What Makes Us See Someone as a Leader? A Field Theory Approach

ABSTRACT

We propose that what seems to be uniquely common to individuals perceived as leaders is that they all either meaningfully challenge the status quo or meaningfully resist challenge to the status quo over a sustained period of time. While we note that a relationship between leadership and challenge to the status quo has been alluded to in the literature, especially regarding (but not restricted to) charismatic leadership, a deeper theoretical development has been missing, particularly addressing the context of the social setting in which challenge may occur as opposed to a leader-centric view. Moreover, we observe that a commensurate connection between resistance to challenge and leadership is relatively unobserved and unexplored.

We develop our argument drawing on Lewin’s field theory and propose a theoretical explanation of how leadership emerges in the perception of others consequent to the sustained invocation and interaction of situational social forces, specifically meaningful challenge, or resistance to challenge, of the status quo. The theory lends itself to empirical study.

MAD statement

While the field of change management recognizes the connection between Lewin’s field theory, the process of change and his classic experiments on leadership, it has missed field theory’s connection to the perception of leadership acts and, more specifically, how leadership emerges in the perception of others. We draw on Lewin’s theory to explore the process of leadership emergence. We focus on forces that challenge (and thus attempt to change) the status quo, as well as those that resist challenge (and thus resist change) to the status quo.

Our paper makes a difference in extending leadership theory and practice by providing a more robust understanding of the challenge concept and its relationship to perception of leadership, with a detailed discussion about how challenging the status quo works in its social context. We also shed new light on resistance to challenge as a dimension of leadership, wherein leaders oppose change and strive to preserve the status quo. In particular, we explore the missing connection between Lewin’s field theory and leadership emergence. Moreover, we show how Lewin’s field approach can be used to empirically study the forces at work in leadership emergence.

KEYWORDS:

• leadership emergence
• leadership theory
• Lewin’s field theory
• challenge and resistance to challenge

To bring about any change, the balance between the forces which maintain the social self-regulation at a given level has to be upset. Kurt Lewin (1997, p. 42, 1943)

Introduction

The question of what makes us see someone as a leader points to some set of actions of individuals in a social context. We choose to answer the question by examining the process of leadership emergence, that is, the perception of leadership without any preconceived ideas based on position, authority, reputation, or disposition. While complexity theory and other areas of systems dynamics have been utilized in the exploration of leadership emergence in the literature, we draw on some older concepts – Lewin’s field theory of social forces – and apply these concepts in a new way to shed further light and build on current understanding of the leadership emergence process.

Acton et al. (2019, p. 145) note ‘Leadership emergence does not reside in a person but rather in an interactive dynamic, within which any particular person will participate as a leader or a follower at different times and for different purposes’. While we agree with the interactive dynamics of social process and distribution of leadership acts, we argue it is also possible that a single leader will emerge. Our position may appear peculiar, at least at the beginning – perhaps because of the dichotomy between leader-centric views and social interaction perspectives; however, we believe some degree of synthesis is possible.

Social situations are live happenings of interactions, ongoing and events. The question is how to conceptualize social situations in general and perception of leadership acts in particular. Current social theories are based on an underlying assumption of democracy and participation. Shared leadership emphasizes the ‘team’ as the social unit from which leadership emerges (Bergman et al., 2012; Carson et al., 2007; Hoch, 2013). Distributed leadership works with the existing hierarchy of the decision systems in an organization, recognizing the overlaps among different roles with respect to higher goals (Cuban, 1988; Spillane & Diamond, 2007), and the situated nature of action (Suchman, 1987). Complexity theory views social interaction as a system of communication networks with adaptive, unpredictable and emergent properties (Hazy & Uhl-Bien, 2014; Uhl-Bien & Arena, 2018).

We develop our theory of perception of leadership acts by conceptualizing social situations using Lewin’s field theory (1935, 1938, 1997) to interpret and expand the notion of ‘challenging the status quo’ from charismatic leadership literature (Conger & Kanungo, 1987; House & Aditya, 1997; Mhatre & Riggio, 2014). Why Lewin? Surely modern theories must be superior to Lewin’s theory from many decades ago, some may say. Those familiar with Lewin’s field theory (Burnes, 2020; Burnes & Bargal, 2017; Burnes & Cooke, 2013; Schein, 2010) recognize that there is a good mapping between concrete social situations and Lewin’s theory. As Lewin put it: ‘there is nothing so practical as a good theory’ (Marrow, 1969). The logic of the quote is because we see the social world through the lens of our theories and concepts.

It should be noted that Lewin conducted an early study to explore leadership based on his field theory (Lewin et al., 1939). His approach departed from the trait-based view dominant at the time; instead, he experimentally manipulated the leader’s style and explored this as part of the process of group interaction. As Ross and Nisbett (2011, p. 17) put it: ‘thus the main point of Lewin’s situationism was that social context creates potent forces producing or constraining behavior’. Note that the leaders were appointed – Lewin thus assumed leadership in the role and his study focused on effectiveness, not emergence. Moreover, the most effective leadership style (e.g. autocratic, democratic, or laissez-faire) was a function of the criterion used to measure effectiveness (e.g. productivity vs. morale). Consistent with this focus, in another article Lewin (1944, p. 395) writes

To understand the dynamics of leadership, one has to study by comparative methods the whole gamut of leadership in high and low positions; in various functions of chairman, coach, teacher, executive, counselor, etc.; in organizations with different objectives and different ideologies.

In contrast, our focus is on emergence and the missing connection between Lewin’s field theory and this critical dimension of leadership.

Lewin’s approach is similar to Leadership As Practice (LAP), ‘which focuses on the everyday practice of leadership … ’ (Raelin, 2017). The suggestions are valuable for understanding how ‘leadership’ (generally attributed to a managerial role) actually works in organizations, but this differs from perception of acts associated with leadership emergence in the eyes of group members, which is our focus. Such acts may or may not happen within the context of an organizational role labelled ‘leadership’.

Philosophically, Lewin was a Gestalt psychologist, thus his approach to psychology was phenomenological. That is, how a person experiences the immediate situation needs to be analysed to answer questions about human behaviour. His famous formula was B = f (P, E), where B is the behaviour, P is the person and E is the environment. Lewin explains human behaviour, in part, within a causal framework of forces; thus some may assume that he is a ‘positivist’ as opposed to a ‘social constructionist’. The simple answer is that he is a phenomenologist who believed there is ‘lawfulness’ in our subjective human experience, which is constructed both socially and physically.

Consider the following situation. A person is driving to an important work meeting to make a presentation. The person finds that the road is blocked because of an accident. The person waits and the road does not open; checking the time there is now a distinct possibility of being late. Intuitively, we may say the person is ‘frustrated’. Note that the importance of the meeting and the person’s responsibility for presentation are socially constructed within the culture of the person’s work situation and the person’s view of their role and goals. Lewin argues that there is lawfulness to the phenomenon of ‘frustration’. More specifically, a person’s cognitive structure can be described in terms of a barrier between the person and the goal. Dynamically, the greater the importance of the meeting the greater the degree of frustration. Further, higher levels of frustration affect the cognitive structure of the person, resulting in regression and aggression. The lawfulness means that any human will experience ‘frustration’ if there is barrier between the person and their goal; the degree of frustration is a function of the subjective importance of the goal and the perceived properties of the barrier.

While we agree that leadership emergence is a social process rather than person-centric, we began our conceptual exploration by trying to identify and distil a common element that might be present in our perception of leadership. We commonly experience and categorize people in daily life as leaders. What is it about these individuals’ actions that might point us to a more generalizable phenomenon?

