreted differ-
ently depending upon who exhibits it (e.g., if my boss
does not interact much with me because they have
confidence in my work versus because they do not
care about how I am doing), this negative evaluation
can rest on ascribed meaning that implies different
presumed intent (i.e., inadvertently silent behavior)
or not (i.e., deliberately silent behavior). In the former
case, there is behavior–intent conflation. In the latter
case, the behavior is inadvertently poorly executed
for maintaining proper relationships at work, such
that there is behavior–execution conflation. Fischer
et al. (2021) outlined for each item of Tepper’s (2000)
questionnaire how it conflates behaviors and evalu-
ations and offers a more comprehensive assess-
ment of conflation. Here, we simply record the
existence of valence-based conflation.
Reviewing previous critiques. Abusive supervi-
sion research has found broad support. Integrative
reviews (Tepper, 2007; Tepper et al., 2017) and
meta-analyses (Mackey et al., 2017; Zhang et al.,
2019) have reported consistently negative effects
of abusive supervision. However, confidence in the
meta-analytic evidence rests on the rigor of the under-
lying primary studies (Antonakis, 2017). Fischer et al.
(2021) have shown that conflation, as well as low base
rates of reported abusive supervision, undermine con-
fidence in the statistical inferences drawn by meta-
analytic evidence and underlying primary studies
alike (e.g., Harris, Kacmar, & Zivnuska, 2007; Tepper,
Henle, Lambert, Giacalone, & Duffy, 2008).
Summary. Abusive supervision is an important
topic of research because such a form of leadership
might engender very negative effects for people and
organizations. However, our review identifies that,
despite the clean original definition offered, its
implementation since that time has resulted in the
current conceptualizations of abusive supervision
that suffer from behavior–intent, behavior–execu-
tion, and behavior–effect conflation, which casts
doubt on the validity of the evidence base. Deconflat-
ing the abusive supervision construct would be a
positive step in enhancing confidence in this leader-
ship style construct.
Destructive Leadership
Conceptual evolution. Destructive leadership is
another commonly studied and well-cited stream
349
of negatively valenced leadership style research.
Einarsen et al. (2007) put forward a construct defini-
tion of destructive leadership centered around the
violation of legitimate organizational interests.
Destructive leadership is also often invoked as an
umbrella term for the “dark side of leadership” in
general, spanning distinct concepts such as petty
tyranny, toxic leadership, or simply bad leadership
(Tierney & Tepper, 2007).
Reviewing dominant conceptualizations.
Einarsen et al. (2007: 208) conceptualized destructive
leadership as “the systematic and repeated behaviour
by a leader, supervisor or manager that violates the
legitimate interest of the organisation by undermining
and/or sabotaging the organisation’s goals, tasks,
resources, and effectiveness and/or the motivation,
well-being or job satisfaction of subordinates.” Both
meta-analytic evidence (Schyns & Schilling, 2013)
and an integrative narrative review (Krasikova et al.,
2013) have provided empirical support for the nega-
tive effects of destructive leadership. The validity of
such evidence depends, however, on the validity of its
conceptualization and measurement (Antonakis, 2017).
Mapping the dominant conceptualization ac-
cording to the four aspects framework to assess
valence-based conflation. The Einarsen et al. (2007)
definition spans multiple aspects of leadership, which
can be seen at the example of “sabotaging” (Einarsen
et al., 2007: 208). Deliberate sabotaging refers to a neg-
ative intent, and nondeliberate “sabotaging” refers to
very poor execution of leader behaviors, which
implies either behavior–intent or behavior–execution
conflation. In addition, “violat[ing] the legitimate
interests of an organization” (Einarsen et al., 2007:
208) refers to a negative effect. Thus, the definition
exhibits all three types of valence-based conflation. In
their integrative review, Krasikova et al. (2013: 3)
explicitly built on Einarsen et al. (2007) and defined
destructive leadership “as volitional behavior by a
leader that can harm or intends to harm a leader’s
organization and/or followers.” This definition con-
flates behaviors with the evaluation of underlying
intentions (“volitional,” “intends”), as well as poten-
tially negative effects (“harm”).
Reviewing and assessing alternative conceptual-
izations according to the four aspects framework.
Other scholars have examined single facets of
destructive leadership or taken distinct approaches
to conceptualizing it, which could be an avenue for
deconflating destructive leadership. For instance,
Padilla, Hogan, and Kaiser (2007) took a systemic
approach and regarded destructive leadership as
the interplay of leaders, susceptible followers, and
350 Academy of Management Annals January

conducive environments (see also Thoroughgood,
Padilla, Hunter, & Tate, 2012). Ferris, Zinko, Brouer,
Buckley, and Harvey (2007), in turn, focused on one
subfacet of destructive leadership, such as strategic
bullying, which still mixes behaviors with intentions.
Others have taken a more exploratory approach
(Shaw, Erickson, & Harvey, 2011) or treated destruc-
tive leadership as rooted in abusive supervision (Col-
lins & Jackson, 2015). These different views share the
research logic of spanning behavioral content as well
as one further aspect of leadership, be it underlying
intentions or behavioral effects.
Summary. Whereas abusive supervision centers on
the experience of abuse by a follower, destructive lead-
ership adds a complementary focus on violating orga-
nizational interests (Einarsen et al., 2007). There is
meta-analytic evidence for the negative effects of these
forms of leadership (Schyns & Schilling, 2013), but the
validity of such research is unclear due to valence-
based conflation. Thus, there is a need for research
based on deconflated constructs that focus on one
aspect of leadership behaviors only. The conceptual
work of Padilla et al. (2007) that distinguished the toxic
triangle—destructive leaders, susceptible followers,
and conducive environments—might be helpful in
this regard for keeping leader behaviors, follower eval-
uations, and contextual features conceptually apart.
SYNTHESIZING THE SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF
LEADERSHIP STYLES
In this section, we first briefly summarize general
insights of our review and take stock of valence-
based conflation. Then, we outline how valence-
based conflation leads to amalgamation, construct
redundancy, and causal indeterminacy. Figure 1
summarizes the key findings of our review.
General Insights of the Review
The systematic review has shown that each of the
10 leadership styles sheds light on an important sub-
topic of leadership, ranging from ethics (i.e., authen-
tic and ethical leadership), follower involvement

FIGURE 1
Overview of the Common Research Logic, Conceptual Weaknesses, and Way Forward
for Leadership Style Research

Amalgamation
Otherwise conceptually
unrelated behaviors are bundled
in the same leadership style
when they share valences

Studying what good/bad
leaders do
Flaw of studying what leaders
do in a charged sense
Evaluative logic:
Bundling behaviors Valence-based conflation Construct redundancy
into a leadership style Classifying behaviors not only Many constructs with similar
based on content but also valence populate—and overlap
in part based on
valences (good or bad intentions, on—the limited construct space
goodness or badness
quality of execution, or effects) of leadership styles

Causal indeterminacy
Obfuscating whether content,
good or bad intentions, execution,
or effects relate to the outcome
(tautologies are one type, or sub-
set, of causal indeterminacy)

Overcoming valence-based conflation and causal indeterminacy: Studying leadership styles in a de-conflated and configurational maner
1. De-conflation along the four aspects-framework: Distinguish between intended leadership styles, displayed leadership style, as well as their realized effects
2. Configuration: Keeping single components conceptually apart yet specifying a causal model how these components relate to each other

