Author(s)

Anne Kleefstra

Research Centre for Employability, Zuyd University of Applied Sciences, Sittard, The Netherlands.

Leadership is one of the most discussed topics in literature across all different industries and sciences. There is a need for clarification and overview on the different types of leadership discussed in literature. This explorative research describes a systematic literature review to give a general overview of the types of leadership discussed in the literature in the time period between March 2013 and March 2018. In total 658 different types of leadership were mentioned in 380 analyzed articles. Of that transformational leadership was mentioned 200 times, effective leadership was mentioned 118 times, transactional leadership 110 times, participative leadership was mentioned 89 times and ethical leadership was mentioned 72 times. Often these types of leadership were also mentioned together and a great overlap on the different leadership styles was mentioned. Further research on leadership should therefore focus less on explorative research and more on developmental research of a new full range scientific leadership model including the different leadership styles discussed most often in the past five year.

Transformational Leadership, Effective Leadership, Leadership Style, Systematic Literature Review

Kleefstra, A. (2019) A Literature Review into Leadership Styles Discussed in the Past Five Years. Open Journal of Social Sciences, 7, 180-190. doi: 10.4236/jss.2019.76015.