ABSTRACT
Management and leadership are not the same thing. Ideally, an organization’s administrators would exhibit both qualities, but there is often a subtle division of labor among people who can manage well and those that inspire or harass others to greater heights. Outside the organizational context, we observe different forms of leadership in political situations and leadership in creative works or technological settings. Some of the contrasts between the different forms of leadership are unfolded in this chapter. Several years ago,my colleagues and students perused Clark andClark’s (1990)
book,Measures of Leadership to see how the contributors handled the distinction between leadership and management. The short answer is “not particularly well,” but the results of our investigation were instructive nonetheless. Most measures of leadership reported by Clark and Clark’s contributors were the results of factor analyses of performance measurements in use in various organizations. We went through the sets of factors that were given as empirical results, and wewrote a brief description of each on index cards. There were 36 cards including the duplicates. The organizational behavior students then sorted the cards into as many categories as they needed, but no more categories than what they needed. After trimming a couple loose ends we came up with five categories of leader-
manager behavior: Ability to motivate-This is the extent to which the incumbent
motivated and developed subordinates and built a cohesive work team. Problem solving and resourcefulness-This is the extent to which the incumbent demonstrated competency in solving difficult problems and generating new ideas and strategies. Communication-This is the extent to which the incumbent kept coworkers and upper management properly informed about important matters, and the quality and clarity of communication.Commitment to the organization-This is the extent towhich the incumbent is committed to organizational goals and policies as demonstrated by actions. We noted that any lack of commitment should not be confused with thoughtful, reasonable, or professional disagreement or differences of opinion. Planning and control-This is the extent to which the incumbent maintains control over his or her responsibilities and makes work plans to carry out objectives (Guastello & Rieke, 1993, p. 4). After all that card sorting, we were still not very close to what seems to be
the philosopher’s stone of leadership-What is charisma? According to French & Raven (1959) charisma is closely linked to the use of two forms of power in organizations: expertise and referent power. Expertise is subjectmatter knowledge. Referent power is the extent towhich the constituency identifieswith the values and behavior patterns of the leader. Forty more years of leadership research suggested that there was still more to be learned about charisma. There are four general ways of studying the characteristics of successful leader-
ship. First, one can study biographies of famous leaders. Of course, the available biographical information is biased toward leaderswhohavebeen interesting enough to generate books. Second, there is the method of correlating traits with behavioral measures of leadership behavior and leadership success; for a recent compendium that includes a wide range of theoretical perspectives, see Clark, Clark, and Campbell (1992). Third, there is the training method. In the training method, people are placed in a training program that is designed around the premises of a theory, and the participants are measured on relevant behaviors before and after training. Ideally, their differences in behavior should be compared against those of a control group. All the usual discussion points regarding what constitutes a reasonable control group should be remembered here. Fourth, there is the method of studying leadership emergence. In this scenario,
a mixture of people is placed into a leaderless group situation where they are given a common task. Then magic happens, and someone is designated the leader at the end of the work period. The data analysis then determines who emerged as the leader and why. Leadership emergence scenarios are also frequently used as devices to assess the leadership potential of individuals who are candidates for promotion in large organizations. The biographic method lends itself to some great stories, dramatic examples,
and basic material from which to build theories. The latter three methods lend themselves more readily to empirical work. The studies of self-organization and leadership in this chapter were conducted within the emergent leadership modality. (Is this a surprise?) The emergent leadership medium of study can be used
with almost any theory of leadership; thus it is a flexible tool for NDS studies of leadership emergence as well. The following section of this chapter recounts some of the landmarks in leader-
ship theory. Special attention is given to those links in the conceptual chain that have led to current thinking about leadership as a self-organizing, emergent process. Next, the theory of emergent leadership is recounted along with the results of empirical studies of nonlinear structures.
