Critical perspectives on leadership psychology

P. Matthijs Bal

Chapter 13 in Handbook of Critical Work and Organizational Psychology, 2026, pp 228-242 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter discusses leadership from a critical psychology perspective. It explores the ways through which leadership can be conceptualized and studied in work and organizational psychology, and how it could be studied from a critical perspective. A critical perspective explains that leaders are often glorified as heroic actors, transforming individuals into a better version of themselves, which consequently translates into greater productivity and efficiency at work. This narrow view of what leaders should be is prominent in work psychology, and the chapter details the implications of such an approach and the aspects of leadership that tend to be ignored in such work. Analyzed from a psychoanalytical perspective, the chapter concludes that leadership itself can be understood as a failure. The chapter also discusses three elements that conceptually respond to this failure, through discussing self-organizing leadership, autonomous organization, and leadership as process. The chapter builds on a contemporary psychoanalytic interpretation of leadership, which is then linked with an ideological analysis of leadership as a neoliberal-capitalist project.

Keywords: Leadership; Critical Work Psychology; Leaderism; Leadership Failure; Transformational Leadership; Psychoanalytic Perspectives (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035331055
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