Leadership then at all events

Abstract

Theory purporting to identify leadership remains over-determined by one of two underlying fallacies. Traditionally, it hypostatizes leadership in psychological terms so that it appears as the collection of attributes belonging to an independent, discrete person. By contrast, contemporary perspectives approach leadership by focusing on the intermediary relations between leaders and followers. We retreat from both of these conceptions. Our approach perceives these terms as continuous within each other and not merely as adjacent individuals. The upshot is that leadership should be understood as a more fundamental type of relatedness, one that is glimpsed in the active process we are here calling events. We suggest further work consistent with these ideas offers an innovative and useful line of inquiry, both by extending our theoretical understanding of leadership, but also because of the empirical challenges such a study invites.