Leadership

Normative Approaches

Leadership is important because it helps groups to coordinate and solve collective action dilemmas. In any group of people, issues will arise over which there might be underlying agreement but disagreement over details or tactics. Leaders can fill the coordination role that ensures that agreements are made and kept. Leaders thus help secure an agreement and then police that agreement: they ensure that everyone knows what role he or she should play and carries it out. Having the coordination and policing function fulfilled is not only important in itself, but also assures everyone that everyone else is doing their bit for the good of the group. Leaders can fulfill this function more or less well. We can study all sorts of organizations and groups of people to see how well run they are, whether activities are coordinated or disparate, and whether the organization efficiently achieves its aim or fails miserably. Either way, the leadership niche is filled by the person recognized as the leader (e.g., the boss, the CEO, or the president). But there is another normative concern about leadership that is orthogonal to this aspect: the manner in which the coordination takes place.

There might be better and worse ways of achieving these coordination and policing functions. Some leaders might inspire followers to want to carry out their roles. Others might do it through incentives, both positive and negative: extra payments are made to those who work well, and sanctions employed against those who do not. Leaders might be liked and respected or feared and distrusted. We can see that this dimension is orthogonal, because a feared and distrusted leader might ensure that coordination does take place, that the organization does succeed, and, for example, that the firm makes big profits. In some studies, however, leaders who are feared and distrusted are not considered good leaders even if they achieve the aims of the organization in other senses. Here, generating admiration is an intrinsic quality of leadership.

...