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leadershipsociology

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  • collective behaviour ( in collective behaviour: Rescue period )

    ...Many business concerns adopt an uneconomic generosity, and some individuals disregard their personal welfare. The imperious demand to “do something” at once creates an urgent demand for leadership. People turn first to established community leaders, and, when they are equal to the demands, such figures as police and fire officials, school principals, and mass-media personages are...

    in social movement: Progressive changes in leadership and membership )

    One of the most apparent changes is a shift in leadership. In its earliest stages the strongest influence on a movement is likely to be the charismatic leader who personally symbolizes its values. At some point intellectuals play a leadership role by contributing to the developing ideology of the movement. And if a movement endures and grows for any length of time, administrative leaders arise...

    in collective behaviour: Interaction theories )

    Freud, too, stressed a distinctive pattern of interaction in collective behaviour. The key to these groupings is the desire to possess a beloved leader. Because the leader is unattainable, and because his attentions must be shared among many followers, a relation of identification is expressed in the demand for uniformity that the followers insistently impose on each other, according to the...

  • fascism ( in fascism: The leadership principle )

    Fascists defended the Führerprinzip (“leadership principle”), the belief that the party and the state should have a single leader with absolute power. Hitler was the Führer and Mussolini the Duce, both words for the “leader” who gave the orders that everyone else had to obey. The authority of the leader was often enhanced...

  • propaganda and political power ( in propaganda: The propagandist and his agents )

    A complicated modern campaign on a major scale is likely to be planned most successfully by a collective leadership—a team of broadly educated and skilled people who have had both practical experience in public affairs and extensive training in history, psychology, and the social sciences. The detachment, skepticism, and secularism of such persons may, however, cause them to be viewed...

  • public opinion ( in public opinion: Opinion leaders )

    Opinion leaders play a major role in defining popular issues and in influencing individual opinions regarding them. Political leaders in particular can turn a relatively unknown problem into a national issue if they decide to call attention to it in the media. One of the ways in which opinion leaders rally opinion and smooth out differences among those who are in basic agreement on a subject is...

  • social group research ( in social psychology: Small social groups )

    ...known as sociometry, members nominate others (e.g., as best friends) to yield measures of preference and rejection in groups. Others have studied the effects of democratic and authoritarian leadership in groups and have greatly extended this work in industrial settings. In research on how people respond to group norms (e.g., of morality or of behaviour), most conformity has been...

  • warfare ( in war: Special-interest groups )

    The chief and most obvious of such groups is the military. Military prowess was a major qualification for political leadership in primitive societies; the search for military glory as well as for the spoils of victory seems to have been one of the major motivations for war. Once the military function became differentiated and separated from civilian ones, a tension between the two became one of...

    in guerrilla warfare: Leaders and recruits )

    Such are the vicissitudes of guerrilla warfare that outstanding leadership is necessary at all levels if a guerrilla force is to survive and prosper. A leader must not only be endowed with intelligence and courage but must be buttressed by an almost fanatical belief in himself and his cause. Lawrence, Tito, Mao, Ho, Castro, the Soviet leaders Vladimir Ilich Lenin and Leon Trotsky, the Filipino...

Citations

MLA Style:

"leadership." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2008. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 13 Oct. 2008 <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/333680/leadership>.

APA Style:

leadership. (2008). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved October 13, 2008, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/333680/leadership

leadership

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Users who searched on "leadership" also viewed:
charisma (leadership)

attribute of astonishing power and capacity ascribed to the person and personality of extraordinarily magnetic leaders. Such leaders may be political and secular as well as religious. They challenge the traditional order, for either good or ill.

The word derives from the Greek charis (“grace”) and charizesthai (“to show favour”), connoting a talent or grace granted by the divine. The term came into scholarly usage primarily through the works of the German sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920), especially his On Law in Economy and Society (1921), in which he postulated that charismatic authority was a form of authority distinct from those of tradition and law. The process whereby charismatic authority becomes transformed, or changed, to any of the other forms of authority (such as bureaucracy) is referred to by Weber as the “routinization of charisma.”

