Leadership in the Implementation of Change: Functions, Sources, and Requisite Variety

Despite leadership being considered essential to successful organizational change, reviews of empirical research on the subject reveal inconsistencies in the approaches to, and measurements of, both leadership and its impact on change outcomes. The study and development of leadership should reach beyond the simple focus on individual leaders and ultimately broaden our view of how the most meaningful impact can be made. Toward this end, a general framework of leadership in the implementation of change is provided. Starting from a functional perspective, it is proposed that leadership is provided by one or more leadership sources that independently or collaboratively enact a configuration of four leadership functions through specific behaviours from three behavioural meta-categories. It is additionally argued that leadership effectiveness – and the success of change – is a product of the degree to which the configuration of functions enacted sufficiently addresses the variety of situations leadership sources encounter. In this regard, the integrative framework offered here focuses primarily on what Rost [(1991). Leadership for the twenty-first century. Praeger] categorizes as the peripheral elements of leadership theory.