Texts

An average of ten articles a day were published on leadership in the 1990s, a figure that had doubled from the five per day of the 1980s (Grint, 2000). The continuing emphasis upon leadership in the noughties suggests that the rate of output will not have decreased. It may, indeed, have continued to rise; for organisations around the world, in the public and private sectors, have been searching for that elusive something that will ensure their survival in what is portrayed as the fierce competitive environment of a globalised economy. Excellent leadership is promoted as a vital element in this Darwinian struggle, and there is governmental support for and advocacy of good organisational leadership. In Britain, for example, a government disappointed in the failure of the policy of investing heavily in the managerialisation of the public sector in the 1980s and 1990s has advocated leadership as the means by which it is now trying to achieve the holy grail of efficient and effective public sector organisations. It has, among other things, established a Council for Excellence in Management and Leadership, which, since its founding in April 2000, has been charged with the task of developing a strategy ‘to ensure that the UK has the managers and leaders of the future to match the best in the world’ (Council for Excellence, 2002, p. 1). We therefore have the classic demand and supply loop beloved of economists: a demand for leadership met by a supply of literature which aims to support developments which will increase the supply of that particular commodity.