Studying Leadership from a Microgenetic Perspective - Towards a Cultural-Psychological Theory of Leadership

This book presents a new theoretical and methodological framework to study leadership from a cultural-psychological and developmental perspective. This framework includes a new theory called Small Act Psychology and a new methodology to analyze leader-follower interactions in irreversible time. This perspective is inspired by current microgenetic (aktualgenese) developmental research within the wider domain of Cultural Psychology. Drawing on Kurt Lewin's field-theory, E.E. Boesch's Symbolic Action Theory and L.S. Vygotsky's semiotic theory, the present work defines leadership socially, and hence from a qualitative perspective, contributing to the development of a cultural-psychological theory of leadership.
This new approach seeks to break with the current prevailing paradigm of the leadership research centered round the big-hero myth and interpreting leadership as a personal quality of a given person.  It also aims to feel a gap within the general literature about qualitative leadership by proposing an encompassing and wholistic theory and methodology to make sense of leader-follower interactions from a developmental perspective.
After presenting this new theory and methodology, the book also presents the results of empirical ethnographic and autoethnographic studies in which the new framework was applied. These studies provide not only empirical proof how leadership can be understood from a field-theoretical perspective but also show how leadership trajectories can change depending on specific interventions, providing evidence to the developmental nature of leadership as a social phenomenon.
Studying Leadership from a Microgenetic Perspective: Towards a Cultural-Psychological Theory of Leadership will be of interest to organizational and educational researchers, as well as qualitative psychologists in any domain of psychology striving for a theory that makes sense of leadership dynamically, and developmental psychologists interested in seeing how developmental approaches can be adopted in the study of a wide range of social phenomena.

List of contents

Chapter 1 Defining Leadership as a Social Function: Beyond the Big-Hero Myth.- Chapter 2 Towards a Cultural-Psychological Theory of Leadership: Getting Inspiration from Boesch, Lewin and Vygotsky.- Chapter 3 Towards Alternative Validity Criteria for the Qualitative Study of Leadership.- Chapter 4 Case Studies, Autoethnographies, and Ethnographies: Insights for Qualitative Leadership Research.- Chapter 5 Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Interpretations of Ethnographic Leadership Patterns.- Chapter 6 Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Interpretations of Autoethnographic Leadership Patterns.- Chapter 7 Digesting Field-Theoretical Findings Personally: Between a Letter to One s Future Self and a Policy Brief.- Chapter 8 Lessons Learnt from Autoethnographic and Ethnographic Methodology in the Qualitative Study of Leadership.- Chapter 9 Pitfalls and Future Research Directions of Cultural-Psychological Leadership.- Chapter 10 Towards an Actualized Cultural-Psychological Theory of Leadership.

About the author

Enno Freiherr von Fircks is a Social and Political Psychologist. His work is concentrated on applying Boeschian Cultural Psychology to the work setting as well as showing the philosophical and literary roots of Cultural Psychology. He also works as a Gestalt practitioner, as a lecturer and as a tennis instructor in Germany providing him with the opportunity to apply his theoretical insights and develop them in-vivo. He has published more than 30 articles in the field of clinical, educational, organizational and general psychology. Further, he has published a monograph in the SpringerBriefs in Theoretical Advances in Psychology book series edited by Jaan Valsiner and Pina Marsico title Conservativism: A Cultural-Psychological Synthesis. A second monograph was published about William Stern’s Critical Personalism and its pathways for revolutionizing today’s psychology wholistically published by IAP (Learning with William Stern: Personology for Future). Currently in press is an edited volume–  titled Culture and Leadership: From Approximation towards Symbiosis. His recent projects include two edited volumes about Goethian science and its implication for psychology as a whole, as well as a volume in French about cultural-psychological theories and methodologies for the francophone area.

Summary

This book presents a new theoretical and methodological framework to study leadership from a cultural-psychological and developmental perspective. This framework includes a new theory – called Small Act Psychology – and a new methodology to analyze leader-follower interactions in irreversible time. This perspective is inspired by current microgenetic (aktualgenese) developmental research within the wider domain of Cultural Psychology. Drawing on Kurt Lewin's field-theory, E.E. Boesch's Symbolic Action Theory and L.S. Vygotsky's semiotic theory, the present work defines leadership socially, and hence from a qualitative perspective, contributing to the development of a cultural-psychological theory of leadership.
This new approach seeks to break with the current prevailing paradigm of the leadership research centered round the big-hero myth and interpreting leadership as a personal quality of a given person.  It also aims to feel a gap within the general literature about qualitative leadership by proposing an encompassing and wholistic theory and methodology to make sense of leader-follower interactions from a developmental perspective.
After presenting this new theory and methodology, the book also presents the results of empirical ethnographic and autoethnographic studies in which the new framework was applied. These studies provide not only empirical proof how leadership can be understood from a field-theoretical perspective but also show how leadership trajectories can change depending on specific interventions, providing evidence to the developmental nature of leadership as a social phenomenon.
Studying Leadership from a Microgenetic Perspective: Towards a Cultural-Psychological Theory of Leadership will be of interest to organizational and educational researchers, as well as qualitative psychologists in any domain of psychology striving for a theory that makes sense of leadership dynamically, and developmental psychologists interested in seeing how developmental approaches can be adopted in the study of a wide range of social phenomena.

Product details

• Authors: Enno Freiherr von Fircks
• Publisher: Springer, Berlin
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 07.09.2025
• EAN: 9783031902130
• ISBN: 978-3-0-3190213-0
• No. of pages: 252
• Dimensions: 155 mm x 18 mm x 235 mm
• Weight: 520 g
• Illustrations: XVII, 252 p. 86 illus., 85 illus. in color.
• Series: Methodologies in Developmental Sciences
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Psychology > Theoretical psychology; Arbeits-, Wirtschafts- und Organisationspsychologie, Developmental Psychology, Leadership Psychology, Small Act Psychology, Qualitative Research in Leadership, Microgenetic Development, Social Leadership, Applied Field-Theory, Cultural-Psychological Leadership