워크앤라이프/심리연구원 >>> “인간, 조직, 사회에 대한 심리학적 지

The Enduring Romance of Leadership Studies

Brad Jackson

Victoria University of Wellington

Books reviewed in this essay:

Keith Grint, Leadership: Limits and Possibilities (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,

2005), 183 pages

Robert House, Paul Hanges, Mansour Javidan, Peter Dorfman and Vipin Gupta

(Eds), Culture, Leadership and Organisations: The GLOBE Study of 62 Societies (Thou-

sand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2004), 818 pages

Thomas Wren, Douglas Hicks and Terry Price (Eds), The International Library of

Leadership (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2004)

1. Traditional Classic on Leadership, 339 pages

2. Modern Classics on Leadership, 493 pages

3. New Perspectives on Leadership, 670 pages

It has been twenty years since James Meindl, Sanford Ehrlich and Janet Dukeric

observed in their provocative article, ‘The romance of leadership’: ‘it has become

apparent that, after years of trying, we have been unable to generate an under-

standing of leadership that is both intellectually compelling and emotionally sat-

isfying. The concept of leadership remains elusive and enigmatic’ (1985, p. 78).

Two decades further on, it would seem an opportune time to take stock of this

diffuse and ubiquitous field by examining a few of the most significant leadership

books to have been published over the past year. In reviewing these books I want

to primarily ascertain what, if anything, may have changed in the intervening

period.

Judging by the number of books on leadership that are currently on the market,

there has never been greater interest in the topic. Grint (2005), for example, notes

Journal of Management Studies 42:6 September 2005

0022-2380

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ,

UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

Address for reprints: Brad Jackson, Victoria Management School, Victoria University of Wellington,

Wellington, New Zealand (brad.jackson@vuw.ac.nz).

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that there were 14,139 items relating to ‘Leadership’ on amazon.co.uk on 29

October 2003. Just two months later this had increased to 14,610. Most of these

publications probably fall into the trade press category but the number of acade-

mic publications on the subject is also noticeably on the rise.

Within the academic realm, the current undisputed heavyweight champion of

leadership studies, The Leadership Quarterly has just celebrated its fifteenth year in

existence. During that time it has established itself as a top-ranked management

journal despite its speciality focus. The outgoing editor, Jerry Hunt recently con-

cluded that the field is now ‘light years away from the doom and gloom period of

the 1970s and early 1980s’ (2005, p. 5). In addition to a rapid increase in sub-

mission rates he notes that leadership scholars are beginning to organize around

a leadership group within the Academy of Management called the ‘Community

of Leadership Scholars’. The incoming editor of The Leadership Quarterly, Michael

Mumford (2005) remarks that, for the first time, interdisciplinary programmes in

leadership studies are being established in major universities in North America. In

parallel, leadership research centres and institutes are springing up on campuses

throughout the world at an impressive rate.

In the red corner, a new European-based journal has entered the fray called,

naturally enough, Leadership. The founding editors, David Collinson and Keith

Grint observe in their inaugural editorial that, within business schools and man-

agement programmes, ‘leadership has often remained a “Cinderella” subject, been

neglected and/or underestimated by those keen to analyse and theorize the social,

political, organizational and philosophical dimensions of human affairs. Conse-

quently, the intellectual integrity of leadership as a legitimate and important field

has remained open to question’ (2005, p. 5). The new journal endeavours to tackle

this question by stimulating interest in new methods and theories of leadership;

encouraging interdisciplinary, diverse and critical analyses of leadership processes;

and providing an international forum for leadership research.

It would be hard to conceive of a sub-field of management studies that has been

written about or is being written about as much as leadership. Making a decision

about what books to select for this composite review was, therefore, fraught with

the overwhelming challenge of choice. In the end I decided to select the books

that had peaked my interest either browsing through the publishers’ catalogues or

the publisher’s stands at conferences, on the assumption that a significant number

of other management scholars might also want to learn more about these titles.

Rather than attempt a broad-based review, I’ve selected three publications that

have the potential to make important and enduring contributions to leadership

scholarship. They also illustrate the range and reach of this field as well as some

of the intellectual promise that Meindl and his colleagues were searching for two

decades ago.

Perhaps the single most impressive leadership study to have been conducted

in the past twenty years has been conducted under the auspices of the Global

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Leadership and Organizational Behaviour Effectiveness research programme,

memorably dubbed the ‘GLOBE’ study. While the study has already spawned an

impressive array of journal articles, the publication in 2004 of the book, Culture,

Leadership, and Organizations has been widely anticipated by leadership scholars

around the world. Weighing in at a hefty 818 pages, the book edited by Robert

House, Paul Hanges, Mansour Javidan, Peter Dorfman and Vipin Gupta does not

disappoint.

The GLOBE project is described by Harry Triandis in the Foreword to the book

as ‘the Manhattan project of the study of the relationship of culture to concep-

tions of leadership’ (p. xv). Certainly in terms of the scale of the project he is not

far off the mark. The project involved 127 investigators from 62 nations, 20 of

whom participated in the writing of this book. Between 1994 and 1997 data were

collected from 17,300 managers based in a total of 951 organizations. Twenty-

seven hypotheses were tested in the study, each linking culture to performance

outcomes.

The book is organized into five sections. Part I discusses the history of the

GLOBE project and what it has tried to accomplish. The idea for GLOBE came

to Robert House in the summer of 1991. Having reviewed a wide array of research

into charismatic leadership that had been conducted in a wide range of cultural

contexts he had cause to believe that there might be a basis for believing that

charismatic leader behaviour might be universally acceptable and effective.

