Leadership in Management: A Universal Leadership Model for the 21st Century

This paper intends to provide an effective universal leadership solution for managers to be able to adapt to the economic environment of the 21st century. The proposed solution focuses on developing managerial agility to adapt to the “economies of change”, which typify the current market conditions, while effectively soliciting organizational commitment. From a literature review approach, the authors will shed some light upon the essence and role of leadership and its relationship within the framework of management, and especially the new upcoming trend of self-management. After evaluating the effectiveness of a selection of different leadership styles against the current state of the economy, the authors propose a hybrid, plastic, and contextual two-tier leadership style, to be the solution of choice. The contextual leadership style combines elements of the transformational, transactional, situational, executive, servant, autocratic and charismatic leadership styles and employs the appropriate style elements according to the situational demands. Therefore the “contextual leadership style” is the optimal universal leadership style choice for managers to adapt to the rapidly changing economic environment while soliciting maximal buy-in from the organization’s human capital assets.