Preface by Frederik Hertel, Kenneth Molbjerg Jorgensen and Anders OErtenblad
1. Background and introduction
Frederik Hertel, Kenneth Molbjerg Jorgensen and Anders OErtenblad
This chapter introduces the book project, argues for the relevance of the book, and discusses how leaderless management is defined in the book. After having argued for the relevance of the book, the chapter outlines the theoretical foundation of the book. Leaderless management is defined, and we introduce the contrast between our concept of leaderless management and the concept of management /leadership introduced in modern management literature. Thereafter, we relate to existing works on leaderless management and suggest how our differs from previous literature. The final part of the chapter presents the content of the chapters and how the authors of the different chapters relate to/view the discussion about leaderless management.
PART I. Against leaderless management
(This part contains chapters arguing that leaderless management is a bad idea.)
2. The enabling role of leadership in realising the future
Cecile Gerwel Proches, Graduate School of Business and Leadership, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa
It is not desirable to have leaderless management. We are slowly emerging from the trail of destruction left behind by the global pandemic, COVID-19, and are yet to determine how this has impacted the workforce and the workplace. We also find ourselves further immersed in the digital era and traversing the fourth industrial revolution, while also being cognisant of the fifth industrial revolution. Increasingly high levels of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity (VUCA) will necessitate strong leadership, which will need to be task-oriented but also responsive to the needs of people. COVID-19 has illustrated how interconnected we are. We seek leadership that is cognisant of how valuable both leaders and followers are in navigating the complexity, by engaging in sense-making processes to co-create the future.
3. Leaderless management & the coach analogy
Sharon Blanchard, Principled Leadership Institute, New Zealand
In addition to working in higher education in various leadership positions for over thirty years, I have worked as a volunteer athletic coach for the same amount of time and use this analogy to explain why you need to have leaders in organizations. I believe that leaders undertake specific positions requiring a high level of accountability and responsibility, and stand completely apart from positions of management. In addition to technical skills, a coach inspires and enables their team to be the absolute best version of themselves whether on the field, in the rink, at home, school or in the office. The coach is responsible for the overall stewardship of the players, the team, and the club. The values and beliefs that are instilled by the coach provide continuity and consistency ensuring that whether the loss or the win, the teachable moment is what we grasp, and with courage, move forward. The coach, or in this case the leader, goes home each day and their team come home with them; their day does not end at 5pm. The coach shoulders their concerns, needs, and desires, as a means of moving them and the company forward. Employees have various degrees of experience, knowledge, skills, and expertise, and their accountability and responsibility within the company needs to be aligned with this. By our very human nature, we need guidance, boundaries and parameters, and even though when we establish these in an equal opportunity dynamic it isn't bullet-proof.
4. Leadership reimagined: reframing leadership for an ambidextrous world
Eric Peter Zabiegalski
Let me make myself perfectly clear, organizations cannot exist without leadership. With this said however, leaderless management often is a viable alternative to leadering business as usual. How can this be? The answer to that question lies within an examination of our current leadership paradigms and the troublesome contradictions they present. Leadership needs to be reconstructed and reimagined and presenting true leadership in all its manifestations should begin in earnest. A book published almost 10 years ago claimed there are over 1500 definitions of leadership and over 30 concepts, with a leadership development industry topping 300 billion dollars globally its likely more definitions have since been added. These statistics are surprising, causing one to pause and reflect. With so many definitions and concepts for leadership which is the true and correct one? Which one do people practice most often and which one do people rely on and desire? I don't feel that leadership is an apparition, I am confident it exists, leadership happens in organizations daily. Every day work gets done and people with leadership titles in leadership positions are present and influencing work. Despite this feeling however there is something unsettling and off regarding leadership and my intuition says it is in the way in which leadership is recognized, perceived, and used. Furthermore, my gut tells me that routine mismanagement, misunderstanding, and abuse of leadership concepts create a paradox and the troublesome contradiction mentioned. This paradox causes harm, suffering, and inefficiency, either bleaching and sanitizing cultures or turning them into treacherous mine fields. The result is a loss of performance seen through a climate of disenfranchised worker hopelessness or fear-based behavior. With a concept so complex and problematic, and with so many working definitions, the question for organizations becomes is leadership necessary? is it worth the trouble it often breeds? Can we sufficiently manage without leadership for a better organization? My position on this highly contested subject is no, we need leadership. But we must change our perception of it, seeing it for what it is and where it is. The phenomena of leadership, the acknowledgment of leaders and leading, should be a healthy part of every organization and a vital companion to management. But instead of being treated as an entitlement for an anointed chosen few, it needs to be understood for what it is, used in the right ways, and shared among its members. Those organizations which can't incorporate a true working leadership model into their cultures should find another infatuation and never utter the word again, lest it become the death of them and their cultures. This paper will explore structures, models, definitions, and cultures pertaining to leadership using the lens of organizational ambidexterity.