The GLOBE project provided him with the means to ascertain this on a grand

scale.

Part II of the book provides an exhaustive review of prior literature on culture

and organizational leadership as well as societal influences on organizational cul-

tural practices. The two chapters provided in this section, especially the one written

by Dorfman and House are expertly done and would alone, almost justify the pur-

chase of the book. In Part III, the research methodology of the project is described.

This section takes up a significant portion of the book (almost 20 per cent) and

covers in copious detail such topics as the development and validation of the

GLOBE culture and leadership scales as well as the regional and climate cluster-

ing of societal value scales and the statistical analyses. The editors are obviously

anxious to be as transparent as they possibly can in the hope perhaps of facilitat-

ing replication in subsequent studies.

In Part IV, the empirical findings detail how each of 62 societies scores on the

nine major attributes of culture identified by the GLOBE study. These are iden-

tified as being: Future Orientation, Gender Egalitarianism, Assertiveness, Humane

Orientation, In-Group Collectivism, Institutional Collectivism, Permanence Ori-

entation, Power Concentration versus Decentralization and Uncertainty Avoid-

ance. When quantified these attributes are referred to as ‘cultural dimensions’.

Four of these were identified in Hofstede’s landmark study (Hofstede, 1980), but

have been renamed. It is readily apparent that the GLOBE project owes a great

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deal to Hoftstede’s work. However, it is by no means meant to act merely as a big

budget remake. As House notes, ‘we have a data set to replicate Hofstede’s (1980)

landmark study and extend that study to test hypotheses relevant to relationships

among societal-level variables, organizational practices, and leader attributes and

behaviour’ (House et al., 2004, p. xxv).

The GLOBE project also identifies six major global leader behaviours. The

study found that there is a wide variation in the values and practices relevant to

the nine core dimensions of cultures and a wide range of perceptions of what con-

stitutes effective and ineffective leader behaviours. In all cultures leader team ori-

entation and the communication of vision, values, and confidence in followers are

reported to be highly effective leader behaviours. While some variation was found

concerning participative leadership, the study found wide variation with respect

to two major dimensions of leader behaviour: autonomous leadership and self-

protective leadership. Autonomous leadership is characterized by a high degree of

independence from superiors and is reported to slightly contribute toward orga-

nizational effectiveness in countries of Eastern Europe (except Hungary) and Ger-

manic Europe (except the Netherlands). Self-protective leadership is characterized

by self-centredness, status consciousness and narcissism. This type of leadership

behaviour is seen to be slightly effective by managers in Albania, Taiwan, Egypt,

Iran and Kuwait. These intriguing exceptions aside, one is struck overall by how

little variation there appears to be in the ascribed values and practices of effective

leaders between managers in the 62 countries surveyed.

Finally, in Part V the authors discuss the implications of the GLOBE project’s

work to both research and practice. What is clear from their assessment is that the

job of investigating the relationship between leadership and organizational and

societal culture has only just begun. As the editors humbly conclude, ‘the wealth

of findings provided in this book set the stage for a more sophisticated and complex

set of questions’ (House et al., 2004, p. 726). They acknowledge that, although the

GLOBE findings have identified the various attributes of leadership, they have not

identified the behavioural manifestations of such attributes. For example, it is clear

from the study that integrity is a universally desirable attribute for leadership but

does it mean the same thing to a Chinese employee as it does to an American?

Moreover, while the GLOBE project provides a profile of cultural dimensions of

each society, further research is required in order to build a subjective under-

standing of how people actually function and manifest these different cultural

attributes. Finally, we also need to develop a more dynamic understanding of

culture that can help us to make sense of the processes and consequences when

leaders and followers from different cultures begin to connect and interact.

This book reports on Phases 1 and 2 of the GLOBE Project. The third and

final phase is currently underway. In this phase, House and his colleagues will be

investigating the impact and effectiveness of specific leader behaviours and style

on subordinates’ attitudes and performance. Specifically, the researchers will be

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looking at the impact over 3 to 5 years of the leadership behaviour of CEOs on

organizational effectiveness. Of particular interest, I believe will be the examina-

tion of the consequences of CEO behaviours that violate societal cultural norms

or leadership expectations represented by a culture’s culturally implicit leadership

theory.

Harry Triandis observes in the foreword to the book that, ‘in a book that con-

tains thousands of findings one can easily find things to criticize’ (p. xix). He help-

fully provides three examples. My major concern is the lack of attention given to

sub-national cultural heterogeneity. For example, to what extent does the cultur-

ally implicit leadership theory of a ‘New Zealander’ reflect those of a M ori or a

Pacific Islander or an Asian immigrant? Overall, however, I was left with a sense

of admiration for a project of this magnitude that is relatively common in the

realm of the sciences, but exceptional in management research. The authors have

endeavoured to make this a truly cross-cultural and collective project and, given

the number of authors involved, go a long way towards achieving their goal of a

‘seamless book’. I believe that a major challenge for leadership researchers is to

develop much more cultured understandings of leadership than we currently tend

to come across in mainstream publications. A project with this profile and with

this much methodological rigour does us an important service by putting the ques-

tion of culture front and centre in leadership research. We will, however, need to

branch out before we can move on.

In the composite book review that preceded this one, Eric Guthey observed that,

‘management researchers need to move beyond the kind of cultural analysis that

seeks to isolate and measure supposedly static and objective cultural determinants

accurately and scientifically’ (2005, p. 463). This would require crossing what he

describes as the ‘great divide’ and occasional antagonism, between humanities-

based research into culture on the one hand and the management research rooted

in the social sciences that is based primarily in business schools and well exempli-

fied by the GLOBE project. The next two books in this review do an exemplary

job of crossing this divide.

