Traditional, hierarchical views of leadership are
less and less useful given the complexities of our
modern world. Leadership theory must transi
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tion to new perspectives that account for the
complex adaptive needs of organizations. In this
paper, we propose that leadership (as opposed
to leaders) can be seen as a complex dynamic
process that emerges in the interactive “spaces
between” people and ideas. That is, leadership
is a dynamic that transcends the capabilities of
individuals alone; it is the product of interaction,
tension, and exchange rules governing changes
in perceptions and understanding. We label this
a dynamic of adaptive leadership, and we show
how this dynamic provides important insights
about the nature of leadership and its outcomes
in organizational fields. We define a leadership
event as a perceived segment of action whose
meaning is created by the interactions of actors
involved in producing it, and we present a set of
innovative methods for capturing and analyzing
these contextually driven processes. We provide
theoretical and practical implications of these
ideas for organizational behavior and organiza
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tion and management theory.