Leadership: the complexities and state of the field (original) (raw)
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LEADER AND LEADERSHIP: HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE TERMS AND CRITICAL REVIEW OF LITERATURE
LEADER AND LEADERSHIP: HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE TERMS AND CRITICAL REVIEW OF LITERATURE , 2019
Leader and leadership are two of the most widely used terms in education and management science research. As a result of their wide use, they have been defined by different researchers and scholars. Because of varied cultural, historical and academic backgrounds of those researchers, these terms have been defined differently. Some of those definitions are focused on one aspect of leader or leadership while the others on the other. This paper critically reviews and analyzes some of the most commonly used definitions of leader and leadership to see their defining characteristics and salient features. Based on the important features of some of those definitions, the paper then comes up 17 with new definitions for both of them. The paper also looks at some of the similar terms to see how they are different. Finally, the paper analyzes how the term leader might have been misused in the literature. The paper also suggests to be more careful with the selection of words to avoid ambiguity. Keywords: leader, leadership, critical review of literature, historical development
Leader and Leadership:: Historical Development of the Term and Critical Review of Literature
Annals of the University of Craiova for Journalism, Communication and Management, 2019
Leader and leadership are two of the most widely used terms in education and management science research. As a result of their wide use, they have been defined by different researchers and scholars. Because of varied cultural, historical and academic backgrounds of those researchers, these terms have been defined differently. Some of those definitions are focused on one aspect of leader or leadership while the others on the other. This paper critically reviews and analyzes some of the most commonly used definitions of leader and leadership to see their defining characteristics and salient features. Based on the important features of some of those definitions, the paper then comes up with new definitions for both of them. The paper also looks at some of the similar terms to see how they are different. Finally, the paper analyzes how the term leader might have been misused in the literature. The paper also suggests to be more careful with the selection of words to avoid ambiguity.
Leonard/The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of the Psychology of Leadership, Change, and Organizational Development, 2013
Leadership: Past, Present, and Future
L eadership matters, according to prominent leadership scholars (see also Bennis, 2007). But what is leadership? That turns out to be a challenging question to answer. Leadership is a complex and diverse topic, and trying to make sense of leadership research can be an intimidating endeavor. One comprehensive handbook of leadership (Bass, 2008), covering more than a century of scientific study, comprises more than 1,200 pages of text and more than 200 additional pages of references! There is clearly a substantial scholarly body of leadership theory and research that continues to grow each year. Given the sheer volume of leadership scholarship that is available, our purpose is not to try to review it all. That is why our focus is on the nature or essence of leadership as we and our chapter authors see it. But to fully understand and appreciate the nature of leadership, it is essential that readers have some background knowledge of the history of leadership research, the various theoretical streams that have evolved over the years, and emerging issues that are pushing the boundaries of the leadership frontier. Further complicating our task is that more than one hundred years of leadership research have led to several paradigm shifts and a voluminous body of knowledge. On several occasions, scholars of leadership became quite frustrated by the large amount of false starts, incremental theoretical advances, and contradictory findings. As stated more than five decades ago by Warren Bennis (1959, pp. 259–260), " Of all the hazy and confounding areas in social psychology, leadership theory undoubtedly contends for
Exploring the Leadership Terrain: Reflections from Literature
This paper appraises the available literature on concept of leadership and proposes fresh imputes to the mainstream theory by highlighting five facets of leadership. First, leadership and management are interlinked yet distinctive set of knowledge and practice-which are not substitution to each other. Second, leadership gets instigated with making of leader's self and its solicitation of authenticity by the followers. Third, an intimate relationship between leader and followers is deemed necessary for embarking on motivation and inspiration among followers to pursue established goals, even if they apparently seem unachievable. Fourth, contemporary organization study overwhelmingly posits leadership as individualistic domain, and thus fails to spot due diligence on the scope of co-leadership. Fifth, whilst talking high of leadership, we must not overlook the potential drawbacks that leadership might augment, because-like all other power corridors-leadership does have this tendency of fostering personal and sometimes ill-conceived agendas.
The Evolution of Leadership Thinking – A Personal Perspective
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A January 2017 Google search for the term ‘leadership’ yielded about 787,000,000 results. Even allowing for duplication, this reflects the enormous volume of material that has been written about leadership, including many bestselling leadership biographies and autobiographies by and of leaders that have been broadly perceived as successful at least at the time of publication. A sample of such “How I or, he did it” literature could include; Bill Gates, Henry Ford, Steven Spielberg, Sir Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, Donald Trump, Sam Walton, Michael Dell, Andrew Carnegie, George Soros, Walt Disney and many others.
We have come to live in an age where leadership is the solution, regardless of the problem. Today, managers are called on to provide leadership which is ‘visionary’, ‘charismatic’, ‘transformational’ and ‘authentic’ in nature. This is what ‘followers’ are said to need to perform to their potential. The efforts of the academy in promoting these ideas means they are typically understood as modern, enlightened and grounded in scientific research. Taking a critical step back, this study examines why we have come to understand leadership in this way. Adopting a Foucauldian methodology, the study comprises three case studies which examine Classical Greek, 16th century European and modern scholarly discourses on leadership. The analysis foregrounds change and continuity in leadership thought and examines the underpinning assumptions, problematizations and processes of formation which gave rise to these truth claims. The relationship and subjectivity effects produced by these discourses alo...
EVOLUTION AND MODERN TENDENCIES IN THE THEORY OF LEADERSHIP
2018
Leadership as a social phenomenon accompanies mankind throughout its existence. In different historical epochs, attempts were made to study leadership qualities on the basis of a description of the personalities of great people. As a result, the idea of leadership quickly evolved as the accumulation of theoretical and empirical material, revealing new facets of this complex phenomenon. In foreign social sciences, the theory of leadership has developed in several directions and by now a number of complementary theories and concepts have been developed, which predetermines the need to describe their continuity and development.
Leadership: A complex concept awaiting a new explanation?
Universidad & Empresa, 2013
Leaders have the task of developing future strategy while being consciously engaged in executing current strategy and mapping landmarks, pathways and obstacles which they meet as they endeavor to traverse challenging, rapidly evolving terrain. In an era in which there is a global leadership credibility crisis, business as usual is no longer an option in the pursuit of the longer-term survival of any organization. The leadership approach to complexity outlined here is based on learning to achieve results through experimentation, learning, and reflection.