Exercising Leadership Within Hierarchy
Understanding leadership requires attention to the ways in which organizational structure influences its practice. Leadership can be conceptualized as a product of organizational or group influences, including the power relationship that exists as a result of hierarchy, or as an individual’s characteristics or behaviors. Northouse (2010) defines leadership as “a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal” (p. 3). The execution of this process is strongly rooted in organizational structure.
Division of labor and hierarchy is one way that organizations meet the goal of organizing work to achieve goals, including goals for effectiveness, conformity, use of power, and decision-making (Hall 2002). The view of organizations as systems that are dependent on hierarchy for order and stability has its modern roots in the work of Weber (1947). Weber’s description of the ideal type of bureaucracy focused on...
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Getha-Taylor, H. (2017). Leadership Across Hierarchical Levels. In: Farazmand, A. (eds) Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31816-5_2208-1
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