The practical utility of leadership

The purpose of the paper is to narrow the gap between practitioners and academics by highlighting the practical utility of leadership theory. Confusion exists about the practical role and value of leadership in society despite a vast literature on the subject. Our thesis is that complex theories of leadership tend to obfuscate the practical value of leadership to society and institutions. The methodology employed in this paper is analytical and discursive. Two principal research questions are addressed: First, what are the principal types of leadership? Second, what are the practical functions of leadership? Three themes are developed to answer each of the research questions. The research is based on a selective survey of the leadership literature. Two tables present the data from our survey: Table 1 provides a tentative typology of twenty-nine types of leadership; Table 2 enumerates twenty-three functions of leadership. The paper offers ten topical conclusions: (1) a number of classification problems constitute impediments to an elegant ordering of leadership theory, (2) there is a lack of any common classification system for leadership theory, (3) classification is rarely addressed in the literature, (4) the lack of a universal definition of leadership may inhibit better organization of leadership theory, (5) there are many types of leadership reflecting a wide range of philosophical approaches and considerable variance in levels of conceptual abstraction, (6) only a primitive ordering of leadership theory is currently prudent, (7) seven principles of taxonomy may be useful to the field of leadership studies, (8) leadership theory is poorly organized at the moment, (9) there is no consensus as to the function(s) of leadership, and (10) the job of real leaders is complex and vital but poorly understood at present. Overall, our general conclusions were that: (a) given the bewildering assortment of leadership types, scholars should invest more effort to organize the large body of theory and research that is currently available, and (b) while there are many functions of leadership reported in the literature, we propose six primary, five secondary, and three generic functions of leadership for all practical purposes.