Blackwell Reference Online

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Leadership has often been contrasted with management. Indeed, Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus (1985) claimed “organizations are over‐managed and under‐led.” While endorsing the validity of the distinction, John Kotter (1990a) claims effective management and inspired leadership are both necessary in an increasingly complex and volatile business environment. In this view, good management provides the degree of order and consistency necessary in large, complex organizations through planning, structuring jobs and relationships, staffing, directing and delegating, comparing behavior with plan, and problem solving and taking corrective action. By contrast, inspired leadership is about envisioning alternative futures, enrolling and aligning people in a common direction, and “satisfying basic needs for achievement, a sense of belonging, recognition, self‐esteem, a feeling of control over one's life, and the ability to live up to one's ideals” ( Kotter, 1990b ). However, this view of leadership is a relatively recent one. Historically, there have been three main schools in the study of leadership: the trait, behavioral, and situational/contingency approaches. These and related perspectives have spawned thousands of definitions of leadership, most of them implying that leadership is about influencing an individual or group to do what “the leader” wants done in a superior–subordinate relationship. ... log in or subscribe to read full text