different disciplines, where leadership serves as a means to different end goals. This topic is
elaborated in the next chapter of this dissertation.
1.4 THE CONTEMPORARY NEED FOR SHARED LEADERSHIP
In the Industrial Age, which favored centralized bureaucratic hierarchies, it was easier to maintain this
idea that leadership emanates ³GRZQZDUGV ́from individual leaders. The age of relatively placid
operating environments and economic expansion driven by mass production lent itself to
organizational forms which reinforced thH SUHVXPSWLRQ WKDW ³OHDGHUVKLS ZDs provided by the top
RIILFLDO V DQGWKDWOHDGHUVKLSLVZKDW³FRPHVRXW ́RIOHDGHUV ́(Krantz, 1990, p.5). Yet, during the late
nineteen seventies and early nineteen eighties (Hunt & Osborn, 1982), a small minority of leadership
researchers became concerned with organizational system approaches (also known as macro
approaches), instead of the predominant micro focus (i.e. leader-follower interactions). Representative
of these works were those by Khandwella (1977), Melcher (1977), Hunt and Osborn (1982), and Katz
and Kahn (1978). The latter stated in their book, The Social Psychology of Organizations (Katz &
Kahn, 1978), that the focus on leadership needed to migrate upwards from the (leader-follower) dyad
to the organization as a ZKROH 7KH\ GHILQHG OHDGHUVKLS DV ³WKH H[HUFLVH RI LQIOXHQFH RQ
organizationally relevant matters by any member of the oUJDQL]DWLRQ ́(p.571), with the organization
more likely to be effective when the leadership function was distributed or shared.
Even though there have been some SUHFXUVRUFRQFHSWVIRUQHDUO\DFHQWXU\LQFOXGLQJ)ROOHWW¶VLGHDRI
WKH³ODZRIWKHVLWXaWLRQ ́(Follett, 1924) (i.e. a logic which dictates that one should look for guidance
EDVHG RQ DQ LQGLYLGXDO¶V NQRZOHGJH RI WKH VLWXDWLRQ DW KDQG DQG %RZHUV DQG 6HDVKRUH¶V(1966)
HPSLULFDOZRUNRQ³PXWXDOOHDGHUVKLS ́WKHOHDGHUVKLSILHOGRQO\UHFHQWO\EHJan to take the idea of
shared leadership seriously (Drath et al., 2008). Gardner (1990) noted that ³LWLVLQWHUHVWLQJWRUHIOHFW
on why such a significant insight, expressed so clearly by several authoritative voices a generation
DSDUWKDVEHHQVRQHJOHFWHGLQFRQWHPSRUDU\OHDGHUVKLSOLWHUDWXUH ́(p.149). This neglect may be partly
due to the abovementioned fact that throughout the 20th century there was no need for such a concept,
given that most organizations were RSHUDWLQJZLWKLQWKH³,QGXVWULDOSDUDGLJPFKDUDFWHUL]HGE\VLQJOH
leaders in formal positions wielding power and influence over multiple followers who had relatively
little influence on top-OHYHOPDQDJHUV¶GHFLVLRQPDNLQJ ́(Seers et al., 2003, p.77).
Drath (1996) argued that there is not so much a lack of leadership, but instead an epistemological
leadership crisis, that is a crisis in our way of knowing. The dominant thinking model says that
leadership has to be provided by individuals. As the leadership guru Warren Bennis (1997) puts it,