DEMANDS, CONSTRAINTS, CHOICES AND DISCRETION: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE WORK OF ROSEMARY STEWART By: Kevin B. Lowe Lowe, K. B. (2003). Demands, constraints, choices and discretion: An introduction to the work of Rosemary Stewart. The Leadership Quarterly, 14(2), 193-197. Made available courtesy of Elsevier Publications: http://www.elsevier.com/ *** Note: Figures may be missing from this format of the document Article: A few years have passed since the Leadership Classics feature last appeared in the Leadership Quarterly and so it seems appropriate to revisit the purpose of this feature. The Leadership Classics feature is designed to revisit a seminal scholarly work or line of research. The selection criteria reflect: prior contribution to the development of the field and ongoing potential to inform leadership research. The focus of the current feature is on the work of Rosemary Stewart of Templeton College, a specialist management college within the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. From her seminal book Managers and Their Jobs: A Study of the Similarities and Differences in the Ways Managers Spend Their Time (1967) through the third edition of The Reality of Management (1997), Professor Stewart has broadened our understanding of what managers actually do. Her work, spanning five decades (Stewart 1965, 2002), stands as a testimony to the benefits of a truly cumulative and programmatic research program focused on systematically exploring a phenomenon layer-by-layer, nuance-by-nuance. Her research methods were (and remain) innovative, exhaustive, and cutting edge. Using a battery of techniques such as structured interviews, diaries, structured observations, group discussions, case analyses, and critical incidents, Stewart was developing grounded theory work and implementing method triangulation before those approaches had fashionable labels. Among the many important contributions emerging from this work are the demands– constraints– choices framework and the notion of managerial exposure, useful models for defining differences in managerial work and discretion across jobs. There is something for almost everyone in Professor Stewart’s research. Her insights and observations span the micro to meso to macro perspectives. Leadership scholars interested in dyadic interactions, group level phenomena, organizational culture, national culture, and the impact of technology on the practice of management will all benefit from reading this feature’s “twenty thousand feet” view of Professor Stewart’s work. One persistent theme, that the demands, choices, and constraints in managerial work vary more dramatically across jobs than across hierarchical levels or organizational functions, has important, but largely ignored, implications for the samples scholars select and the generalizations they make and infer from the results. Human resource scholars interested in more effective utilization of the performance appraisal process, improving managerial development processes, and for an alternative perspective on person–job–organization fit will be informed by this body of work. Her discussion of the ability of managers to (not) see choice in situations as a determinate of (in)effective leadership is both a lucid and promising area for future research. Indeed, one of the defining characteristics of the transformational leader may be the ability to identify choice in situations where others perceive little or none. Professor Stewart suggests that the ability to see a wider set of choices in a situation can be developed in individuals. This ability to see a larger choice set may in part explain the utility of less system ensconced organizational consultants. Readers of The Leadership Quarterly, especially younger U.S. scholars, may be relatively unfamiliar with the work of Rosemary Stewart. This may be due to the effects of time on the ardor for a particular body of research