Putting Power back into Leadership: A long overdue Integration
Power is an omitted construct in the leadership literature. In this work-in-progress, we apply a power lens to the study of leadership in order to offer new insights on the leadership phenomenon. The power lens reveals an important inconsistency between how leadership is conceptualized (i.e., as a social influence process) and operationalized (i.e., as an individual holding a formal authority position). We borrow then from French and Raven (1959) bases of social power to introduce leadership bases and conceptually integrate these leadership bases into the full-range model. Our analysis indicates that different leadership types exists based on the leadership bases at someone’s disposal. It also shows that leadership bases are tied to a context or a task. We also introduce selected constructs derived from the psychological and sociological literatures to breed a necessary cross-fertilization into the leadership literature. We conclude by offering various recommendations to slightly improve the study of leadership.
Nicolas Bastardoz (in collaboration with David V. Day)