Notes: The solid lines indicate that one concern necessarily leads to the other (e.g., valence-based conflation necessarily leads to causal inde-
terminacy), and the dashed lines indicate that one concern increases the risk/probability of the other concern (e.g., valence-based conflation
promotes the risk of amalgamation).]
2023 Fischer and Sitkin
and support (i.e., empowering and servant leader-
ship leadership), higher values (i.e., charismatic and
transformational leadership), relations- versus task-
orientation (i.e., consideration and initiating structure
leadership), organizational strategy (i.e., instrumental
leadership), follower abuse (i.e., abusive supervision),
to violating legitimate interests of the organization
(i.e., destructive leadership).
Leadership style research has produced a seem-
ingly consistent evidence base, suggesting that posi-
tive leadership styles lead to positive outcomes (i.e.,
do-good logic) and that negative leadership styles
lead to negative outcomes (i.e., don’t-do-bad logic).
Such findings have drawn an uplifting image of
leadership style research and leadership practice,
affirming scientific progress and negating potential
tensions between doing good and doing well (e.g.,
Avolio et al., 2009; Lemoine et al., 2019). As our sys-
tematic review shows, these findings might be an
artifact of valence-based conflation and causal inde-
terminacy. Supporting evidence of the do-good and
don’t-do-bad logic of leadership rests on shaky con-
ceptual grounds, which puts into question the valid-
ity of the findings. Overall, our review has identified
a set of problems that characterize all 10 reviewed
leadership styles and that stem from valenced con-
ceptualizations that conflate the description of leader-
ship behavior with the evaluation of leadership styles
(see also Tables 1, 2, 3). Thus, our review supports
arguments of those who have expressed skepticism
about the strong claims in extant leadership research
(e.g., Alvesson & Einola, 2019; Antonakis et al., 2010;
Pfeffer, 2015; Van Knippenberg & Sitkin, 2013).
This general insight also raises questions about
leadership development and training that is based
on findings of leadership style research limited by
the concerns identified in this manuscript. We advo-
cate evidence-based management education (see
also DeRue, Sitkin, & Podolny, 2011b; Rousseau,
Manning, & Denyer, 2008), and warn against man-
agement education that rests on evidence whose
validity is limited by conflated conceptualizations
and causal indeterminacy. Such leadership develop-
ment and training has two types of problems: a
flawed evidence base, and ambiguous prescriptions.
First, the content of such training might be wrong
because, as outlined above, the do-good and the
don’t-do-bad logic of leadership style research is not
supported by sound evidence. Second, the prescrip-
tions of such training are likely to be ambiguous
because valence-based conflation obfuscates, or even
obstructs, what exactly has to be done to lead in a
certain style. Ethical leadership and the item “makes
351
fair and balanced decisions” (Brown et al., 2005: 125)
serve as illustration. Leadership training that pre-
scribes fair and balanced decision-making would be
perfectly aligned with compiled evidence on ethical
leadership (Bedi, Alpaslan, & Green, 2016; Lemoine
et al., 2019). However, the prescription is vague to the
point of being difficult to teach and frustrating to learn.
From the perspective of a training participant, the
question arises as to what one is supposed to do when
trying to follow this prescription of ethical leadership.
For instance, is it fair or unfair, and is it balanced or
unbalanced (a) to fire an employee after months of
underperformance, (b) to grant an employee a pay raise
above the levels of colleagues to entice them to stay, or
(c) to give an employee with mental health issues pref-
erential treatment in terms of performance standards?
Answers to these questions are likely to vary depend-
ing on national and organizational culture, as well as
the business environment, but they are also likely be
contested within many organizations. Training partici-
pants might be looking for guidance on which deci-
sions are fair and balanced and on how to make such
decisions, instead of getting the generic (and barely
actionable) advice that decisions should be fair and
balanced. Moving on from our general insights, we
next summarize the major sources of conflation identi-
fied in our review, and the consequences that result.
Taking Stock of Valence-Based Conflation
We find that valence-based conflation is nearly a
defining feature of how leadership styles have been
studied to date. All 10 reviewed leadership styles
span both behavioral content and quality of execution
and are hence limited by behavior–execution confla-
tion. In addition, two leadership styles explicitly
include intentions in both their conceptualization
and measurement (ethical and servant leadership),
and intentions are part of measurement items of other
styles as well (i.e., authentic and servant leadership
and abusive supervision).
The conceptualizations of eight leadership styles
(all except consideration-initiating structure leader-
ship and authentic leadership) conflate behaviors
with their effects. This has already been documented
as a serious problem by Van Knippenberg and Sitkin
(2013) for the cases of charismatic and transactional-
transformational leadership. Our review shows that
behavior–effect conflation limits the confidence
in most constructs of leadership style research and
is a much more widespread problem than com-
monly presumed. Next, we examine problematic
352 Academy of Management Annals
consequences of valence-based conflation for leader-
ship style research.
Taking Stock of Amalgamation
Our review has shown that when researchers con-
flate the content of behavior with the valence of
the behavior (i.e., evaluations of presumed underly-
ing intentions, quality of execution, or behavioral
effects), they are likely to bundle together multiple
conceptually distinct behaviors in their constructs.
Thus, valence-based conflation weakens the concep-
tual rationale for classifying leadership behaviors
into leadership styles. By implication, otherwise
conceptually unrelated behaviors are amalgamated
in the same leadership style when they share valen-
ces. For instance, the same tough feedback can be
part of ethical leadership or abusive supervision
depending on the presumed intention (e.g., ethical
leadership if the tough feedback is judged as norma-
tively appropriate or helpful to the recipient, and
abusive if judged as rude or unnecessarily harmful to
the recipient). Tepper (2000) noted that such evalua-
tions are subjective and vary across people who
make judgments. Likewise, vastly different behav-
iors can be part of ethical or destructive leadership,
as long as presumed underlying intentions or behav-
ioral effects are positive (for ethical) or negative (for
destructive), thus meeting the spirit of the respective
leadership style. The consequence is that valenced
leadership styles become conceptual hodgepodges of
all kinds of otherwise unrelated behaviors that evalua-
tors judge as sharing positive or negative valences.
Because this is a flawed justification for the creation of
a coherent “style,” amalgamation weakens conceptual
precision and coherence and undermines the ability
to specify the shared mechanisms by which they have
predictable effects (Hirsch & Levin, 1999; Van Knip-
penberg & Sitkin, 2013). Although amalgamation has
been lamented previously (Carton, 2022; Van Knip-
penberg & Sitkin, 2013), in this review we have identi-
fied valence-based conflation as a continuing root
problem in the leadership style literature.
One benefit of the kind of synthetic review per-
formed here is that it also helps to clarify that amalgam-
ation is particularly pronounced in leadership style
conceptualizations that are not delimited to inter-
personal behaviors but also involve a leader’s judg-
ment, information processing, and decision-making.
For instance, in addition to interpersonal path–goal
clarifying behaviors, instrumental leadership in-
cludes strategy formulation and implementation
(Antonakis & House, 2014), which is in the realm of
January
decision-making independent of any relational ties.
Authentic leadership involves not only relational
transparency as a set of interpersonal behaviors but
also self-awareness and an internalized moral perspec-
tive, which are in the realm of information processing
and manifest in judgment and decision-making. Using
Mintzberg’s (1973) terminology, such leadership styles
mix interpersonal with informational and decisional
roles. Or, in more recent terminology, they amalgam-
ate interpersonal behaviors, which are in the realm
of leadership, with decision-making, which is in
the realm of management (Ashford & Sitkin, 2019;
Bedeian & Hunt, 2006).
Taking Stock of Construct Redundancy
Valence-based conflation is also a source of con-
struct redundancy in leadership research. Construct
redundancy is the result of two or more constructs
overlapping in their construct domain and hence
having limited incremental variance in explaining
outcomes relative to each other. In a meta-analysis,
Hoch et al. (2018) demonstrated that authentic and
ethical leadership have limited incremental validity
relative to transformational leadership, indicating
redundancy between these constructs. Banks et al.
(2018) argued that such limited incremental validity is
due to overlap in the behaviors described by various
leadership styles.
Extending these insights, we find that leadership
styles overlap in not only their descriptions but
also their evaluations of leadership behaviors. For
instance, empowering and servant leadership over-
lap in attention to the quality of executing behavior
supportive of followers and in achieving corre-
sponding effects (Ahearne et al., 2005; Liden et al.,
2008). In addition, construct redundancy can also
result from nonoverlapping yet diametrically
opposed construct spaces when two constructs share
the same focus for assessing valence (e.g., normative
compliance) but have opposed directionality (i.e.,
positive versus negative). That is, two variables may
appear to be distinct, but are to a large degree simply
the opposite poles of the same continuum. For
instance, in a given context, a behavior cannot be a
manifestation of ethical and destructive leadership
at the same time because they are conceptualized as
mutually exclusive: the former rests on a leader’s
legitimate (i.e., normatively appropriate) conduct
(Brown et al., 2005) and the latter on a leader violat-
ing legitimate interests of the organization (Einarsen
et al., 2007). By definition, an increase in destructive
leadership entails a decrease in ethical leadership.
2023 Fischer and Sitkin
Empirically, both forms of leadership should strongly
correlate, even though with a negative sign. By impli-
cation, a strong correlation between two predicting
variables leads to limited incremental validity because
one construct has limited explanatory power vis-a-vis
the other construct.
In general, the eight reviewed positive leadership
style research streams and the two negative leader-
ship style research streams share an evaluative
approach even though the directionality of valence
changes. This overlap might be explained by three
types of root causes: commonalities in evaluations of
a good or bad character, high or low leadership com-
petency, and high or low leadership success. These
three potential root causes are intended to capture
the general tendencies of a person with regard to the
three evaluative aspects such that good or bad char-
acter is associated with a higher base rate of good
or bad intentions, high or low competency with a
higher base rate of good or poor quality of execution,
and high or low success with a higher base rate
of positive or negative effects. Particularly in the
absence of rich situation-specific information about
a leader’s intentions, quality of execution, or effects,
raters of leadership styles have to draw on more gen-
eral evaluations of the leader’s character, compe-
tency, or general success to evaluate the leader’s
style. That is, in a specific situation, judging a leader
as having a good or bad character might be the source
of attributing good or bad intentions, judging a leader
as high or low in competence might be the source of
evaluating a person as good or bad in terms of execu-
tion, and judging a leader’s success might be the
source of inferring good or bad behavioral effects.
Consequently, assessments of leadership styles
characterized by behavior–intent conflation (e.g., ethi-
cal leadership) might largely tap into evaluations of a
leader’s character, which is in line with Trevi~ no et al.
(2000), who put center-stage a leader’s reputation for a
moral character. Leadership styles characterized by
behavior–effect conflation (i.e., all except authen-
tic and consideration-initiating structure leader-
ship) might largely be assessed by evaluating a
leader’s success, which is what has often occurred
in research demonstrating that information about pre-
vious success increases ratings of positive leader-
ship styles (e.g., Fischer & Dietz, 2020; Lord et al.,
1978). Given that all leadership style research con-
flates behaviors with quality of execution, the defini-
tions of leadership styles routinely conflate the
quantity with the quality of displaying a certain lead-
ership behavior, and not only describe what leaders
generally do but also evaluate a leader’s competence.
353
Our analyses show that conceptualizations of positive
and negative leadership styles not only tap into leader
behaviors but also represent valenced evaluations of
a leader’s character, competence, and success. Thus,
construct redundancy in leadership styles goes beyond
overlapping descriptions of behaviors.
Taking Stock of Causal Indeterminacy
How valence-based conflation leads to causal
indeterminacy. Most problematically, valence-based
conflation creates causal indeterminacy in the rela-
tionship between a leadership style (the independent
variable) and outcomes (the dependent variable),
because conflation obfuscates which aspects of a
leadership style (i.e., behavioral content, good or bad
intentions, good or bad execution, or good or bad
effects) relate to the focal outcome (e.g., good or
bad follower performance or satisfaction). In other
words, by definition, valence implies a conflation of
descriptions of leadership with evaluations of lead-
ership, rendering it impossible to decipher which
aspect of leadership is causally linked to the out-
come of interest. Even worse, evaluations of leader-
ship, notably evaluations of its behavioral effects, are
causally more proximate to the focal outcome than
the description of behavioral content (see Figure 2).
Causal proximity between evaluations of leader-
ship and other outcomes of leadership (e.g., follower
satisfaction) makes findings related to evaluations
and focal outcomes prone to being affected by shared
antecedents (i.e., common cause) and mutual influ-
ence (i.e., reverse or bidirectional causality). For
instance, evaluating a leader as having a good charac-
ter might be a common cause of a follower attributing
positive intentions to the leader and being satisfied
at work; a follower evaluating a leader as highly com-
petent might be a common cause of evaluating the
leader’s behavior as well-executed and being satis-
fied at work; and a follower evaluating a leader as
generally successful might be a common cause of
evaluating a leader as transformative (i.e., behavioral
effect) and being satisfied at work. However, a com-
mon cause between evaluations and outcomes of
leadership implies that there can be a style–outcome
link irrespective of the displayed leadership
behaviors. Put differently, cooccurrence of good or
bad evaluations and good or bad outcomes of leader-
ship does not imply causal effects of leadership behav-
iors, which is illustrated by our previous example
of the manager displaying hard-hitting behaviors for
changing customer service procedures. Employees
being receptive versus resistant to the change might
354 Academy of Management Annals January

