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Abstract
Postmodernism paradigm is one of the newest paradigms represented in response to the deficiencies of traditional modernistic approaches in management and social sciences. Postmodernism does not present a systematic and comprehensive theory which in turn results in fundamental changes in management concepts such as leadership. In that manner, one can see that in an age of escalating uncertainty, the idea that leadership means being in charge is antiquated. In this paper we follow the idea that whereas pre-modern leadership was characterized by the "great leader", born to lead and the modern leadership was embodied in the idea of the great organization, system, or process, postmodern leadership refers to leading within context and ambiguity. Given the fact that the postmodern world has called both the premodern and modern notions of leadership into question, the aim of this paper is to answer the following questions: What is the meaning of leadership in a postmodern era, how does it need to be redefined for today?
Keywords: Leadership, modernism, postmodernism, paradigm
Track: Management
Word count: 5.222
1. Introduction
Ever since the 1970's seventies, social sciences are experiencing an unusual preoccupation with the prefix "post", using which many terms, that represent a kind of barrage towards our intellectual orientation, were coined. For example, we are familiar with the concepts such as post-Keynesianism, post-Fordism, postt-liberalism, post-industrial society, post-feminism, postcolonial theory and postmodernism. Moreover, the widespread use of the term "post" can be understood in at least two respects.
In the first, the prefix can mean to live in a world of flux and transition: old decays and disappears, and the new is still vague and indefinite (Penna, O'Brien, 1997). In this sense, it seems that the present is something that appears later, and stems from a certain future which has not yet been outlined. In another sense, the prefix 'post' may refer to a world in which the old and the new coexist; what follows after the Fordist, industrial, modern society does not replace it necessarily, but is mixed with it and fragments it. Here, the present has many facilities, a myriad of different political, cultural and economic experiences and events, a multitude of conflicting and unstable social and institutional association, and lots of levels of personal and...