Leadership in Relational and Distributed Practice: General and Historical Perspectives

This book presents a leadership perspective based on relations rather than individuals. By implication, leadership should not be understood as the effect of a leader’s unique personal abilities. Instead it should be seen as an umbrella term covering a number of specific organisational tasks that are embedded in and developed through organisational actors’ cooperation. Within this relational perspective, however, the formally appointed leader may still be positioned at the centre of the analysis. This chapter is largely based on a perspective that is often called distributed leadership (cf. e.g. Jeppesen 2013; Nielsen 2008) refecting the fact that leadership tasks have to some degree become distributed across the company or institution.