Running head: EMERGING LEADERSHIP IN DISTANCE EDUCATION

Emergent Leadership in Distance Education:

Benefits and Applications
Apostolos Koutropoulos
Athabasca University

EDDE 804 - Assignment 1

February 7, 2016
Emergent Leadership in Distance Education: Benefits and Applications

EMERGING LEADERSHIP IN DISTANCE EDUCATION

Whenever two or more people come together to accomplish a joint goal, leadership is an
indispensable part of that equation. Whether its a small entrepreneurial team working on their
first product, or an institution of higher education that has existed for centuries, effective
leadership is needed in order for these entities to continue to exist and thrive. This is even truer
today where the speed of social changes and technological innovations is accelerating, changing
the landscape in which higher education operates, and to which it responds.
Leadership is an important construct, but what is leadership? Yoo & Alavi (2004) cite Yukl
(1998) who defines leadership as an influence that is exerted over others in order to guide,
structure, and facilitate the relationships of those in the group. Hogg et al (2005) go a step
further, beyond influencing individuals in a group to accomplish certain tasks, and they suggest
that leadership is also about influencing others to adopt as their own the values, attitudes, and
goals of that leader. Finally, Uhl-Bien (2003) distinguishes between management and leadership
by explaining that managers influence employees to comply with directives, however leaders
influence employees, and one might add inspire employees, to act in manners that are not
affiliated or connected with their formal roles in the organization.
This paper briefly examines a small set competing theories of leadership, and compares
those with the theory of emerging leadership. In this paper, emerging leadership is viewed
through the lens of higher education distance education in an increasingly globalized world.
The Leadership Field
There is certainly no lack of leadership theories available to explain what leadership is.
Avolio, Walumbwa, and Weber (2009) provide us with a survey of various leadership theories.
Among the leadership theories that they describe are Authentic Leadership, Transactional
Leadership, Transformational Leadership, Ethical Leadership, Complexity Leadership, and
eLeadership. Uhl-Bien (2003) also introduces us to Leader Member Exchange (LMX). While
these are not the only leadership theories that seek to explain the work of the leader, they do

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show the diversity of research on leadership, and the different aspects of leadership that get
uncovered through additional research.
Avolio et al (2009), for example, define Authentic Leadership as a pattern of transparent
and ethical leader behavior that encourages openness in sharing information needed to make
decisions while accepting followers inputs (p. 423). Related to this definition, I would argue is
the definition of Ethical Leadership which they define as the demonstration of normatively
appropriate conduct through personal actions and interpersonal relationships, and the promotion
of such conduct to followers (p. 424). Ethics and openness are issues that could be considered
personal stances, ones own view of whats important in a human being transposed into what
leaders should be.
Some leadership theories may be seen as dyadic and opposites of one another. For example,
Avolio et al (2009) define Transactional Leadership as leadership largely based on the exchange
of rewards contingent on performance (p. 427) and Transformational Leadership as leader
behaviors that transform and inspire followers to perform beyond expectations while
transcending self-interest for the good of the organization (p. 423). Transactional leadership
could be considered by Yukl (1998, as cited in Yoo & Alavi, 2004) and Hogg et al (2005) as a
leadership theory because a quid pro quo approach could be viewed as providing a means of
influence over individuals. However, such an approach potentially lacks the transcending
qualities that Uhl-Bien (2003) considers as an important characteristic of leadership.
Finally, there are leadership theories that seem to build on previous theories. Leader
Member Exchange (LMX) for example that considers the high-quality or low-quality
relationships that leaders build with their followers, and how that relationship impacts leadership
(Uhl-Bien, 2003); and eLeadership which seems to take a techno-centric approach to leadership
in that it is leadership where individuals or groups are geographically dispersed and interactions
are mediated by technology (Avolio et al, 2009, p. 440).

