Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Leadership dynamics significantly shape communication in organizations. By defining leadership primarily as a process of →  Persuasion , many scholars place communication at the very heart of leadership dynamics. The complex organizational relationships between leaders and followers can crucially influence the nature and extent of communication. Equally, the nature and extent of communication often reflects and reinforces the quality of the relationships between leaders and followers. Within organizations, leadership and communication frequently interact in complex, mutually reinforcing and sometimes contradictory ways. Within the literature there is a growing recognition that leadership in organizations can occur at various hierarchical levels and is best understood as an inherently social, collaborative, and interdependent process. Leadership is the responsibility not only of those who occupy senior positions such as entrepreneurs, owners, chief executives, and senior managers, but also of all those engaged in supervisory functions. These insights are suggestive of new forms of organizational communication. Rather than the traditional top-down model of command and control, there is a growing view that, especially in high performance organizations, communication is dispersed through team-based interdependencies and fluid, multidirectional social interactions and networks of influence ... log in or subscribe to read full text