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The Complexity of Leadership

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Leading Responsibly in the Asian Century

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Abstract

Examinations of leadership in the academic literature have found it to be an elusive concept. The debate continues about what constitutes effective leadership, and indeed whether leadership is actually necessary. Scholars such as Alvesson and Sveningsson (2003) have examined the possibility of non-relevance of the notion of leadership. They claim that “leadership in any straightforward and clear sense is perhaps a rare bird indeed” (p. 378). However, leadership seems entirely necessary in human activities that require cooperation: families, sports teams and group work. Is this always true?

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This section includes an updated version of ideas first presented in Fernando (2007) and in Fernando and Nilakant (2008).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Business, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, Australia

    Mario Fernando

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Fernando, M. (2016). The Complexity of Leadership. In: Leading Responsibly in the Asian Century. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21789-5_4

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