Leadership: It’s pretty simple… by itself

Speaker: Dr. Marc Hurwitz, Assistant Professor in the School of Business and Economics at Wilfrid Laurier University and President of Flipskills Consulting
Title: Leadership: It’s pretty simple… by itself
Date: Tuesday, April 16th, 2013
Category: Seminar

Abstract:

The study of leadership dates back to the earliest records of human endeavour – the Iliad and the stories of Gilgamesh are in large part leadership fables. Early studies of leadership focused on the traits of great leaders, or sometimes the tactics of great leaders. This was extended in the 20th century to include leadership behaviours as well as situational contingencies. Unfortunately, all this approaches have failed to produce successful theories of leadership.

In this talk I’ll explore how leadership, considered as an in situ role in group dynamics, leads to unsatisfactory models that explain or predict only the smallest part of group behaviours and outcomes. Next, we’ll consider a more robust approach that naturally leads us to complexity theory, and how this requires a different way of theorizing and researching question of ‘leadership’.

Speaker Biography:

Marc Hurwitz is Assistant Professor of Organizational Behaviour in the WLU Business School. He co-founded and runs a consulting firm which trains on innovation, leadership, followership, and partnerships. Prior to WLU, Marc worked for many years in private industry in HR, marketing, training, and actuarial departments. He has a PhD from U. Waterloo in cognitive neuroscience, master’s degrees in Math (U. Guelph) and Physics (McMaster U.), and an MBA (WLU).