内容简介:Over the past thirty years, leadership has become a mantra in our culture - a path to power and money, a road to personal and professional success, and a mechanism for creating change that has spawned its own lucrative worldwide industry. Yet why does government remain riddled with inept, corrupt, or badly behaved leaders? Why is business filled with leaders who are venal, self-centered, and seek more power and influence than they can exercise wisely and well? Why, for all attention to ethics, is corruption and malfeasance so pervasive? "The End of Leadership" offers a critical rethinking of the "leadership industry", challenging the idea that leadership can be taught.
Breaking with common wisdom, Barbara Kellerman argues that while leaders always were and still are the focus of our collective attention, they have never been as central to success as we think. Even in times past, when leaders had far more power, authority, and influence, they were vulnerable to forces beyond their control, forces that limited their options and constrained their behaviors. In the twenty-first century, she argues, these forces are stronger, more variegated, and more numerous than they ever were before, relegating current notions of leadership to the dustbin of history. Instead, she offers an alternative model that better reflects - and addresses - contemporary political and organizational realities.
作者简介:Barbara Kellerman is the James MacGregor Burns Lecturer in Public Leadership at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. She was the founding executive director of the Kennedy School's Center for Public Leadership and served as its research director.
She was ranked by Forbes.com among the Top 50 Business Thinkers in 2009 and by Leadership Excellence in the top 15 of the 100 "best minds on leadership" in 2008 and 2009. In 2010 she was given the Wilbur M. McFeeley Award for her pioneering work on leadership and followership. She is author and editor of many books, including, most recently, Bad Leadership, Followership, and Leadership: Essential Selections on Power, Authority, and Influence.
Breaking with common wisdom, Barbara Kellerman argues that while leaders always were and still are the focus of our collective attention, they have never been as central to success as we think. Even in times past, when leaders had far more power, authority, and influence, they were vulnerable to forces beyond their control, forces that limited their options and constrained their behaviors. In the twenty-first century, she argues, these forces are stronger, more variegated, and more numerous than they ever were before, relegating current notions of leadership to the dustbin of history. Instead, she offers an alternative model that better reflects - and addresses - contemporary political and organizational realities.
She was ranked by Forbes.com among the Top 50 Business Thinkers in 2009 and by Leadership Excellence in the top 15 of the 100 "best minds on leadership" in 2008 and 2009. In 2010 she was given the Wilbur M. McFeeley Award for her pioneering work on leadership and followership. She is author and editor of many books, including, most recently, Bad Leadership, Followership, and Leadership: Essential Selections on Power, Authority, and Influence.