Leadership: The Collaborative Process

Abstract

The industrial paradigm of leadership which equates leadership with good management and implies a hierarchical relationship between leader and follower, associated more with mechanistic forms of organizational structures and relationships, is a concept of the past. Our knowledge-based society calls for a post-industrial paradigm of leadership as espoused by Rost 1993, based on a collaborative process of leadership that is a more horizontal than vertical relationship, resembling a computer network. For illustrative purposes, this article discusses Rost's post-industrial paradigm of leadership in a project team environment where both leaders and collaborators through shared meanings, engage in leadership for the 21st century.