Proceedings of the 5th World Conference on Management and Economics
Year: 2024
DOI:
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Leadership as Practice: Unfolding Complexity Leadership Theory
Dr. Ahmed Hashem Khamis Embarak
ABSTRACT:
Trait behavior induced leadership models have been developed over the last century to match the industrial era organization’s needs for charismatic leaders to achieve success. However, these models are not valid for today’s knowledge-based economy in which organizations struggle to achieve adaptability to ever changing environment. Leadership as practice approach seeks to provide practically relevant models of leadership. A real advance must look into the philosophical foundations of leadership phenomenon to identify the appropriate leadership approach. Complexity leadership theory introduced in this study is a promising approach eager to provide solutions for practitioners’ desire to preserve levels of performance while building tomorrow’s organizations. Complexity approach views organizations as a complex adaptive system that possesses the ability to adapt and learn through its parts’ continuous dynamic interactions. The study highlights gaps in knowledge of leadership studies, and introduces complexity leadership theory as a way to study leadership phenomenon. Particularly, the study depicts leaders’ qualities required to achieve success in complex adaptive systems, main leadership functions embedded in complexity leadership theorem, and the mechanisms of influence of which leadership affect organizations adaptation.
keywords: Leadership as practice, complexity leadership, organization adaptation, CAS dynamics