FIGURE 2
Valence-Based Conflation, Causal Indeterminacy, and the Pattern of Flawed Results
Antecedents of Descriptive aspect of Evaluative aspects of Focal outcome of
leadership leadership leadership leadership

Attribution of good or bad

? intentions

Traits of the leader and

follower
?

Good or bad focal outcome

Behavioral content (e.g., ? Evaluation of good or bad ? (e.g., follower
words) execution of behaviors performance or satisfaction,
org. performance)

Features of the context ?

(including leader–
follower relationship) ?
Evaluation of good or bad
effects

Positive or negative leadership style (e.g., empowering and

transformational leadership or destructive leadership)

Causal proximity to Causal proximity to

antecedents of leadership outcomes of leadership

The erroneous logic of studying positive/negative leadership styles as if they were unconflated descriptions of leadership behaviors

Do-good logic Positive leadership style Good focal outcome

Don’t-do-bad logic Negative leadership style Bad focal outcome

Notes: The further a box is positioned to the right, the more causally proximate the corresponding concept is to the focal outcome and the
more the concept is an outcome itself. Causal proximity between two constructs makes it likely that they share antecedents or mutually influ-
ence each other, which renders the relationship between the two constructs causally indeterminate. Further, if a focal outcome is defined by or
identical to an evaluative aspect (e.g., empowering or transformational effects partially defining a focal outcome such as follower empowerment
or motivation), the relationship between a valenced leadership style and the focal outcome is tautological. A tautology is a subset of causal
indeterminacy.

