ABSTRACT
The role of leadership is to help generate transformative change through generating greater levels of effectiveness, not management which makes sequenced change incrementally through efficiency. Leadership in the post-industrial age is about people working together to create this level of change but in an environment of value built on trust. The task of the leader is to create an optimal balance between the organisation and environmental conditions. Open systems provided a new lens on organisations to explore the relatedness of individuals, the organisation and its environment but also more intangible realities borrowed from psychoanalytic approaches to group relations such as symbolism and projection. Many management and organisation textbooks have a tendency to look for the real dynamics underlying forces in an organisation or to promote something called 'best practice'. To compete in the future, organisations will need to recruit a global network of outside contractors, outsourcing partners, vendors, strategic partners and other non-traditional workers.
