Studying Leadership from a Microgenetic Perspective

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.