EMERGING LEADERSHIP IN DISTANCE EDUCATION

Some leadership theories may just take a trait-based approach and look at the traits of
people who are leaders and people who are followers. More complex ways of looking at
leadership include examining the traits of followers and the environments where leaders and
followers interact. As Kean, Haycock-Stuart, Baggaley, and Carson (2011) write, traditional
studies of leadership take a leader-centric perspective in which followers are recipients of
leadership. However, leadership does not occur in a vacuum and environmental forces, including
followers views, perceptions, and values, influence how successful a leader can be.
Emerging Leadership
Emergent leadership is when a member, or members, of a group emerge into a leader role
without having been conferred that role by some external entity. This is a theory of leadership
that exists on a continuum with other theories of leadership, however it may be considered a
superior theory of leadership because it is versatile enough to be used in many different contexts,
and within it one might find elements of other leadership theories. In emerging leadership the
leader, or leaders, emerge organically in a group setting. Misiolek and Heckman (2005) found
that in virtual teams the patterns of emergence showed teams that were leaderless, teams where a
single leader emerged, and teams where different leaders emerged. Because the leadership
functions emerge from the needs of the group, within their given environment, emergent
leadership may take on the characteristics described in other leadership theories such as
distributed leadership, or servant leadership for example. Misiolek and Heckman (2005) describe
the continuum as going from strong to weak leadership, where one end of the spectrum (strong
leadership) is centralized leadership, and the other is more distributed.
Another reason why emergent leadership is potentially a better way to approach the
examination of leadership because it encompasses both the actions that leaders take, and the

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environment in which they operate. Its not just about the actions of the leader, but about the
group, the environment, the relationships, interactions, and various roles taken by the group
members and leaders. Beck (1981), for example, provides us with leadership roles within a faceto-face therapy group, while Misiolek and Heckman (2005) give us examples of leadership roles
within a virtual group that is supported by CMC.
Citing Bass (1990), Kickul and Neuman describe an emergent leader as someone whose
actions, skills, and attitudes provide conditions that will promote the movement toward
accomplishment of goals and objectives, increase members' freedom and acceptance, and assist
in developing a cohesive team (2000, p. 28). While leaders may initiate communication on task
process communication (Misiolek & Heckman, 2005), they may not embody a lot of different
roles in a team. Carte, Chidambaram, and Becker (2006), for example, find in their study that
while producer behaviors of the team were concentrated, the monitor behaviors (checking for
errors) were shared amongst team members and not given to the leader. Yoo & Alavi (2004) also
indicate that leaders play more of an integrator role in the team, putting the pieces of the final
product together for the team. Thus a leader isnt the team boss, but someone who helps move
the team forward.
Conclusions
The issue of leadership is a complex one. There is no single theory that explains all aspects
of leadership, and there are no optimal training programs that will enable one to be a successful
leader. Emergent leadership, however, is one view of leadership which is currently better than
others in the context of higher education. Research on leadership does indicate that there are
roles that leaders embody, however those roles do not need to be assigned to the leader, and more
than one individual within a working group can execute those roles. In higher education there are

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many individuals who are experts in their own fields, however they are not all experts in
everything. Being able to emerge into specific roles within the team, when it is beneficial for that
team, is an important aspect of emergent leaders. Emergent leadership may explain the benefits
of cMOOCs for example, while xMOOCs who seem to rely more on the Great Man narrative
have been more the focus of harsh critique in educational circles.
Finally, emergent leadership is also more encompassing compared to other theories of
leadership. It considers leaders and followers, and the relationships between them. Emergent
leadership can pull inspiration from, among other things, distributed, complex, servant, or
transformational leadership depending on the context. Unlike theories such as eLeadership,
emergent leadership is not dependent on the distributed nature of the team and CMC in order for
it to be useful. Emergent leadership can explain leadership in both localized and distributed
contexts. In the academe, still viewed primarily as composed of bricks and mortar institutions but
keeping a gaze toward online, distance, and distributed, these qualities make emergent leadership
an important and relevant leadership theory.
References
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