“Historical paradigms of leadership: Rost’s (1991) postindustrial concept – An intradisciplinary
evaluation of its currency and praxis in America”
by Michael S. Kearns
July 19, 2004
In the groundbreaking book Leadership (1978), distinguished leadership scholar James
McGregor Burns calls attention to the crisis in the field of leadership studies, as he finds little
reason to be optimistic after analyzing past leadership study and practice:
The crisis of leadership today is the mediocrity or irresponsibility of so many of the
men and women in power, but leadership rarely rises to the full need for it. The
fundamental crisis underlying mediocrity is intellectual. If we know all too much about
our leaders, we know far too little about leadership . . . Leadership is one of the most
observed and least understood phenomena on earth (p. 1-2).
What does Burns mean by: “If we know all too much about our leaders, we know far too
little about leadership . . .. ” This statement begs the question: How is it possible to know all
too much about our leaders, yet, far too little about leadership? Isn’t the leader the one who does
leadership? Or, is it that we scholars and practitioners are focused solely upon the leader, and
the study of that individual – forgetting that leadership may be also known as a relationship?
Rost and the postindustrial concept: James MacGregor Burns, remarks in the Forward to
Rost’s (1991) book Leadership for the twenty-first century:
This work, in my view, is the most important critique of leadership studies in our time,
and as such will stand as one of a half-dozen indispensable works on leadership. Will it
also stand as a major positive contribution to the understanding of leadership? For
some time the jury—the many jurors—will be out before rendering this verdict. But I
expect that Rost’s call for a “post-industrial” concept of leadership—the most
important concept in this book—will put him in the vanguard of a whole new force and
direction in leadership theory. (p. xii)
Did Rost’s postindustrial concept (PIC) of leadership put him in the vanguard of a whole
new force in leadership theory? What populations of leadership scholars and practitioners know
of, and have adopted the postindustrial concept, and are they finding it purposeful for training
and education? [Ask who here at the AU LP Roundtable has heard of it?]
This study seeks to answer the question: To what level of currency (general acceptance
or common use; prevalence; up-to-dateness) and praxis (practical application in learning)
is Rost's postindustrial concept within the discipline of American leadership studies (scholars
and practitioners), over ten years after it was first proposed? Has Jim Burns’ 1991 prediction
come true, that Rost’s calling for a postindustrial concept will form the vanguard of a whole new
force and direction in leadership theory, or is the jury is still out?
Methodology. The discipline of evaluation is devoted to “the systematic determination
of merit, worth, or significance” (Scriven, 1999, p.1). The better-known fields of evaluation vary
considerably in quality as well as in their relevance to and dependence on the social sciences. As
described by Scriven (1999) the “Big Six” are the fields of; program, personnel, performance,
policy, proposal, and product evaluation. The “Super Two” include: a) Intradisciplinary
evaluation—the evaluation of the entities that are the currency of a discipline’s economy
such as theories, hypotheses, classifications, data, research designs, practitioners,
contributions, and journals—and of the discipline itself; and; b) Meta-evaluation, the
evaluation of evaluations themselves, a practice that demonstrates the reflexive nature of
evaluation and the reflexive integrity of its practitioners (p. 2).