The International Library of Leadership is a three-volume collection that has been

edited by Thomas Wren, Douglas Hicks and Terry Price, all three of whom are

on the faculty of the Jepson School of Leadership Studies at the University of

Richmond in the United States. The editors note that the term ‘leadership studies’

has generally been associated with a relatively narrow corpus of social science

analyses, primarily from the fields of social psychology and management science.

While this work has made some important contributions to the understanding of

the leadership phenomenon, they believe it has been too limited in scope and

purpose. By contrast, the trade press leadership books have been comparatively

more ambitious and wider in scope, yet invariably simplistic and shallow in their

analyses. The editors argue that, ‘leadership is too important and too complex to

leave the field to these champions alone’ (2004, p. xi).

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For this reason they cast their editorial net wide enough to encompass writers

in this collection who might not normally be considered leadership thinkers per

se, but who have nonetheless mined some very important insights about the phe-

nomenon. They note that, ‘leadership has occupied centre stage throughout

human history. It embraces far more than the running of modern formal organi-

zations, and it is much too complex to summarize neatly in one short paperback’

(2004, p. xi).

Volume 1 of the collection, Traditional Classics on Leadership, contains the editors’

vision of the most insightful and important writing on leadership from ancient

times to the dawn of the twentieth century. The selections are arranged accord-

ing to what the editors believe to be the key leadership issues of the pre-industrial

age. These include: What is the moral purpose of leadership? What is the nature

of leadership? What constitutes legitimate authority? What is the role of follow-

ers? How might one go about challenging authority? While the writers featured

in this volume include many of those we would expect to see in such a volume

(e.g. Plato, Kant, Nietzsche, Machiavelli, Freud and Hume), the editors have

taken care to include the voices that have been left out of the mainstream: women

such as Christine de Pizan, Mary Wollstonecraft, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and

Virginia Woolf, as well as ‘men of colour’ such as David Walker and W. E. B.

Du Bois.

The second volume, Modern Classics on Leadership, presents the articles and chap-

ters that have shaped the modern field of leadership studies. These include sci-

entific management, which we would not normally associate with leadership

studies as well the chestnuts such as trait theory, behaviour theory, contingency

theories of leadership, transformational leadership charismatic leadership, cogni-

tive approaches to leadership and studies of power. The editors note that in the

twentieth century the field of ‘leadership studies’ took a dramatic turn so that it

came to be narrowly defined in terms of its focus (i.e. formal organization) and

method (i.e. social science methodology, chiefly derived from the disciplines of

social psychology and management science). The editors have chosen to include

only ‘seminal’ writings from this field. That is, those writings that marked a new

departure for the field and have been cited by subsequent scholars as the starting

point for further inquiry. One certainly gains a new respect for what these writers

accomplished by reading their original work rather than the highly processed and

selected forms that are customarily presented in leadership texts.

The final volume, New Perspectives on Leadership, brings us up to the present. These

writings are organized around the questions and themes that the editors believe

most pertain to the postmodern age. These include: how leadership should be con-

ceptualized; the role of power and authority; and questions of values, morality,

and ethics. Again many of the usual suspects are featured such as Howard Gar-

diner, Robert Greenleaf and Peter Senge. However, these are joined by a number

of thinkers such as Michel Foucault, Paulo Freire and Benjamin Barber whom we

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would not normally associate with leadership scholarship but who obviously cast

a critical light upon the leadership question.

Not all of the included works are recent. Some date back to the middle of the

last century (e.g. Hannah Arendt, Bertrand Russell and Isaiah Berlin). These

authors have been selected because the editors believe they frame to good effect

the issues that will preoccupy leadership scholars during the twenty-first century.

What is striking from reading the articles collected in this volume is how much

more they have in common with those featured in the first volume as opposed to

those featured in the second. They share a wider socio-political view informed by

philosophy and fired by a humanities-inspired imagination. Indeed the editors note

that, ‘readers of Volume 1 of this series will recognize that many of the issues that

occupy contemporary writers are remarkably similar to those that have drawn the

attention of commentators since the beginning. This should not be surprising:

some leadership challenges are indeed perennial’ (2004, p. xv). I certainly found

myself being more intrigued and compelled to read the pre-modern readings

than those included in the last two volumes, perhaps due in part to an over-

familiarity with more recent work as well as an unbridled faith in the wisdom of

earlier ages.

The editors should be commended for undertaking this initiative. They have

certainly succeeded in accomplishing one of their objectives which was to ‘provide

easy access to the best thinking of the great minds of past and present’ (2004 p.

xiii). I applaud the inclusion of substantial portions of each writer’s argument so

that the reader can gain a firsthand appreciation of the author’s position. I was

also pleased to see that in Volumes 2 and 3, the original typefaces of the articles

and book chapters are maintained as this improves the aesthetic appreciation of

the work and facilitates fast and accurate citation. It is unfortunate that idiosyn-

cratic editorial decisions required the content of Volume 1 to be set in a different

type.

With respect to the second objective, namely that of integration, the editors do

a reasonably good job in the brief commentaries they provide in each volume

preceding the writings. These commentaries provide competent and engaging

summaries of the key arguments of each contribution. The interlinking of these

contributions into a historical argument is less convincing, however. At the end of

the day, the authors perhaps wisely elect to let the writers speak for themselves and

leave the integration to the readers. As to who the reader might be, this collection

is obviously ideally placed to become a valuable desk reference book. It could also

form the basis of a first-rate graduate seminar on leadership, although the total

price for the three volume set, £350, would likely prove prohibitive to most

students.

