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One Reason There Are Many Bad Leaders Is the Misleading Myth of “Leadership”

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Debating Bad Leadership

Part of the book series: Palgrave Debates in Business and Management ((PDBM))

Abstract

We argue—in the spirit of debate that informs this book—that whether or not there are bad leaders, the very idea of leadership, especially the idea as it is currently retailed in the popular literature of leadership, is itself bad. That literature, with its relentless emphasis on the exceptional individual, has the effect of eroding faith in, and competence for, collective and democratic processes of deliberation and change that match the scale and complexity of the interlocking problems faced by humanity.

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Correspondence to Richard Little .

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Little, R., Bendell, J. (2021). One Reason There Are Many Bad Leaders Is the Misleading Myth of “Leadership”. In: Örtenblad, A. (eds) Debating Bad Leadership. Palgrave Debates in Business and Management. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65025-4_20

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