Illuminating blind spots and skewness in leadership

Abstract

We explore the topic of leadership through a novel approach of analysing social science research literature called computer assisted research profiling (CARP) for ontological profiling. Our review revealed a domination by western approaches and perspectives, leading to some blind spots and skewness in understanding leadership processes, perspectives and research designs. There is a scope of organising leadership research and refining the conceptualisation of leadership in order to adequately include various differential aspects and perspectives of leadership. Often driven by existentialist positioning and unclear objectives, a synthetic integration of approaches result in more confusion. Furthermore, positivist paradigms emanating from the dominant worldview hardly leave space for indigenous approaches and perspectives. The paper suggests to bring 'leadership research' philosophically closer to advances in 'fundamental research' in physical sciences to benefit from each other. It suggests an integrative paradigm led multi-paradigmatic approach for leadership development by tapping into ancient traditions of the world.