The problem with any collection like this inevitably revolves around not what

the editors include but rather what they exclude. The editors make it clear at the

outset that the selections they feature originate solely from Western traditions.

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They recognize that many works from other cultural traditions would obviously

be relevant but space constraints preclude anything but merely anecdotal treat-

ment. The editors rightfully note that these works deserve a much fuller treatment

in a separate collection that Edward Elgar and other publishers would do well to

consider pursuing. Most European scholars will likely point out that, despite the

editors’ obvious best intentions to be inclusive, the balance of writing, especially

the more recent writing, is perhaps weighed too much in favour of the United

States. This would call into question the wisdom of calling the three volume

set, the ‘International’ Library of Leadership, the obvious marketing appeal

notwithstanding.

In explaining the genesis of their three volumes, Wren and his colleagues ques-

tion what can really be said about leadership within the constraints of a short

paperback. As if to refute this, Keith Grint’s most recent book, Leadership: Limits

and Possibilities does manage to pack an awful lot into a relatively modest 183 pages.

In many respects we can see this book as a logical companion piece to his earlier

book, The Arts of Leadership (Grint, 2000). In that book Grint made the case that

leadership is not accessible to scientific approaches because it is essentially a con-

stitutive process. Instead, he suggests we should think of leadership as an art

because, ‘it appears to have more to do with invention than analysis, despite claims

to the contrary; it operates on the basis of indeterminacy, whilst claiming to be

deterministic; it is rooted in irony, rather than the truth; and it usually rests on a

constructed identity but claims a reflective identity’ (2000, p. 6).

Effective leaders, Grint argues, need to develop and learn from an ensemble of

arts. From the philosophical arts, they can learn to create a compelling sense of

identity for their organization by asking the question ‘Who are we?’. From the fine

arts they can learn to forge a powerful strategic vision for the organizations they

lead by asking the question ‘Where are we going?’. The martial arts can help

leaders learn to develop smart organizational tactics by asking the question ‘How

will we achieve this?’. Finally, from the performing arts, leaders can learn to per-

suasively communicate to their followers the organization’s identity, its strategic

vision as well as its tactics.

Grint illustrates his argument by providing a number of rich and fascinating

portraits of well-known leadership figures including Horatio Nelson, Henry Ford,

Florence Nightingale, Martin Luther King and Richard Branson. However,

instead of highlighting their heroic exploits he points to the number of occasions

that they did, in fact, mess up, in a number of cases, quite badly. Based on these

historical analyses, he concludes in his inimitably deadpan style that, ‘the trick of

the leader is to develop followers who privately resolve the problems leaders have

caused or cannot resolve, but publicly deny their intervention’ (2000, p. 420). In

coming to this conclusion, Grint suggests that leadership should be returned to its

talismanic origins as ‘it performs a ritual that followers appear to require . . . As

long as followers need leaders, leaders will be necessary’ (2000, p. 420).

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In the current volume, Grint (2005) carries on exactly where he left off five years

previously. In subtitling this book, ‘Limits and Possibilities’, he wants to highlight

the limits of our understanding of leadership. He also wants to underline the

limited impact that leaders can actually have, despite the pervasive belief that

getting the right leader is the solution to all manner of problems. On a more opti-

mistic note, the ‘Possibilities’ component of the book’s sub-title reflects his view

that the power of leadership should not be underestimated. Indeed, the book’s

unofficial mission is neatly encapsulated in the epithet, ‘putting the “ship” back

into leadership’ (2005, p. 2). This is something that Grint achieves to elegant and

persuasive effect in this volume.

The GLOBE project arrived at a definition of leadership at a meeting of 54

country co-investigators representing 38 cultures that was held at the University

of Calgary in August 1994. Leadership was defined by that group as ‘the ability

to motivate, influence, and enable individuals to contribute to the objectives of

organizations of which they are members’ (2005, p. xxii). Being a sole operator,

Grint has the luxury of taking the opposite tack. He begins the book by outlining

a heuristic model that features ‘ideal types’ that he hopes will enable us to not only

understand the leadership phenomenon better but also its attendant confusions

and complexities. The four ideal types encapsulate the four different ways that

people have tended to understand leadership as well as the primary questions they

have posed:

• Leadership as Person: is it WHO ‘leaders’ are that makes them leaders?

• Leadership as Results: is it WHAT ‘leaders’ achieve that makes them

leaders?

• Leadership as Position: is it WHERE ‘leaders’ operate that makes them

leaders?

• Leadership as Process: is it HOW ‘leaders’ get things done that makes them

leaders?

In his view, each of these ways of thinking about leadership has some merit and

has made a contribution to our understanding of leadership. However, the fact

that we look at leadership in these different ways goes some way towards explain-

ing why we have so much trouble explaining leadership, trying to understand it

and trying to teach or reward it. In light of this fact, he suggests that leadership

should join the ranks of ‘Essentially Contested Concepts’ identified by Gallie

(1955–56). This would put it alongside equally elusive yet compelling concepts

such as ‘power’, ‘performance’, ‘sustainable development’ and ‘security’. This is

not to rule out any attempts at definition. In fact Grint believes that defining lead-

ership must be contested within the organization because, ‘the lack of clarity as

to which definition of leadership is being used can inhibit organizational success’

(2005, p. 31).

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Taking each of the four definitions in turn he shows through a mixture of

theoretical argument and empirical illustration the possibilities and limits that are

presented when each definition is adopted.