account both for the focal outcome (e.g., employee per-
formance, satisfaction) and for judgments of a leader
as having transformative or abusive effects. In
addition, related to the well-known performance
cue effect, success in implementing a new proce-
dure informs judgments of transformative and abu-
sive effects, which constitutes reverse causality.
Thus, irrespective of the causal effect of the hard-
hitting behavior itself, shared antecedents and
mutual influence can make for a causally indeter-
minate cooccurrence of positive leadership with
positive outcomes, and negative leadership with
negative outcomes.
Likewise, good intentions, well-executed behav-
iors, and proximate behavioral effects might not
only cause a focal outcome such as follower job satis-
faction but also be the result of that outcome (i.e.,
bidirectional causality). That is, people use out-
comes such as follower job satisfaction as cues for
evaluating or inferring the character (related to
intentions), competence (related to quality of execu-
tion), and success (related to effectiveness) of leaders
2023 Fischer and Sitkin
(cf. Epitropaki, Foti, & Hansbrough, 2020). This means,
however, that outcomes of leadership often inform
what are supposed to be a priori and independent
evaluations of leadership styles. Thus, valence-based
conflation obfuscates the causes of leadership style–
outcome relationships.
This obfuscation follows a pattern. As our system-
atic review has shown, positive leadership styles have
been found to “predict” positive outcomes and nega-
tive leadership styles have been found to “predict”
negative outcomes. Although positive evaluations of
leadership have been found to coincide with positive
outcomes of leadership, and negative evaluations of
leadership have been found to coincide with negative
outcomes of leadership, this finding should not be
mistaken to necessarily imply a causal relationship.
The do-good logic, as well as the don’t-do-bad logic,
can be an artifact of causal indeterminacy manifested
through common causes of or bidirectional causal-
ity between evaluative aspects of leadership and
leadership outcomes. For instance, leader behav-
ior tends to be evaluated more positively if the
leader is, for whatever reasons, associated with
positive outcomes (akin to the well-known perfor-
mance cue effect [Gioia & Sims, 1985; Lord et al.,
1978]), which illustrates bidirectionality by switch-
ing presumed causal direction. In addition, positive
ratings of leadership styles and positive outcomes
could both be caused by a positive organizational
or economic environment, which illustrates third-
variable causation.
In the most extreme case of causal indeterminacy,
the leadership style–outcome relationship is a tau-
tology because the outcome is defined by the style
(cf. Popper, 1959). For instance, it would be tautolog-
ical to theorize that empowering leadership be-
haviors empower followers if behaviors that are
classified as empowering leadership are defined in
terms of empowering effects. Likewise, it would be
tautological to theorize that destructive leadership
reduces follower performance if destructive leader-
ship behaviors are defined by having negative
effects on followers. In these cases, by definition
“good” behaviors (e.g., empowering) lead to “good”
outcomes (i.e., empowerment) and “bad” behaviors
(e.g., destructive) lead to “bad” outcomes (i.e., poor
performance). Generally, behavior–effect conflation
makes leadership style research prone to tautologies
because effects are built into the conceptualization
of leadership styles (e.g., empowerment, destruc-
tion), and these effects can overlap with the out-
come of interest (e.g., follower performance or
satisfaction).
355
Notwithstanding the type of causal indeterminacy,
our analysis shows that valence-based conflation ob-
scures the exact causes of leadership style– outcome
links and that the empirical support for the do-good
and the don’t-do-bad logic rests on shaky conceptual
grounds. Cooccurrence of positive evaluations and
positive outcomes of leadership, as well as negative
evaluations and negative outcomes of leadership, tend
to coincide for many other reasons than the causal
effects of leadership.
Why causal indeterminacy is a genuinely con-
ceptual problem. In empirical analyses, causal inde-
terminacy might appear as an endogeneity problem.
In statistical terms, common causes are called omit-
ted variables while bidirectional causality is called
a simultaneity problem—two classical sources of
endogeneity (Hill, Johnson, Greco, O’Boyle, & Wal-
ter, 2020). In recent years, endogeneity has become a
topic of increasing interest to leadership scholars,
and more robust statistical analysis tools have been
suggested to address endogeneity problems and
ensure proper estimation results (e.g., Antonakis
et al., 2010; Sajons, 2020). We endorse the trend
toward stronger research methods. Still, we warn
that research methods alone are insufficient for over-
coming the problem of causal indeterminacy
because the root cause is valence-based conflation.
For instance, if the quality of executing leadership
behaviors is defined in terms of observed leadership
performance, it is simultaneously a behavior and the
outcome of that behavior (Campbell, 2012; Campbell
& Wiernik, 2015). In addition, attributions or evalua-
tions of presumably underlying intentions of leader-
ship commonly arise after observing the leadership
behaviors and outcomes, and are hence outcomes
too (Martinko et al., 2007; Meindl et al., 1985).
Linking attributed intentions, quality of execution,
or effects with an outcome such as follower perfor-
mance means linking a more proximal outcome (i.e.,
the evaluative aspects of leadership) with a more dis-
tal outcome (i.e., follower performance). Empirical
analyses appear biased due to endogeneity resulting
from omitted variables or simultaneity problems.
However, the origin of such endogeneity is not sta-
tistical modeling but valence-based conflation,
because a predictor variable—the content of leader-
ship behaviors—is mixed up with proximal outcomes
such as the attribution of intentions or observed effects
in a positively or negatively valenced leadership style.
The statistical model testing a leadership style–
outcome link is only misspecified because leadership
styles are conflated and are not valid representations
of leadership behaviors.
356 Academy of Management Annals January

DISSECTING THE LOGIC OF 70 YEARS OF
LEADERSHIP STYLE RESEARCH
In this section, we first document that valence-
based conflation is not an idiosyncratic weakness
of only the reviewed leadership styles—it also
occurs in four general sublogics of leadership style
that we have identified in leadership research,
which have emerged sequentially over the last 70
years, and currently coexist. Despite their differ-
ences, these four sublogics share a valenced con-
ceptualization that specifies what good or bad
leaders do instead of specifying what leaders do.
Second, we show that valence-based conflation is
reflected in the general conceptualization of the
notion of leadership style and reinforced by the
commonly used practice of measuring leadership
with questionnaires. Throughout this section, we
point to alternatives for better research practice,
before expanding on these ideas in the subsequent
section.
Four Sublogics of Studying What Good and Bad
Leaders Do
In the systematic review, we have shown that lead-
ership styles capture different variants of goodness
or badness in a leader’s pattern of behaviors. We now
outline four sublogics under which all 10 leadership
style research streams can be subsumed—the study
of what (a) effective leaders do, (b) value-driven lead-
ers do, (c) moral leaders do, and (d) immoral leaders
do. We argue that these four sublogics offer only var-
iations of valence-based conflation in studying what
good leaders or bad leaders (but not both) do. We also
indicate what it would take to overcome these weak-
nesses and really study what leaders (irrespective of
whether they are good or bad) do by distinguishing
behaviors from their evaluations. In addition, we
sketch alternative approaches that have already been
dissected and have a long research tradition yet have
disappeared from the mainstream leadership research
landscape. Table 4 summarizes the key points.

TABLE 4
Varieties and Commonalities in Sublogics of Leadership Style Research
Valence-Based
Sublogics of Leadership Encompassed Valenced Principles of Conceptual Weaknesses Conceptual Remedies
Style Research Leadership Styles the Sublogicsa of the Sublogics for the Sublogics

Effective or functional Consideration and Leadership that meets Specifying leadership Dissecting the
leadership styles initiating structure needs to foster behavior by its behavioral construct
(positive, leadership higher performance function for from its performance
performance-related Empowering or related improving (-related) effects
valence) leadership organizationally performance or
Instrumental relevant variables related variables
leadership (e.g., job performance
Transactional or job satisfaction)
leadership
Value-based leadership Charismatic leadership Value-based leadership Specifying leadership Dissecting the
styles (positive, Transformational that engages or behavior by its behavioral construct
influence-based leadership inspires followers inspirational impact from its inspirational
valence) beyond expectations on followers impact
or self-interest
Moral leadership styles Authentic leadership Leadership based on the Specifying leadership Dissecting the
(positive normative Ethical leadership “right” values behavior by its moral behavioral construct
valence) Servant leadership (deontological or righteousness from its moral
virtue-based) or evaluation
causing “good”
outcomes (i.e.,
consequentialist)
Immoral leadership Abusive supervision Leading based on the Specifying leadership Dissecting the
styles (negative Destructive leadership “wrong” values or behavior by its moral behavioral construct
normative valence) causing “bad” despicability from its moral
outcomes evaluation

