Document Type
Commentaries
Abstract
What contribution can a leadership focus make to arbitrating the catch-22s and wicked problems of the ongoing polycrisis? Not much, if you were to turn for advice to mainstream leadership studies (LS), a field of enquiry that continues to see itself, above all, as a tool for optimizing corporate performance and effectiveness. One way in which LS can escape its current tunnel vision and lack of relevancy is to return to its own roots and rehabilitate the historical approach. Historical LS can add value in several areas: it has the ability to deliver insightful case studies that provide useful analogies, which improves the description problem in LS; it can contribute to the empirical verification of leadership theory, which offers a response to the replication problem in LS and promotes the development of more robust models of leadership; it is an antidote to the crisis in LS, as it nurtures a culture of long-term and sustainable thinking, and serves as a corrective to short-termism and narrowing of vision; it contributes to the cultivation of new essential skills; and it adds a measure of sophistication to the framing and discussion of contextuality and complexity in LS. The piece ends with a description of the obstacles that exist to bringing history into LS, due to differences in scientific culture.
Recommended Citation
Sanders, Paul W. and Gutmann, Martin
(2024)
"Why Leadership needs History,"
Interdisciplinary Journal of Leadership Studies: Vol. 3, Article 3.
Available at:
https://scholarship.richmond.edu/ijls/vol3/iss1/3