A Multi-Dimensional Approach to Leadership in Chaotic Environments

The Simultaneous Conceptual Development of Chaos and Leadership

The mathematician and philosopher Poincaré's discovery of chaos, hidden in the heart of the Newtonian universe, was taken up by Planck in 1900 as one of the fundamental concepts of quantum theory. Later Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, Schrödinger, Louis de Brogile, Pauli, Fermi and Dirac, along with many other scientists, developed modern quantum theory. Along with the development of quantum theory came the further development of theories of chaos (Peat, 2002).

In the same period, leadership became one of the main topics of a great deal of studies in the field of management. Since the beginning of the 1900's, both theoreticians and practitioners have put significant effort into analyzing leadership. These efforts have led to more than 5,000 studies on leadership and more than 350 different definitions of the term (Erçetin, 2000,pp. 2).