1. Why debating Leaderless Management.- Part I. For leaderless management.- 2. The Moral Necessity of Leaderless Organizations.- 3. Developing for Leaderless Organizations: Two Eco-Friendly Coaching Practices.- 4. When Matters are Too Important to be Left to Leaders and Better Left to Democratic control.- 5. Leaderless Management as the Solution to Struggles over the Moral  Center of Healthcare? Ward Nurses’ Critique of Management as “Real Utopias” in the Public Sector.- 6. Dissolving the Leader-Follower Schism: Autonomist Leadership and the Case of Word of Warcraft.- 7. In Favor of Leaderless Management: Follettian Perspective of Co-Leadership.- 8. Leaderless Leadership: Implications of the “Agora” and the “Public Library’’.- 9. Beyond Leaderlessness: Even Less Than Nothing Is Way Too Much.- Part II. In Between For And Against Leaderless Management.- 10. Leaderless Work and Workplace Participation.- 11. Who Sustains Whose Passion?.- 12. Leaderless Organization versus Leading for Creativity: The Case for Creative Leadership.- Part III. Against Leaderless Management.- 13. Why Leaders are Necessary.- 14. Ghostbusters! On the Narrative Creation of (Absent) Leader Characters.- 15. Against leaderless management: What Leaderless means in South Africa.- 16. Leaderless Management: No! Leaders at All Levels: Yes!.- 17. Principled leadership: The Antidote to Leaderless Management.- 18. The Enabling Role of Leadership in Realizing the Future.- Part  IV. Beyond Leaderless Management.- 19. Organizational Management is Paradoxically both Leaderless and Leaderful.

Management research has traditionally assumed that leaders play an essential role in both public and private organizations and are required for a business to run smoothly. However, more recently, a vein of critical research has claimed that leaders can do more harm than good, creating confusion and putting their reputation before production and employee wellbeing. This book asks the question - what would happen if there were no leaders? Would employees be better off without formal (or informal) leaders? And even if such a utopia were desirable, would it be realizable in practice?

“Do we still need leaders? Is there a moral necessity of leaderless organizations? Should we learn to be wary of the unexpected consequences of a leaderless management the same way we have learned to be wary of a leaderful management? In this book there is a plethora of answers that illustrate all the complexity of the problem. However, the book has the power to steer the debate into more productive directions.” (Silvia Gherardi, Università di Trento, Italy) “This book presents an interesting angle to the age old management/leadership debate, which I think is specifically relevant in ‘post-Covid’ times, where traditional work arrangements, as well as our conceptions about management and  leadership, have been turned on their head.” (Geoff Goldman, University of Johannesburg, South Africa) “Can employees do without leaders? This collection offers a range of different answers to this important question, none of which leave readers unaffected. An important effort to help readers get to grips with the strengths and weaknesses of leadership.” (Torkild Thanem, Stockholm Business School, Sweden)

Examines the literature that supports the need for leaders within an organization Discusses the viewpoint that leaders are not required for an organization's success Explores alternative methods of organizing