Consider a variety of individuals whom most observers would likely agree fall into the leader category: Mandela, Gandhi, Churchill, Hitler, Mao, Margaret Thatcher, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Pope Francis. It is fair to say that these are very different individuals – different personalities, shaped by widely differing discourses, with diverse styles and acting in a variety of different situations. Mandela is associated with overthrowing the apartheid system in South Africa and ousting the supporting government. Gandhi is seen as instrumental in the overthrow of the British colonial system and rule in India. Churchill was the UK Prime Minister during WWII when the British were under severe assault by Nazi forces and there was a critical need for extraordinary forces to be mobilized to cope with the threat of overthrow. Hitler acquired power over Germany and drove the Third Reich to war in an effort to decimate established systems and people and create a fascist world order. Mao is credited with bringing the communist revolution to the Chinese masses, overthrowing the entrenched system and rule. Margaret Thatcher oversaw a major displacement of the British welfare state by implementation of conservative policies. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs both significantly challenged conventional modes of business and industry. Pope Francis seems to be challenging the strong Catholic Church system with the intent of coming more into line with current societal mores.

Similar observation can be made in different domains. Einstein, for example, challenged Newton’s concept of gravitational force by proposing a different theory of space and time, and Bob Dylan challenged the simplicity of the lyrics in popular songs by lines like ‘Money doesn’t talk, it swears’.

What seems to be uniquely common to these individuals is that they all either meaningfully challenged the status quo or meaningfully resisted challenge to the status quo over a sustained period of time. What is missing from the above examples is the social context, because of simplicity of attribution. Any historian, for example, will explain Gandhi’s actions within the context of India’s social situation of the time, the role of many key people as well as the public in the process of challenging the status quo, and the British resistance to the challenge.

A review of the literature reveals recognition that challenging the status quo is essential to leadership, particularly charismatic leadership. However, while this observation about challenge and its relationship to leadership has been noted, a deeper theoretical development is still missing. There is no definition for the challenge concept and no discussion about how challenging the status quo is supposed to work. Obviously, challenging the status quo (or resisting a challenge) will take different forms in different situations, but are there common fundamental properties of the acts across situations? We propose that Lewin’s field theory (1935, 1938, 1997) can be used to better understand how challenge (or resisting challenge) to a status quo actually works as a social process. Further, we propose that perception of leadership is based on acts of challenging the status quo (or resisting a challenge.)

What Differentiates Our Approach?

A critical distinction of interest in leadership studies is that between leadership emergence and leadership effectiveness. Emergence focuses on understanding why we might perceive an individual to show up as a leader in the first place. Effectiveness focuses on how an individual already perceived as a leader might better execute in that role. Judge et al. observe the following distinctions between emergence and effectiveness:

 … research on leadership emergence identifies the factors associated with someone being perceived as leaderlike … Thus, leader emergence refers to whether (or to what degree) an individual is viewed as a leader by others, who typically have only limited information about that individual’s performance. In contrast to being perceived as a leader, leadership effectiveness refers to a leader’s performance in influencing and guiding the activities of his or her unit toward achievement of its goals. (Judge et al., 2002, p. 767)

Much of the current leadership literature acknowledges that assuming leadership to be inherent to a role is an attribution error, resulting in a measurement validity problem (Bedeian in Alvesson, 2020; Bavelas, 1960; Bedeian & Hunt, 2006; Pfeffer, 2016). We would contend that empirical studies in organizations searching for leadership in managerial roles are studying influence, not leadership. Moreover, the focus is role effectiveness, not leadership emergence (e.g. Avolio et al., 2009; Burke et al., 2006; Judge & Piccolo, 2004). In these studies the researchers manipulate leadership as the independent variable in various organizational settings in an effort to discern the impact on staff/followers; thus they assume they know what leadership is in the first place. In contrast, we make no assumptions as to the existence of leadership at the outset. Our interest is to shed light on the phenomenon itself: how does leadership emerge in the first place?

Certainly, leadership is about influence, but not all influence is leadership. Individuals are influencing each other all the time without necessarily being perceived as leaders. What kinds of influence uniquely relate to leadership emergence, if any? Our interest and focus in this paper are to introduce a novel way to explore and explain the nature of influence in the leadership emergence process through the application of Lewin’s field theory. Moreover, we show how Lewin’s field approach can be used to empirically study the forces at work in leadership emergence.

Much existing literature sees leadership as intimately connected with change. While we would agree that this is sometimes the case – meaningful challenges to the status quo – we also argue that sometimes leadership is about meaningful resistance to challenges and thus resistance to change.

The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: first, we review the relevant literature. We then draw on Lewin’s field theory to develop our theoretical explanation of how leadership emerges in the perception of others through sustained and meaningful challenge, or resistance to challenge, of the status quo. We provide explanation and examples of the concepts for those who may not be familiar with Lewin as well as a theoretical discussion of two concrete situations (the film ‘12 Angry Men’, and the game of basketball) for illustrative purposes. We follow with a detailed discussion on characteristics of the proposed theory and various associated observations as well as links to concepts in other fields of study, and end with potential avenues for future research and some observations on limitations.

How ‘Challenging the Status Quo' Shows up in the Leadership Literature

Katz and Kahn (1978, p. 528) declared ‘ … we consider the essence of organizational leadership to be the influential increment over and above mechanical compliance with the routine directives of the organization’. There are two implicit issues worth noting. First, the definition has an organizational context as the ‘routine directives of the organization’, implying that leadership must go beyond the habitual patterns of behaviour. Second, the notion of increment suggests there are degrees of influence from the leader towards the followers. The influence may be small, large, or changing at different points in time as the situation requires. Charismatic leaders, for example, are supposed to exert the biggest influence on their followers and possibly achieve the biggest change. Some of the words used in description of charismatic leaders make the point: ‘extraordinary, superhuman’ (Weber, 1922/1978, 1968); ‘exceptionally self-confident, strongly motivated to attain and assert influence, strong conviction in the moral correctness of their beliefs’ (House, 1977; House & Aditya, 1997); ‘vision’ (Bass, 1985; Conger, 1985); and ‘unconventional and/or counter-normative behavior’ (Conger, 1985; Martin & Siehl, 1983). For a comprehensive review of charismatic leadership see Antonakis et al. (2016).

House and Aditya (1997, p. 416) describe the process by which charismatic leaders may achieve the intended change in the following manner:

Since charismatic leaders advocate change and, thus, challenge the status quo, they are likely to be resisted by defenders of status quo who are in positions of substantial power. Also, since social change is difficult to accomplish, a great deal of determination and persistence is required on the part of change agents. The need to overcome these obstacles requires substantial risk-taking and perseverance. Leaders who are motivated to assert and exercise influence are theoretically expected to advocate change and challenge the status quo.

Although the discussion is about charismatic leaders, the last sentence generalizes the notion of challenging the status quo to all leaders. In essence, the quote suggests, leadership is about bringing change and the mechanism is challenging the status quo. We would expand this to also include resisting challenges to the status quo. Levay (2010, p. 127), for example, reports two case studies in which there were charismatic qualities in the leaders and the ‘leaders and followers actually opposed upcoming change and made efforts to preserve the status quo’. Similarly Cuban (1988, p. 194) notes, ‘The teacher or administrator who fights doggedly to maintain what is believed to be precious and imperiled is as much a leader as those who try to change the organizational landscape’.

