Collective dimensions of leadership: The challenges of connecting theory, method and practice

WOW member co-edits competitive Special Issue of Human Relations

The global, national and local response to the Coronavirus crisis has exemplified the limitations of the traditional highly individualised heroic approaches to leadership and highlighted the power and effectiveness of collective leadership in responding promptly, creatively and authoritatively in real time.      

Research that helps us to better understand and then develop these collective approaches to leadership has pre-occupied a growing community of leadership scholars around the world.  As Professor Brad Jackson notes this ‘includes diverse scholarship on the shared, distributed, pooled, and relational aspects of leadership; its emergence and relation to hierarchical leadership; and its impact on work and performance’.

Professor Jackson has recently co-edited a Special Issue of the journal, Human Relations, entitled ‘Collective Dimensions of Leadership: Connecting theory and method’ along with Sonia Ospina and Eric Foldy from New York University and Gail Fairhurst from the University of Cincinnati.  The primary aim of the Special Issue was to showcase the best theoretically-informed empirical research into collective leadership that is currently being conducted around the world and to advance the quality and quantity of this work going forward.  

“We received a total of 52 submissions from which we eventually selected, through a very thorough and lengthy editorial review process, the five articles which we felt best highlighted the variety and quality of theoretically-informed empirical research into collective leadership. We also produced two articles to introduce and to conclude the Special Issue which we anticipate will be important in guiding future research and practice in collective leadership”, said Professor Jackson.

The Special Issue featured the following five articles:

• ‘Bridging competing demands through co-leadership? Potential and limitations’;
• ‘Investigating the interplay between formal and informal leaders in a shared leadership configuration: A multimodal conversation analytical study’;
• ‘Paradigm warriors: Advancing a radical ecosystem view of collective leadership from an Indigenous Māori perspective’;
• ‘Moments that connect: Turning points and the becoming of leadership’; and
• ‘A tale of three approaches: Leveraging organizational discourse analysis, relational event modeling, and dynamic network analysis for collective leadership’.

Back in November, Professor Jackson, delivered a research seminar to WOW members and industry attendees on collective leadership which drew on the Special Issue work.

He has also produced a short podcast on collective leadership.

According to Journal Citation Reports® 2019 release, a Clarivate Analytics product, the 5 Year Impact Factor for Human Relations was now 4.360 and the journal is ranked 2nd out of 104 in Social Sciences, Interdisciplinary and 62nd out of 217 in Management – a competitive achievement!