A multi-level leadership spectrum for collective good

Abstract

The complexity of today’s local and global challenges requires us to look critically at both the concept and the practice of leadership in society, government, business and national and international networks. This article reviews recent critiques of leadership theory and practice and focuses on the significance of purpose as a central concern. It goes on to frame multi-level leadership for the collective good as a spectrum and identifies four angles or approaches of significance. These are defined as the Intra- Organizational angle, the Macro-Meso angle, the Distributed and Shared angle and the System Wide Change angle. The article briefly reviews articles in the special issue Multi-Level Leadership for Collective Good and their connections to these approaches and concludes with a future research agenda for further expanding our leadership thinking, research and practice.