Zaccaro, Stephen J.

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Zaccaro, Stephen J.

PERSONAL:

Male. Education: Fairfield University, B.A. (psychology), 1977; University of Connecticut, M.A. (social psychology), 1980, Ph.D., 1981.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Fairfax, VA. Office—Department of Psychology, George Mason University, David King Hall, Room 3064, MSN 3F5, 4400 University Dr., Fairfax, VA 22030-4444.E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, professor of psychology.

WRITINGS:

(Editor, with Anne W. Ripley) Occupational Stress and Organizational Effectiveness, Praeger (New York, NY), 1987.

Models and Theories of Executive Leadership: A Conceptual-Empirical Review and Integration,U.S. Army Research Institute (Washington, DC), 1996.

(Editor, with Richard J. Klimoski) The Nature of Organizational Leadership: Understanding the Performance Imperatives Confronting Today's Leaders, foreword by Neil Shmitt, Jossey-Bass (San Francisco, CA), 2001.

The Nature of Executive Leadership: A Conceptual and Empirical Analysis of Success, American Psychological Association (Washington, DC), 2001.

(Editor, with Stanley M. Halpin and David V. Day)Leader Development for Transforming Organizations: Growing Leaders for Tomorrow, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates (Mahwah, NJ), 2004.

SIDELIGHTS:

Stephen J. Zaccaro is a professor of psychology who is an expert on teamwork and leadership. His research interests include determining what affects team performance, the dynamic between teams and their leaders, leadership adaptability, and executive leadership. His The Nature of Organizational Leadership: Understanding the Performance Imperatives Confronting Today's Leaders attempts to combine research findings from psychology literature with that from strategic management in order to improve understanding of the top leadership organizations. Personnel Psychology critic John W. Fleenor wrote that "this book does an excellent job of integrating the leadership literature, which, according to the editors, has been ‘disconnected and directionless’ for years. Each of the leadership performance imperatives is fully incorporated into one or more of the chapters, with the exception of the technological imperative, which could have received more attention."

With Leader Development for Transforming Organizations: Growing Leaders for Tomorrow Zaccaro looks at the corporate need for trained leaders in order to increase growth and productivity. Cynthia D. MacCauley, in a review for Personnel Psychology, remarked that "as with many edited books, this one reinforces my concern with the lack of connections across different knowledge arenas related to individual learning, growth, and change. Reading the different chapters often felt like entering different worlds. Differentiation without more integration robs us of a more developed knowledge base for enhancing leader development."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Personnel Psychology, spring, 2002, John W. Fleenor, review of The Nature of Organizational Leadership: Understanding the Performance Imperatives Confronting Today's Leaders, p. 254; summer, 2005, Cynthia D. McCauley, review of Leadership Development for Transforming Organizations: Growing Leaders for Tomorrow, p. 540.