Conger and Kanungo’s (1987) behavioural theory of charismatic leadership lists 10 ‘behavioral components’ to ‘demystify’ charisma. First item on the list is opposing and changing the status quo. The other items on the list are either directly connected to challenging the status quo (e.g. statements about the future goal, unconventional behaviour) or are inferences by followers as the charismatic leader challenges the status quo (e.g. trustworthiness, likableness). Conger et al. (2000, p. 748) point out that followers perceive managers’ desire to change the status quo: ‘ … managers who are seen as charismatic will therefore be more likely to be perceived as both critics of the status quo and as reformers or agents of radical reform’. Mhatre and Riggio (2014, p. 225) note the relationship between communication of vision and challenging the status quo and the impact on followers: ‘ … . communicating a vision that serves to challenge the status quo leads to perceptions of leader boldness and decisiveness, … ’, and ‘they offer their followers a new purpose and meaning, and inspire them to strive hard to attain their radical vision by denouncing the status quo … ’

There are other perspectives on charisma. For example, Ladkin (2008, p. 33) describes charisma from an aesthetic view in her analysis of a Bobby McFerrin performance in Albert Hall. It is interesting to note simultaneous to being a beautiful performer and involving the audience, the enactments include challenging the status quo: ‘ … purpose was to disrupt us as an audience, to invite us to engage beyond the constraints of conventional performance rituals’, and resisting challenge to the status quo ‘ … . while singing nonsense syllables, a baby in the audience began crying. I wondered whether he would respond in any way, and in a moment he did, working into his improvisation – “the baby's crying”’.

In connection to organizational leadership and in contrast to charismatic leadership literature, March (March & Weil, 2005, pp. 116–118) points out that the importance associated with organizational leadership is an illusion: ‘the contrast between the elementary things that make an organization work and the heroic conceptions of leadership is striking’. He further observes that the importance of leadership is socially constructed by how ‘the procedures and dramas of decision are organized to emphasize the importance of management and managers, to reassure us of the significance of the leaders’.

The dichotomy between not much opportunity for leadership in the context of organizations and a revolutionary leadership that challenges the organization to change it represents two extremes. These extremes were described by Zaleznik (1977) and Kotter (1987, 1990) as two different types of outlooks, goals and behaviours, one belonging to managers and the other to leaders.

What is missing from all this discussion about leadership is the scope of the influence. More specifically, how far does influence travel; the influence may affect one person, a small group, a department, an entire organization, and so on. It is true that organizations are to some degree ‘loosely coupled systems’ (Orton & Weick, 1990; Weick, 1976), with coordination problems among functional units (Safayeni et al., 2008; Safayeni & Purdy, 1991), which constrains the scope of the influence. Nevertheless, people have different degrees of discretion and thus potential influence for each task they perform. For example, professors have a good deal of control over how they choose to teach their courses. James March (March & Weil, 2005) chose to teach a graduate course in leadership at Stanford (1980–1994) by using four classics of literature – Othello by Shakespeare, Saint Joan by Shaw, War and Peace by Tolstoy, and Don Quixote by Cervantes – instead of all the books and journal publications about leadership. The scope of influence in March’s creative approach to teaching leadership was limited mostly to his students; the mainstream thinking and research in leadership was not affected, nor was Stanford University. Leadership acts can happen when an individual has discretion over how they perform the task, and it can happen in various organizational settings (Shamir, 1999). The difference between a ‘charismatic’ leader and a non-charismatic one may be mostly in the scope and magnitude of the influence over a period of time. Organizational settings tend to constrain the situation (e.g. task, role, culture) such that the scope becomes limited. It is worth noting that Elliott Jaques defined organizational work utilizing the concept of discretion as the exercise of judgment and discretion to arrive at decisions to execute tasks, within parameters (Jaques, 1996).

Before we discuss how challenging the status quo, or resisting it, actually works, it is important to recognize that there are four differences between the way we are using the term and the literature. First, the challenge has to be seen as meaningful, which is analogous to Weick’s (1995) notion of ‘sensemaking’, and approved by the recipient. This is important as not all challenges are seen as meaningful or approved. Second, the challenge to status quo has to be sustained over a period of time. That is, a single meaningful challenge will likely not lead to the perception of leadership. Third, in addition to magnitude of influence suggested in the Katz and Kahn (1978) definition, the situation in which the meaningful challenge occurs has boundaries, thus restricting the scope of the influence. Fourth, resisting a challenge to status quo can also be perceived as leadership when it is seen as meaningful and is sustained over a period of time.

How Does Challenging or Resisting Challenge Work?

Leadership is a social phenomenon subjectively perceived and experienced, but also often collectively agreed upon as an objective ‘social fact’ (Durkheim, 1895/1964). For example, most people would likely categorize Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi as leaders. From this, we would expect that we should be able to encounter and explore the phenomenon empirically in social settings, much as we can encounter and explore physical phenomena such as gravity. Different people have different perceptions as to who is a leader, depending on their individual dispositions and psychological situations, but they seem to be observing a common social phenomenon; there are simultaneously positivist and constructivist dimensions. So, while there may be variety and differences of opinion among individuals as to whom they perceive as a leader, we would claim the common phenomenon is that all those perceived as leaders either meaningfully challenge, or resist challenge to, the status quo over a sustained period of time.

The field theory of Kurt Lewin (1935, 1938, 1997) is a useful way of representing social situations. Lewin is the father of social psychology and group dynamics. He applied his field theory to a wide range of topics including (but not limited to) learning, memory, motivation, conflict, problem solving, attitude change, group decision making, organizational change and development, and leadership.

There was a decline in application of Lewin’s theory for a few decades after his death in 1947, partly because of the complexity of his theory, partly because of the popularity of behaviourism, and partly because of lack of currency for the concept of force. But there has been a growing realization of its value since the 1980s (Argyris, 1997; Burnes, 2020; Burnes & Bargal, 2017; Burnes & Cooke, 2013; Coghlan & Brannick, 2003; Dent & Goldberg, 1999; Ross & Nisbett, 2011; Schein, 1996; Snyder, 2009; Snyder, 2013; Stivers & Wheelan, 1986; Swanson & Creed, 2014; Weick & Quinn, 1999). Also, two books have been published on collections of his articles, one by Gold (1999) and one by Lewin (1997). Gold (1999, p. 5) quotes Kleiner and Maguire (1986) who described Lewin as ‘complete psychologist – a theorist, a methodologist and a practitioner’. Gold adds: ‘Lewin is a unique standing model for what a contemporary social scientist can be’.

The basic idea of field theory is that social situations are continuously affected by forces both internal and external to the situation. For example, consider a mother who insists that her son should finish his dinner vegetables before going to his music lesson. The situation can be represented as a force from the mother towards the child and the child’s resistance to eating the vegetables as an opposing force. Together they form the conflict (a tension system), which is intensified by the external force due to the time of the music lesson. Note that adjustments in any of these forces change the dynamics of the situation (e.g. mom says you will finish your vegetables after the music lesson, which temporarily removes the force she was exerting.)

Invariably the definition of leadership acknowledges an influence process (Antonakis & Day, 2017). In field theory, influence is represented as a force within a system of forces. There are two advantages to represent influence as force. First, the force has a specific definition as a vector (similar to physics) with direction, magnitude and point of application (scope). If one were to define influence, the result will be a force (i.e. how big is the influence, where is it coming from and who is it affecting.) Second, field theory represents a social process as a distribution of changing forces and the resulting tensions, thus it avoids static categorical thinking and linguistic traps such as leader vs. follower or messy categories of leadership types (Alvesson & Einola, 2019). For a theoretical discussion of static and dynamic thinking see Safayeni et al. (2005).

What is Status Quo?

