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Leaderless Leadership: Implications of the "Agora" and the "Public Library"
Malmö University, Faculty of Culture and Society (KS), Department of Urban Studies (US). (Organisation Studies)ORCID iD: 0000-0003-1487-9397
Malmö University, Faculty of Culture and Society (KS), Department of Urban Studies (US). (Organisation Studies)
2022 (English)In: Debating Leaderless Management: Can Employees Do Without Leaders / [ed] Hertel, Fredrik; Örtenblad, Anders; Mølbjerg Jørgensen, Kenneth, Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022, p. 125-141Chapter in book (Refereed)
Abstract [en]

Leadership education has become a billion-dollar business and is a popular field among researchers and students in universities. Multiple debates about what leadership is and how to perform it flourish. In a recent debate book, Anders Örtenblad (2018) has collected contributions that debate whether leadership should be a profession. Jørgensen and Svane (2018) argue that the answer is no to this question from the premises that leadership education would then be defined by the powerful and because it would entail an instrumentalization and standardization of leadership. Hertel and Fast (2018) suggest that leadership is connected to a certain way of being in a context. Therefore, they argue, that it is impossible to define universal principles of leadership. These arguments against turning leadership into a profession are grounded in the idea that leadership is a situated, relational and collective practice rather than a personal and a technical practice. Turning leadership into a profession implies the assumption that leadership emerges from the actions of superior individuals. These debates connect to our position regarding the central theme of the book, which is that we are for leaderless management. Using Hannah Arendt’s (1998) distinction between action and work, we develop a position within leaderless management, which we call leaderless leadership. This position is founded upon action and involves specifying the critical dimension of democratic participation in decisions that concern the whole organization. Arendt argues that action is where people become political among other people. It presumes the perception of a common space among them. Action is thus where people assume responsibility for a world they have in common with others (Arendt 1998, pp. 50–55). Action is etymologically associated with leading and is not only a natural part of the human condition, but also an obligation because it implies taking responsibility for the complex matters of the world.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. p. 125-141
Series
Palgrave Debates in Business and Management, ISSN 2524-5082, E-ISSN 2524-5090
National Category
Economics and Business
Research subject
Organisational studies; Arbete och organisation
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-57319DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-04593-6_8ISBN: 978-3-031-04593-6 (electronic)ISBN: 978-3-031-04592-9 (print)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:mau-57319DiVA, id: diva2:1724964
Available from: 2023-01-09 Created: 2023-01-09 Last updated: 2023-01-12Bibliographically approved

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Mølbjerg Jørgensen, KennethIngman, Sissi

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