The Leadership as Person view perceives leadership as a consequence of a

person who embodies the personal characteristics traditionally associated with

leaders. Grint argues that the reduction of leadership to the individual human is

analytically inadequate because it excludes followers. Leadership might be better

construed as a function of the community – ‘the god of small things’ – rather than

the result of superhuman individuals. Drawing on Actor Network Theory (Callon,

1986; Latour, 1993), he seeks to go beyond this relational view of leadership by

exploring the viability of approaching it beyond its normal individual embodiment

and beyond a collective form towards a notion of hybridity comprised of humans,

clothes, adornments, technologies, cultures, rules, etc. The dizzying array of exem-

plary leadership hybrids that Grint provides – ranging from the obvious Hammer

and Sickle and the Atomic Bomb to the considerably less obvious 2002 Renault

Mégane II and a set of traffic lights – fire the imagination and crackle the

synapses. Unfortunately, the more detailed case study of the leadership hybrids,

such as the landing craft, that were deployed by the Allies on D-Day serves to

only further muddy the waters. That said, I do believe that Grint has unearthed

a potentially new and exciting line of inquiry in leadership studies that requires

further exploration because, as he opines, ‘traditional analytic approaches to

understanding and predicting leadership have proved inadequate because hybrid

leadership is a performance to be achieved not a script to be rolled out’ (Grint,

2005, p. 32).

The Leadership as Results perspective takes results as the critical aspect of lead-

ership. It was particularly prevalent toward the end of the twentieth century with

the rise of performance management and auditing systems. Grint takes this per-

spective to task on two fronts. First, he questions the extent to which results can,

in fact, be realistically traced back to the actions of leaders. Second, he analyses

the significance of results-behaviour on ethical behaviour by gently challenging

our well-entrenched assumptions about two beacons of ethical leadership:

Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Theresa. Exposing the sacred cows of leadership

is a key weapon in Grint’s intellectual armoury that he consistently uses to good

heuristic effect in this and his earlier books.

He further bolsters his case by using the slave revolts led by Spartacus in the

Third Servile War against Rome together with the rebellions and resistance orga-

nized against Nazi slave labour to make his case. Based strictly on the results they

achieved, these movements can be judged to have failed. However, the fact that

they have inspired anti-oppression movements throughout the world gives us pause

for thought. From these case studies, he concludes that, ‘any simple notion of

assessing leadership by its alleged “results” is doomed to fail: the results of lead-

ership are as contested as the definitions, and we would be better served by con-

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sidering leadership as a subjunctive verb – as something that may, or may not,

have results, rather than something that definitely does or does not’ (2005, p. 65).

With respect to the third perspective, Leadership as Process, Grint makes the

point that, although we can recognize the leadership behavioural processes that

differentiate leaders from followers, this does not mean we can simply list the

processes as universally valid across space and time. In fact, in line with the guiding

assumptions of the GLOBE Study, Grint notes that, ‘it remains the case that most

of our assumptions about leadership relate to our own cultural context rather than

someone else’s’ (2005, p. 28).

Grint decides to focus his attention on the processes by which leaders learn to

lead. Drawing a thought-provoking parallel between the ways parents learn from

their children to become parents, Grint argues that leadership must be appropri-

ately learned from one’s subordinates. He notes, ‘I want to suggest further, in an

inversion of our common assumptions about this relationship, that it is followers

who teach leadership to leaders’ (p. 102). Moreover, because leadership is essen-

tially a social activity, that is, it is not affected through isolated individuals and their

atomized group of followers, it is best learned through a ‘community of practice’

(Wenger, 1998). The case study that is brought to bear in order to bring these two

arguments to life is a detailed exposition of two RAF leadership courses that Grint

observed during a two month period in 2003. Through several vignettes from these

two courses, we are shown the various ways in which learning to lead is both

created (i.e. through the courses’ well-honed learning philosophy) and inhibited

(i.e. through the formal hierarchy of rank) by the community in which it is prac-

ticed. Paraphrasing Edmund Burke, he notes that, ‘it only requires the good fol-

lower to do nothing for leadership to fail’ (Grint, 2005, p. 133).

The final perspective that Grint tackles in the book, Leadership as Position, is

the way that leadership has been most traditionally thought about. It suggests that

leadership can be found in a spatial position within an organization, most fre-

quently at the top of the organization. Leadership along positional dimensions

differs according to the extent to which it is formally or informally structured, and

vertically or horizontally constituted. Grint distinguishes between ‘Leadership-in-

Charge’ which implies some degree of centralizing resource and formal authority

and ‘Leadership-in-Front’ which is informally constituted through a network or a

‘heterarchy’ (i.e. a flexible and fluid hierarchy).

A recent spate of leadership books have endeavoured to advance heterarchi-

cally-based leadership models in which leadership is distributed throughout the

organization rather than centralized at the top. Most notably, Joseph Raelin (2003),

in his book, Creating Leaderful Organizations, argues with infectious passion that, ‘in

the twenty-first century organization, we need to establish communities where

everyone shares the experience of serving as a leader, not sequentially, but con-

currently and collectively’ (2003, p. xi). Taking this one step further, Jeffrey Nielsen,

in his book, The Myth of Leadership, makes the case for ‘the end of leadership as we

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commonly know it – that is, rank-based management – and introduces a method

for developing an organization into a true society of peers. I call this model the

peer-based organization’ (2004, p. x).

Grint recognizes that, while Distributive Leadership may be attractive to people

who are inhibited by idiosyncratic leaders or who are being suffocated by stultify-

ing bureaucracies, simply wishing away leadership, ‘the big pink elephant’ as he

colourfully characterizes it, may result in some grossly ineffective and inefficient

organizations that can become susceptible to takeover by authoritarian leaders.

