Conceptions Of Leadership

An exploration of both classic and contemporary conceptions of leadership, focusing on social psychological approaches to central questions such as the way people think about leaders and leadership, the personality attributes of leaders, power and influence, trust, and the qualities that sustain positive relationships between leaders and followers.

What are the main characteristics of effective leadership? How can we understand leadership today? This wide-ranging, inter-disciplinary book provides readers with a complete introduction to the essentials of leadership. Included here are accessible and insightful entries on what leadership is, how it is practised and the relevant strengths and pitfalls. The book provides a one stop introductory guide to one of the most central and contested concepts in the social sciences. An invaluable reference tool, this book offers insight into issues such as: • Are leaders born or made? • Authoritarian versus participative leadership • The psychology of leaders and followers • Leadership development • Leadership styles, skills and functions • Leadership in practice This book is an indispensable guide to the central concepts of leadership for professionals and students alike.

This is an indispensable and authoritative guide to the most crucial ideas, concepts and debates surrounding the study and exercise of leadership. Bringing together entries written by a wide range of international experts, this is an essential desktop resource for managers and leaders in all kinds of institutions and organizations, as well as students of business, sociology and politics. Topics covered in this guide include: authority creativity cross-cultural leadership motivation emotional intelligence group dynamics.

This resource frames leadership as based in learning processes and distinct from management processes. It presents practices and tools together with examples and pointers for intervening with contentious problems.

Corporate America is experiencing an ever-increasing shortage of qualified leaders. Thousands of older executives and other senior leaders are now retiring, creating unprecedented promotion opportunities. Competition for vacant leadership roles will be fierce, but if you desire to serve in a leadership role (or a more senior leadership role), there's a high probability that the opportunity will be yours for the taking!

Leadership, Capacity Building and School Improvement provides a fresh and original perspective on the most important issues confronting today’s practitioners and academics in the field of educational leadership. New and exciting concepts are introduced such as the research-engaged school of the future. While its theoretical and evidence-based approach raises to a robust level the discussion on the most important leadership challenges of the day, the book is at the same time intensely practical in addressing everyday issues faced by contemporary policy makers and school practitioners. Underpinning the eleven chapters is a conceptual framework founded on the notion of leadership as capacity building, giving the book a coherence that many others on school leadership lack. Among the themes actively discussed are: Conceptualising and Contextualising Leadership – what is leadership? What distinguishes good from mediocre and poor leaders? What are the traits, dispositions and attributes that make for good leadership? How does context influence leadership? How appealing is leadership as a career? What are the components of capacity building leadership? Contemporary Leadership Themes – what is learning-centred leadership and how can it best promote good teaching and student learning? How can leaders distribute leadership across the school, and what are the pitfalls? How can leaders capitalise on the notion of the school as a professional learning community? How can leaders best be nurtured and developed? Policy, Leadership Practice and Impact – what new forms of leadership are presaged by the specialist schools policy as a means of school improvement? How can schools combine a focus on academic achievement with the need to prepare students for the changing twenty-first century workplace? Leadership, Capacity Building and School Improvement provides an up-to-date authoritative, critical and insightful account of school leadership. It combines advocacy and argument with evidence-based practice drawn from the most plausible and robust sources. This book will prove a valuable tool for those taking higher degrees in school leadership and management: school leaders on NPQH courses and school practitioners as a whole interested in interfacing with the latest empirical evidence and ideas, as well as academics teaching and researching in the area of educational leadership. Since the book adopts an international perspective, drawing its examples and evidence from both the Anglo-American and the Asian contexts, it will be found relevant to academics, policy makers and practitioners across these regions. Clive Dimmock is Visiting Professor at the National Institute of Education in Singapore and Professor Emeritus at the University of Leicester, UK.