Leadership: Theory and Practice

For years, I'd have students come into my doctoral classes eager to cite Northouse. I had read scanned snippets of earlier versions, but I set about to read the latest version I could find cover to cover. From a content standpoint, it did not disappoint. Northouse provides an introduction to a range of leadership theories, and the consistent structure of the chapters, though a tad dry, is effective at giving readers comparative points for the theories/approaches included. The book was a dense read, but it was not a hard read. Each chapter took me about an hour, give or take just a few minutes.

The only chapter with which I'd quibble regarding content was the final one of team leadership (contributed by a guest author). I have studied shared and distributed leadership, and I found that chapter to be a bit limiting because of an over-reliance on process. I fully admit that the chapter focused on team leadership rather than shared or distributed leadership. Thus, the structure related to the work team context. Still, there were some passages that tried to integrate shared and distributed leadership into the team context, and I did not feel the author was as successful as she could have been.

The reason this book did not receive a five-star rating from me is its publishing. It's a Sage book, and I have always found Sage to be a quality publisher with solid editing. Yet, this edition was littered with typos and mistakes, ranging from missing spaces between words to obvious misspellings in section headings (e.g., "Inclusjve" instead of "Inclusive"). If this is the direction in which Sage is heading, it will soon find itself knocked off its pedestal as a quality publisher of leadership and management texts.