Classical Sociological Approaches to the Study of Leadership

By: Mauro F. Guillen

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Synopsis: Leadership in organizations, political parties, and nation-states has been the subject of much sociological work since the very inception of the discipline, yet sociologists still disagree on the relationship between leaders and followers, whether leadership is about meaning or domination, and about the performance implications of different leadership styles. This chapter describes the theoretical assumptions and arguments of the four main schools of sociological thought on leadership-Weberian, institutional functionalism, neo-Marxist, and relational-and focuses on the historical origins of current work in the field. Through a discussion of the past century of research, the chapter explores the four different approaches to leadership in terms of their varying theoretical assumptions, methodology, and type of evidence used, as well as the important overlaps that exist between them. This chapter was originally published as Chapter 8 of "Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice: A Harvard Business School Centennial Colloquium."