Critical Leadership Theory

This book contributes five novel tenets for building a critical theory of leadership studies. Drawing from transdisciplinary insights, these tenets help shape the emerging field of inquiry. They also facilitate the examination of normative social processes that reinscribe hegemonic power relations, because much of what is accomplished in current leadership scholarship, teaching and practice reinforces these power relations. The book begins by contrasting critical theory with positivist approaches to analyzing social phenomena, and then explores four broad disciplines using subcomponents of leadership as an investigatory lens. The resulting five tenets are presented and discussed so that they may be picked up and used by scholars contributing to the developing field of critical leadership studies.