Distributed leadership also generates the means by which liberal democratic soci-

eties can be destabilized by small and unrepresentative groups or even individu-

als. By way of graphic example, Grint brings us bang smack up to date with a

sobering and trenchant account of the rise and persistence of the hydra-like ter-

rorist group, al- Quaida. He concludes that Distributed Leadership presents us

with a serious paradox: ‘it provides something of a blueprint for making us face

the terror of the pink elephant, for inhibiting authoritarian leaders, but it also pro-

vides terrorists with a blueprint for cohabiting with what seems to be leaderless

authoritarianism’ (2005, p. 145).

With his latest book, Grint has provided us with a powerful heuristic framework

for making sense of the various ways in which we tend to make sense of leader-

ship. He reveals with surgical poise the limits of each of these perspectives but, in

the process, he also reveals new and exciting possibilities for investigation. While

there is no doubt Grint provides us with a fuller treatment of the limits than the

possibilities of leadership, the real lasting effect of this book may well come about

as a result of the take-up of a number of the strands he has teased out. If I have

one regret about this book it is that the author has a tendency to become bogged

down in some of the historical details when, in fact, more attention could have

been given to the theoretical development of some of the new lines of leadership

inquiry that he has opened up.

From the perspective of the practitioner, assuming that they are willing to wade

though the complex yet invariably engaging theoretical web he weaves, I believe

Grint has some important advice that is drawn from well known and some not so

well-known historical events. The most pertinent of these is to move one’s focus

away from leaders to leadership. In my discussions with leaders who are feeling

over-scrutinized and over-pressurized, Grint’s unsentimental follower-centric per-

spective provides a welcome counter-balance as well as some measure of relief.

The father of modern leadership studies, James MacGregor Burns has recently

noted two striking developments in the field of leadership studies. The first is the

internationalization of the study of leadership. Noting the blossoming of leader-

ship as a discipline in the mid- and late-twentieth century, he comments that ‘the-

oretical work and practical application in non-American contexts will inevitably

move leadership theory away from its overly American emphases and bias toward

a more international perspective’ (2005, p. 11). The GLOBE project represents a

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B. Jackson

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005

Page 13

bold and ambitious step towards broadening the empirical net of leadership

research but its theoretical base is still firmly rooted in American soil. We gain a

great deal in methodological rigour but lose something in philosophical acuity.

House’s intentions are unquestionably honourable when he states that, ‘Hopefully,

GLOBE will be able to liberate organizational behaviour from the U.S. hegemony’

(p. xxv). However, I feel that, somewhat perversely, American supremacy in this

field is strengthened by this project not challenged. Similarly, for all the cross-

disciplinary reach of the International Leadership Library project, it cannot seem

to free itself from the shackles of modern leadership theory and its American

domination. These are promising developments but the field is still a long way

from becoming a truly international field.

The second major development that Burns points to is the role of leadership

research as an interdisciplinary endeavour that invigorates related disciplines.

Obviously, leadership theory draws heavily from established disciplines but it can

also vitalize those disciplines. Burns notes, however, ‘but leadership, in common

parlance, is a ‘good’. When people call for leadership, or deplore the lack of lead-

ership, they see it not as a needed spur to human progress but, as in itself, a moral

and ethical entity and a necessary gauge of action. Leadership, in short, becomes

an activity as well as an academic enterprise’ (Burns, 2005, p. 12). The Interna-

tional Leadership Library project will undoubtedly provide a valuable resource in

this regard and may help to persuade non-management scholars that there is, in

fact, a place for their work in leadership studies. Likewise, Grint’s work might well

encourage and inspire other critically-minded scholars both from within manage-

ment and beyond to engage in leadership research.

Grint also graphically demonstrates the value of conducting good old-fashioned

historical research in the name of leadership scholarship. In this respect he joins

the perennially colourful leadership scholar, Manfred Kets de Vries, who has taken

a strong historical turn with his two most recent books, Are Leaders Born or are They

Made? The Case of Alexander the Great (Kets de Vries and Engellau, 2004) and Lessons

on Leadership By Terror: Finding Shaka Zulu in the Attic (Kets de Vries, 2004).

Returning to the observation made by Jim Meindl and his colleagues at the

beginning of this review, we might well conclude that, based on this review, the

field of leadership remains elusive and enigmatic twenty years on. However, we

might also conclude that, while the quest may still be elusive, some encouraging

progress has been made in generating an understanding of leadership that is gen-

uinely intellectually compelling and emotionally satisfying. The chronic optimist

in me thinks that this progress may have been made not merely in spite of, but

because of, the elusive nature of the quest.

In the same article Meindl and his colleagues also noted with some degree of

resignation that, ‘the concept of leadership is a permanently entrenched part of

the socially constructed reality that we bring to bear in our analysis of organiza-

tions. And there is every sign that the obsessions and celebrations of it will persist’

Leadership Studies

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© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005

Page 14

(1985, p. 78). Based on the review of these books and the state of the field of lead-

ership studies in general, the romance of leadership is likely to endure for a long

time to come. However, the degree to which is romanticized is culturally contin-

gent! The GLOBE study found that Americans, Asians, English, Eastern Euro-

peans, French, Germans, Latin Americans and Russians tend to romanticize the

concept of leadership and consider leadership to be important in both political

and organizational arenas to be important. By contrast, many people of German-

speaking Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia are sceptical about

leaders for fear that they will accumulate and abuse power.

Perhaps, at the end of the day, a healthy blend of romantic affliction and sus-

picious scepticism is what is required in our deliberations regarding leadership.

