The challenges of leadership in the twenty-first century

Abstract

This chapter presents and discusses organisational leadership from a historical and theoretical perspective to identify issues and challenges for leadership going forward into the twenty-first century. Leadership and management theory, the global context, changing demographics and mobilities of workers, and contemporary perspectives on organisational structures are introduced and discussed. Particular reference is then made to the Australian context with a focus on the rail industry as an example of a large and established enterprise that is facing contemporary challenges in moving towards a workplace culture based on workforce development and participation models rather than traditional hierarchical, command-control structures and bureaucratic processes. The chapter begins with a review of external perspectives including an overview of leadership and management, and the latter part then focuses on internal perspectives including what it means to be a leader in Australia. We consider how developments in leadership and management theory and practice are viewed and dealt with in the Australian rail industry and conclude that robust evaluation tools and continuous improvement processes for leadership development programs are recommended for modern organisations to avoid costly and time-consuming mistakes.