According to Lewin (1947, 1997) social systems tend towards a ‘quasi-stationary equilibrium’; the relative stability of these situations is maintained by the forces that participants exert on each other, goal forces and environmental forces (Lewin, 1997). The behaviour of an individual is to be understood as a component in the force field. For example, the behaviour of each member of a family during dinner is part of the pattern of ‘dinner eating behavior’ which has become relatively stable over time as the ‘norm’ for dinner behaviour. This line of thinking is consistent with general system theory (Von Bertalanffy, 1968), cybernetics (Beer, 1972, 1975) and complexity theory (Mitleton-Kelly, 2003; Uhl-Bien & Arena, 2018). For example, in cybernetics ‘quasi-stationary equilibrium’ is called ‘the steady state of the system’ and in complexity theory ‘the adaptive level’.

Katz and Kahn (1978, p. 533) in applying systems thinking to organizations note that:

Many aspects of the relationship of organization to environment are well represented in Lewin’s concept of quasi-stationary equilibrium. It is consistent with Lewin’s exposition of such equilibria that environmental fluctuations of certain kinds and amplitudes are handled by the organization without any change in the organization itself as a system. It absorbs and adjusts to the external change and returns to the previous level of equilibrium. When an environmental change exceeds this amplitude, the organization may nevertheless adjust to it, but it will undergo systemic change itself in the process and a new level of equilibrium will be established with the environment. It is adaptation of such scale which demands invention and creativity beyond the performance of role requirements; it requires leadership of a high order.

In the above quote the perturbations to the status quo are from the environment and could be of a magnitude to modify the equilibrium (e.g. rapid decline in market share). Leadership is seen as the mechanism for resisting the challenge and making a successful adaptation to a new level of equilibrium. The hypothesis of a connection between ‘crisis’ and charismatic leadership is based on a similar idea (Davis & Gardner, 2012; Pillai, 1996).

Challenging the status quo may also come from within the organization as an attempt to change the existing situation of a group, either within the group or in the environment of the group. For example, a person may challenge sexist behaviour in a work group or in an organization like the Canadian military as a whole. Most scholars in organizational behaviour are familiar with Lewin’s model of change. Weick and Quinn (1999, p. 363) point out ‘Lewin's three stages of change – unfreeze, change, and refreeze – continue to be a generic recipe for organizational development’.

Lewin described the process in the following manner:

A successful change includes … three aspects: unfreezing (if necessary) the present level L¹, moving to a new level L², and freezing group life on the new level. Since any level is determined by a force field, permanency implies that the new force field is made relatively secure against change. (Lewin, 1947, p. 35)

It is curious that although leadership theories consider change as the goal of the leader, most theories do not discuss the very process of change as the acts of leadership unfold. On the other hand, researchers in change management often only cite leadership theories with an explicit reference to the change process. For example, By et al. (2016) observe that the most cited leadership theory in the Journal of Change Management was Kotter (1996).

The leadership phenomenon can show up in various ways and at various magnitudes, as perceived by a receptive collective. Key to this is meaningful challenge (or resistance to challenge) to the status quo or system over a sustained period of time. How should we more fully understand this?

We exist in a social reality of human construction and are ‘thrown’¹ into situations, continuously engaged in daily living and involved somehow in activities of concern to us. We experience breakdowns and opportunities in the course of our activities. A meaningful challenge to the status quo or system is a physical or communicative act that takes care of some breakdown or opportunity that is of concern to us that is not being resolved by the prevailing forces in the system or situation (automatic stabilizers, behaviour settings, rules of the game, programmed responses and so on).

In simple situations we may see someone act in a way that resonates for us, restructuring the situation as we perceive it, changing the attractiveness of a particular activity or removing a barrier and thereby inducing in us a psychological force to align and move ourselves towards engaging in that activity (e.g. a great hunter, warrior, politician, or revolutionary whom we perceive challenges the system or status quo, inducing us to act in alignment). In the more complex situations and systems we generally encounter in society, without the attendant opportunity to be in direct contact with those who challenge or, even if in direct contact, to actually see them in action, we often rely on meaningful challenge through language (e.g. speeches, interviews, or other interpersonal interactions that resonate strongly). Others may compel us to follow based on these communicative acts that, again, restructure a situation in our perception and create the perceived potential of a new and better (for us) social reality (e.g. Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream … ’ speech; Winston Churchill’s ‘We shall fight … We shall never surrender’ speech), increasing the attractiveness of potential actions, introducing new opportunities for action, reducing the attractiveness of other actions, or removing barriers to action, and inducing in us forces to act in alignment with their declarations, requests and offers.

Moreover, there seems to be a time element involved. We may be moved significantly by a particular physical or communicative act, but generally, we seem to seek some amount of on-going evidence that our concern(s) will truly be taken care of before fully committing to engage and follow. Thus leadership emergence involves temporal observations of some number of physical and/or communicative acts that meaningfully challenge/resist challenge to the status quo or system. It also involves the temporal acquisition and accumulation of associated legitimate power.²

What is the Relation Between Lewin’s Model of Change and Challenging the Status Quo?

The ‘unfreezing’ happens when the group sees a need for change; Schein (1996) calls the first step of the process ‘disconfirmation of expectations’. This may happen by challenging the status quo, which disturbs the ‘quasi-stationary equilibrium’ by exerting a force. In Lewin’s theory, changing the ‘valence’ of some ‘region of activity’ from positive to negative creates a force field away from that region (Lewin, 1935, 1938). For example, consider a comment like ‘how would you like your mother, daughter, sister, or wife to be treated this way?’ to a group in which sexual comments to women are the norm and considered funny. The act of making the comment is a force in the opposite direction to the group’s behaviour; such acts are considered as ‘workplace courage’ (Detert & Bruno, 2017).

If some members of the group support the objection, then there will be a stronger opposing force towards such behaviour. Obviously, one challenge to the status quo is not likely going to change the attitude of those who are used to having ‘fun’ at somebody else’s expense. But a few challenges to such behaviour, with growing support from other members, may ‘unfreeze’ the activity. In Schein’s (1996) language this is ‘disconfirmation of expectations’ creating ‘guilt or survival anxiety’. ‘Moving’ will require education and group discussions about the behaviour; an understanding that the behaviour is hurtful to others, and that they can be productive members of the group while exercising their sense of humour differently. The ‘refreezing’ will be a new group norm that considers the behaviour as bad and acts as a central force that controls the behaviour of the members.

Two Examples and More Theoretical Discussions

An example of the leadership emergence process is depicted in the movie ‘12 Angry Men’ (1957), with Henry Fonda as a juror who challenges the status quo assessment of the other 11 jurors who are convinced that a young boy, accused of killing his father, is guilty. His first anonymous vote is not guilty, explaining that he feels the jury should discuss the case given that someone’s life is at stake. As the other 11 jurors object, saying that the boy’s guilt is obvious, he suggests another round of voting in which he won’t vote and if all 11 still vote guilty, he will go along with the group’s decision. In this round an old man votes not guilty, explaining that he also thinks there should be a discussion. While the other 10 jurors make statements like ‘what is there to discuss’ and ‘this is a waste of time’, he proposes examining the evidence more carefully.

As Fonda’s character finds holes in the testimony of the two eyewitnesses, some jurors change their vote, and actively participate in the process of examining the evidence. The situation slowly changes to a tense conflict with six votes for guilty and six votes for not guilty. Although everyone is participating in pushing for their side, the person who challenges the status quo more often and more rigorously and the person who resists the challenge most often and most forcefully are seen as the respective leaders.

