Exploring Leadership: Individual, Organizational, & Societal Perspectives

Citation

Hughes, L. (2012), "Exploring Leadership: Individual, Organizational, & Societal Perspectives", Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 33 No. 3, pp. 317-318. https://doi.org/10.1108/01437731211216498

We believe that the real learning can only be said to have taken place when, back in the ‘office’, something changes as a result of the intervention (Hutchinson and Lawrence, 2011, p. xiv).

Reading Exploring Leadership brings memories of reading of Bruce Avolio (2003) missive to those studying leadership in the early millennium in that Bolden and colleagues infuse into “yet another leadership book” a call to action to work toward the future, based on the academy's current body of knowledge, to address the most pressing issues of the day. This book does not contain an overt political message, but it does leverage contemporary challenges to describe the potential roles of leaders in addressing these challenges. Exploring adds to similar calls to take the historical context into consideration and to extend prior work into “new and interesting domains of inquiry” (Avolio and Gardner, 2003, p. 315), an admonition all leadership scholars are wise to observe.

The authors are quick to address (on page 1, in fact!) the same question the readers of this review are asking themselves: Why another leadership book? Bolden and colleagues identify four ways that they believe set this book apart from some others on the market, and many that were published before theirs. These include a “broadly critical perspective on leadership” (p. 1), and interdisciplinary, multilevel, and balanced perspectives. The first two are self‐explanatory, but the latter two require some explanation. The balanced perspective occurs as the authors attempt to balance the pros and cons of the various perspectives of leadership

However, the need to investigate leadership from a multi‐level perspective has been discussed repeatedly, but for a variety of reasons has gained momentum in the past decade (Yammarino et al., 2005). This is due, in part, to the availability to the tools necessary to explore multi‐level effects (e.g. hierarchical linear modeling and structural equation modeling, to name two), but mainly to move the discipline past the theoretical block it dashed up against in the latter two decades of the twentieth century.

In the 1970s and 1980s followers of academic study of leadership saw articles in which the question was begged, does leadership matter? Substitutes and neutralizers were offered to explain leadership, as were attribution theories (Bass, 2008). Work in developing transformational leadership theory (Bass and Avolio, 1994) seemed to put leadership back into relevance; however as scholars label new theories “old wine in a new bottle” the problem is seen as one of conceptualization and measurement. Leadership occurs, and is felt, at many levels: individual, group, organization, societal, and global. In order to understand this ephemeral thing it must be thought about and studied appropriately.

This volume contains seven chapters. An introduction is followed by five chapters each in which a unique perspective is explored (theoretical, individual, organizational, societal, and emerging). The close of each chapter contains a list of notes that clarify statements made throughout each chapter. A short conclusion wraps up a succinct yet satisfying overview of the discipline.

The first chapter introduces the book and ends with three points supporting the necessity of reframing how academics and practitioners investigate leadership. First, the authors assert the necessity of balancing the focus not solely on a single leader, but on the many individuals involved in the collective process of leading. Next, the authors point out that how leaders are developed, for example, is reframed, followed by a call to reassess appropriate methodologies in the study of leadership.

Theoretical perspectives comprise Chapter 2 and might be aptly labeled “historical perspectives” because it is an overview of leadership study preceding this book. Similarly, Chapter 3 (individual perspectives) explores the history of trait theories, for example. Next, contextual and organizational perspectives are offered. It is in Chapter 5 that societal perspectives are explored. It is here that the authors begin to address the importance of leadership beyond organizations, armies, and governments. “Emerging perspectives” are addressed in the sixth chapter in which ethics and spirituality, among other new genre leadership perspectives and topics are briefly discussed. The authors conclude the book with a call for leadership scholars to frame their contemporary thinking based on an understanding of the history of the discipline.

Additionally, the book contains a comprehensive and highly useful table of contents, a list describing the five figures and boxes showcased throughout the book, author biographies, a reference list after the concluding chapter (22 pages), and an index.

Exploring Leadership provides today's take on a decades long history of leadership study. What Bass's Handbook of Leadership does for us in completeness, Bolden and colleagues provide with pith.