Distribution of Leadership

Leadership by Exception

Exceptionalism reemerged during the early-1980s with the gradual supplanting of command-and-control line managerialism by rhetorics of integration and control achieved through the management of culture. The idea of exceptionalism assumes that leadership is the monopoly of individual position-holders or a handful of strategically located actors in organizations. This doctrine is legitimated by a discursive normative split—a conceptual distinction that is often drawn between managers and leaders—between leadership and management that constructs leaders as visionary champions who, unlike managers, add value to organizations.

Leadership that is exceptional is presumed to be manifest behaviorally in individual deeds of heroic proportions, as is evident in an accompanying discourse of transformation that attributes states of organizational turnaround, revitalization, and performative excellence to high profile, larger-than-life figures. Exceptional leadership, then, is “focused” leadership. The totality of the behavior that is deemed to count as leadership by exemplars, proponents, and observers alike is presumed to be concentrated in one or at best a very few hands.

The popularity of focused exceptionalism has resided mostly in its attraction as a presumed solution to the problem of motivation, that is, how to secure enhanced levels of employee output and productivity in a competitive global economy. Exceptionalism puts the bar very high. It says, in effect, “If you want to be a leader, then this is how high you have to be prepared to jump.” Its status is also fuelled by a wider culture of narcissism and romanticism in which control by so-called ordinary functionaries has proven incapable of representing popular fantasies of organizational leadership (Gabriel 1997, 338). Despite its seductive appeal, however, focused exceptionalism generates a number of unintended consequences. First, while canonizing leaders, its proponents are inclined to downplay or demonize the work of managers (Krantz and Gilmore 1990).

Second, while highlighting the claimed superiority of leaders, exceptionalism has residualized and infantilized so-called followers. For this reason, the experience of nonleadership induces feelings of disempowerment and alienation (Gabriel 1997). Such outcomes create strong incentives for prospective and aspiring leaders to disengage from the career pursuit of leadership roles. Exceptionalism puts the bar very high. Many people reason that since not everyone can be—nor would they want to be—a hero-like figure, a leadership role is not worth the intense effort required to achieve it.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, in foregrounding the work of leaders, exceptionalism glosses the complexities of the division of labor in the workplace and the processes by which the totality of an organization's work is accomplished (Gronn 2003, 28–43).

Distributing Leadership

An alternative to focused exceptionalism, is a conception of leadership grounded in the actual division of workplace labor: dispersed, shared, or distributed leadership. It was Gibb (1954) who first articulated the possibility of “distributed leadership.” Initially, his idea attracted remarkably little scholarly attention. Recently, however, it has been developed conceptually by both Spillane, Halverson, & Diamond (2000) and Gronn (2002).

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