Hayyat Malik, S. (2012). A Study of Relationship between Leader Behaviors and Subordinate Job Expectancies: A Path-Goal Approach. Pakistan Journal of Commerce & Social Sciences, 6(2), 357-371. This study explores the relationship between leadership behavior and acceptance of a leader by subordinates. The underlying concept is path-goal theory, which is based on the idea that a leader's style can dictate organizational effectiveness, and that the style should be tailored to specific situations. There were n=200 managers in the study. They were not randomly selected, but rather were pulled from four telecom companies in Pakistan. The author found that leadership behavior does influence subordinate behavior. Another finding was that certain behaviors can be predictors of subordinate acceptance of a leader.

The study ties into leadership studies that seek to identify if there are traits or behaviors that can be used as predictors of effective leadership. The leaders in these organizations were mainly middle managers, and there was essentially one culture represented, and one industry. So the findings cannot be extrapolated to a broad population. The study does, however, add to the body of knowledge with respect to testing behavior theory and the concept of situational leadership, lending support for both.

Jiaxin, H., Lin, W., & Jun, X. (2014). Leader-member exchange and organizational citizenship behavior: The roles of identification with leader and leader's reputation. Social Behavior & Personality: An International Journal, 42(10), 1699-1711.

This article works on the leader-member exchange theory, which holds that managers will typically sort subordinates into two groups -- those who are trusted and those who are not. The former will receive more challenging work, and opportunities to grow, while the latter will not. The result is that the latter may in some cases be a wasted resource, not working to their fullest potential. The study took place in China, with n=262 leader-subordinate dyads. The study found that in that culture, the leader's reputation was a moderating factor in the strength of the relationship. This finding illustrates that leader-follower is a two-way relationship, essentially each having to prove itself to the other.

The implications for this are that leaders need to perform well, and their behavior towards subordinates matters in terms of subordinate engagement. This holds mainly for Chinese culture, and the results cannot be extrapolated beyond mainland Chinese business culture.

Kramer, W. S., & Shuffler, M. L. (2014). Culture's consequences for leadership: The role of context in affecting leadership perceptions and performance. Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice, 7(2), 199-203. doi:10.1111/iops.12132.

This article looks at culture as a factor in determining the way that leader-follower relationships develop. This ties into the Jiaxin and Havyat papers in particular, as those are particular to their cultures, and highlight some differences between not only Pakistani and Chinese cultures, but how those cultures differ from Western managerial culture as well. One of the important elements of the Kramer paper is to seek to distill what elements of leader-follower relationships cut across cultural lines, and what findings might be considered to be culture-specific. Kramer finds in the study that culture is not taken into account as much as it should be, and this undermines the strength of many studies in the field. Kramer's core finding is that context matters in leadership, and culture is one of the more important contextual factors that needs to be taken into consideration. Perhaps this is why the concept of great leadership has proven to be so difficult to pin down -- that there are so many contextual variables that a leadership style that would be effective in one context is ineffective in another.

Saxena, S. (2014). Are transformational leaders creative and creative leaders transformational? An attempted synthesis through the Big Five Factor Model of Personality Lens. Aweshkar Research Journal, 18(2), 30-51.

This article uses the Big Five Factor Model of Personality as a theoretical framework for examining the idea of transformational leadership. The big five traits are openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. The author did not conduct a study, but has synthesized other studies in an exploratory paper.

The author examines what relationship exists between creative leadership and transformational leadership -- to what extent is creativity important in transformational leadership. The author finds that, again, in leadership that context matters. Contextual factors need to be taken into account when examining how different leadership styles, different personality traits, and other facets of leadership will be effective. This finding supports other findings, particularly those of Kramer, in that context is important in determining the effectiveness of different leadership styles.

Van Dierendonck, D., Stam, D., Boersma, P., De Windt, N., & Alkema, J. (2014). Same difference? Exploring the differential mechanisms linking servant leadership and transformational leadership to follower outcomes. The Leadership...

doi:10.1016/j.leaqua.2013.11.014.
This article follows three studies, two experimental and one field study. In these studies, the authors looked at the different mediating mechanisms that affect followers. They were seeking to study both servant leadership and transformational leadership, two of the more vague leadership concepts, but two that are not mutually exclusive. They found that these two leadership styles were related to higher levels of organizational commitment among followers, and to work engagement.

The authors found that the mechanisms by which the leadership styles worked was different, however. This was predictable, given the inherent differences between leaders that seek to empower employees, and those that are guiding them through transitional periods. In that sense, this study ignores key contextual variables, something that Kramer noted occurs frequently in papers about leadership. The authors here were studying the Dutch context, and as with many other nation-specific studies this may have constrained the ability to extrapolate results beyond that culture. The other finding of interest here is that different leadership styles work in different ways, but many can be effective.

A common idea throughout these different studies is that no two situations are alike. While there are many different leadership styles, and these styles can be effective in different situations, the quest for the one ideal leadership style is ultimately going to be futile. Changing situations will result in different findings about leadership effectiveness. One commonality, though, is that leaders need to be flexible, and responsive to their charges, because work engagement is correlated with organizational outcomes. No matter how a leader goes about building that work engagement, if the leader is able to do that successfully, the organizational outcomes should be improved.

Overall, the five studies are just the beginning . There are many other similar studies, and it may require much more analysis of dozens of studies to start to draw bigger-picture trends. The fact that context is so important, and that many studies are specific to a single industry or a single nation, indicates that to find any broad-based conclusions about leadership will require synthesis of a much broader body of work; cherry-picking a small handful of articles is not going to lead to meaningful conclusions, even when it leads to some sort of hypothesis formation.

The studies are a good starting point for understanding the complexity of leadership study. The trends that are identified would need to continue to be identified as the annotated bibliography is built out to a much greater level. These five papers on their own do not form the core of a coherent paper, because they are disparate studies. There are some links between them, but nothing overtly concrete. The studies also lack a common theme -- other than the overly-broad "leadership" -- that would make them a viable basis for a paper. A paper built around these papers would need supplemental research to investigate the concept of context in leadership styles and effectiveness. There are some nuggets of good ideas in these papers with respect to leadership-member exchange, but the use of different theoretical frameworks, and that three studies were conducted in narrow geographic contexts, makes it difficult to draw too many conclusions that can be applied universally. More papers are required to build on the ideas presented here and support the core underlying arguments presented in these five papers.

Introduction

Overview of Studies

Five papers were examined, the common theme being leadership

The studies were from different countries

They looked at different leadership theories

There were few common traits to these studies

Highlights the role that different contexts play in leadership effectiveness

Geographic Dispersion

Studies from Pakistan, China and Netherlands

Different countries have different leader-follower relationships embedded in their cultures

These differences influence what we learn about leadership

Lessons from one culture are not necessarily applicable to others

Populations of these studies too limited for universal application of their findings

Leadership Theories

These studies looked at different leadership theories

Leader-member exchange is one

Another is path-goal theory

Big Five Personality Factors

These different theories have limited relationship to each other

They each seek to explain what works and does not work in leadership, but derive from different conceptualizations of the leader

Another study looks at transformational leadership and servant leadership, two theories that derive from entirely different philosophical underpinnings

Lack of Congruence Across Studies

These studies come from different geographies

They work with different underlying leadership theories

There are no common traits other than vague macro-level "Leadership"

Findings from one study cannot relate to findings…