A critical examination of leadership theories past and present, "Managing without Leadership" argues that leadership as traditionally understood does not explain organizational functioning. Bounded by empiricist assumptions and methodology, and including a narrow theory of mind as symbol processor, leadership theories are unable to support their claims about leaders and their actions. Drawing on coherentist epistemology, connectionism, and the theory of self-organizing dynamic systems, a naturalistic account of organizational functioning and organization design is explored that includes leaders as non-privileged agents in the cognitive fabric of organizational life.
Author(s): Gabriele Lakomski
Year: 2005
Language: English
Pages: 168
Contents......Page 6
Preface......Page 8
Acknowledgments......Page 14
Introduction......Page 18
From leader behaviors to transformational leadership......Page 20
Empiricist science and leadership......Page 22
Leadership and organizational culture......Page 25
Reconsidering culture as cognitive process......Page 27
Distributed leadership......Page 29
Conclusion......Page 31
References......Page 32
Introduction......Page 36
Postmodernism in organization theory and educational administration......Page 37
Problems of postmodernist theory and practice......Page 41
The alleged primacy of discourse and the construction of self......Page 44
The neural self......Page 47
Conclusion......Page 50
References......Page 51
Introduction......Page 54
Organization and culture......Page 55
The special case of culture in cross-cultural management......Page 57
Schein's conception of organizational culture and leadership......Page 59
Some inconsistencies......Page 61
Cultural cognition or cognitive culture: two sides of one coin......Page 62
Organizing in context......Page 65
Organizations and change......Page 68
Conclusion......Page 69
References......Page 70
Introduction......Page 72
The substitutes for leadership view......Page 74
Distributed leadership: an idea whose time has come?......Page 78
Distributed leadership and distributed cognition......Page 80
The theory of cognition......Page 84
Naturalism and leadership......Page 85
Conclusion......Page 88
References......Page 89
Introduction......Page 94
The promise of Knowledge Management......Page 95
The two dimensions of Knowledge Management......Page 97
The dynamic theory of organizational knowledge creation......Page 98
Netting human cognition......Page 100
Communities of practice and collective knowledge......Page 104
Managing more than we can tell?......Page 106
Conclusion......Page 109
References......Page 110
Introduction......Page 114
``Sticky'' transfer......Page 116
Situated learning and transfer......Page 119
The meshing of mind and world......Page 121
How to determine a [task] environment......Page 122
Environment as activity space......Page 125
Conclusion......Page 127
References......Page 129
Introduction......Page 132
Cooperation and coordination: the twin problems of organization......Page 133
On the pheromone trail: from simple rules to complex outcomes......Page 136
Swarm intelligence, emergence and self-organization......Page 139
The logic of patches......Page 143
Patching, real world, and organization design......Page 146
Conclusion......Page 151
References......Page 152
A Road Map to Managing without Leadership......Page 154
References......Page 162
Subject Index......Page 164
