Participative leadership: in search of a (shifting) concept

Abstract

This contribution to the Gruppe. Interaktion. Organisation (GIO) deals with selected concepts of participative leadership. The aim is to carry out a critical overview of the underlying assumptions about participation in leadership. We will first focus on the historical precursors of participative leadership, such as the reflections provided by Mary Parker Follett, Kurt Lewin or Robert Tannenbaum and Warren H. Schmidt. We then discuss a number of recent concepts from the field of participative leadership with regard to their analytical core dimensions and rhetorical claims. By outlining the conceptual landscape of participative leadership research, we examine whether the concepts focus on the humanistic inspired ideas of democratization in organizations by means of participation, or rather consider participative leadership as a just another means of improving performance in organizations, or possibly both. Finally, we discuss which of these various conceptual considerations have found their way into the debate on agile management.