In Lewin’s field theory, the situation can be represented as six force vectors in the direction of guilty and six force vectors in the opposite direction of not guilty. Each vector represents an individual with different magnitude at a different point in time and the vector with the largest magnitude (on average) as the perceived leader for each side. It is important to recognize that the local context determines who exerts the biggest force at a given point in time. In the movie, for example, the person most familiar with switchblade knives exerts the biggest force as expert power (Cartwright, 1959) when the group is discussing how the stabbing might have happened.

The story progresses by showing how each juror changes his vote to not guilty by accepting a meaningful challenge to what he had previously considered as convincing testimony. It is worth pointing out that the Fonda character who initially voted not guilty and was willing to change his vote if the rest of the group voted guilty becomes again, by the end, forceful (e.g. demanding explanation from other jurors about the logic of their decision to convict). The force he is able to exert is in part due to perception of others about his leadership in challenging the status quo by a sustained logical analysis of the testimonies, and in part due to his accrued power (French & Raven, 1959) given to him by those who now see the boy as not guilty.

The theory is that the perception of his leadership is due to the cumulative effect of the meaningful and successful challenges to the testimonies. One may well ask: how many challenges/resistances are required for perception of leadership to emerge? Obviously, there is no absolute number; the number will vary depending on the local context and how the events are counted. Nevertheless, ‘the law of small numbers’ suggests that we tend to generalize based on a small sample size (Kahneman, 2011). Tajeddin et al. (2012) have shown that a group’s perception of expertise for judgmental tasks happens within 2–3 iterations.

The perception of leadership is direct and based on information revealed or emerging as the dynamics of the situation change. That is, each act of challenging the status quo can be experienced by the group members as a communication that is against the prevailing view and is felt as a tension resulting from the opposing forces in the situation. The notion of direct perception is based on the idea that the information for our perception is directly available in the environment, and it is not necessary to presume complex cognitive mechanisms to account for it (Gibson, 1979, 2014). Gibson uses the concept of ‘affordances’ to account for the differences in individual perception. For example, a kitchen knife is usually used for cutting food, but it has the affordance of being used as a screwdriver if there is a perceived need.

How long do status quos last? Some status quos last for a very long time, particularly when they have a positive valence and become part of the cultural habit (e.g. drinking coffee in North America). On the other hand, the status quos in competitive sports games last a short time. Basketball, for example, is a zero-sum game and the status quo in each round is defined by the score. The team that has the ball challenges the status quo by trying to score, and the team on defence is resisting this challenge by trying to maintain the status quo. Thus, in each round both teams have an opportunity to show some leadership.

Consider the following quote about leadership from Larry Bird, who was an excellent professional basketball player and viewed as the team leader by his teammates and the audience alike: ‘Leadership is diving for a loose ball, getting the crowd involved, getting other players involved. It's being able to take it as well as dish it out. That's the only way you're going to get respect from the players’.

He starts the quote with ‘diving for a loose ball’, an act which is an indication of how hard you are willing to play. In field theoretic terms, it reflects the high valence of the goal of winning, the level of aspiration (Lewin, 1997) and the ‘induced’ forces in the form of expectations from the other players and the audience. Other players get ‘involved’ as his playing hard exerts a force on teammates and sets up the norm of how hard everyone is expected to play. The similarity to Burns definition of leadership is evident: ‘Leadership occurs when persons engage with others in such a way that leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of motivation and morality’ (Burns, 1978, p. 20).

A number of points are worth noting. First, Bird was not seen as a leader the first day he became a professional basketball player; his leadership emerged over a period of time as he consistently played hard and, on average, better than other players. That is, his actions of challenging the status quo (or resisting challenge) were cumulative, ultimately resulting in his reputation as the team leader. Second, challenging the status quo (scoring) and resisting challenge (defending) are distributed among all players. That is, acts of leadership are not centralized in one person – they are distributed within a team game. Third, the meaning of leadership during a basketball game is influencing the outcome more than others by doing more scoring, more defending, more stealing the ball, more assists to other players to score, and so on. At the group level, it is influencing other players by raising the norm for expected level of playing. This is in line with Bass’ definition of leadership (Bass, 1990, pp. 19–20):

Leadership is an interaction between two or more members of a group that often involves structuring or restructuring of the situation and the perceptions and expectations of the members. Leaders are agents of change – persons whose acts affect other people more than other people’s acts affect them. Leadership occurs when one group member modifies the motivation or competencies of others in the group.

Fourth, the magnitude of the challenge or resistance depends on the local context. For example, the last shot that wins the game is of much bigger influence than a shot in the middle of the game while the team is ahead. Fifth, the scope of the influence is limited to the team, other teams, audiences and youngsters who imitated Bird’s style.

A Few Words About Leadership Emergence, Motivation and ‘Life Space’

In both of our examples (‘12 Angry Men’, and basketball), leadership emerged. Leadership emergence has been conceived of as a multi-level, dynamic, temporal process grounded in complexity theory (Acton et al., 2019; Kozlowski et al., 2013). In particular, the emergent process is seen to be characterized by three things: (i) it comprises individuals who coalesce to form a group, (ii) it involves dynamic interaction in the form of information exchange among the group members, and (iii) it unfolds over time. What has been identified as still missing and been further called for in the literature are (i) a deeper understanding of the precipitating situational context within which the process unfolds, beyond the notion of ‘being embedded within greater social networks’ and (ii) an in-depth, revealing exploration, description and explanation specifically of the dynamics of the leadership emergence process itself, beyond a strong linkage to general complexity theory and emergence concepts (Acton et al., 2019).

Our discussion indicates that Lewin’s field theory is useful in gaining insight into the emergence process. Members of the group see leadership emerge when either the status quo is challenged in a meaningful way (as a force against the status quo) or challenge is resisted in a meaningful way (as a force against a threat to the status quo). Both types of actions need to be sustained to gain momentum (support from other group members) thus resulting in a force and movement in a different direction. The group situation is a force field with forces from within the group and the environment of the group. The perceived emerged leader is the one who exerts the biggest force in either challenging the status quo or resisting a challenge to the status quo.

What is a group norm? It is a force for regulating the behaviour of the group as to what is acceptable behaviour and what is not. Lewin explains:

An individual P may differ in his personal level of conduct (L^P) from the level which represents group standards (L^Gr) by a certain amount n (|L^Gr – L^P| = n). Such a difference is permitted or encouraged in different cultures to different degrees. If the individual should try to diverge “too much” from the group standards he will find himself in increasing difficulties. He will be ridiculed, treated severely and finally ousted from the group. Most individuals, therefore, stay pretty close to the standard of the groups they belong to or wish to belong to.

‘In other words: the group level is not merely a level of equilibrium resulting from whatever forces … the circumstances provide. Frequently this level itself acquires a value. It becomes a positive valence corresponding to a central force field with the force f_P,L keeping the individual in line with the standards of the group’. (Lewin, 1947, p. 1(1), p.33)

The leader affects the group norms by challenging them or protecting them against a challenge. The relationship is reciprocal, that is, the group norms affect who emerges as the leader (Schein, 2010). For example, in the classic studies of a boys’ camp Sherif and Sherif (1969) reported that one boy who had been a relatively low-status bully in the group formation phase rose to the status of leader during the intergroup competition phase. Note that as the environment of the group changed, the norm for needed leadership changed to someone aggressive, thus making the bully the leader. In addition to group norms, the group situation needs to be analysed with respect to its goals, degree of role homogeneity, the task dependency of its members, and the environmental forces that are acting on it.

