Leadership development: Crisis, opportunities and the leadership concept

In this paper, we address two different types of crises. The first one refers to a crisis in the leadership development literature. We suggest that its resolution lies in focusing on the leadership concept - the schemata that organizations have embedded in their culture about leadership. We believe that the role of leadership development is to renew these assumptions, so that they reflect the new challenges organizations face. The second type of crisis refers to the pragmatic challenges facing organizations. We suggest that the context of crisis provides ideal circumstances for promoting changes in the leadership concept, as schemata are then more malleable. In addition, we argue that sensemaking may be a possible mechanism for renewing the leadership concept due to its role in schemata changes during times of ambiguity and uncertainty, such as those of crisis

Leadership as purpose: Exploring the role of purpose in leadership practice

This article initiates a long overdue discussion regarding purpose within leadership, an integral yet often taken-for-granted and subsumed function of leadership. Specifically, the article problematicizes the manifestation of purpose in everyday organizational leadership practices through the work of the moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre. The article argues that purpose requires greater attention if it is to become manifest in both the corporate and the societal orientations of leaders in organizations. In support of this argument we identify the implications of singularly focusing upon corporate purpose to the exclusion of societal purpose against the backdrop of the credit crunch aftermath. The article develops a theoretical argument that, when conceptualized as a process of sensemaking, leadership can provide an opportunity for notions of societal purpose to come to the fore in countervailing balance with corporate purposes. We conclude by suggesting a research agenda centred on further explicating and developing the idea of leadership as purpose