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Abstract(s)
In this chapter, we discuss the coevolution of leadership and power, pivoting to a consideration of leading in a digitally enabled organizational democracy. We start by providing sense-making of past theorising, discussing the rational mode of organizing (the default mode of organizing in bureaucracies), which as first suggested by Weber, represents a mode of “power over”. Next, we discuss this and other varieties of power, including “power to” and “power with”. Power to is manifest in notions of empowerment, where a leader invests followers some elements of decisional power, authority and accountability, which can be even more motivating and efficient than imposed power over. We further consider servant leadership as a way of leading through exercising power to. Power “with” is at the core of understanding leadership as a process co-created by both leaders and followers (Uhl-Bien et al., 2014), first conceived in the circular theory of power suggested a century ago by Mary Parker Follett (1868-1933). Subsequently, in our final section, we offer sense-breaking by looking to an emerging future that is seeing growing reliance on distributed leading, mostly focused on project work aided by digital technologies, reliant on power within a networked system of social relations. Overall, we argue that power and leadership, leading and organizing, are intertwined – or, better, modes of organizing represent different frameworks of power in action (Clegg, 1989; Cunha et al., 2021), where power, leadership and design are related and coevolve in new organizational forms (see Table 1). Of course, the different types are not mutually exclusive, in fact they may well coexist, but different designs give more prominence to some expression of power than to others.
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Power Leadership Polyarchy Projects
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SAGE Publications Ltd