Leadership and Management Theory

A chapter on leadership and the major schools of management theory. Leadership is defined as the process of social influence by which one person enlists the aid and support of others in accomplishing a common task, and the text moves through the trait, behavioural and contingency approaches, including the behavioural premise that leaders are made rather than born and that leadership can be learned through teaching and observation. Covers the systems view, in which students take account of how an organisation's major functions affect one another rather than optimising one part at the expense of another, the biological analogy of systems that grow more complex and therefore more volatile, and the classical tensions of the field such as centralisation against decentralisation, where the right balance depends on the particular organisation.