Leadership: Theory and Practice

Abstract

This chapter reviews major approaches to leadership that have been pursued over the course of the two and a half millennia since classical scholars first turned their attention to this topic. Before setting out on this venture, it is important to recognize that this task is a formidable one. Cursory examination of any daily broadsheet shows that leadership is a constant topic of interest, debate, and speculation. In particular, it reveals a widespread fascination with the lives of leaders and with their individual psychology. How were they brought up? What key events shaped their intellectual and social development? What are their defining psychological characteristics and traits? What makes them so special? With a view toward imposing some semblance of order on this literature, and as a means of organizing attempts to understand and explain how researchers have approached questions of leadership, this chapter follows the structure suggested by Haslam, Reicher, and Platow (2011) in differentiating between three key research perspectives or traditions in the field: (a) a classical perspective based on the definition of leadership as the preserve of "great men" whose leadership is a reflection of their distinctive (and superior) personality, (b) a contextual perspective in which leadership is understood to be contingent on features of the social and organizational context that facilitate or else constrain leader effectiveness, and (c) an identity perspective that sees leadership as a relational process that centers on the group-based bonds between leaders and followers. As Haslam et al. (2011) observed, these different traditions also chart the historical development of thinking on leadership, with the classical perspective being "old," the contextual perspective being more "contemporary," and the identity perspective being relatively "new." This chapter concludes by reflecting on some of the methodological and political dimensions of leadership research that feed into our understanding of this process. A key point here is that the attraction of different approaches needs to be understood not only in relation to empirical data but also in relation to the prejudices and practices that they support (e.g., those that seek to justify high executive salaries; Gemmill & Oakley, 1992). In these terms, there is a need to engage with the political dimensions of leadership research as much as with the psychological