Conceptualizing Leadership With Respect To Its Historical-Contextual Antecedents To Power

Original publication by Raymond D. Gordon
Leadership Quarterly, Elsevier Science Inc., Vol 13, Issue 2, April 2002, 151-167.
Synopsis by Barbara Ascher, Leadership Review editor, Kravis Leadership Institute, Claremont McKenna College

Hierarchical leadership structures are currently giving way to more dispersed leadership strategies in corporations and institutions across the country. Some refer to this as a “flatter” organizational design. Traditional leadership theories focused on the traits, behavioral styles, and charisma that give leaders power in the context of certain situations. In the traditional model, whether the leaders choose to act in a transactional (incentive-driven) or transformational (empowering) way toward their subordinates, the hierarchical relationships are spelled out. Conversely, contemporary dispersed leadership theory stresses increasing the decision-making opportunities for lower level workers, and the sharing of power in the more flexible leadership potential of team efforts. In this article, the author explains why he finds this organizational shift problematic and proposes a different conceptual framework to address what he describes as the structural flaws.

Building on an earlier article (Hunt and Dodge, Leadership Quarterly, Volume 11, 2000, 435), that reminds leadership researchers to consider “the historical-contextual antecedents of the field” when they proffer new theories, Gordon laments that current leadership literature fails to accept the enduring existence of implicit hierarchical power “codes” beneath the surface of supposedly dispersed leadership organizations.

Technological advances have required change across businesses and other institutions. Gordon analyzes the treatment of power in contemporary leadership literature. The relevant factors of interest are organizational structure (traditional or organic), power (dominance), and identity (or the way one is historically “supposed” to behave).

Traditional leadership theories concentrated on the differentiation of leaders and followers. The leader possesses power (authority, influence, control), either through his or her personal traits, style, or position. In contrast, dispersed leadership blurs the boundaries between leader and follower.

The greatest challenge for leaders today is to be able to both differentiate themselves (so as to exist) and empower others (de-differentiate themselves) at the same time.

Among the consequences of dispersing leadership is the glossing over of social codes or expectations that Gordon terms “deep structures.” Even if an organizational chart indicates the sharing of power, the deeply embedded expectations of the workers might influence hierarchical behaviors that are then not recognized as being in play. “Therefore, under the guise of sharing leadership’s power and control, dominant power holders will exercise their power through a network of compliant, so called, self-leaders.”

Another unintended consequence of dispersing or decentralizing the traditional decision-making and authoritative duties of leaders concerns shifting the focus to studying leadership rather than leaders. Studying the process of leadership, rather than attributing skills and abilities to the leader, removes it from the realm of the elite and makes it something that anyone can do. This flexibility within a team may actually become a destabilizing force if the expectations of people who were previously followers, and still want to follow a leader, find that the person they so designate is no longer delivering what they desire.

For Gordon, theorists of dispersed leadership have not sufficiently addressed the construct of power and the role of expectations deeply embedded in the human psyche. The future challenge for leaders is to disperse power sufficiently to avoid constraining creative contributions by others, yet still fulfill the deeply embedded expectations of the exercise of power.