“Leadership as a social problem”: A conversational engagement with the ideas of Alvin Gouldner

Abstract

Sociologist Alvin W. Gouldner’s (1950) book of original and previously published chapters collected under the title Studies in Leadership: Leadership and Democratic Action opens with the proclamation: “Leadership as a Social Problem.” Although Gouldner’s work is rarely cited in contemporary critical leadership discourse, he and his coauthors make an important contribution to an analysis of the potentially counter-democratic role of leaders. By using an unusual methodology—an imagined conversational engagement between this article’s author and Gouldner (who has been dead for 40 years)—the article offers an historical appraisal of the contribution of Studies in Leadership to critical leadership; a contribution that is especially relevant when elected leaders are undermining the institutions and norms that together maintain democratic societies.

Transformational leadership: A political science theory transformed by management studies. How did this happen, and why does it matter?

“…Instead, these are more like propositions of how we could represent the past. Therefore, critical historical researchers acknowledge that there cannot be only one possible understanding; these propositions are to be judged based on plausibility (Spector, 2020). This is essential, or I risk repeating what may have already happened to transformational leadership theory: misrepresentation communicated as fact.…”