• individual/ organizational/ societal. These are the three levels the authors – Richard Bolden, Beverley Hawkins, Jonathan Gosling and Scott Taylor, in their book: “Exploring leadership. Individual, organizational and societal perspectives” (2011) – are considering sufficient to present the understanding of leadership concept along the ages. Those three levels are discussed in three chapters – 3, 4 and 5 – each chapter for one level (while the first two chapters and the last two chapters of the book are only the scaffolding for the presentation). In sociology, the individual/ organizational/ societal levels are better known as “micro”/ “mezzo”/ “macro” levels, these being only other names from the multitude of others – like “element”/ “structure”, “person”/ “culture”, “organism”/ “environment” etc. Probably of much help is the 2^nd edition of the book, published in 2023, where the perspectives of leadership are also seen from another two frameworks – the first, the one established by Simon Western (in her work: “Leadership. A critical text”); the second, the one presented by Keith Grint & Owain Smolovic Jones (see “Leadership. Limits and possibilities”), Steve Kempster, Brad Jackson & Mervyn Conroy (in “Leadership as purpose. Exploring the role of purpose in leadership practice”) and Brad Jackson (“The power of place in public leadership research and development”). Therefore, the four frameworks – 1^st that of Gosling & al (and their emphasis on leader – follower – significant others); 2^nd that of Western (and her concern for the leader); 3^rd that of Grint, Kempster, Jackson & al (and their interest on the main questions of communication); and 4^th that of historical development (where each idea has a starting point on the time-line of events) – are mapping the same territory. Even if there are some equivalences between the four frameworks, and even if everyone is free to speak his/ her mind and cherish one of them (I have to admit that the framework proposed by Grint, Kempster, Jackson & al is very intriguing to me), I believe there are some questions worth asking, questions that don’t have any established answer: 1) why any framework has to have some layers, some levels? 2) how complementary frameworks are competing for the same reality, for the same territory? and 3) what is this thing that help others to make the distinction between frameworks, and between frameworks and reality? Beside these questions, the main critique of the book could be stated as follow: it is fascinating that a finite and identified number of layers (Gosling & al are speaking of three layers – individual, organizational and societal) could order of and make sense in what seems to be an infinite and unidentified number of possibilities (in fact, the phenomenon of leadership)

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Resources:

• Richard Bolden, Beverley Hawkins, Jonathan Gosling & Scott Taylor (2011): “Exploring leadership. Individual, organizational and societal perspectives”, Oxford University Press
• Simon Western (2007): “Leadership. A critical text”, SAGE Publications Ltd
• Keith Grint & Owain Smolovic Jones (2022): “Leadership. Limits and possibilities”, Bloomsbury Academic
• Steve Kempster, Brad Jackson & Mervyn Conroy (2011): “Leadership as purpose. Exploring the role of purpose in leadership practice”, Leadership, Vol. 7, No. 3, pp. 317-334
• Brad Jackson (2019): “The power of place in public leadership research and development”, International Journal of Public Leadership, Vol. 15, No. 4, pp. 209-223