Leadership can provide a powerful source of inspiration to take action but it can

also blind us in our desire to believe in leaders as well as our deeply felt need to

be well led. It is all the more important then to bear in mind Keith Grint’s chill-

ing remarks in reference to the Herculean efforts of the US-led coalition to estab-

lish democracy in Iraq, ‘Leadership, then, is not just a theoretical arena but one

with critical implications for us all and the limits of leadership – what leaders can

do and what followers should allow them to do – are foundational aspects of this

arena. Leadership, in effect, is too important to be left to leaders’ (2005, p. 4). This

is an important intellectual and moral message that all leadership scholars would

do well to heed.

REFERENCES

Burns, J. M. (2005). ‘Leadership’. Leadership, 1, 1, 11–12.

Callon, M. (1986). ‘The sociology of the actor network’. In Callon, M., Law, J. and Rip, A. (Eds),

Mapping the Dynamics of Science and Technology. London: Macmillan.

Collinson, D. and Grint, K. (2005). ‘Editorial: The leadership agenda’. Leadership, 1, 1, 5–9.

Gallie, W. B. (1955–56). ‘Essentially contested concepts’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 56,

167–98.

Grint, K. (2000). The Arts of Leadership. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Guthey, E. (2005). ‘Management studies, cultural criticism and American dreams’. Journal of Man-

agement Studies, 42, 2, 451–66.

Hofstede, G. (1980). Culture’s Consequences. London: Sage.

Hunt, J. (2005). ‘Explosion of the leadership field and LQ’s changing of the editorial guard’. The

Leadership Quarterly, 16, 1, 1–8.

Kets de Vries, M. F. R. (2004). Lessons on Leadership by Terror: Finding Shaka in the Attic. Cheltenham:

Edward Elgar.

Kets de Vries, M. F. R. with Engellau, E. (2004). Are Leaders Born or Made? The Case of Alexander the

Great. London: Carnac.

Latour, B. (1993). We Have Never Been Modern. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester/Wheatsheaf.

Meindl, J. R., Ehrlich, S. B. and Dukerich, J. M. (1985). ‘The romance of leadership’. Administrative

Science Quarterly, 30; 78–102.

Mumford, M. (2005). ‘Something old, something new: the mission of the leadership quarterly’. Lead-

ership, 16, 1, 9–15.

Nielsen, J. (2004). The Myth of Leadership: Creating Leaderless Organizations. Palo Alto, CA: Davies-Black.

Raelin, J. (2003). Creating Leaderful Organisations: How to Bring Out Leadership in Everyone. San Francisco,

CA: Berrett-Koehler.

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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<Mumford 등의 리더십스킬모델(Mumford, Zaccaro, Harding, Jacobs, & Fleishman, 2000)>

 

(1) `90년대, 군 장교를 대상으로 조직에서 훌륭한 성과를 창출하는 리더십요소를 규명하는 연구

1) 리더의 지식, 역량과 리더의 업적 간의 관계를 검증

2) 타고난 소수만이 리더십을 발휘하는 것이 아니라 많은 사람들이 잠재력을 가지고 있다고 제안.

(2) 리더십 역량모형 구성요소

1) 역량(Competencies): 문제해결, 사회적 판단, 지식.

2) 개인속성(Individual Attributes): 일반적 인지능력, 학습된 인지능력, 동기, 성격.

3) 리더십 성과(Leadership Outcomes): 효과적인 문제해결, 성공적인 업적.

4) 경력상 경험(Career Experiences): 도전적 업무, 멘토링, 적절한 훈련, 색다른 직접 경험.

5) 환경적 영향요인(Environmental Influences): 리더의 역량, 특성, 경험 외 통제할 수 없는 요소들.

(3) 시사점: 리더역량의 윤곽을 보여주고 있기 때문에 조직 내 모든 계층의 리더들이 활용할 수 있음. 반면 역량모델

의 범위가 너무 포괄적이고 구성요소간의 인과관계를 제시하지 못함.

-. Goleman(1998)은 유능한 리더들에게서는 한 가지 중요한 유사점이 발견되는데 그것이 바로 높은 수준의 정서지능이라는 것임. 이는 지적인 능력(IQ)과 전문적 기술이 관련이 없다는 것이 아니고, 이러한 지적인 능력과 전문적인 기술도 중요하지만, 그것은 주로 초기능력(threshold capabilities)으로서 중요성을 가지는 것이고 정서지능은 리더십의 필수조건이며, 만일 그것이 없다면 세상에서 최고의 훈련과 예민하고 분석적인 마인드, 그리고 현명한 아이디어의 창출이 불가능하게 되어 결국 위대한 리더가 되지 못할 것이라고 강조하고 있음.

 

-. Druskat와 Wolff(2001)는 조직에서 팀의 유효성을 높이기 위한 3대요소로 구성원 간의 신뢰, 집단 정체감, 집단 효능감을 제시하면서, 자신의 정서를 알고 동료의 정서도 알아서 서로 이해하고, 동료들의 정서를 수용하고 조정하는 능력인 정서지능을 높여야 구성원간의 신뢰도가 높아진다는 것임. 평소에 구성원들의 정서지능을 높여야 개인 간의 신뢰가 쌓이고 이러한 개인 간의 신뢰가 쌓여 팀이 목표한 성과를 달성할 수 있다고 하면서 팀 수준에서의 정서지능의 중요성을 강조하고 있음.

1.1. 셀프 리더십(Self-Leadership) 정의: 스스로 자기 자신에게 영향을 미치기 위해 사용되는 사고 및 행동 전략의

일체(Manz & Sims, 2001).