Most challenges to status quo are likely to happen during the ‘unfreezing’ stage of the change process, as opposed to the ‘moving’ or the ‘refreezing’ stage. Thus, the perception of leadership is most likely to emerge during this stage. The person who exerts force repeatedly and more than others to meaningfully challenge the status quo is most likely to be seen as the emergent leader. The same logic applies to resisting a challenge to status quo by exerting a force to maintain the status quo. Three points are worth noting. First, the process of challenging the status quo or resisting a challenge through exertion of a force can potentially result in a social conflict within the group. If over time the interactions related to the resolution of the conflict result in favour of the challenger (or resister), then the person will be perceived as the leader. That is, a sufficient number of group members exert a force in a similar direction by indicating their approval and extending the relevant arguments in favour of the position. Second, although the perception of leadership acts happens during the ‘unfreezing’, this does not mean there will not be a need for leadership in the ‘moving’ and ‘refreezing’ stages. However, the required leadership will be more in the form of effectiveness in planning, coordinating, learning, adjusting, and finally stabilizing as opposed to exerting a force in the opposite direction. Third, the process of change in Lewin’s model is not a simple linear model when considered within the context of field theory. For an excellent explanation and discussion, see various articles by Burnes (e.g. Burnes, 2004, 2020).

We argue that Lewin’s field theory provides the theoretical foundation for addressing the concerns raised for a deeper understanding of leadership emergence (Acton et al., 2019).

To answer questions at the individual level, particularly what is meaningful to a person and the person’s motivation including the leader, we have to consider Lewin’s topological representation of the person’s situation.

Lewin used topology to represent the cognitive structure of a person’s immediate psychological situation, which he called ‘life space’ (Lewin, 1935, 1938, 1997). Life space is composed of ‘regions of activity’, ‘goals’ and ‘paths’ (i.e. connection between regions of activity leading to the goal). For example, if someone wants to have a cup of tea (goal), the person’s path may be going through the region of activity of boiling water, then the region of activity of getting a cup and a tea bag, then the region of activity of pouring the boiled water into the cup, and arriving at the goal region of drinking the tea. The movement through the regions of activity in the life space is called ‘locomotion’.

Each region of activity has either a positive or a negative valence; a positive valence sets up a force field towards the region (e.g. desire for tea), and a negative valence sets up a force away from the region (e.g. having to go to the store to buy tea bags to make the tea). In addition to the forces due to valence for a region of activity, there are forces from the environment that Lewin called ‘induced’ forces. The induced force can be from the physical environment (e.g. a table forces a person to go around it), from another person (e.g. ‘let’s go for coffee’), at the level of the group as a norm (e.g. greeting manners), and at the level of the culture (e.g. how to behave as a passenger on a bus).

One way in which a person may find a challenge to status quo meaningful is by seeing a positive valence in it. This may happen more easily if the person already sees the status quo having a negative valence. On the other hand, if the person sees a positive valence in the status quo, then the person is more ready to resist the challenge, at least initially. Meaningfulness, which we referred to as analogous to Weick’s sense making (1995), becomes more complicated as we consider how a person views the challenge’s goal, the path to the goal, the obstacles on the way, and the valences associated with each region of activity in their life space. For example, a single mom may see the goal of increase in pay as having a positive valence, thus a force towards the goal. But she may see a walkout strike (the path to the goal) as having a large negative valence (i.e. reduction in pay during the strike) because of her financial situation, thus a force (stronger than the force towards the goal) against moving towards the goal. Note that the person understands the situation and agrees with the goal, but it is not ‘meaningful’ or it ‘doesn’t make sense’ to her to take the risk. More accurately, she is not motivated.

Lewin’s theory explains motivation as the total forces that are acting on the person. More specifically, a person’s motivation at a given point in time is equal to the sum of forces towards the goal minus the sum of the forces away from the goal. One may well ask about the goal of the leader, how it changes in the process of interactions within the force field of the group and the environmental forces. We have discussed the conditions that lead to perception of leadership. It is equally important to consider what conditions remove the leadership status. What are the forces (expectations) that the group exerts on the leader? Further, it is possible to ask questions about the life space of the leader (e.g. What is the path to the goal? What are the valences associated with each region of activity? And how does the path change over time?)

Shamir et al. (1993) proposed a motivational theory based on identity in response to the lack of adequate explanation of the motivational effects of charismatic leadership and how they may increase motivation of the employees. The attempt to increase an employee’s motivation, in Lewin’s theory, will be either in increasing the positive valence of the goal, decreasing the negative valence of the regions of the activity on the path, or by changes in the induced forces. One way motivational force may increase is by connecting the valence of the person’s task to the valence of a broader context with a higher positive valence such as ideology, history and so on (Shamir et al., 1993). For example, a health care worker who takes routine measures of a patient’s vital signs may see a higher valence attached to the activity if it is connected to the broader goal of saving lives. How long such connections last is an interesting theoretical and empirical question.

Discussion

The proposed theory has the following characteristics.

1. Status quos are self-regulated recurring social systems, regardless of the level of analysis, which have some degree of regularity or pattern to the activity of its members. Lewin called the pattern ‘quasi-stationary equilibrium’, which is maintained by the forces internal and external for a given situation, particularly social norms. The ‘quasi-stationary equilibrium’ is called ‘the steady state of the system’ in cybernetics (Ashby, 1956; Beer, 1972, 1975), and ‘adaptive level’ in complexity theory (Mitleton-Kelly, 2003; Uhl-Bien & Arena, 2018)

2. Social change requires perturbations or challenges to the status quo, which may be initiated from within the social unit or from its environment. In either case, the system is in a state of tension between conflicting forces including individual preferences, norms, and environmental forces.

3. There are two possible responses to the perturbing forces: adjustment in the direction of the perturbing forces, or resistance. The term ‘unfreezing’ is used when the members of the social unit see a positive valence associated with the change, even if not initially, over time. The term ‘resistance to change’ is used when the group sees a negative valence in the proposed change or there are restraining forces in the culture (Schein, 2010).

4. Each individual is represented as a force with magnitude, direction and point of application (scope). Each individual’s force affects the force field and is affected by the force field, what Weick (1995) calls the ‘enacted environment’. The person who exerts the largest force (influence), either to cause unfreezing or to maintain the status quo, emerges as the leader, if the actions are sustained and viewed as meaningful (exertion of force in the same direction) with respect to a particular goal.

5. The power of the perceived leader is proportional to the degree of support from the members (i.e. the individual member forces pointing in the same direction); increase in support results in the potential for exerting a larger force and vice versa. The main sources of the power are ‘expert power’ and ‘referent power’ (French & Raven, 1959).

6. Exertion of force is not unique to the perceived leader; any member of the group is part of the force field and can exert a force at a given point in time, the basic premise of shared leadership (Bergman et al., 2012; Carson et al., 2007; Hoch, 2013). The exertion of force is a communication. The ‘meaningfulness’ of the act (message) depends on the local context, the intent of the act, and the psychological situation of the recipient(s).

7. Each individual’s situation can be examined by the properties of their ‘life space’, which includes their cognitive structure of the immediate situation, the forces due to valences associated with various ‘regions of activity’ including goals, group norms and the environmental forces acting on the person.

8. Pre-requisite to an act of leadership is perception of discretion in the performance of the task in a given social situation.