a
For simplicity, we specify here the sublogic based on their positive or negative effects (e.g., follower performance or well-being).
Commonly, leadership styles have also been specified by good or bad intentions or quality of execution for reaching the effect (Table 3
offers an overview). However, whether it is behavior–intent, behavior–execution, or behavior–effect conflation, the basic logic remains the
same: specifying behaviors based on their goodness/badness.
2023 Fischer and Sitkin
Effective or functional leadership styles refer to
positive contributions to organizational perfor-
mance. Consideration and initiating structure
leadership dates back to research conducted more
than 70 years ago and distinguishes relations- and
task-oriented behaviors (see, e.g., Stogdill, 1950).
These behaviors are supposed to make employees
more effective by meeting their interpersonal and
task-related needs, respectively. Such a needs-based
conceptualization is even more explicit in path–goal
theory (House, 1971, 1996) and in conceptualiza-
tions of transactional leadership (Bass, 1985), such
that leaders have to meet the needs of followers to
make them perform better. Instrumental leadership, a
spin-off of path–goal theory, expands this logic from
the follower level to the organizational level (Antona-
kis & House, 2014). Similarly, empowering leadership
is about offering conditions that make followers more
effective in autonomously solving problems and tak-
ing initiative for making positive contributions to the
organization (Ahearne et al., 2005).
Fleishman et al. (1991) synthesized such work
into a framework of functional leadership behaviors
where behaviors contribute to the functioning of the
organization, its subunits, or individual members.
Yukl (2012) offered a related framework, asserting
that effective leadership behaviors produce positive
effects. The problem with these frameworks and
their underlying primary research is that specifica-
tions of effective or functional behaviors have a
built-in positivity because behaviors are classified
based not only on their content but also on their qual-
ity of execution or even their positive performance
effects (see Table 4). While functional specifications of
leadership behaviors can be prone to conflation, func-
tional theorizing is still very valuable for synthesizing
existing research or hypothesizing about yet-to-be
examined causal relationships (see, e.g., Morgeson,
DeRue, & Karam, 2010).
Value-driven leadership styles refer to norma-
tive achievements or compliance. Since the 1970s,
scholars have drawn attention to leadership behav-
iors that are driven by values rather than by func-
tional or effectiveness considerations. Whereas
functional approaches are about meeting people’s
needs to unleash their known performance potential,
value-based approaches such as charismatic and
transformational leadership are about achieving
“performance beyond expectations” (Bass, 1985).
According to these theories, leaders who appeal to fol-
lowers’ values can motivate and influence followers
to go beyond self-interest (Bass, 1985; House, 1977).
357
These approaches have also been labeled “neo-
charismatic” or “new leadership” because they
complement older effectiveness-based versions of
leadership (Antonakis & House, 2013). For instance,
House (1977) formulated charismatic leadership as a
complement to path–goal theory. Bass’s (1985) con-
cept of transformational leadership was intended to
“augment” transactional leadership. Whereas it is
valuable to examine leaders’ appeals to values and
their impact on followers and their performance,
most previous research went further by defining
value-based behaviors in terms of their capacity to
inspire followers to go beyond self-interest (see
Table 4). This problem has been already identified
by Van Knippenberg and Sitkin (2013) and other
researchers, who called for separating behaviors
from their effects. Antonakis et al. (2016) outlined
such an approach for charismatic leadership. This
approach has been increasingly used in primary stud-
ies (e.g., Antonakis et al., 2021; Meslec et al., 2020), as
well as meta-analytic research (Ernst et al., 2021), and
allows for studying what leaders do in terms of value-
based appeals, without specifying how well they do
it. We believe that such an approach is more fruitful
than conflation-based research practice.
Moral leadership styles refer to unambiguously
positive normative achievements or compliance.
Since the 1990s, scholars have become increasingly
wary about the potentially immoral consequences
of value-based forms of leadership because leaders
might appeal to socially undesirable values or appeal
to desirable values but abuse these values for unde-
sirable ends. Thus, scholars have started to distin-
guish moral from immoral value-based approaches.
For instance, by splitting charisma into a positive
socialized and a negative personalized form (Howell
& Avolio, 1992), or by splitting transformational
leadership in a positive authentic and a negative
pseudo-transformational form (Bass & Steidlmeier,
1999), scholars have suggested a variety of moral
leadership styles now including authentic, ethical,
and servant leadership (Lemoine et al., 2019). The
basis for judging the morality of behaviors varies
across these leadership styles but shares the problem
of conflating distinct aspects of leadership because
behaviors are specified by their moral righteousness
(see Table 4). Thus, moral leadership is an extreme
case of valence and studying what “good” lead-
ers do.
Immoral leadership styles refer to unambigu-
ously negative normative achievements or (non-)
compliance. Study of immoral forms of leadership
took off in the 2000s with the formulation of abusive
358 Academy of Management Annals
supervision (Tepper, 2000). The research logic is
similar to that of moral leadership, with inverse
directionality of valence. Behaviors are classified as
immoral when they rest on reprehensible values or
have harmful consequences (see Table 4). Even
though studying immoral forms of leadership might
appear to be dramatically different from the study of
positive forms of leadership, it exhibits the same
valenced approaches and would similarly benefit
from distinguishing behaviors from their evaluation.
Alternatives to valenced leadership style con-
structs. There are two alternative approaches that are
descriptive of what leaders do: (a) leadership style
research in the tradition of Kurt Lewin (1948/1997)
and further developed by Vroom & Jago (1988), and
(b) research on managerial work, initially pioneered
by Sune Carlson and further developed by Henry
Mintzberg (see the overview by Tengblad, 2003).
First, Lewin, Lippitt, and White (1939) pioneered
the study of leadership and experimentally manipu-
lated autocratic, democratic, and laissez-faire leader-
ship displayed by adult leaders in a children’s camp.
They found that a democratic style caused less ag-
gression than an autocratic style, while the laissez-
faire leadership was in between. Their finding of
positive consequences of democratic leadership
sparked interest among psychologists and manage-
ment scholars. For instance, Tannenbaum and
Schmidt’s (1973) popular science article on how to
choose a leadership pattern advanced the work by
Lewin et al. (1939) by treating boss-centered (i.e., auto-
cratic) and subordinate-centered (i.e., democratic)
leadership as a continuum instead of a dichotomy.
Vroom and Jago (1988) built upon Lewin’s work by
suggesting contingency factors for when it is more
effective to be directive versus consultative. While
Kurt Lewin’s (1948/1997) research was driven by a
search for social betterment and for democratizing
society, his research on leadership styles was not lim-
ited by valence-based conflation because he systemati-
cally described and manipulated behavioral content
(see Table 1 in Lewin et al., 1939).
Second, in the 1950s Sune Carlson’s pioneering
research (cf. Tengblad, 2003) formed the basis for
Mintzberg’s (1973) well-known descriptive studies
of managerial work. Key findings are that there is a
high pace of work, brevity of managerial activities,
high action orientation, and preference for informal,
lateral communication (Mintzberg, 2009). Research
on managerial work has avoided the problems iden-
tified in the 10 reviewed leadership styles. However,
quantitative assessment of how different forms of
January
managerial work relate to performance is lacking,
and, thus, has only occasionally been referenced in
the mainstream leadership research reviewed here.
The Lewin- and Mintzberg-type research offers
alternatives to studying what good or bad leaders do
in a valenced manner, but do suffer from their own
limitations (see, e.g., Willmott, 1984). Still, these
forms of research have illustrated that there are via-
ble alternatives to the valenced approaches of study-
ing good or bad leadership that dominate today.
The Overarching Logic of Studying What Good
or Bad Leaders Do
We have systematically reviewed 10 leadership
styles and traced the evolution of four dominant sub-
logics of leadership style research. However, we
have not yet assessed the leadership style concept in
general and how its typical measurement produces
spurious results. We do this next to offer a compre-
hensive assessment of leadership style research.
The common leadership style definition speci-
fies what good or bad leaders do. Although the
concept of a leadership style is commonly invoked,
it is rarely explicitly defined (see, e.g., Antonakis &
Day, 2017; Yukl & Gardner, 2019), with an important
exception. The Bass Handbook of Leadership pos-
ited that “leadership and management styles are
alternative ways that leaders and managers pattern
their interactive behavior with those they influence”
(Bass & Bass, 2008: 73–74). This definition is a fair
representation of past and current usage of the term
leadership style, both in common parlance (Mer-
riam-Webster, 2020) and in scholarly work (e.g.,
Anderson & Sun, 2017).
The Bass and Bass (2008) definition provides a
springboard for assessing the overarching logic of
leadership styles more generally. The definition has
four components: leadership, management, patterns
of interactive behavior, and influence. The first, sec-
ond, and third components distinguish leadership
from management, interactive behavior from unilat-
eral decision-making, and patterns of behavior from
single concrete behaviors. The fourth component
distinguishes influence from authority-based direc-
tion. Especially relevant for our purpose is the notion
of influence. By including the term “with those they
influence” (Bass & Bass, 2008: 74), this conceptuali-
zation of leadership styles presupposes influence.
Due to the notion of influence, studies of leadership
styles have investigated what good or bad leaders do
instead of what leaders in general do. Pfeffer (1977)
lamented ambiguity in the concept of leadership
2023 Fischer and Sitkin
because the concept is so big that it is hard to distin-
guish leadership from social influence. We agree that
there is no leadership—and, for that matter, no lead-
ership style—without social influence, but warn that
mixing a behavior with the effect or intent to influ-
ence somebody else makes the concept prone to
conflation.
Leadership styles include all kinds of influence
toward achieving objectives that are relevant for a
follower, team, or organization in the broadest sense
(Fleishman et al., 1991; Yukl, 2012). Effective
or functional leadership styles refer to influencing
performance-related variables, value-based leader-
ship styles refer to influencing followers beyond
self-interest, and (im-)moral leadership styles refer
to influencing followers or organizations in a mor-
ally laudable or reprehensible way. In some cases,
leadership styles additionally refer to the intention
to achieve these different types of objectives (e.g.,
ethical or servant leadership). Thus, generalizing
beyond our systematic review, and generalizing
even beyond the four identified sublogics, we can
say that leadership styles have been conceptualized
in the past and are commonly studied today as pat-
terns of informal and interactive behaviors that foster
certain follower-, team-, or organization-related
objectives. This conceptualization is problematic
because style-specific influence blends what leaders
do with the study of how good versus bad leaders
exercise influence based on good versus bad motives
or achieve good versus bad outcomes; valence-based
conflation and causal indeterminacy is the inevitable
consequence.
The common leadership style measures specify
what good or bad leaders do. In addition to the
problematic general conceptualization of leadership
styles, there is a problematic approach to measure-
ment that segregates good behaviors from bad behav-
iors, and good intentions from bad intentions—and
then focuses on evaluations of a leader’s style that
samples on the pre-valenced dependent variable. In
