Julian Barling, Borden Professor of Leadership and Queen's Research Chair at the Queen's University School of Business

Questions from Leadership Research for Leadership Research Julian Barling Borden Chair in Leadership Queen’s School of Business

For better or for worse, leadership affects the lives of most people in some way or another, and not surprisingly, attracts the attention of the public, media, policy makers and management. What is less well known is that we have now reached the stage where literally several hundreds of research articles on leadership are published each year, as a result of which we know a lot about some things, but there are still a lot of things about which we seem to know very little. I will highlight several areas in which we seem to have avoided asking the most fundamental questions, thus highlighting opportunities for new and exciting research. (1) How different are the different leadership theories? (2) Do available research findings favor any one particular theory? (3) Can we translate leadership theories into everyday leadership behaviors? And is there a dose-dependent relationship between leader behavior and outcomes? (4) Does our continuing neglect of followers hurt our understanding of leadership and organizational effectiveness? (5) Genders and leadership. I will conclude with some thoughts on how future research on organizational leadership could benefit and gain in relevance by tackling some of the major social issues that confront society today (e.g., inequality, poverty).