Conceptualizing leadership with respect to its historical-contextual antecedent to power

An attempt is made here to build on the ideas and arguments presented in a recent Leadership Quarterly journal article written by Hunt and Dodge (2000). In their article, it is argued that contemporary leadership researchers tend to neglect the historical-contextual antecedents of the field and as a result are developing many theories that reflect little more than a form of academic amnesia and leadership deja vu. The importance of Hunt and Dodge's argument is reinforced through the use here of a form of deconstruction to reveal a lacuna in the leadership literature - the insufficient coverage of power, particularly at what is termed a deep structural level. A new conceptual framework is proposed that begins to address these problems and in so doing provides ideas and challenges for future research in the field.