2024/01/16 by S. Alexander Haslam, Mats Alvesson, Stephen D. Reicher +1 · 2 voices · 85 citations
Business, Management and Accounting · Psychology · #Computer science #Job Satisfaction and Organizational Behavior #Leadership, Courage, and Heroism Studies #Management and Organizational Studies #Media studies #Political science #Public relations #Set (abstract data type) #Sociology #Transactional leadership #Zombie
paper · doi:10.1016/j.leaqua.2023.101770
published in The Leadership Quarterly 35(3), 101770 (Elsevier BV)
openalex publication_date 2024/01/16 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/02
Considerable progress has been made in the field of leadership in recent years. However, we argue that this is undermined by a strong residual commitment to an older set of ideas which have been repeatedly debunked but which nevertheless resolutely refuse to die. These, we term zombie leadership. Zombie leadership lives on not because it has empirical support but because it flatters and appeals to elites, to the leadership industrial complex that supports them, and also to the anxieties of ordinary people in a world seemingly beyond their control. It is propagated in everyday discourse surrounding leadership but also by the media, popular books, consultants, HR practices, policy makers, and academics who are adept at catering to the tastes of the powerful and telling them what they like to hear. This review paper outlines eight core claims (axioms) of zombie leadership. As well as isolating the problematic metatheory which holds these ideas together, we reflect on ways in which they might finally be laid to rest.