Anthropological accounts of leadership: Historical and geographical interpretations from indigenous cultures

Edwards, Gareth

Abstract

© 2014, © The Author(s) 2014. This paper critiques contemporary leadership theory through a historiography of anthropological accounts. Through this review, the paper highlights a number of nuances in the conceptualisation of leadership from differing indigenous cultures using historical and geographical perspectives. The paper contributes to the leadership literature by taking a longitudinal perspective and providing further evidence of a history of notions akin to distributed leadership. This longitudinal perspective enables the paper to uncover an individualistic focus of leadership studies that appear to override sociologically orientated and distributed perspectives within a particular period of the twentieth century. The review of these studies also seems to point towards a pluralistic paradigm of leadership evidenced early on in the twentieth century.

Citation

Edwards, G. (2015). Anthropological accounts of leadership: Historical and geographical interpretations from indigenous cultures. Leadership, 11(3), 335-350. https://doi.org/10.1177/1742715014536920

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Aug 16, 2015
• Journal: Leadership
• Print ISSN: 1742-7150
• Electronic ISSN: 1742-7169
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 11
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 335-350
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1742715014536920
• Keywords: leadership, cross cultural, worldliness, history, geography and anthropology
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/830323
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1742715014536920