addition, these studies have mixed behaviors with
attributions of intention and behavioral valance.
Typical leadership style research has measured
leadership behaviors with follower ratings through a
set of questionnaire items (next to our systematic
review, see also Hunter, Bedell-Avers, & Mumford,
2007). In line with the conflated conceptualization
of leadership styles, however, these items formulate
what good or bad leaders do and conflate the descrip-
tion of behaviors (i.e., what a leader does) with the
evaluation of those behaviors (i.e., whether they are
good or bad). As outlined previously, conflation
359
leads to causal indeterminacy in a systematic man-
ner. A good evaluation—whether of a leader’s inten-
tion, quality of execution, or effects—is a positive
proximal outcome, and a negative evaluation is a
negative proximal outcome. Thus, when raters give
high scores on a positive leadership style measure or
a high score on a negative leadership style measure,
they indicate their approval or disapproval of the
leader. It is no surprise that such measures correlate
with other, more distal outcomes such as follower
performance or satisfaction. The do-good logic and
the don’t-do-bad logic of leadership can exist as
artifacts of conflated measurement, irrespective of
actual causal relationships. Please note that this con-
cern exists independent of raters and their relation-
ship with the leader or their cognitive biases because
the problem exists at the level of the item and hence
precedes problems of responding to such items.
THE WAY FORWARD: DECONFLATING
THROUGH A CONFIGURATIONAL APPROACH
Based on our review of research on leadership
styles, we suggest that future work should apply a
deconflated and configurational approach. Such an
approach would retain the benefits of a broad and
multifaceted conception of a leadership style while
avoiding the conflation-induced traps of current
approaches. In this section, we first offer an outline
for studying leadership styles in a deconflated man-
ner. Then, we sketch the key pillars of a deconflated,
configurational view. Subsequently, we discuss im-
plications for the empirical study of leadership
styles. We conclude with a general note on the future
of leadership style research.
Studying Leadership Styles in a Deconflated
Manner
Beyond naïve holism. Our review uncovered an
emergent view in leadership research that warns
about the perils of overly broad constructs. For
instance, calls have been made for using more
refined concepts in the study of authentic (Alvesson
& Einola, 2019), ethical (Banks et al., 2021a), and
transformational leadership (Van Knippenberg & Sit-
kin, 2013), as well as abusive supervision (Fischer
et al., 2021). Our review has shown that the valenced
specification of leadership styles has fostered amal-
gamation and construct redundancy, and, even more
problematically, has rendered leadership style re-
search causally indeterminate. Hirsch and Levin
(1999) proposed that broad umbrella concepts are
360 Academy of Management Annals
only appropriate in early stages of a research pro-
gram but that maturing fields need to use increas-
ingly refined concepts. The field of leadership
research is now well established, and it is high time
to go beyond valence-based conflation in the study
of leadership styles.
Distinguishing intended and displayed leader-
ship styles, and their realized effects. To overcome
conflation, we follow a previous conceptual devel-
opment in strategy research. Whereas initially schol-
ars used strategy as a broad umbrella term that spans
planning, the activity of strategizing, and effective
strategic positioning, Mintzberg and Waters (1985)
distinguished intended, emergent, and realized strat-
egies (for a recent update, see Mirabeau, Maguire, &
Hardy, 2018). Analogous to Mintzberg and Waters’s
(1985) approach to deconflating the umbrella term
“strategy,” we suggest deconflating the umbrella
term “leadership style.” That is, we suggest distin-
guishing intended leadership styles from displayed
(i.e., emergent) leadership styles, and from their real-
ized effects.
We suggest the following definitions of leadership
styles.
 Intended leadership styles refer to the patterns of
informal and interactive behaviors a leader wants
to display (e.g., empowering intentions).
 Displayed leadership styles refer to displayed pat-
terns of interactive behaviors (e.g., content of exe-
cuting empowering behaviors).
 Realized effects of leadership styles refer to the
achieved results that are believed to be causally
driven by the pattern of leadership behaviors
(e.g., empowering effects).
The three leadership style concepts share a focus
on patterns of interactive behaviors that are sup-
posed to foster certain goals. However, the three
refined leadership style concepts avoid conflation
of multiple aspects of leadership. For instance,
intended leadership styles focus only on one aspect
of leadership: underlying intentions. Likewise, dis-
played leadership styles focus only on behavioral
content, and realized effects of leadership styles
focus only on effects of leadership. Generally, all
three types of leadership styles are worth studying in
their own right. In addition, studying the interrela-
tionships among these types of styles can be illumi-
nating. However, to avoid causal indeterminacy, it is
critical to keep the three types of leadership style
conceptually and empirically apart.
January
Studying Leadership Styles in a
Configurational Manner
Beyond scattered reductionism. While deconflat-
ing leadership styles is necessary, we do not call for
its extreme opposite, which would be atomizing
leadership research into scattered reductionism with
minuscule constructs. Because the fundamental idea
of a style is not about individual elements but
instead concerns recognizable patterns among those
elements, advocating atomization would reject the
very idea of leadership styles as “alternative ways
that leaders [ … ] pattern their interactive behavior
with those they influence” (Bass & Bass, 2008;
73–74). As “patterns” of behaviors, leadership styles
are irreducible to any single behavior. Thus, concep-
tually integrating scattered behaviors is necessary.
Katz and Kahn (1978), Van Knippenberg and Sitkin
(2013), and Lind and Sitkin (2015) have already
explicitly called for studying leadership styles con-
figurationally, and the work of Kipnis, Schmidt, and
Wilkinson (1980) and Yukl and Falbe (1990) on influ-
ence tactics demonstrated that leadership behaviors
can be classified in conceptually meaningful bundles
(i.e., configurations), and that these meaningful bun-
dles—and not isolated behaviors—have causal effects
on outcomes of interest. In this way, a configurational
approach can serve as a middle ground that avoids
conflation yet ensures conceptual integration.
Whereas leadership has not yet been studied config-
urationally, future scholarship can build on the con-
figurational tradition in adjacent fields.
The configurational tradition in management
research. In human resource management and orga-
nization theory, configurational research has a long
tradition that can be tapped and applied to leader-
ship (for overviews, see Delery & Doty, 1996; Misan-
gyi, Greckhamer, Furnari, Fiss, Crilly, & Aguilera,
2017). For instance, Ichniowski, Shaw, and Pre-
nnushi (1997) used a configurational lens to demon-
strate empirically that specific bundles of distinct
human resource management practices can lead to
increases in productivity, but only when imple-
mented jointly. More generally, Miller (1986, 1996,
2018) formulated configurational research as a dis-
tinct paradigm, and recently a configurational para-
digm for testing and theorizing has been further
developed (e.g., Fiss, 2007; Fiss, Marx, & Cambr e,
2013). Very recent applications to job demands (Ong
& Johnson, 2021) and corporate venture innovations
(Waldkirch, Kammerlander, & Wiedeler, 2021) have
suggested that this paradigm is beginning to flourish
among organizational scholars.
2023 Fischer and Sitkin
Perhaps the classical exemplar of such a paradigm
is Mintzberg’s (1980) synthesis of research on organi-
zational structure into five configurations: simple
structures, machine bureaucracies, professional
bureaucracies, divisionalized forms, and adhocra-
cies. These configurations, in turn, are distinguished
across two key constituent dimensions: coordinating
mechanisms and design parameters. In this way,
Mintzberg’s (1980) approach is both deconflated and
integrated—deconflated because he specifies config-
urations by their constituent components (i.e., coor-
dinating mechanisms and design parameters), and
integrated because he specifies how these compo-
nents relate to each other when forming one of the
five configurations.
More recently, Cardinal, Sitkin, and Long (2010)
synthesized research on organizational control in
a similar manner. They drew on a well-established
set of four configurations of control types—bureau-
cratic, clan, market, and integrative systems—and
specified two key constituent dimensions of these:
control mechanisms and control targets. Control
mechanisms are either formal or informal, and con-
trol targets are behaviors, inputs, or outputs. Akin to
Mintzberg’s (1980) configurations, Cardinal et al.’s
(2010) control types are deconflated because they are
specified by their constituent components (i.e., con-
trol mechanisms and control targets), and they are
integrated because they delineate how the single
components have to relate to each other when form-
ing a configuration. Below, we outline how leader-
ship research can follow the examples of Mintzberg
(1980) and Cardinal et al. (2010).
Extending the configurational tradition to lead-
ership styles. We suggest that a configurational
approach can overcome the current impasse in lead-
ership style research. Currently, leadership styles are
treated as unitary constructs or as a bundle of unitary
dimensions, despite the fact that they span multiple
single behaviors and aspects of leadership. Thus,
these types of leadership styles also need to be
decomposed in terms of their concrete, single inten-
tions, behaviors, and effects. Subsequently, there is
a need to specify whether and how these distinct
components form a joint construct such that it ex-
emplifies the definition of configuration as “multi-
dimensional constellation of conceptually distinct
characteristics that commonly occur together” (Meyer,
Tsui, & Hinings, 1993: 1175).
A configurational approach to studying leader-
ship styles does not imply replacing one type of
valenced amalgam with another type of valenced
amalgam. Instead, constituent components need to
361
be theoretically distinct constructs that have a shared
set of attributes and thus can be theoretically argued to
be recognized as coherent building blocks of a leader-
ship style. Specifically, there is a need for articulating
how and why these building blocks are interrelated.
Only if both the building blocks and their interrelation-
ships are well-specified can we speak of leadership
styles as meaningfully cooccurring patterns, instead of
arbitrary and valenced laundry lists of conceptually
distinct components.
Empirically Studying Leadership Styles in a
Deconflated and Configurational Manner
A reconceptualization of leadership as deconflated
configurations implies reconsidering empirical meth-
odologies. We now assess the prospects and limits
of the dominant methodology, leadership question-
naires, for configurational leadership research, and
we sketch alternatives.
Questionnaire measures: Prospects and limits.
Our review has shown that contemporary conceptu-
alizations of leadership styles are operationalized by
questionnaire measures that have similar problems
in their underlying conceptualization. There is close
theory–method correspondence; however, it is dubi-
ous if such correspondence can be maintained if
leadership styles are theorized in a deconflated and
configurational manner because for empirical con-
figurational studies, it is important to measure not
only the whole (i.e., leadership styles) but also its
parts (i.e., different aspects of leadership).
We have observed that questionnaires are suscep-
tible to conflated measurement. Several leadership
questionnaires mix representations of leadership
behaviors with representations of follower evalua-
tions (Fischer & Dietz, 2020). Leadership question-
naire items typically tap into respondents’ semantic
memory, which encodes general impressions rather
than concrete episodes of behaviors (Hansbrough
et al., 2021). These general impressions are likely to
rest on multiple domains of leadership, which leads
to amalgam-based conflation. Furthermore, Eden
and Leviatan (1975), Lord et al. (1978), and Gioia and
Sims (1985) showed that knowledge of leadership out-
comes influences ratings of leadership styles. These
results support our finding that leadership measures
mix distinct behavioral aspects such as behavioral
content, quality of execution, or behavioral effects,
