LDR 711A Week 1 The Scholar-Practitioner and the Study of Leadership Example

Theory on the Ramp: The Scholar-Practitioner Leader and a Map of Leadership Research Applied at a Regional Airport

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

LDR/711A: Leadership Theory and Practice

Week 1 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Cascade Valley Regional Airport, its staff and its events are composites written for a model paper.

Cascade Valley Regional Airport is a composite commercial airport in central Washington State serving about 1.1 million passengers a year on four airlines, with a general aviation area and an air cargo operation. The airport authority employs 210 people in operations, maintenance, aircraft rescue and firefighting, public safety, finance and administration. Marisol Vega, director of operations and a doctoral student, leads operations and maintenance staff directly and coordinates daily with airline station managers, the federal control tower, security screeners, ground handlers, concessionaires and the fire department, none of whom report to her. Last February, an ice storm closed the airport for 14 hours, stranding about 1,600 passengers in the terminal overnight. The response worked in some ways and failed in others: runways reopened ahead of forecast, but passengers went hours without information, and two airlines and the authority gave conflicting messages. Afterward, Marisol asked which leadership theories could explain what happened. This paper examines the scholar-practitioner role, maps the field of leadership theory and applies it to the storm.

The Scholar-Practitioner Role

Wasserman and Kram (2009) studied how professionals who considered themselves scholar-practitioners described the role. Their narratives revealed different ways of enacting it, from integrating research and practice in a unified identity to moving back and forth between the two and to experiencing tension between them. Participants valued bringing rigorous thinking to practice and practical problems to scholarship, and many described the role as a continuing developmental process rather than a fixed state.

The Field in the New Millennium

Dinh et al. (2014) reviewed leadership research published in major journals from 2000 to 2012. They found that established approaches, such as neo-charismatic, transformational and leader-member exchange theories, continued to dominate, while emerging approaches, including strategic, team, contextual, information processing and social exchange perspectives, grew. They noted increasing attention to processes, such as how leadership emerges and changes over time, and called for more integration across theories.

Levels of Analysis

Yammarino et al. (2005) reviewed leadership theories and research for their treatment of levels of analysis. They found that many theories did not specify whether they described individuals, dyads, groups or organizations, and that measures and analyses often did not match the theory's level. They argued that clarity about levels is essential for valid conclusions, since a relationship that holds between individuals may not hold between groups.

Defining Leadership for This Course

Definitions of leadership vary, but most share a core: leadership is a process of influence through which people pursue shared goals. The definition matters because it shapes what counts as leadership. If leadership is only what formal leaders do, much of what happened during the storm, such as a ground handler organizing cots for stranded families, falls outside it. If leadership is a process of influence, it can come from anyone. This course will use the broader definition while paying close attention to formal roles, since Marisol's position gives her particular responsibilities.

Leadership Across Organizations

Airports pose a particular challenge for leadership theory. Most theories assume a leader and followers within one organization, connected by authority. At Cascade Valley, the people who shaped the passenger experience during the storm worked for at least seven organizations, each with its own chain of command, priorities and procedures. Marisol had formal authority over fewer than half of them. Influence across organizational boundaries depends on relationships, shared plans and credibility rather than position, which is why relational and shared approaches will matter in later weeks.

A Map of Theory Families

For this course, theories can be grouped into families: trait and skills approaches, focused on who leaders are and what they can do; behavioral and contingency approaches, focused on what leaders do and when; relational approaches, focused on leader-follower relationships and followership; transformational and charismatic approaches, focused on inspiring change; values-based approaches, focused on ethics, authenticity and service; and shared and collective approaches, focused on leadership distributed among many people.

The Storm at the Individual Level

At the individual level, Marisol's own skills mattered. Her technical knowledge of snow removal and deicing allowed her to sequence crews effectively, and runways reopened two hours ahead of forecast. Trait and skills approaches would ask which of her capabilities produced this result.

The Storm at the Dyadic Level

At the dyadic level, relationships determined information flow. Marisol had a strong relationship with the tower manager and a weak one with the newest airline station manager, whose airline gave passengers a reopening time different from the authority's.

The runways were cleared by a chain of command, but the terminal was managed by a web of relationships that no one had mapped.

The Storm at the Group Level

At the group level, the emergency operations team worked well within operations and maintenance but poorly across organizations. No one was assigned to coordinate passenger information across airlines, screening and concessions.

The Storm at the Organizational Level

At the organizational level, the authority's emergency plan focused on airfield safety and assumed passengers would leave the terminal, an assumption that failed when roads also iced over.

What Each Theory Family Might Explain

Skills approaches explain the airfield success. Relational approaches explain the conflicting messages. Shared leadership approaches explain why no one owned passenger care across organizations. Contingency approaches raise the question whether the directive style that suited snow removal suited the terminal. Values-based approaches ask whether stranded passengers' needs received the priority they deserved.

The Practitioner's Questions

The storm raises questions Marisol will pursue in the course: How do leaders influence people they do not supervise? Which leadership behaviors fit fast technical crises and which fit slower human crises? How can leadership be shared across organizations during emergencies?

Evidence Marisol Can Gather

As a scholar-practitioner, Marisol has access to evidence most researchers lack: the after-action review, radio logs, passenger complaints, airline incident reports and interviews with staff and partners. She can use these to test explanations drawn from theory, for example whether conflicting passenger messages traced to particular relationships, and she can repeat observations in later irregular operations to see whether changes help. This combination of theory and local evidence is the core of the scholar-practitioner approach.

Reflecting on the Scholar-Practitioner Stance

Marisol's instinct after the storm was to fix procedures. The scholar-practitioner stance asks her first to understand, using theory to frame what happened and evidence to test her explanations, before designing solutions.

Questions of Method

Testing theories against one storm has limits: a single event cannot show cause, and memories of a crisis are shaped by its outcome. The course will therefore draw on several events, including smaller irregular operations, to see whether patterns repeat.

Conclusion

Scholar-practitioners move between research and practice, using each to inform the other. The leadership field has grown into many families of theory and increasingly attends to processes and context, while research on levels of analysis warns against confusing individual, dyadic, group and organizational claims. Applied to an ice storm at Cascade Valley, these ideas show that different theories explain different parts of the response, and they set the questions for the weeks ahead.

References

Dinh, J. E., Lord, R. G., Gardner, W. L., Meuser, J. D., Liden, R. C., & Hu, J. (2014). Leadership theory and research in the new millennium: Current theoretical trends and changing perspectives. The Leadership Quarterly, 25(1), 36-62. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2013.11.005

Wasserman, I. C., & Kram, K. E. (2009). Enacting the scholar-practitioner role: An exploration of narratives. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 45(1), 12-38. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021886308327238

Yammarino, F. J., Dionne, S. D., Chun, J. U., & Dansereau, F. (2005). Leadership and levels of analysis: A state-of-the-science review. The Leadership Quarterly, 16(6), 879-919. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2005.09.002