Leadership and Identification Dynamic : Integrating Cognition, Emotion and Power in the Study of Influence in Contemporary Organizations

The structural, social, and cultural composite of transformations that contemporary organizations face indicate a new dynamic in exercising leadership and a renewal on the conception and analysis of this practice. This paper explores the subtlety of this dynamic, developing a conceptual framework that considers leadership and identification as complementary phenomena. Leader influence emerges from the significant ordering of the reality of people who simultaneously identify themselves with and consent on that influence. Both phenomena mobilize and articulate power, cognition, and emotional resources. This conceptual framework allows us to make a more accurate and up-to-date evaluation of leadership as a dynamic process that involves: (a) political as well as cognitive and emotional issues; and (b) ordering as well as recognizing, and consenting processes