MIT Sloan Management Review

Leadership and Organizational Studies

The Hidden Side of Organizational Leadership

By Louis B. Barnes and Mark P. Kriger

October 15, 1986

THE ROLE OF LEADERSHIP is a favorite theme among students of management, but most studies focus too narrowly on the individual “hero-leader;” according to these authors. They argue that leadership typically does not rest with a single individual, but is both pluralistic and fluid. This pluralism is in part a function of two very different leadership structures: the formal management hierarchy, and the informal networks that cross and operate within hierarchical lines. The intelligent manager understands that these two structures are complementary. The most successful decision making–and the most effective leadership–occurs when they are encouraged to coexist. Ed.

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I'll be damned if I understand how we make some of our most important decisions around here.
--CEO of a Fortune 500 company
"The (Mustang) model (of 1964) was totally completed by the time Lee (Iacocca) saw it,"; says (Gene) Bordinat, now retired. "We conceived the car, and he pimped it after it was born."
--Time, April 1, 1985
Leadership is one of the most observed and least understood phenomena on earth.
--James MacGregor Burns

LET’S START WITH the premise that no one has a good all-purpose definition of leadership. For most of us, the word conjures up an image of one leader with followers. However, the quotes above suggest that understanding—and assigning credit for—leadership can be confusing and highly emotional. James MacGregor Burns’s recent book, Leadership, cites one study with 130 definitions of the term.1 Another book notes over 5,000 research studies and monographs on the subject. The editor concludes that there is no common set of factors, traits, or processes that identifies the qualities of effective leadership.2 Most of these books equate leadership with the leader who is a hero-person. That is one extreme. The other extreme is found in studies that view leadership as a set of personal attributes such as energy, charisma, or style. In between are the contingency theorists who argue that leadership depends upon anything from task conditions... To read the complete article, login or sign-up using the form below.

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