which leads to valence-based conflation.
Conflation in leadership questionnaires reinforces
the degree of subjectivity and rater specificity in
measurement, such that the same leadership
362 Academy of Management Annals
behavior might be systematically evaluated differ-
ently based on the rater’s organizational role relative
to the focal leader (e.g., subordinate, peer, hierarchi-
cal superior, or detached observer). By contrast,
should leadership questionnaires utilize noncon-
flated measures, their items would objectively
describe a leader behavior, and rater specificity in
questionnaire responses would be limited to the
capacity of raters to recall a certain behavior or not.
Consequently, in the absence of systematically dif-
ferent mental recall capacities, ratings of subordi-
nates, hierarchical superiors, peers, or detached
observers would be randomly distributed.
However, when leadership styles conflate the
description with the evaluation of leadership behav-
iors, there are two sources of systematic and role-
based rater specificity in questionnaire responses.
First, the types of leadership outcomes that influence
questionnaire responses (see Eden & Leviatan, 1975;
Lord et al., 1978) likely depend on the rater’s role
relationship with the evaluated leader. For instance,
subordinates might rate a leader differently based on
knowledge about job satisfaction, peers based on
knowledge about the performance of the leader’s
team, and supervisors based on knowledge about
compliance with organizational rules. Second, the
semantic memory of evaluators might influence rat-
ings in evaluator-specific ways too. For instance, sub-
ordinates might have interpreted previous assertive
leadership behaviors as dominating, whereas supervi-
sors might have intended and remembered the same
behavior as determined. Consequently, the semantic
memory of supervisors might influence future ratings
of leadership behaviors more positively than that of
subordinates. Jointly, these mechanisms indicate how
conceptual conflation can lead to systematic bias in
measuring leadership behaviors.
A conflation-based explanation for why leader-
ship questionnaires exhibit construct redundancy
between different leadership styles is that different
leadership questionnaires are supposed to measure
distinct leadership behaviors yet largely tap into the
same positivity or negativity in evaluating leader-
ship (i.e., valence-based conflation and overlap in
evaluative aspects of leadership). For instance, ethi-
cal and transformational leadership might rest on
considerably different behaviors, but the measures
of these leadership styles might capture shared posi-
tive leader evaluations rather than concrete and dif-
ferent leader behaviors. Such conflated measurement
is inconsistent with studying leadership styles config-
urationally because it allows for assessing the valence
of the whole but does not capture the pattern
January
represented by its constituent parts. In addition, this
insight on overlaps between different leadership
styles on evaluative aspects of leadership comple-
ments a nonconflation-based explanation for con-
struct redundancy that rests on behavioral overlap to
explain high intercorrelations between measures.
Questionnaires are still useful for studying leader-
ship styles configurationally, but have specific limi-
tations that must be taken into account. On one
hand, questionnaires are useful for assessing the
whole—that is, leadership styles as a configuration.
On the other hand, using questionnaires for assess-
ing the descriptive parts—the essence of displayed
leadership styles, representing patterns of leader
behaviors—is trickier. That is, to measure behavioral
content with questionnaires in a nonconflated man-
ner, items need to be formulated in a concrete and
descriptive manner to avoid evaluations of behav-
iors. Gioia and Sims (1985) have demonstrated that
measures of consideration and initiating structure
lack this concreteness but that more descriptive
items can be developed, and that measures based on
such items are better reflections of what leaders actu-
ally do. However, current questionnaire measures
struggle to achieve this (see Table 3). Temporal separa-
tion of measuring behaviors and outcomes such that
responses are not influenced by performance informa-
tion is one way of reducing, albeit not eliminating,
concerns. Currently, the quality of questionnaire-
based measurement is mostly judged according to psy-
chometric criteria such as discriminant or incremental
validity (e.g., Banks et al., 2016; Hoch et al., 2018);
though these are helpful, future research needs to also
assess whether questionnaires allow for nonconflated
behavioral measurement.
Questionnaires can be used effectively for assessing
the evaluative aspects of leadership. For instance,
attributional scholars have measured presumed leader
intentions irrespective of actual leadership behaviors
(Martinko et al., 2007). For this purpose, question-
naires can be used to assess attributions of intended
leadership styles. In addition, scholars in industrial-
organizational psychology use questionnaires to dis-
tinctly evaluate the quality with which leadership
behaviors are executed and the effects they produce
(Campbell, 2012; Campbell & Wiernik, 2015). With a
focus on behavioral execution, questionnaires can be
used for assessing realized effects of leadership styles.
Taken together, the current usage of questionnaire
measures requires either refinement (e.g., for behav-
ioral content) or explicit delimitation (e.g., for evalua-
tions only). Future measurement needs to proceed
with increased accuracy when using questionnaires,
2023 Fischer and Sitkin
and, more generally, we need to extend our criteria
for judging the quality of questionnaires to avoid
conflated measurement and ensure causally well-
determined research.
Methodological alternatives to questionnaire
measures. Irrespective of using more appropriate
questionnaire measures, empirical research on lead-
ership configurations would profit from more meth-
odological diversity that takes advantage of the
strengths of other research methods. Two avenues
seem to be particularly promising: (a) methods focus-
ing on deconflated measurement, and (b) methods
focusing on configuring distinct components.
First, behavioral coding is helpful for separately
measuring the behavioral content of leadership styles.
Bales (1950) pioneered such an approach for the
study of leadership decades ago. Recently, behavioral
coding has also been used to assess the verbal and
nonverbal content of charismatic leadership (Jacquart
& Antonakis, 2015). Accurate and descriptive coding
schemes can reduce the risk of mixing the measure-
ment of behavioral content with evaluative aspects
such as underlying intentions or quality of execution.
Still, human coding is always prone to subjectivity
and the description of behaviors can be mixed with
their evaluation. Hence, computerized behavioral
coding schemes are particularly promising for non-
conflated behavioral measurement. For charismatic
leadership, Tur et al. (2021) used such an objective
measure. More behavioral coding, and notably com-
puterized coding, can help future research to sepa-
rately measure the descriptive parts of leadership
configurations.
Second, qualitative comparative case analysis
(QCA) is helpful for empirically studying the emer-
gence of leadership configurations from distinct sin-
gle components. QCA is an established methodology
in sociology (Schneider & Wagemann, 2010), as well
as in organization theory and strategy research
(Greckhamer, Misangyi, Elms, & Lacey, 2008), and
the methodology has been put forward to study the
emergence of configurations (Fiss et al., 2013; Misan-
gyi et al., 2017). Whereas the QCA method is mainly
conducted at the organizational level of analysis,
adaptations for the individual or dyadic level are
promising for studying leadership styles in a decon-
flated and reconfigured manner.
In summary, there are both quantitative and quali-
tative methods with distinctive advantages for mov-
ing forward a deconflated, causally well-determined,
and configurational study of leadership. Future
research might move beyond the contemporary
methodological monoculture of relying predominantly
363
on questionnaires toward a more multifaceted ap-
proach. More rigorous questionnaires, but also (com-
puterized) coding and qualitative case study analysis,
are exemplary methods for future leadership style
research.
The Future of Leadership Style Research
We wish to conclude by addressing what the
future of leadership style research should look like.
The most important insights emanating from our
meta-level review are that we need to (a) use decon-
flated leadership constructs to overcome causal
indeterminacy and (b) configure these constructs to
ensure conceptual integration.
Micro-oriented scholars are both conceptually and
methodologically well-equipped for advancing decon-
flated leadership style research because they use more
precise and nonconflated constructs and measures
than have been applied in extant mainstream leader-
ship style research (cf. Hunter et al., 2007). For
instance, rhetorical approaches to charismatic leader-
ship (Antonakis et al., 2016; Baur et al., 2016; Shamir
et al., 1994) have overcome limitations of previous
research practice (Van Knippenberg & Sitkin, 2013;
Yukl, 1999) while maintaining the centrality of values
for emerging as a charismatic leader. Another rhetori-
cal approach to studying leadership would be to exam-
ine how people talk about their leadership styles,
which might be distinct from their intended leader-
ship styles, displayed leadership styles, or the realized
effects thereof. Drawing from other lines of micro-
oriented scholarship outside of leadership research
can also help move the field forward. An example is
research showing how cues of competence and status
increase a person’s social influence (Berger, Ridgeway,
Fisek, & Norman, 1998; Correll & Ridgeway, 2003);
such insights can reinvigorate task-oriented or instru-
mental leadership research.
Macro-oriented scholars are also well-equipped
for building on deconflated micro-oriented leader-
ship research to advance a configurational approach.
Scholars can examine whether different configura-
tions of organizational structure (Mintzberg, 1980) or
organizational control (Cardinal et al., 2010) are
associated with different leadership configurations
(i.e., styles). In this way, scholars can also reintegrate
macro-organization theory and leadership research,
which have become increasingly disconnected (Heath
& Sitkin, 2001).
Taken together, we have the tools to successfully
fix the problems identified and to avoid repeating the
pattern of merely replacing one conflated leadership
364 Academy of Management Annals
style with a newer but similarly conflated style. As a
field, we should abstain from moving from one type
of big, valenced concept (e.g., authentic, ethical, or
transformational leadership) to another type of big,
valenced concept (e.g., caring, empathic, or inclusive
leadership), or from “excessive positivity” (Alvesson &
Einola, 2019) to excessive negativity (e.g., harmful or
toxic leadership) in leadership style research. Leader-
ship style research is at a critical turning point, yet we
are well-equipped for studying leadership styles in a
deconflated and configurational way. Such a funda-
mental reorientation is in order to avoid the loss of
credibility given the increasing concerns about the
validity of leadership style research findings. This crit-
ical turning point offers a unique chance for recogniz-
ing these fundamental problems in a way that fosters
transforming the field to become more rigorous by
embracing a de-conflated and configurational approach.
CONCLUSION
Our review maps the landscape of leadership style
research and uncovers valence-based conflation as a
critical limitation, leading to amalgamation, construct
redundancy, and causal indeterminacy, which makes
it impossible to causally interpret the existing knowl-
edge base. The breadth of our review demonstrates
that valence-based conflation is not the isolated weak-
ness of one or a few leadership styles but pervades the
whole field of leadership style research due to a ten-
dency to study what good and bad leaders do instead
of studying what leaders do. The problem is not the
examination of good and bad leadership per se but
valence built into the research concepts. Despite this
sobering assessment of the state-of-the-science, there
are clear prospects for better leadership style research
in the future. Our review identifies a nascent decon-
flated and configurational approach that allows for
overcoming the identified weaknesses, and we outline
how the use of our four aspects of leadership frame-
work can guide future research toward more produc-
tive scholarship.
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372 Academy of Management Annals January