Typically, the charismatic leader can demand and receive complete devotion from his or her followers. The foundation of charismatic authority is emotional, not rational: it rests on trust and faith, both of which can be blind and uncritical. Unrestrained by custom, rules, or precedent, the charismatic leader can demand and receive unlimited power.

In the original sense of the word, only such phenomenal personages as Jesus or Napoleon would merit the description charismatic, but in current usage, the term is applied more broadly to popular political leaders and cult organizers alike: John F. Kennedy, Eva Perón, and cult leader Charles Manson—all have been labeled charismatic.

Student Encyclopædia Britannica articles specifically written for elementary and high school students.

BBC - A step-by-step guide to charisma
New Maxico State University College of Business -...
leadership (sociology)
  • collective behaviour ( in collective behaviour: Rescue period )

    ...Many business concerns adopt an uneconomic generosity, and some individuals disregard their personal welfare. The imperious demand to “do something” at once creates an urgent demand for leadership. People turn first to established community leaders, and, when they are equal to the demands, such figures as police and fire officials, school principals, and mass-media personages are...

    in social movement: Progressive changes in leadership and membership )

    One of the most apparent changes is a shift in leadership. In its earliest stages the strongest influence on a movement is likely to be the charismatic leader who personally symbolizes its values. At some point intellectuals play a leadership role by contributing to the developing ideology of the movement. And if a movement endures and grows for any length of time, administrative leaders arise...

    in collective behaviour: Interaction theories )

    Freud, too, stressed a distinctive pattern of interaction in collective behaviour. The key to these groupings is the desire to possess a beloved leader. Because the leader is unattainable, and because his attentions must be shared among many followers, a relation of identification is expressed in the demand for uniformity that the followers insistently impose on each other, according to the...

  • fascism fascism

    Fascists defended the Führerprinzip (“leadership principle”), the belief that the party and the state should have a single leader with absolute power. Hitler was the Führer and Mussolini the Duce, both words for the “leader” who gave the orders that everyone else had to obey. The authority of the leader was often enhanced...

  • propaganda and political power propaganda

    A complicated modern campaign on a major...

ntemi (East African leadership)
  • place in Eastern African history eastern Africa, history of

    In northwestern Tanzania, dynasties of a pre-Chwezi kind apparently spread from the interlacustrine area during the middle centuries of the present millennium. Ntemi (as the office was called) became prevalent among both the Sukuma and the Nyamwezi. They (the ntemi) were probably as much ritual leaders as political rulers; certainly they do not seem...

Southern Christian Leadership Conference (American organization)

nonsectarian American agency with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, established by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and his followers in 1957 to coordinate and assist local organizations working for the full equality of African Americans in all aspects of American life. The organization operated primarily in the South and some border states, conducting leadership-training programs, citizen-education projects, and voter-registration drives. The SCLC played a major part in the civil rights march on Washington, D.C., in 1963 and in notable antidiscrimination and voter-registration efforts in Albany, Georgia, and Birmingham and Selma, Alabama, in the early 1960s—campaigns that spurred passage of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

After King was assassinated in April 1968, his place as president was taken by the Reverend Ralph David Abernathy. The SCLC maintained its philosophy of nonviolent social change, but, having lost its founder, it soon ceased to mount giant demonstrations and confined itself to smaller campaigns, predominantly in the South. The organization was further weakened by several schisms, including the departure in 1971 of the Reverend Jesse L. Jackson and his followers who had staffed Operation Breadbasket in Chicago, which was directed toward economic goals.

The SCLC nonetheless sustained its mission by organizing voter drives and cultivating African American political candidates. It also lobbied for the designation of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday as a national holiday (see Martin Luther King, Jr., Day). The SCLC has published...

Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls (school, Henley-on-Klip, South Africa)
  • establishment by Winfrey Winfrey, Oprah

    Winfrey has engaged in numerous philanthropic activities, including the creation of Oprah’s Angel Network, which sponsors charitable initiatives worldwide. In 2007 she opened a $40-million school for disadvantaged girls in South Africa. She is an outspoken crusader against child abuse and has received many honours and awards from civic, philanthropic, and entertainment organizations.

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