Leadership: Leaders, Followers, Environments

Institutional contexts: presidentialism and managerial discretion

Strong and prosperous groups tend to have transparent agencies and institutions with countervailing centers of power. These institutions balance or restrain the power of leaders and elite groups. Weak or ineffective institutions, by contrast, shield leaders from outside scrutiny and oversight and encourage toxic leader and follower behavior specifically, and the process of destructive leadership, generally.¹⁷ Managerial discretion in the management literature¹⁸ and the notion of presidentialism from political science¹⁹ concern the degree to which senior managers or government executives are insulated from the oversight and influence of others. While there is no directly analogous concept to presidentialism in the management literature, the work on empowerment and decentralization of authority is similar.²⁰ It refers to centralization of decision making and independence from institutional guidelines. Too much managerial discretion can lead to excessive centralization and to ineffective checks and balances. Certain follower characteristics (e.g., a culture of dependence, poverty, low levels of education) often contribute to or exacerbate tendencies toward centralization of power.²¹

LEADERSHIP SPOTLIGHT

Presidentialism in Latin America

Before the 1980s, totalitarian rulers headed most countries in Latin America. Today, ...