Keywords: structures, ambidexterity, culture, leadership models.
5. Leaderless management vs. creative leadership
Camille A. McKayle, Univesity of the virgin Islands, USA.
This chapter argue against leaderless management since we need creative leadership especially in challenging times. This article will look at the concept of leaderless management, starting with the definitions of leadership and of management. This will be compared with approaches to leadership. Within the context of leadership, we will focus on creative leadership. Creative leadership is defined as the type of leadership needed to guide a team toward a new or novel goal (Puccio, Mance, & Murdock, 2011). This type of leadership is seen as essential in today's VUCA world as creativity is most valuable in situations that are complex and ambiguous. We will then look at the desired outputs from a creative leadership approach and determine if leaderless management is able to achieve the types of goals and outcomes in instances when a creative leader would thrive.
6. Leaderless management and follower maturity
Yusuf Sidani, American University of Beriut, Lebanon
A significant debate, which is not recent, has emerged regarding substitutes for leadership. Substitutes for leadership refer to those organizational or situational variables that - supposedly - significantly reduce or, negate, the need for leadership. One of those factors refers to the maturity of the follower. I argue that it is indeed the case that the need for a leader, higher in hierarchy, is sometimes reduced depending on the level of ability and willingness of the follower. Yet, this does not mean that management is leaderless. It is just the case in this instance that real leadership would be vested in the follower himself/herself. The notion of ascribing the title leader to the person higher in the hierarchy becomes a misnomer. In all of that I am arguing against the notion of leaderless management based on follower maturity.
7. Managing, but not leading.
Andrew Rozhdestvensky, Lviv Business School of Ukrainian Catholic Univesity, Ukraine.
By supporting the position against leaderless management we ensure that the emphasis on importance of leadership nowadays is being put. According to John Cotter's studies, management is aimed to provide stability, while leadership means implementing changes and improving. Therefore, leaderless management may be considered as sticking to fixity without regarding the importance of change. In turn, change is a precursor of the growth of individuals, groups, companies and the world. Then, a methodology used by the Center for Leadership of UCU, embodies three components of leadership macro-model. These are competencies, character and commitment. All this put together is equal to the company's success and well-being of employees. Consequently, leaderless management foresees evidence of competencies and perhaps commitment, but not character. And the last indeed form a true leader.
8. Leaderless management and value-based cultures
Yusuf Sidani and Yasmeen El Kaissi, American University of Beriut, Lebanon
The role of ethics and ethical leaders in promoting value-based cultures has been investigated in prior research. We contend that value-based cultures require the presence of leaders in a sustained manner. Ethical leaders act as role models, helping organizational members to focus on what is right, not only in terms of doing things efficiently and effectively, but also in terms of doing things ethically. When leaders disappear, cultures are more prone to fall into ethical blindness, and they might gradually go down on a slippery slope. The presence of ethical leaders is not only necessary to develop such cultures, but also to keep them going. As such, we argue that leaderless management is not possible in creating or sustaining those types of cultures.
9. The internalized manager
Mogens Spare and Frederik Hertel, Aalborg University, Denmark
Despite sympathies will we in this article argue against leaderless management. The chapter will introduce a case study on a company in the middle of a transformation from being a traditional organization based on top-down management to becoming a modern organization empowering and involving employees in (selected part of) the decision-making processes. The latter modern organization illustrates (essential aspects of) leaderless management, while the former illustrates the traditional approach to management. Our analysis will show how differently employees responds towards the two approaches. However, our analysis will also reveal that despite the approaches on the surface level appears as contradictions they are both on the subsurface level a result of the phenomenon named work. We conclude that leaderless management exchange a physical manager with a nonphysical, internalized manager. Leaderless management remove the physical manager, but it maintains the purpose and consequently reproduce the concept of work.
