Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice

8

CLASSICAL SOCIOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF LEADERSHIP

Mauro F. Guillén

Introduction

Leadership in organizations, parties, and nation-states has been the subject of much sociological work since the very inception of the discipline in the nineteenth century. Up until the 1970s, sociologists in general, and political sociologists in particular, were the most assiduous students of leadership among social scientists. However, the scholarly literature on leadership has witnessed explosive growth in recent decades. Figure 8-1 plots the number of scholarly articles published each year since 1960 in three fields, namely, business, psychology, and sociology.¹ Until 1969 sociologists published more articles on leadership, especially political ...