 

1.2. 필요 역량

0. 자기관찰: 긍정적인 행동과 부정적인 행동의 원인을 관찰. 실패에 대한 내적인 자기성찰, 그 실패로부터 배우

려는 노력, 성취에 대한 좋은 느낌, 건설적인 자기교정 피드백의 제공에 집중하는 것.

0. 자기설정목표: 자신들이 처리해야 할 일들의 목표와 장기적으로 달성하고자 하는 목표를 설정한 후 이들의 우

선순위를 정하고 자기 스스로에게 실행을 지시하는 행동.

0. 단서에 의한 관리: 바람직하지 못한 행동을 야기하는 자극을 제거하고 바람직한 행동을 야기하는 자극을 증가

시킴으로 행동에 영향을 주는 환경 조건을 변화시키는 일련의 과정.

2.2. 변혁적 리더십

0. 관점: 구성원의 정서, 가치관, 윤리, 행동규범, 장기목표 등을 바꾸어 줌으로써 개인을 변혁시키는 과정으로 봄.

0. 연구 결과

-. Burns(`78): 거래적 리더십과 변혁적 리더십 비교

-. House(`76): 카리스마적 리더십(변혁적 리더십과 유사개념)

-. Bass(`85, `94): 리더십 7가지 요인(4개의 변혁적 요인, 2개의 거래적 요인, 1개의 비리더십/비거래적 요인) -. Bennis와 Nanus(`85): 변혁적 리더들의 4가지 공통전략,

-. Tichy와 DeVanna(`90): 조직변화를 위한 3단계 행동과정

0. 정의: 카리스마와 개인적 배려, 지적 자극을 통한 부하들을 변화시켜 나가는 것.

-. 카리스마: 리더의 이상적인 공약, 부하들에 대한 높은 기대감, 리더 자신의 확신감과 부하들에 대한 리더의 신뢰감에 의해 형성

-->부하들은 리더의 계획에 대한 강력한 지지와 몰입, 리더와 자신 동일시.

-. 지적 자극: 부하들에게 문제점을 새로운 방식으로 보도록 시도하는 것.

-->부하들은 스스로 문제에 대한 해결책을 탐구, 부하들의 문제해결능력이 고양됨(학습).

-. 개별적 배려: 리더의 관심사항과 부하들의 관심사항을 공유하는 것.

-->부하들이 개인적 욕구를 스스로 확인하게 만들고, 보다 높은 차원의 욕구를 가질 수 있도록 함.

0. 강점

-. 다양한 시각에서 많은 연구 실적

-. 리더에 대한 사회적 통념과 일치

-. 리더십의 확대된 모습 제공

-. 구성원들의 욕구와 가치관, 도덕성을 강조

0. 한계

-. 폭이 넓어 리더십 변수들을 명확히 한정하기 곤란.

-. 변혁의 주역으로서 리더에게 특별한 위치와 자질 요구

-. 상위 리더들의 정성적 자료에 의존하여 연구됨(조직 내 다양한 리더에게 적용시 의문).

-. 가치관과 새로운 비전이 바람직하지 않을 경우 부담.

2.1. 관계 중심적 리더와 과업 중심적 리더: 리더십 이론 중 행동유형연구(Behavioral Style) 관점의 리더 분류임.

0. 리더의 행동을 2가지로 분류

-. 오하이오 주립대(`40년대 말 이후): 구조주도-과업행동 or 배려-관계성행동

-. 미시간대(`50년대 이후): 구성원지향 vs 생산지향

-. 관리격자모형(`60년대 초 이후): 생산을 위한 관심 and 사람을 위한 관심, 이후 1964년 리더십그리드모형

(X=Results,Y=People)으로 변경.

0. 행동유형연구(Behavioral Style) 관점의 리더십 정의: 일반적으로 2가지 행동으로 구성되어 있음.

-. 과업행동: 목표달성을 촉진하는 행동, 집단원들이 목표를 달성하도록 도와주는 행동.

-. 관계성행동: 하위자들이 스스로 그리고 상황을 편안하게 느끼고 좋은 인간관계를 가지도록 도와주는 행동.

0. 행동유형연구의 강점

-. 과업행동과 관계성행동의 2가지로 리더십행동유형을 구분, 두 행동유형의 조화가 리더십과정의 핵심임.

-. 자신의 행동을 측정하고 자신의 리더십유형을 개선하기 위해 어떤 변화를 시도해야 하는가를 결정할 수 있

음.

0. 행동유형연구의 한계

-. 관계중심과 과업중심의 2가지 축과 실질적인 효과성의 일관된 관계 입증 안 됨.

-. 리더십그리드모형에서 가장 효과적인 리더십유형(9.9형)에 대한 논란(상황에 따라 다름)

0. 자기인식(Self Awareness)의 정의: 자기인식은 자신의 강점, 약점, 사고, 신념, 동기, 정서 등을 포함하여 자기 자신에 대해 분명한 인식을 가지는 것임.

0. 중요성

-. 자기 내면에서 일어나는 반응과 외부적 반응을 제대로 이해해야만 직원의 행동에서 숨은 의도와 의미를

파악하고 성숙하게 대처할 수 있음.

-. 인간행동에 대한 이해는 직원에게 일할 수 있는 동기를 부여하고 헌신을 이끌어 내는데 큰 도움이 됨.

-. 리더는 자신의 방어행동 뿐만 아니라 직원의 방어행동에 대해서도 이해하고 적절하게 대처해 나갈 줄

알아야함.

 

서번트 리더십에 관한 논문 고찰 경영자코칭연구회.pdf