How Business Students Think about Leadership: A Qualitative Study on Leader Identity and Meaning-Making

Abstract

Business schools face increasing criticism for their one-size-fits-all approach to leadership development. Too much emphasis is placed on knowledge and skills building and the developmental needs of managers while insufficient attention is paid to purposeful student leadership development and to the underlying cognitive components that drive leadership development. The present study takes a cognitive approach to leadership development and explores how cognitive schemas of leadership manifest in students. We collected qualitative data from 510 undergraduate business students to analyze students' leader identity and its relatedness to their leadership-structure schema and implicit leadership theory. Results show that students' leader identity is related to their leadership-structure schema and their implicit leadership theory. More specifically, alignment between these cognitive schemas of leadership strengthens leader identity. In addition, results show that the content of the leadership-structure schema serves as a constraint or a catalyst for possible future alignment between the cognitive schemas of leadership. Implications for leadership development are discussed.Leadership development is considered to be an important objective and outcome of business schools (Benjamin & O'Reilly, 2011;DeRue, Sitkin, & Podolny, 2011;Eich, 2008;Sternberg, 2011). Through their leadership education, their research on leadership, and provision of leadership development initiatives, business schools aim to offer valuable learning platforms that contribute to developing leaders. In particular for young adults, business school and universities can provide suitable learning environments for building leadership capacity prior to starting one's work career (Avolio & Vogelgesang, 2011;Day, 2014;Petriglieri & Petriglieri, 2010;Sternberg, 2011). Research shows that purposeful development in adolescence, educational activities at college and university, and the learning environment in business schools positively impact ongoing leadership development and the leadership behavior individuals later on exhibit in the workplace (

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