The Routledge Critical Companion to Leadership Studies

7 Collaborative leadership A processual approach

Linda Buchan and Barbara Simpson

DOI: 10.4324/9781003363125-9

Introduction

In recent decades, the field of critical leadership studies has advanced trenchant critiques of heroic, individualistic, and positivistic orientations, which nevertheless continue to dominate the leadership literature. This critical trend reflects a growing awareness that in attending to those characteristics presumed to be essential qualities of putative leaders, we commit a “category error” (Kelly, 2008) that ultimately impoverishes, rather than enhances, the scholarship of leadership. It seems that the more we pursue precise definitions and generalizable explanations, the more the phenomenon of leadership slips from ...