View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by UNL | Libraries University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Leadership Institute Faculty Publications Leadership Institute 12-2006 Relational Leadership Theory: Exploring the social processes of leadership and organizing Mary Uhl-Bien University of Nebraska-Lincoln,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/leadershipfacpub Part of the Management Sciences and Quantitative Methods Commons Uhl-Bien, Mary, "Relational Leadership Theory: Exploring the social processes of leadership and organizing" (2006). Leadership Institute Faculty Publications. 19. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/leadershipfacpub/19 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Leadership Institute at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Leadership Institute Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. Published in The Leadership Quarterly 17:6 (December 2006), pp. 654-676: The Leadership Quarterly Yearly Review of Leadership; doi 10.1016/j.leaqua.2006.10.007 Copyright © 2006 Elsevier Inc. Used by permission. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/10489843 Published online November 16, 2006. Relational Leadership Theory: Exploring the social processes of leadership and organizing Mary Uhl-Bien Department of Management University of Nebraska–Lincoln Lincoln, NE 68588 USA Abstract Relational leadership is a relatively new term in the leadership literature, and because of this, its meaning is open to interpretation. In the present article I describe two perspectives of relational leadership: an entity perspective that fo- cuses on identifying attributes of individuals as they engage in interpersonal relationships, and a relational perspec- tive that views leadership as a process of social construction through which certain understandings of leadership come about and are given privileged ontology.