PART II. In between for and against leaderless management
(This part contains chapters arguing in between for and against leaderless management. It may be that these chapters further on will be divided into two parts, one part on in between, leaning towards against and another part on in between, leaning towards for.)
10. To some extent, employees can do without leaders
Jessica Flanigan, The University of Richmond, USA
To some extent, employees can do without leaders. The more important question is whether they should. In this essay, I evaluate arguments in favor of codetermination and workplace democracy in light of recent philosophical criticisms of the hierarchical workplace and empirical evidence that purports to show that a more egalitarian workplace is more efficient. Contrary to this research, I argue that non-hierarchical workplaces are not intrinsically more egalitarian than workplaces with leaders and they are plausibly less efficient as well. Nevertheless, I agree that leadership is often morally fraught. Rather than addressing the moral risks of leadership by sharing responsibility and decisional authority though, I conclude that businesses should be structured in ways that promote independent work and minimize the degree to which people have authority over each other at all.
11. The middle ground approach as a way to creating effective ways of leading in the 21st century
Helena Knoerr, Rowland School of Business, Point Park University, USA.
In this chapter I will argue that an in between approach to leaderless management is needed as we progress into the 21st century and base my argumentation on the following: first, the need for centralization and de-centralization of management under complex and dynamic environments; second, the analysis of leadership and decision-making systems that are more efficient. Finally, solutions that come from co-creating initiatives and anticipating possible scenarios, through collaboration, cooperation, and collective actions, as alternative ways to leader-ship. I argue that in order to solve complex problems, a multidisciplinary app-roach is needed that includes centralization/de-centralization, the middle ground. I present best practices based on the research, observation, and analysis of crisis management during Covid 19, exploring them from a Global systems perspec-tive.
12. Dynamic burgeoning of self-organisation: paradox and prospect
Ana Martins and Isabel Martins, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.
The debate surrounding the notion of leaderless management has been prevalent for several decades. Do organisations need leaders? Do organisations need managers? This chapter will highlight the in between viewpoint. The business world has seen various economic crises and therefore management and leadership have come under close scrutiny. What is more, the current COVID-19 Pandemic has unveiled the pressing need to re-balance organisations and unlearn the prevailing dominant logic and mindset; the purpose of re-evaluating the way organisations are functioning, whether there should indeed be formal governance structures of managers and leaders. This study will further emphasize reasons why self-organization should bourgeon. There is a great need for individuals to be responsible, accountable, humanised in their work ethic.
13. Leadership without leaders: an argument for the return of the public space in organizations
Kenneth Molbjerg Jorgensen, Malmoe University, Sweden.
Do we need leadership? Yes. Do we need great leaders? No. Contemporary great man leadership discourse is devastating for true leadership. Great man leadership is ultimately associated with capitalism, accumulation of capital and short-term profits where planet and people are colonized and ultimately destroyed. Instead, we draw on Hannah Arendt and argue that true leadership takes place in public space, a space of appearance, where people meet and make their appearance explicitly through disclosing their intentions, passions, feelings and voices. This collective, relational and material space is decisive for collective wisdom: a wisdom in which a plurality of voices is present in collective action and which makes citizens answerable and responsible in relation to environmental, cultural, social and economic problems. We argue that the public space is inhabited by the highest form of being: Free actors who are political participants in organizing and managing activities and who are answerable exactly because they are political participants. Thinking, the deep activity through which we reflect on ourselves and the consequences of our action, requires a public space and the freedom of participation in order to become politically relevant. Thus, the return of the public space is absolutely necessary for connecting action (politics) with the material practices by which we act into, manipulate and create realities (work), and with what Arendt referred to as natality - the eternal recurrence of the cycles of nature and earth, and which is the reason why we are here in the first place. The public space requires new principles for organizing. These principles are identified and discussed as under the metaphors of 1) the Agora, 2) the public library and 3) the private space, which we discuss in relation to the creation of good life (health and well-being). We submit these to certain ground criteria, which organizing is submitted to: water, air, life on land and life in the water.
