Until now there has been no general definition or general theory of leadership. The General Theory of Leadership: Defining Leadership, Understanding How it Emerges in Individuals, Learning solves that problem. It develops and presents the general definition and the general theory of leadership to the world of researchers, teachers, and practitioners of leadership. Grounded in general systems theory, both the general definition and general theory are supported by other hypotheses such as structural coupling theory, theory of structural determinism, and Pavlov's work on stimulation and response. The definition and thesis developed in this book are general because they have universal application in the sense wherever there is an organization, these concepts will hold true, just like other general definitions and general theories.
At the heart of the general definition of leadership is the human element. Here the book emphasizes that an individual, in order to be effective in the practice of leadership, must pose a high combination of factors such as knowledge, intelligence, wisdom, and courage. All these must be applied in dealing with threats and opportunities emergent in the organization's environment. These emergent events in the organization's environment function much like Pavlovian bells and stimulate the emergence of leadership in individuals within, and outside, the organization. These concepts of stimulation and emergence are at the core of the general theory. But there can be no emergence of leadership without learning, which in itself requires a certain level of cognitive energy and as well as capacity. Thus, learning for organizational and environmental knowledge acquisition, and intelligent analysis of acquired knowledge to generate understandable information for decisioning, are foundational to the practice of leadership in organizations as open systems.
