Leadership in an Age of Ambiguity and Risk

Abstract

Those who were responsible for the establishment of the Commonwealth Council for Educational Administration (CCEA) in the early 1960s and 1970s were clearly leaders. All had vision, were entrepreneurial and tenacious, sensitive to situational and political pressures and highly ethical in their relationships with others. Yet each displayed a unique style of leader behaviour. Thus the three key elements in their behavioural setting were the traits they possessed, the sensitivity to the environment they demonstrated and the style they adopted. Ansoff has described contemporary society as being typified by paradox, ambiguity and risk. These characteristics continue to typify the business and government environments of advanced Western nations. Are the characteristics of leader behaviour demonstrated by CCEA′s founders adequate to meet the turbulence of future societal change? The answer is “yes”. When the extensive literature on leader behaviour is analysed and the politics of scholarship are taken into account, those three key elements remain. This is reflected in Zehnder′s recent address to the Australian Institute of Directors with its highlighting of leadership as a function of intuition, ethics, entrepreneurship and vision and in the recent emphasis by several writers on “transformative leadership”.

Citation

Walker, W.G. (1989), "Leadership in an Age of Ambiguity and Risk", Journal of Educational Administration, Vol. 27 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/EUM0000000002460