Elsevier

The Leadership Quarterly

Volume 19, Issue 5, October 2008, Pages 622-628
The Leadership Quarterly

Theoretical and Practitioner Letters
Shared leadership theory

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2008.07.005Get rights and content

Abstract

Edwin Locke contributed a chapter to the critique section of Craig Pearce and Jay Conger's edited book, Shared Leadership: Reframing the Hows and Whys of Leadership (Sage, 2003a). In this letter exchange, they continue their dialogue on this important topic. They focus in particular on clarifying what each means by “shared leadership” and on what shared leadership can and should look like at the top of organizations.

Section snippets

Letter 1

Edwin A. Locke

Dean's Professor of Leadership and Motivation (Emeritus)

University of Maryland

32122 Canyon Ridge Drive

West Lake Village, CA 91316

Dear Ed:

We found the ideas in your critique chapter (Locke, 2003a) in our book, Shared Leadership (Pearce & Conger, 2003a), challenging and provocative. As you know, the purpose of the book was to put a stake in the ground, so to speak, on shared leadership theory: We wanted to advance inquiry into leadership processes outside the typical top–down

Letter 2

Craig Pearce

Associate Professor

Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management

Claremont Graduate University

1021 N. Dartmouth Avenue

Claremont, CA 91711

Jay Conger

Henry R. Kravis Research Chair in Leadership Studies

Claremont McKenna College

850 Columbia Ave.

Claremont, CA 91711

Dear Craig and Jay:

This is in response to your comments on my chapter on shared leadership. I believe that the differences you point out between my position and yours are due mainly to three things: definition

Letter 3

Edwin A. Locke

Dean's Professor of Leadership and Motivation (Emeritus)

University of Maryland

32122 Canyon Ridge Drive

West Lake Village, CA 91316

Dear Ed:

Thank you for your challenging response to our letter. You articulate well the small margin of difference between our views. In response to your first two related critiques of our letter—that we have engaged in definition switching and equivocation—we disagree. For the sake of clarity, the exact quote from Cox et al. (2003, p. 48) defines shared

Letter 4

Craig Pearce

Associate Professor

Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management

Claremont Graduate University

1021 N. Dartmouth Avenue

Claremont, CA 91711

Jay Conger

Henry R. Kravis Research Chair in Leadership Studies

Claremont McKenna College

850 Columbia Ave.

Claremont, CA 91711

Dear Craig and Jay:

Just some final remarks about our discussion. First, you point out (correctly) that I had inadvertently left out three words when quoting your definition of shared leadership as: “lateral

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