Zupan on Leadership

3 May 2009 at 9:38 am Peter G. Klein 5 comments

| Peter Klein |

I’m not sure if leadership counts as an ill-defined, un-measured core construct but it certainly is an elusive one. Here is Mark Zupan’s attempt to get a handle on it. In brief, he describes leadership as the ability to convert a single-period prisoner’s dilemma game into a multiple-period game. “In a very fundamental way, leadership involves creating opportunity from a seemingly intractable setting that, if otherwise left to its own resolution, confines us to an inferior equilibrium. . . . This paper shows how effective leaders make this traverse through vision; enrolling others to participate in the ongoing play of the reformulated prisoner’s dilemma; commitment; integrity; communication; and authenticity.” Check it out.

My old friend Dwight Lee and I used to joke that we’d respond to the rise of leadership courses and programs in the MBA curriculum by developing our own program in followership, letting us exercise our comparative (and absolute) advantage freely. Of course no management concept is too droll to have its own academic literature.

Entry filed under: - Foss -, - Klein -, Management Theory.

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5 Comments Add your own

1. Amit Gal | 3 May 2009 at 11:38 pm

I wouldn’t take it as a joke either. While I don’t claim any understanding on how top managers act and behave, I know, for example that you can’t conduct orchestras well if you haven’t played in one. In my own (past) workshops on leadership and teamwork, the first thing that always came up (and practiced) is that a key skill for a team leader is knowing inside out how to be a team member. Again, I don’t claim it generalizes to top managers, but I think for low- and mid-level managers it is certainly true. So in a way, the leadership component should follow your followership course. The first exercise would probably titled “follow the follower”.
2. Nicolai Foss | 4 May 2009 at 3:48 pm

And here is a coordination game approach to leadership: http://icc.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/10/2/357
3. Peter Klein | 4 May 2009 at 3:50 pm

How did I forget that one?!
4. REW | 4 May 2009 at 7:26 pm

Nicolai is treading very close to identity theory here. Better not let the orgtheory mob find out!
5. Warren Miller | 5 May 2009 at 1:38 am

“Orgtheory mob” is redundant.