Keywords: great man leadership, public space, collective wisdom, thinking, action, the eternal recurrence, the agora, the public library, the private space.
PART III. For leaderless management
(This part contains chapters arguing that leaderless management is a good idea.)
14. Deconstructing leadership: an invitation to leaderless organizations
Jeffrey S. Nielsen, Utah Valley University, USA
My thesis, though difficult to imagine, is quite simple. Our concept of leader and practice of leadership is harmful to the majority of persons working in leader-based organizations. Taking leadership apart, that is deconstructing it, reveals the following five aspects of the concept of leader, which will be unpacked in this essay: One, you cannot have a leader without creating a follower, which automatically sets up an unequal power relationship, where the leader is privileged to monopolize information, control decision-making, and command compliance, while the follower is required to obey, frequently without question or dissent. Two, in a leader-based hierarchy, we naturally tell the persons above us in rank and power what we think they want to hear, and we tell the persons beneath us only what we think they need to know, which behavior creates poor and inauthentic communication. Three, the consequences of any leader-based hierarchy have been, are, and always will be, along with poor and inauthentic communication, dishonesty, promise breaking, and a corrosive secrecy leading to low levels of trust. Four, coercion and manipulation become the default, normal and acceptable way of getting people to do what the leader wants. Five, leader-based communities and organizations lead to sacrificing the wellbeing of the majority in order to preserve and maintain the power and privilege of the leaders. I will present a peer-based model is a whole new way to think about the nature of management and organizations themselves, and how we organize, design, and manage human cooperation. We must rethink the entire architecture of organizational management. We can't just rearrange the furniture; we need to completely redesign the building! This will be the major challenge of the twenty-first century.
15. Beyond ego-massaging coaching: eco-friendly coaching practices for leaderless organizations
Robert Garvey, the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC) and Pauline Fatien Diochon, Grenoble Ecole de Management, France.
This chapter argues for leaderless organizations. The performance of leaderless organizations however relies on practices that can sustain and develop self-organized and self-led communities. Specifically, we discuss what kinds of coaching practices that can sustain and develop leaderless organizations.
Many current coaching practices are designed as if leadership is performed by powerful individuals (leader as hero). Such an individualized and decontextualized approach runs the risk of reinforcing egos, creating disconnections and increasing interpersonal competition. Coaching for leadership development in such contexts contributes to massaging ego rather than contributing to any substantial organizational development.
Instead, we suggest that leadership is collective and community-based. It requires that we think about how to develop programs for supporting community-based and collaborative leadership. We argue that leaderless organizations require to move away from such individualistic performance oriented coaching and rather use an eco-friendly coaching. An eco-friendly approach takes into account the whole system of the organization and views this as, potentially at least, a self-sustaining ecosystem.
16. Towards alternative wisdom of leadership
Shih-Wei Hsu, Business School, University of Nottingham Ningbo, China.
This chapter suggests that leaderless leadership should be an ideal state of leadership, and leaderless leadership is a possible activity. However, to achieve this goal, we should portray a fundamentally different understanding of the very idea, leadership. Whilst most accounts of leadership start from the premise that we need leadership, the premise is, in fact, an ideological appeal rooted in the romantic leader-follower dualism, which assumes that some people, with their personality or superior leadership skills, are able to lead, and others follow. The leader-follower schism often results in a disquieting human reality, which is well explained by Foucault's Nietzsche hypothesis: history seems to be a continuous and violent process wherein domination never disappears. Leadership is a necessary activity in the historical process, because it legitimates a taken-for-granted assumption that leaders lead and others follow. In contemporary leadership studies, we should note that some scholars maintain a view that leader-follower schism should be reconsidered. For example, the democratic leadership champions claim that leaders should let subordinates involve in the decision-making process, or that followers should take part in leadership activity. The laissez-faire leadership ideologues argue that leaders should empower followers to do most leadership tasks. However, whilst the aforementioned two attitudes may have somewhat challenged the conventional leader-follower relationship, the leader-follower schism remains intact: leaders lead and followers follow. Insofar as a (residual) leader-follower schism exists, domination will never disappear. However, some wisdom and philosophical traditions imply a very different leadership scenario. For illustration, I identify two philosophical traditions as they render an understanding of leaderless leadership: ancient Taoism, and Deleuze and Guattari's theory of rhizome. While the former offers the moral principles for leaders to restrict their action, the latter implies a radical democratic approach to leadership. Both approaches seek to remove leader-follower schism and offer a fertile source for leaderless leadership scholars to draw upon.