APPENDIX A

TABLE A1
Sample of Articles Underlying the Review
Cut-Off Valueb Number of
(For Inclusion Articles
Total Number of Based on Additionally
Leadership Articles Retained Number of Articles Retained Absolute Included in the
Stylea Search Terms for Each Type Based on Inclusion Criteria Citations) Review

Positive leadership styles

Authentic authentic AND leader Conceptual: 10 Review: 6 91 3
leadership Empirical: 4 Relative number of citations (i.e.,
Review: 6 relative to the publication
year): 2
Absolute number of citations: 12
Consideration and consideration AND Conceptual: 0 Overall: 4 — 4
initiating initiating structure
Empirical: 3
structure Review: 1
Empowering empowering AND Conceptual: 0 Review: 1 22 2
leadership leader Empirical: 19 Relative number of citations: 1
Review: 1 Absolute number of citations: 18
Ethical leadership ethical AND leader Conceptual: 2 Review: 5 60 2
Empirical: 13 Relative number of citations: 6
Review: 5 Absolute number of citations: 9
Instrumental Instrumental AND Conceptual: 0 Overall: 2 — 6
leadership leader Empirical: 2
Review: 0
Servant leadership servant AND leader Conceptual: 1 Review: 4 1 1
Empirical: 15 Relative number of citations: 3
Review: 4 Absolute number of citations: 13
Transformational transformational AND Conceptual: 0 Review: 5 427 0
leadership leader Empirical: 15 Relative number of citations: 2
Review: 5 Absolute number of citations: 13
Charismatic charisma AND leader Conceptual: 2 Review: 4 79 4
leadership Empirical: 14 Relative number of citations: 0
Review: 4 Absolute number of citations: 16
Negative leadership styles
Abusive abusive AND Conceptual: 0 Review: 5 201 0
supervision (supervision OR Empirical: 15 Relative number of citations: 5
supervisor) Review: 5 Absolute number of citations: 10
Destructive destructive AND Conceptual: 4 Review: 4 — 0
leadership leader Empirical: 3 Relative number of citations: 0
Review: 4 Absolute number of citations: 7

a
For three leadership styles, we identified fewer than 20 articles. We still include these styles in the review because they have been
very influential in the past, have clear conceptualizations, and include very influential articles up to the current time (i.e., consideration
and initiating structure leadership, path–goal theory or instrumental leadership), or shed light on the dark side of leadership (i.e.,
destructive leadership). Together, the ensemble of reviewed leadership styles covers much of the ongoing research.
b
The cut-off value refers to the minimum number of citations in Web of Science that an article needs to have in order to be retained based
on the absolute number of citations. For instance, for authentic leadership the cut-off value is 91. This means that we retained all articles
published since 2000 in our set of 12 journals that have at least one of the following three features: (a) being a review article, (b) being marked
as highly cited in Web of Science (i.e., relative number of citations; top 1% for the publication year), or (c) having at least 91 citations. A cut-
off value of “—” means that there are maximally 20 identified articles; thus, all identified articles are included in the review.