Event System Theory of Instrumental Leadership: The Case of General Nathanael Greene

Significant scholarly research suggests that leaders are a key component in ensuring organizational success through their strategic decision making and social influence (Kaiser et al., 2008). Indeed, because leaders are such an integral piece of the organization, scores of academic studies are devoted to increasing our understanding of leadership theory (Avolio et al., 2009). However, scholars argue that not all leadership theory is created equal; the most important leadership theories explore the influence leaders have on the underlying processes that lead to organizational success (Dinh et al., 2014). Effective leadership entails both interpersonal interaction and strategic objectives and task accomplishment (Fleishman et al., 1992). Transformational and transactional perspectives of the "full-range" theory put forth by Bass (1985) primarily explain interpersonal or "consideration" behaviors but explain little of the strategic and task focus of "initiating structure" behaviors (Judge et al., 2004). Accordingly, Antonakis and House (2014) suggest that critical components of leadership missing from the "full-range" theory include identifying organizational strategies and goals, providing task direction and resources, monitoring and adapting to the external environment, and evaluating individual performance and offering quality feedback. As such, these scholars suggest an "extended, full-range" theory in which instrumental leadership complements transformational and transactional leadership forms by accounting for important strategic leader activities that require leader expert task-related knowledge (Antonakis & House, 2002).The instrumental leadership perspective highlights the importance of leaders accounting for the environment in their strategic decisions (Antonakis & House, 2014). Instrumental leaders monitor their internal and external environments and examine the impact of environmental occurrences on leadership and organizations at the event-level (Hoffmann & Lord, 2013). This research stream is grounded in event system theory. The event systems theory (Morgeson et al., 2015) suggests that individual leaders are shaped as their knowledge and expertise are affected by the events which occur over time. Thus, instrumental leaders closely scan and react to environmental events and, as a result, acquire expertise about these very events. We seek to approach such event-level theorizing by examining the instrumental leadership of Major General Nathanael Green through the events of diverse features that occurred during his time in the American Revolutionary War.Nathanael Greene rose through the ranks of the resource-strapped Continental Army and became one of the most reputable of George Washington's generals by experiencing both successes and failures while being exposed to a flux of specific defining events to which he instrumentally responded in his military career. Grounding our examination of his instrumental leadership in event system theory (Morgeson et al., 2015), we analyze these defining events through the lens of an event taxonomy and extreme event typology. Guided by this lens, we perform an analytically structured archival search to identify the most salient events of diverse features and assess how General Greene exhibited instrumental leadership effectiveness across these events.We begin by providing the historical background and events of Greene's military life, which serve as the basis of our further event driven analysis. Next, we explain in greater depth the perspective of instrumental leadership and the event systems theory used to guide our archival analysis. Finally, we present our archival analysis and conclude with the implications of our research.The military life of Nathanael GreeneNathanael Greene rose through the ranks of the Continental Army with seemingly great speed. Greene's involvement and ascent in the affairs of the blossoming country began with his service in 1770 with the Rhode Island legislature (Siry, 2006). …