|
by Peter Block, Berrett-Koehler Publishers
|
|
Use the form below to order the book |
|
Click here to read the comments of 100 managers that use job matching to identify which of their qualified job appicants have the right "talents" for the job. |
In his latest book Stewardship, Block (1993) takes current leadership theory to task. He exposes the underbelly of the cult of leadership arguing for a courageous introspection of the leadership movement. He believes that, despite our best attempts to reconceptualize leadership, its connotations carry the trappings of power and privelege, resulting in helplessness and dependency.
Stewardship is an attack on control, consistency and predictability. These, according to Block, are the guts of bureaucracy and patriarchy. Stewardship, builds on Block's previous book The empowered manager (1987). Block brings a business oriented notion of service approach together with the more spiritual and lofty notion of servant leadership from Robert Greenleaf (1977). He places serving opposite leading. Block is betting that the service reorientation (of leadership) will make the case of empowerment clearer and more compelling in business terms. It will dispel some of the criticisms that mistakenly equate empowerment with entitlement.
Unique about this book (according to Larry Levine's review in the Journal of Organizational Change Management) is "Block's ability to address both the inner side of leadership and the more practical, outer, political side of leadership". Block: "If there is no transformation inside each us, all the structural changes in the world will have no impact on our institutions". Source: Journal of Organizational Change Management 7 (1994)1, p.74-76 (featuring Spirituality in organizations).
