To read this content please select one of the options below:

Leadership in a new millennium: the challenge of the “risk society”

Anthony J. Berry (Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK)

Leadership & Organization Development Journal

ISSN: 0143-7739

Article publication date: 1 February 2000

2536

Abstract

The “risk society” presents a considerable challenge to current understanding of the question of risk and the task of organisational leadership. Beck has proposed that we, in late modernity, are moving from an industrial society to a risk society, which requires a corresponding shift from modernism to reflexive modernism. A brief discussion of the risk compensation ideas of Adams will be used to bridge to some observation about how humans approach and understand risk in our society. Four stances towards risk are used as a basis for considering the modes of leadership associated with each of them. It is argued that this provides a starting point from which leadership theory may be extended from its mainly intra organisation perspective to include critical reflexiveness in an inter‐ and extra‐organisational framing. This goes beyond social responsibility to include a critical attention to how a risk society requires leadership to be construed in institutional terms.

Keywords

Citation

Berry, A.J. (2000), "Leadership in a new millennium: the challenge of the “risk society”", Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 21 No. 1, pp. 5-12. https://doi.org/10.1108/01437730010310686

Publisher

:

MCB UP Ltd

Copyright © 2000, MCB UP Limited

Related articles