Cornell University
Library
Cornell UniversityLibrary

eCommons

Help
Log In(current)
DigitalCollections@ILR
ILR School
  1. Home
  2. ILR School
  3. ILR Collection
  4. ILR Articles and Chapters
  5. Leading Amidst Competing Technical and Institutional Demands: Revisiting Selznick’s Conception of Leadership

Leading Amidst Competing Technical and Institutional Demands: Revisiting Selznick’s Conception of Leadership

File(s)
Besharov3_Leading_amidst_competing.pdf (170.38 KB)
Permanent Link(s)
https://hdl.handle.net/1813/75803
Collections
ILR Articles and Chapters
Faculty Publications - Organizational Behavior
Author
Besharov, Marya
Khurana, Rakesh
Abstract

This chapter explores how Selznick’s approach to leadership can inform contemporary organizational theory and research. Drawing on Selznick’s writing in Leadership in Administration and related works, we characterize organizations as simultaneously technical entities pursuing economic goals and value-laden entities pursuing non-economic goals arising from their members and their role in society. These two aspects of organizations are deeply intertwined and in continual tension with one another, and the essential task of leadership is to uphold both – protecting and promoting values while also meeting technical imperatives. To do so, leaders establish a common purpose that includes values and ideals not just technical imperatives, they create structures and practices that embody this purpose, and they make organizational decisions and personal behavioral choices that are consistent with this purpose. We consider each task of leadership in turn, showing how Selznick’s ideas enrich and extend contemporary research on competing institutional logics, organizational design, culture, and identity, leadership, and meaningful work.

Date Issued
2012-11-01
Keywords
leadership
•
Philip Selznick
•
institutional demands
•
technical demands
Rights
Required Publisher Statement: © Emerald. Forthcoming in Research in the Sociology of Organizations. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
Type
article

Site Statistics | Help

About eCommons | Policies | Terms of use | Contact Us

copyright © 2002-2026 Cornell University Library | Privacy | Web Accessibility Assistance