Leadership, Public Values, and Trust in Emergency Management

Background

For two millennia at least, the concept of leadership has been in literature long before modern study of leadership grapple with the “vexing problem of the rulers versus the ruled” (Burns, 1979, p 2). Plato analyzed not only philosopher–kings, but the influences on the rulers upbringing. Thinkers were busy examining the concept of leadership in moral teaching. Long before modern biography, Plutarch was writing about the living of a host of Roman and Greek Rulers and orators, arguing that philosophers “ought to converse especially with men in power” (Burns, 1979, p. 2). Arish literature on leadership and followers flourished in the classical and middle ages. Later – for reasons we would examine in this chapter, the study of rulership and leadership ran into serious intellectual difficulties. Leadership as a concept has dissolved into small and discrete meanings. Immense reservoir of data, analysis and theories have developed but no central concept of leadership has yet emerged, in part because scholars have worked in separate disciplines and sub-disciplines in pursuit of different and often unrelated questions and problems.

Hence, it is time that the study of leadership be lifted out of the anecdotal and the eulogistic and placed squarely in the structure and processes of human development, public safety and political action (Burns, 1979). This is because leaders have a critical effect on society in the present and future. They can determine on the success or failure of a society, country and community.

The need for emergency or disaster management came to fore in Nigeria as a result of the impact of extreme natural disasters globally . There have been reports that natural disasters forced 26 million people into poverty, cause $520 billion loss annually (World Bank (2016); Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) (2016) .