Dimensionality of Leadership in the Perceptions of Senior Human Resource Executives in Poland

Purpose: Sixty-five HR general managers representing companies from a variety of industries took part in the research that we conducted between April and October 2013. They had identified leadership development as the most significant factor in the growth of the top firms in Poland’s economy. We have conducted in-depth interviews to understand the perception of the leadership concept. We have found that they tend to focus on the following dimensions of leadership: conveying a vision, inspiring, being charismatic, being credible, being able to manage others, and having good interpersonal skills. Research limitations and implications: The main limitation of the research is that it does not allow for generalization of findings on perceived dimensionality of leadership on larger population of HR Executives. Our findings imply that leadership development will soon be a strong priority among HR teams of 500 largest companies, but several dimensions are not present in their description of leadership. Originality/value: Our paper makes three contributions to the literature. We have developed a managerial attention view of the firm by surveying senior HR executives. CEOs, CFOs, and top management teams tend to be subject of studies in this theoretical tradition more often than HR executives, Another contribution is the use of mixed methods that is rather rare yet offering vast opportunities for triangulation and knowledge building in the discipline. Our third contribution is that we applied a standard scale of the multidimensional leadership concept.