Contemporary Leadership Theories

This book provides a comprehensive overview of basic theoretical approaches of today's leadership research. These approaches conceive leadership as an interactive and complex process. They stress the significance of the individual perception for developing and forming leadership relations. Leadership is understood as the product of complex social relationships embedded in the logic and dynamic of the social system.

The book discusses theoretical approaches from top leadership journals, but also addresses various alternatives that are suitable to challenge mainstream leadership research. It includes attributional and psychodynamic approaches, charismatic leadership theories, and theoretical concepts that define leader-member relations in terms of exchange relations, as well as leadership under symbolic and political perspectives, in the light of role theory and as a process of social learning.