A Theoretical Treatise and Proposal for An Integrated Approach to Leadership and Management

Abstract

Leaders and managers provide direction and influence individuals and groups to achieve goals. They articulate the vision and communicate it to the people by giving information and knowledge on how to achieve these goals. They think strategically and provide solutions as well as create a platform where the solutions come from. While some scholars argue that everything rises and falls with leadership, other scholars have challenged views on leadership and dislodged its centrality, arguing that leaders account only for a small portion of a group's success or failure. Such diverse perspectives lay the ground for objective and holistic scholarship on leadership and call for a candid examination of the leadership experience in its totality. As such, theoretical questions such as what makes leadership necessary and also what human conditions make leadership both necessary and possible cannot go unanswered. If then leadership and management are necessary in the society, what approach or approaches would be deemed ideal? This paper has proposed an integrated approach to leadership and management that seeks to merge diverse approaches including trait, skills, style, situational and transformational approaches as well as ethical perspectives to leadership and management. It is guided by the general theory of leadership that aims at finding coherence in leadership scholarship. While taking the integrated approach, this paper is aware of the dilemma of finding a single philosophical view to leadership. An integrated approach to leadership and management as proposed in this paper is aimed at building a new body of knowledge that will seek to arrest the shortcomings of already existing models of leadership and management. It also seeks to improve scholarship of both leadership and management of people in as far as influencing and working with them to accomplish goals is concerned. It further aims at improving theoretical perspectives to leadership by contributing insights into the application of the General Theory of Leadership. This paper is important because it forms fodder for exploring another approach to leadership that scholars and (leadership) practitioners may find relevant.