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The New Psychology of Leadership

Identity, Influence and Power

  • Price: $71.95 $64.76
  • Hardback: 192 pages
  • Also available in Paperback
  • Published: October 2010
  • ISBN: 978-1-84169-609-6
  • Publisher: Psychology Press

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This landmark text provides an overview of the new understanding of leadership that has emerged in the last two decades in social and organizational psychology, as part of the development of self-categorization and social identity theories. The New Psychology of Leadership advances the argument that leadership is a group process grounded in the creation, management and control of group identity — a shared sense of ‘us’.

Written in an accessible and engaging manner, The New Psychology of Leadership discusses multiple aspects of leadership. It examines leadership as the product of dynamic principles reflecting the variable and flexible nature of identity; the active role of leaders in shaping and changing social identities and intergroup relations; the distinction between power and influence and the role of legitimacy; the place of justice, fairness and consideration in binding members to the leader; and the basis of leadership charisma and vision.

The book will appeal to academics, practitioners and students in social and organizational psychology and any other discipline or profession interested in leadership, influence and power. It should also be of interest to members of the reading public who have an interest in these issues.

Table of Contents

Foreword by George A. Akerlof: The Social Identity Approach to Leadership and Why It Matters 1. The Old Psychology of Leadership: Great Men and the Cult of Personality 2.　 The Current Psychology of Leadership: Issues of Context and Contingency, Transaction and Transformation 3. Foundations for the New Psychology of Leadership: Social identity and Self-categorization 4. Being One of Us: Leaders as In-group Prototypes 5. Doing It for Us: Leaders as In-group Champions 6. Crafting a Sense of Us: Leaders as Entrepreneurs of Identity 7. Making Us Matter: Leaders as Embedders of Identity 8. Identity Leadership at Large: Prejudice, Practice, and Politics

Reviews

"As Haslam, Reicher and Platow set it out, a simple but profound theory underlies their New Psychology of Leadership. And that theory seems so very right that it may come as a surprise that this is not already the concept of leadership everywhere. This captures the true structure of what leadership is all about. Accordingly, on almost every page of the text there is a new subtlety about what leadership means and about how it works. It takes a subject older than Plato and as current as Barack Obama in a new and correct way." - From the Foreword by George A. Akerlof, Nobel Laureate in Economics, University of California, Berkeley USA

"Haslam, Reicher, and Platow provide a tremendous service by sorting through the tangle of leadership studies and theories to offer a new perspective that is at once elegant, supported by eclectic research, and readily translatable into practical implications for social domains as varied as business, politics, and sports. It contains a profound wealth of insights on the nature and dynamics of leadership." - Blake Ashforth, Professor of Management, Arizona State University, USA

"An amazing book, that completely changed my mind about leadership. It's a double treat: a new theory and a new set of empirical regularities. That the theory makes intuitive sense and that the data fit the theory is just a bonus. I expect that this new, systematic approach to this important topic will attract scholars from many disciplines." - Rafael di Tella, Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School, USA

"This is a first rate work that makes a major contribution to an expanded understanding of leadership…. The authors provide a major advance in thinking and they have written a rich and accessible account that will have a major impact on the field." - George E. Marcus, Professor of Political Science, Williams College, UK

Author Biography

S. Alexander Haslam is Professor of Social and Organizational Psychology at the University of Exeter and is Editor of the European Journal of Social Psychology.

Stephen Reicher is Professor of Psychology at the University of St Andrews and is formerly Editor of the British Journal of Social Psychology.

Michael Platow is Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the Australian National University.