Leadership and History

Walter A. Friedman

Chapter | Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice | 2010

Leadership and History

Abstract

Historians have written a lot about business leaders, especially successful ones. In fact, rags-to-riches stories have come to embody the philosophy of America itself, yet the term "business leadership" was rarely used until the early twentieth century. This chapter looks at historians who have studied the functional role of leadership and have aligned it with the early twentieth-century economist Joseph Schumpeter's definition of entrepreneurship: a creative-destructive process carried out both by individual agents and by those working in firms. (It was Schumpeter who famously described the entrepreneur as a "rogue elephant" who has the courage and chutzpah to overturn the existing order.) The author focuses on the work done at Harvard's Research Center in Entrepreneurial History--in existence only from 1948-1958, yet home to some of the most prominent scholars in sociology, economics, and history. He reviews the research of two historians, Fritz Redlich and Alfred Chandler, who use history to illuminate the phenomenon of leadership, particularly the concept of leadership as a "disruptive art."

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; History; Leadership;

Format: Print

Citation:

Friedman, Walter A. "Leadership and History." Chap. 11 in Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice, edited by Nitin Nohria and Rakesh Khurana. Harvard Business Press, 2010.

Conference Presentation | Aug 2017

To Highlight or Downplay Differences? A Threat-Matching Model for Crafting Diversity Approaches

J. Lees and Evan Apfelbaum

We integrate organizational and psychological scholarship to devise the threat matching model, a contingency theory that illustrates when, how, and which diversity approaches—frameworks leaders provide employees to understand and respond to diversity—promote inclusiveness. Rather than presume the existence of a “best” approach, we theorize that two types of diversity approaches, the value in difference approach (which focuses on the importance of social group differences) and the value in equality approach (which focuses on the importance of equality irrespective of differences), can each be effective, but only when they match the magnitude of threat employees experience and corresponding psychological needs that underlie feelings of inclusion. We propose that the value in equality approach is most effective when threat is high because it satisfies employees’ salient desire to belong and be accepted as an insider, whereas that the value in difference approach is most effective when threat is low because it satisfies employees’ salient desire to be respected for the unique characteristics they contribute. Further, we develop a two-step recursive process for promoting inclusion as threat evolves over time. This model reconciles mixed results in past research, substantively extends existing theory, and informs leaders’ efforts to promote inclusion across contexts.

Keywords: diversity; gender; race and ethnicity; leadership; inclusion; Diversity; Gender; Race; Ethnicity; Equality and Inequality; Leadership;

Citation:

Lees, J., and Evan Apfelbaum. "To Highlight or Downplay Differences? A Threat-Matching Model for Crafting Diversity Approaches." In Making a Case for Diversity: Pros, Cons, and Complexities. Paper presented at the Academy of Management Annual Meeting, Atlanta, GA, August 2017. View Details

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