17. Does leadership matter?
Amanda Sinclair, Melbourne Business School, The University of Melbourne, Australia and Huw Pattinson, Agile Tribe Coach, Australian Bank
We are mother and son, management professor and manager. This is not a conventional book chapter but rather snapshots of our conversations, debates and stand-offs about teams, the value of leadership and change in organisations. Huw is a Tribe Coach in a large financial organisation aspiring to be Agile. I am a Professorial Fellow who teaches at a business school in the area of leadership, change and diversity. Huw is more optimistic about self-managing teams and promoting more enlightened - more effective and less hierarchical - ways of working. My research has always come from a critical perspective, arguing hierarchies reassert themselves in teams and traditional leadership continues to inflict suffering. Our experiences - and views - are different. Yet through our conversations, we've come to share a view that leadership that is not a position but a disposition to be open, human-centred and less-ego driven, can foster organisations that are satisfying for employees and better at what they do.
18. Leaderless or headless leadership
Jenika Gobind, University of Johannesburg, South Africa
The historical and hierarchical regime of the South African workplace is a barrier that raises insecurity regarding employee participation and self-leadership. The challenge to allow employees to initiate self-leadership remains with existing leaders who in their insecurities are adamant to remain, as head. Where does the need to lead in a particular manner arise? Furthermore, the reluctance to embrace change is of interest. It is, therefore, necessary to understand why South African leaders are reluctant to move away from hierarchical leadership to one that is leaderless. In so doing this chapter argues that the South African leadership style is built on colonial apartheid ideology and governed by African paternalism and thus presenting barriers to transitioning into a leaderless workplace. In the current South African climate leaderless management is limited, however, it is becoming more desirable.
19. On the implausibility of a well-functioning manager-governed psycho-social work environment and the possibilities of a self-governed one
Thomas Borchman and Bendt Torpegaard, Department of Communication & Psychology, Aalborg University. In this chapter, we argue for leaderless management by discussing the potential roles of contemporary leaders regarding the management and maintenance of occupational health issues and the psycho-social work environment which are presently conceived as an important domain for securing both motivation, effectiveness and employee rights. Against the heightened tendency to emphasize, the importance of the role of leaders and management in this particular domain we point to a triad of obstacles that makes the potential positive roles and contributions of leaders seem highly questionable. The first group of obstacles we label practical obstacles. The second group of obstacles we label principal obstacles. Finally, the third group of obstacles we label psychological obstacles. These obstacles stem from the tendency of power to corrupt (Kipnis 1979, 1990; Galinsky; Rus & Lammers, 2012) and the stereotypical behavior of the powerful and the effect of these behaviors on the relatively less powerful employees (Fiske, 1993).
PART IV. Beyond leaderless/-ful management
(This part contains chapters criticizing the very distinction between leaderless and leaderful management.)
20. Organizational management is paradoxically both leaderless and leaderful
Emily Mertz, and Jennifer L. S. Chandler, Arizona State University in Tempe, AZ, USA
Drawing from research on non-human animal behavior (which includes: wolves, horses, birds, fish, cattle, whales, and primates), we take the position that organizational management is paradoxically both leaderless and leaderful regardless of anyone's leadership intentions. Therefore, we are neither for nor against leaderless management. The common understanding of leadership is full of illusions. The leader-follower distinction that implies that people are either leaders or followers is part of those illusions as are many other myths and inaccurate assumptions. The understanding of leadership used in this chapter is that leadership is a social process of influence that impacts the movement and direction of a group. The common perception of leadership as being restricted to a single, heroic positional individual creates an idealized illusion.
AFTERWORD
Afterword
Gabriele Lakomski, University of Melbourne, Australia
The afterword will be authored as a commentary chapter, on basis of the other book chapters and the reasonings in them, something that makes it difficult to at this point outline any exact content of the afterword.