The idea of perception of leadership based on forces pointing in the same direction while one person exerts a larger force (on average) than others is one possible distribution of forces. In shared leadership, the assumption is based on democracy or the equality of these forces (Bergman et al., 2012; Carson et al., 2007; Hoch, 2013). If the forces are kept equal, then there can be no perception or emergence of leadership of one person; the leadership has to be attributed to the ‘team’ as a whole. Note that the distribution of forces in our theory appears in conflict with shared leadership. Since the forces can vary in magnitude, scope and direction, the number of possible distributions of forces in a social situation is enormous. The question is: what is the probability of having a distribution of equal forces vs. one person exerting a larger force (on average) than others do as a social situation unfolds?

In both of our examples (the game of basketball and the movie ‘12 Angry Men’) the situations start with the possibility of everyone exerting an equal amount of force, but uneven distributions develop. The main reason for the unevenness is the difference in the expertise of individuals (e.g. some players play basketball better than other players) which changes the distribution of forces over time, thus making the emergence and perception of a ‘leader’ a possible outcome.

The equal footing of the players in the game of basketball or the jury situation is seldom the case in organizations with the hierarchy of authority and responsibility. Managers in the formal hierarchical situation of business organizations have coercive power (institutionally conferred on them) and may or may not have expert power and/or referent power (accrued personally). Further, managers are typically caught between conflicting expectations from above and below (e.g. higher management wants a project to be completed faster than what the team considers reasonable). Nevertheless, there may be opportunity for challenging the status quo or resisting challenge from the environment of the group, thus a perception of leadership in a role. For example, consider an experienced engineer as the manager of a team for the design of the next iteration of the brake system for a new car model. The individual may be viewed as a leader if he demonstrates expert power by challenging the proposed designs and over time establishes the norm of ‘carefulness’ in the design process. He may also resist challenge to this norm by telling higher management that if they want the design to be completed faster, they should take responsibility for possible recalls and lawsuits in writing, which gives him referent power in the team. It is worth noting that the behaviour of the manager is connected to the ‘purpose’ (By, 2021) of engineering as a profession.

An analogy can be drawn here with the concept of entropy in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, measured through probability distributions and statistical disorder. Isolated systems tend to migrate to a ‘disordered’ state, since the possible number of these states is much larger than that of specific ‘ordered’ states (much like the probability of being dealt a specifically-defined hand in poker, such as a straight, a flush, or a full house, is much less than that of receiving a hand of random cards). In our description of leadership emergence, we would contend that the probability of a relatively equal distribution of social forces emerging and being sustained – manifested in shared leadership – may be significantly less than these forces manifesting in a particular individual or individuals, as a function of the specific capabilities and/or perceptions of those individuals to challenge or resist challenge to the status quo in a given situation. Such an individual or individuals will also accrue non-coercive power in the process of repeatedly challenging, or resisting challenge to, the status quo. Over time, the accrual of this power may acquire a valence in and of itself (similar to the valence afforded by a group norm), thereby rendering an individual (or individuals) ‘the leader’ without having to continually challenge or resist challenges.

Thus the phenomenon of ‘leadership’ can be seen as meaningful challenge or resistance to challenge of the status quo over a sustained period of time – the positivist dimension of the phenomenon – while the term ‘leader’ might be attributed to an individual or individuals who is/are seen to be manifesting these behaviours in the eyes of a receptive collective and who accrue non-coercive power in the process of doing so – the interpretative dimension. People will be perceiving a common social phenomenon, but each person will have their own perceptions as to who is a leader based on their subjective interpretations of that phenomenon, dependent on what is meaningful to them. Individuals might be perceived entitatively to be leaders based on sustained challenge to the status quo or sustained resistance to challenge, coupled with accumulation of non-coercive power, or this might show up in a more shared, distributed, or relational way.

A number of elements in our theory can be linked to concepts in various other fields of study. These linkages provide additional interesting perspectives and insights that may contribute to further understanding the leadership phenomenon. Some examples are given below.

Paradigm shifts – Thomas Kuhn argued in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Kuhn, 1962/1970) that the history and advancement of science is comprised of revolutions in which the prevailing world view is challenged and ultimately overthrown by new theoretical or methodological approaches that take care of the concerns of the scientific collective who are dissatisfied with the ability of the current state of the field to deal with existing intellectual challenges. Kuhn called these new approaches new ‘paradigms’. Over time, a new paradigm becomes ‘normal science’, i.e. the new paradigm becomes the system, and scientists operate within this new paradigm, and refine and tweak it, until it no longer meets the emerging intellectual challenges and is itself displaced. Thus Aristotelian physics was displaced by Newtonian mechanics which was in turn displaced by relativistic and quantum mechanics. At its most significant, leadership is about paradigm shifts, whether leadership in science, literature, music, politics and so on – meaningfully challenging entire systems and creating a new social reality that shifts the behavioural forces of a large collective. People then operate over time within the new system in a new quasi-stationary equilibrium – cf. normal science – with smaller magnitude challenges to the status quo a feature of the new system.

Complexity and causality – Consider again the game of professional basketball. There are 10 players (5 in each team); if we assume each player can be in one of two possible states at a given moment (in reality the number is much higher), the number of possible states in the system is 2 to the power of 10 or 1024. The number of possible states is too many to execute an exact plan; thus it is reasonable to talk about unpredictability, and self-organization as the emergent property of the complex system. Here self-organizing means simultaneous ad hoc decisions by each player based on years of learning and practice for generating interdependent offensive and defensive patterns based on the state of the perceived situation and a predictive model of what is likely to happen if a particular action is taken, given the momentary configuration of the players. There are heuristics such as ‘hit the open player’ or set plays like ‘pick and roll’; nevertheless, what emerges as an offensive pattern depends on the defensive pattern and vice versa.

It is difficult to give a causal reason for a successful shot that one player makes because it could have been the result of a good pass, which could have been because of another player’s actions and so on. That is, causality is in the pattern, not in an individual. Note that logical analysis of causality is different from perception of causality. Perception of causality (Heider, 1958) is based on how the person sees the situation. For example, the tendency for perception of ‘figure-ground’ may make the audience see the shooter as the figure and the pattern of the remaining players as background, thus attributing the successful shot to the shooter as opposed to the complex pattern for all 10 players. In our theory, we acknowledge the existence of the pattern as well as the potential contribution of one individual in moving the team towards a common goal. That is, challenging a status quo (or resisting) is one force in the context of all other forces that are acting on the situation.

Potential Avenues for Future Research

Two concepts for representing system complexity are relevant to our discussion: structural properties of networks (Bavelas, 1950), and Ashby’s law of requisite variety (Ashby, 1956). Bavelas (a student of Lewin) mathematically analysed communication network structures (pattern of connectivity) for a group of 5 and experimentally demonstrated that the network structure affects the performance and the morale of the group working on a task with a common goal. Beer (1994) proposed that for larger groups the geometric structure of icosahedron (for 30 people) has similar properties to Bavelas’s ‘circle’ network, where the structure leads to better morale and handling of complexity. The point is that the structural properties of the network play an important role in the emergent properties of the system. In the game of basketball, given the number of possible patterns, it is difficult to determine the structure of the network. Nevertheless, it is possible to estimate, for example, the ‘centrality’ of a player in an offensive pattern by how often each player has the ball during the game. There may be a correlation between such a measure and perception of leadership, lending to investigative research.

