International Journal of Organizational Leadership

Abstract

Some researchers consider leadership and directing to be equivalent as much as they use them interchangeably. According to the study of the historical course done in this research, this issue has been seen more than ever in recent texts. In this study, the critical hermeneutics of Prasad’s (2005) four-stage model was used. In the first stage, the data was collected from books, and papers related to organizational leadership theory. To this end, 61 definitions of organizational leadership and eight definitions of directing have been collected from the viewpoint of management experts. Ambiguities were raised in the form of questions about the intentions of the authors of the relevant texts. In the second stage, layers of texts were interpreted, and themes and concepts were extracted. In the third stage, to close the hermeneutic cycle, a narrative case was used, which is the personal experience of an organizational leader of the distinction between leadership and directing. The final stage was suggested to the researchers not to consider the words ‘leadership’ and ‘directing’ equivalent or interchangeable. Directing is a part of leadership that is more or less applied depending on the type of leadership style. It is also recommended for experts in marketing, business and economics to use the alternative terms market pioneer and industry director instead of the words market leader and industry leader because obedience to other organizations may be due to duty not influence or follow-up.