What if Action Defined Leadership?

• Published date: 01 September 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00953997231180304
• Author: David Dery
• Date: 01 September 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/00953997231180304

Administration & Society

2023, Vol. 55(8) 1605 –1622

© The Author(s) 2023

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/00953997231180304

journals.sagepub.com/home/aas

Article

What if Action Defined

Leadership?

David Dery1

Abstract

What if action defined leadership? By pushing the idea of “leadership-as-

action” to its logical conclusion, I hope to show that it has the potential

of introducing much needed discipline to a field of research that has been

built on weak conceptual foundations and as a consequence is hampered

by fragmentation and diversity. With action as an organizing idea, a pivot,

around which leadership revolves, leadership theory and practice can be

advanced toward a more unified and coherent body of knowledge. Following

a brief discussion of some of the noted difficulties and weaknesses, the

paper explores the notion of “act of leadership,” the peculiar conceptual

field (labeled “the fourth domain”) within which such acts take place and the

distinctive attitudes, behaviors, and evaluation standards that follow.

Keywords

action, act of leadership, the fourth domain, agere aude

Introduction

Man was made for action and to promote by the exertion of his faculties such

changes in the external circumstances both of himself and others, as may seem

most favorable to the happiness of all (Smith, 1976, p. II, iii, 3).

Thinking of leadership as action or activity marks in my view a significant

turning point which escaped us far too long. The notion of leadership as

1Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

Corresponding Author:

David Dery, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem 9190501, Israel.

Email: david.m.dery@gmail.com

1180304AAS0010.1177/00953997231180304Administration & SocietyDery

research-article2023

1606 Administration & Society 55(8)

action of a specific kind is hardly new. But what seems to be missing is a

realization of its potential to introduce much needed discipline to this field.

Rather than serve as the sine qua non of leadership, an organizing idea, per-

haps the pivot around which leadership revolves, the idea of leadership as

action simply has been appended as just another viewpoint, one more

approach in a fragmented literature whose weaknesses are too often over-

looked or too easily excused as a necessity (Dinh et al., 2014, pp. 55–56; van

Wart, 2003, p. 214, 2013, p. 561).

Decades of widely shared dissatisfaction with the scholarly research and

theory on leadership have somehow failed to challenge the fundamentals of

the field. Critical voices, old and new, remain on the sidelines while the

march goes on along many of the same paths that have been found wanting.

Who is a leader? What is leadership? Definitions abound, and so do theoreti-

cal domains, classifications, taxonomies of behaviors and contexts,

approaches and methodologies. Whether the exact number of definitions of

“leadership” is 130 (Burns, 1978, p. 2), 121 (Nye, 2008, p. vii), or 650

(Bennis & Townsend, 1995, p. 27) makes little difference. The overall mes-

sage is one of dissatisfaction with the scholarly research and theory that have

been and continue to be hampered by the absence of sound conceptual foun-

dation and the resultant boundless fragmentation and diversity (e.g., Bennis,

2007; Burns, 1978; Dinh et al., 2014; Jennings, 1960; Nye, 2008; Stogdill,

1974; ‘t Hart & Uhr, 2008; van Wart, 2003, 2013; Wildavsky, 1984).

In 1974 Stogdill (1974) famously reported that “four decades of research

on leadership have produced a bewildering mass of findings [. . .] The end-

less accumulation of empirical data has not produced an integrated under-

standing of leadership” (p. vii). A fast forward glimpse into the same literature,

brings us to 2007, seven decades away from the earliest literature studied by

Stogdill, and the message is virtually the same. According to the editors of a

special issue of the American Psychologist on leadership “the field remains

curiously unformed”; “there are no generally accepted def‌initions of what

leadership is, no dominant paradigms for studying it, and little agreement

about the best strategies for developing and exercising it” (Hackman &

Wageman, 2007, p. 43). Introducing a special issue of the American

Psychologist, special issue, renowned leadership scholar Bennis (2007)

summed up his frustration: “After studying leadership for six decades, I am

struck by how small is the body of knowledge of which I am sure” (p. 5); this

was not unlike his blunt assertion some 20 years earlier: “Never have so many

labored so long to say so little” (cited in van Wart, 2003, p. 15). In his cele-

brated book Leadership, published in 1978, the leading leadership scholar

Burns (1978) complained that “leadership is the most observed and least

understood phenomenon on earth.” But on the very next page he expressed