Wood, Martin.  “Process and Reality in Leadership Research and Development.”  In Alfred North Whitehead on Learning and Education: Theory and Application (Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2005): 267-292.

Abstract

Recent years have seen considerable industry in the area of leadership research and development.  The leadership literature typically talks about the discrete individuality of its subject and particularly the personal qualities and capabilities of a few key people occupying top positions in a hierarchy.  Current leadership research has now begun to generate new knowledge about leadership practice in relations of interpersonal exchange.  Nevertheless, there is an urgent need for the implications of this insight to be developed more fully.  The current discussion explores how a perspective of process studies challenges the dominance of the field by both self-identical individualism and discrete schemes of relations.  Its aims are twofold.  First, it will show how both of these latter epistemologies are lacking and suggest that current leadership research and development activities must rise to the ontological challenge of processes rather than things.  Second, it looks at some methodological implications of this way of thinking as a productive incitement to future leadership research and development.