Understanding Leadership: Paradigms and Cases

Are current concepts of leadership appropriate for today′s organizations? What will tomorrow′s leadership need to be like? Is there a best approach to leadership?

With a huge range of definitions and theories of leadership available, the field has become confusing for both students and practitioners alike. This text provides a framework for making sense of the field. In Part One, Gayle C Avery integrates a fragmented field into four broad paradigms or forms of leadership, helping to simplify and clarify the ill-defined field of leadership. The second part provides 10 case studies from leading organizations across Europe, Australia and the United States to illustrate how diverse leadership can be in successful organizations. At the end of each case, specific questions guide the reader in interpreting and analyzing the cases, connecting them to the leadership frameworks and theories in Part One.

Written in simple language, Understanding Leadership can be used by readers with no prior knowledge of leadership. With its overview of major theories in the field and presentation of a simple and effective framework for analyzing these theories, the book will be essential reading for advanced undergraduate and MBA students.

Professor Avery’s research contributes to Sustainable Leadership in organisations at the macro level of leadership. She draws heavily from cutting-edge international enterprises that embrace leadership practices shown by research and their own performance to be more sustainable than short-term business-as-usual approaches. She contrasts traditional and non-traditional approaches to leadership, presenting them in new frameworks, such as ‘honeybee’ and ‘locust’ practices; or via classical, transactional, visionary, and organic/ dispersed leadership. The objective of this research is to help managers grapple with issues of contemporary leadership, equipping them with important conceptual knowledge and key tools relevant to executive practice