This study analyzes the current trends in leadership research within the Korean management academia and proposes directions for future development. To achieve this objective, leadershiprelated articles published in three major academic journals-Korean Management Review, Journal of Organization and Management, and Korean Journal of Management-were reviewed and systematically analyzed. To date, leadership research in Korea has predominantly focused on empirical studies, with relatively few efforts to provide an integrated overview of the field. Addressing this gap, the present study seeks to offer an objective assessment of the current state of leadership research and to derive meaningful implications for advancing leadership scholarship in the field of management. The analysis examines key aspects including dominant theoretical frameworks, levels of analysis, research participants, data sources, time dimensions, validity assessments, and hypothesis testing methods. The findings indicate that neo-charismatic leadership theory has been the prevailing theoretical framework. Most studies have focused on the individual level, investigated private-sector organizations, adopted cross-sectional research designs, and employed regression analysis for hypothesis testing. Based on these results, the study offers recommendations for diversifying leadership research in Korea, with an emphasis on expanding theoretical perspectives, employing multi-level and longitudinal approaches, and exploring varied organizational contexts.
Choi et al. (Sun,) studied this question.