Critical Leadership Studies

Abstract

This chapter explores the growing impact of critical leadership studies (CLS). Covering a diverse set of theories and approaches, critical perspectives hold that, whether for good and/or ill, and whether focusing on individuals and/or collectives, power in all of its forms is a central, underexamined issue for leadership studies. Problematizing the dichotomizing tendency in leadership studies, CLS also emphasize the value of analyzing leadership power relations through dialectical perspectives. Critical approaches address the asymmetric interplay between leaders, managers, followers, and contexts, as well as their potentially contradictory conditions, processes, and consequences. By addressing the dialectics of power, conformity, and resistance, critical perspectives challenge conventional understandings of leader–follower dynamics. In so doing, they open up new ways of theorizing, researching, and enacting leadership.

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