Ashby’s law of requisite variety (1956) states, ‘Only variety can destroy variety’. Variety refers to the number of possible states, and the law provides the limitations of control or regulation of the outcome in any complex system. For example, when driving a car in a city one outcome of interest is to avoid an accident as environmental varieties are encountered (e.g. a car moves to your lane, a pedestrian crosses the street and so on). These varieties are handled (destroyed) by the skill of driver (requisite variety). If the environmental variety is greater than variety in skill of the driver (e.g. driving in a large city where drivers do not follow the rules), then the system may go out of control, thus a possible accident. Beer (1972, 1975) has used Ashby’s law in conceptualizing organizations as systems, Scala et al. (2006) have applied it to manufacturing flexibility, Safayeni et al. (2008) for studying new product introduction, Mitleton-Kelly (2003) for ‘exploration-of-the-space-of – possibilities’ in complexity theory, and Ford et al. (2021) to leadership in change management.

The concept of ‘variety’ at the individual level corresponds to expert power. To say someone has expertise for a given task means the person has a high level of requisite variety or a large ‘repertoire of responses’ (Ford et al., 2021). In the context of basketball, the player that stands out is the one who generates team and individual offensive variety that the other team cannot handle, thus resulting in scoring, and on the defensive side generating requisite variety to destroy the opponent’s patterns of attack.

Note that the basic notion of meaningfully challenging the status quo (or resisting) that we call expert power is replaceable by the concept of variety generating/handling capability of an individual. This raises the question whether it is possible to express our theory of perception of leadership using system concepts only – another opportunity for further research. Fundamental to all leadership definitions and our theory is the idea of influence, which is represented as a force in field theory. It turns out that representing influence mechanisms in social network theories is a challenge (Valente & Pitts, 2017). It will be even more challenging to represent social norms.

Both complexity theory and field theory agree that social and organizational situations are dynamic processes with respect to which individual behaviours must be understood. Each approach has its strength, and the choice of the approach should depend on the purpose of the application. Concepts of network structure and Ashby’s law more easily lend themselves to mathematical analysis and computer simulations, whereas field theory makes it easier to represent psychological concepts (e.g. influence, norm, power). The two approaches are complementary. Burnes (2021, p. 321) discusses the similarity between Lewin’s concept of ‘quasi-stationary equilibrium’ and notion of ‘order-disorder’ in complexity theory with the following conclusion:

Nevertheless, given the democratic, self-organizing and group-based nature of Lewin’s approach, if organizations wish to move forward by adopting a complexity approach, they may find themselves having to return to the work of Kurt Lewin in order to do so: very much a case of “back to the future”.

The theory that perception of leadership is directly related to either a sustained, meaningful challenge to the status quo or a sustained, meaningful resistance to challenge has several elements which can be empirically tested. Specific hypotheses can be formulated on the relationship between perception of leadership and the magnitude, the scope, and the frequency of the challenge or resistance to challenge. These variables lend themselves to both experimental and qualitative studies.

For example, we conducted an experiment to test the following hypothesis: ‘There is a direct relationship between the magnitude of the force in challenges to status quo and the perception of leadership’. The experimental results provisionally confirmed the hypothesis. We also conducted a qualitative study to test the hypothesis that individuals who are asked to recount in some detail specific acts of leadership they have experienced will share the unique common thread of perceiving another individual (or individuals) meaningfully challenging the status quo with respect to an issue of concern to them over a sustained period, or meaningfully resisting challenges to the status quo. And again, our hypothesis was provisionally confirmed in the study.

Replications of these kinds of studies would serve to further support our theory. As well, other opportunities for research come to mind. For example, in our experiment we used a speech as the stimulus to meaningfully challenge the status quo – a communicative act of challenge. It would be interesting to test whether communicative acts of meaningful challenge or resistance are instrumentally equal in strength to physical acts in perceptions of leadership emergence, or whether there is a difference, perhaps depending on the situation. In addition, what might be the impact of a combination of communicative and physical acts as compared to either one or the other alone? We would expect myriad opportunities for other hypotheses and studies to present themselves to creative researchers.

Some Observations on Limitations

In applying the concepts of force and vectors using Lewin’s field theory approach it might reasonably be asked how one would measure the strength of the forces in the field, can they be standardized to facilitate addition and subtraction and, indeed, what precisely is meant by the notion of force in this context?

The concept of force here refers to the psychological force induced by an individual or the environment on another individual in a particular situation. For example, if you are following someone into a building and that person holds open the entrance door for you while you are a number of steps away, you may very well feel compelled to speed up your pace to reach the door. The other person’s action has induced in you a psychological force that manifests in an observable behaviour. Similarly, in the jury situation in ‘12 Angry Men’, Henry Fonda’s character induced a psychological force in the elderly juror in the early jury deliberations through his sustained challenges to the ‘guilty’ status quo that were meaningful to that juror. That psychological force in turn manifested itself in a behaviour in the form of a changed vote by that juror, from ‘guilty’ to ‘not guilty’. This pattern was then repeated by different combinations of jurors over time until all voted ‘not guilty’. And though there seems no clear way to formally measure and standardize the various psychological forces, it would seem reasonable and useful to conceptualize that forces of some kind were indeed at play and behaviours changed as a consequence.

Another limitation that may be advanced is that Lewin’s 3-stage model perhaps is insufficient to capture the complexity of the leadership emergence process. We hope that our detailed discussion and mapping to more recent process approaches above has shed some additional light on the depth we perceive in Lewin’s model and its ability to help us conceptualize the process. We would note that others have also commented on this, e.g. Burnes, 2020, p. 49: ‘It is the conventional representation of Lewin’s model that is simplistic … [there is an] iterative nature of the three processes … and … key underlying elements of the entire model’. As the statistician George Box observed, ‘Essentially all models are wrong, but some are useful’.

Thus Lewin offers a way of formalizing leadership emergence processes that makes it easier to represent psychological concepts such as influence and power. And while such a formalization offers new challenges such as the complexity of identifying, measuring, and analyzing the interaction of myriad forces in a social situation, it does offer the benefit of conceptual clarity and simplicity and a reasonable explanation of how leadership emerges in social situations. As such it can complement other existing thoughtful approaches to the process of leadership emergence.

Conclusion

Lewin’s field theory is a useful way of thinking about social situations including leadership. Leadership is a component in a social situation in which there are forces from the members of the group and from the environment of the group. Challenge to the status quo can come from the environment or from within the group. When environmental forces challenge a status quo with a perceived positive valence and begin to ‘unfreeze’ the group’s ‘quasi-stationary equilibrium’, perception of leadership corresponds to someone who exerts a force and causes others to exert a similar force to restore the situation. On the other hand, perception of leadership may come from within the group when someone challenges the status quo (a force against some group norms) within the group, ‘unfreezes’ the equilibrium, and over time causes others to exert a similar force to bring about change and establish new group norms.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The German existential philosopher Martin Heidegger argued that human beings are always involved practically with on-going concerns in the world, interacting with other people and with inanimate objects, and primarily doing so unreflectively, rather than engaging in detached contemplation. He uses the example of hammering. If we want to hammer nails when building something we generally don’t stare at and contemplate the hammer – we just go to work hammering nails. Heidegger called this human condition ‘thrownness’ – we are always ‘thrown’ into the world. (ref. Heidegger, 1962; Bakewell, 2016; Winograd & Flores, 1987)

2 As French and Raven observe: ‘It is assumed that O is capable of various acts which, because of some more or less enduring relation to P, are able to exert influence on P. O’s power is measured by his maximum possible influence, though he may often choose to exert less than his full power … The concept of power has the conceptual property of potentiality; but it seems useful to restrict this potential influence to more or less enduring power relations between O and P by excluding from the definition of power those cases where the potential influence is so momentary or so changing that it cannot be predicted from the existing relationship. Power is a useful concept for describing social structure only if it has a certain stability over time; it is useless if every momentary social stimulus is viewed as actualizing social power’. (Cartwright, 1959, p. 152)