Advancing Leadership Theory and Practice

Rakesh  Khurana; Nitin   Nohria

Chapter | Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice | 2010

Advancing Leadership Theory and Practice

Abstract

More than a means of getting ahead and gaining power, leadership must be understood as a serious professional and personal responsibility. In this introductory chapter, editors Nitin Nohria, the dean of Harvard Business School, and Rakesh Khurana, a professor of leadership development at HBS, point out that while many university graduate programs in business, law, education, and public policy claim that their mission is to educate leaders who will advance the well-being of society, the reality is that scholarly research on leadership is, at best, at the periphery of these same universities. In fact, the increasing demand for insights about leadership has largely been met by popular writers--consultants, journalists, or "iconic" business leaders. The papers that comprise this book--originally presented at the Harvard Business School Centennial Colloquium, "Leadership: Advancing an Intellectual Discipline"--are a starting point. Nohria and Khurana define five dualities that they believe are at the heart of research on leadership--for example, the duality between the leader's role in producing superior results and the leader's role in creating meaning. The chapter concludes with a brief summary of each of the book's 25 subsequent chapters.

Keywords: Leadership; Practice; Research; Theory;

Format: Print

Citation:

Khurana, Rakesh, and Nitin Nohria. "Advancing Leadership Theory and Practice." Chap. 1 in Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice, edited by Nitin Nohria and Rakesh Khurana. Harvard Business Press, 2010.

In 2006 Harvard Business School’s Michael E. Porter and Nitin Nohria launched a study tracking how large companies’ CEOs spent their time, 24/7, for 13 weeks: where they were, with whom, what they did, and what they were focusing on. To date, Porter and Nohria have gathered 60,000 hours' worth of data on 27 executives, interviewing them—and hundreds of other CEOs—about their schedules. This article presents the findings, offering insights not only into best time-management practices but into the CEO’s role itself. CEOs need to learn to simultaneously manage the seemingly contradictory dualities of the job: integrating direct decision-making with indirect levers like strategy and culture, balancing internal and external constituencies, proactively pursuing an agenda while reacting to unfolding events, exercising leverage while being mindful of constraints, focusing on the tangible impact of actions while recognizing their symbolic significance and combining formal power with legitimacy.

When we think of human behavior, especially from a moral perspective, we often rely on explanations based on character. We think that good decisions and responsible behavior require people with integrity and strong character and that immoral behavior originates within people with little integrity and weak character. However, important research in recent decades strongly suggests that situational factors often dominate character in ethical decision making—for leaders and for members of their organizations. This note summarizes the recent research, shows its implications for the basic steps in ethical decision making, and provides a basis for in-depth discussion of the character-versus-situation question.

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Advancing Leadership Theory and Practice

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