Abstract Drawing on approximately 470 relevant studies published in the past 20 years（1995～2015）, we summarized the contextual factors that have been primarily studied in the leadership research, reviewed the effects of context on leadership effectiveness, and as well as the joint effect of context and other aspects of leadership (e.g. leader attributes and behaviors) on leadership effectiveness. Our research findings show that the current literature in this area appear to lack synthesized attention to situational factors. The fact that context may affect or correlates with leadership effectiveness in a more complex fashion calls for more study. Moreover, existing research has been limited to examining the role of trait, behavior, and context in affecting leadership effectiveness. More qualitative research is needed to reveal the underlying mechanisms of the leadership process. Based on this review, we finally offer suggestions for future research with the hope to advance the research on leadership and context.
