Late 80's: alternative theories
Slide 4 of 28
Notes:
Hoskins and Morley (1988, page 91) note the inaccuracy os the psychological/managerial view of leadership: We take the view that leadership processes represent a special kind of organizing activity, the organizing activity that is political decision making, construed in the widest possible sense&In sum, leadership is an inherently political process. (Hoskins and Morley, quoted in Rost, page 25)
Many anthropologists, historians, political scientists, and authors in the popular press conceptualize leadership as a a political process. The consistency with which management and psychological scientists have developed a worldview of leadership devoid of politics shows how narrow their unidisciplinary perspective is and how inaccurate their narrative of leadership theory is. (Rost, page 25)
The theories presented here have a common structural-functionalist frame of reference grounded in a hierarchical, linear, pragmatic, Newtonian worldview. These leadership theories are also alike in their almost total concentration on the leader, with very little interest in followers. They tend to be pragmatic, goal-achievement oriented; utilitarian and short-term in their ethics; reminiscent of mythic, fairy tale images of what males do as leaders; and rationalistic, technocratic, and quantitative in conceptualization. In short, the psychological/managerial perspective shares the limits and weaknesses of both the industrial paradigm and the rationalistic, Western, reductivist worldview.
