There is no alternative.’ This was a slogan often used by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s to summarise her belief that there was no credible substitute to the liberaleconomic system of free markets. Similarly, many students, managers, and politicians think that there is no alternative to market-oriented hierarchical organisations, led either by entrepreneurs or executive boards. But with growing awareness of rising economic and social inequality within and across many countries, and the increasing ecological degradation of the Earth, there is rising recognition that other organisational forms might be possible, even preferable. Many have argued that market-oriented hierarchical organisations are, both historically- and quantitativelyspeaking, a minority among forms of social organising. Take into consideration the myriad voluntary groups, self-help groups, charities, NGOs, sports clubs, families (and extended families), and religious groups across the world both now and back through the ages, and the marketoriented hierarchical organisation looks more like a rarity than a self-evident blueprint for all forms of social organising. DIFFERENT APPROACHES With my colleague Steve Allen, I have reviewed research specifically looking at what leadership in so-called ‘alternatives’ looks like (including acephalous social groups [literally ‘without head’, how hunter-gatherer humans lived prior to agricultural society, and how many groups still live around the world today], co-operatives, social movements, communes, social enterprises, hobby clubs, and terrorist organisations). The work was diverse, complex and compelling, and several key things stood out. Firstly, there was great variety in how leadership was understood – some experts understood leadership as something that leaders did, and this was what they saw in their research. For others, leadership was understood as a type of mutual activity that only existed in its collective performance. For these latter researchers, leadership was seen as shifting and rotating between different people and the things they did and thought. The second key feature of many of the groups was their desire to be ‘leaderless’, that is, to continue to exist without a formal leader or group of leaders. In egalitarian acephalous groups and societies this involved what has previously been referred to as a form of ‘reverse dominance’. That is, group members exercised forms of control over people that were temporarily ‘leaders’ or otherwise had special status. These forms of ‘bottom up’ control included ridicule and ostracism, and in extreme cases, killing those that might be considered ‘too big for their boots’. The desire to be leaderless is argued by some to be itself problematic. For example, some argue that this desire for leaderlessness masks processes by which individuals exercise considerable influence. Discussing the US women’s liberation movement in the 1970s, Jo Freeman famously described this as ‘the tyranny of structurelessness’ whereby the ideal of having an egalitarian group without formal authority tended to lead to informal power structures – based on social status, knowledge, or social bonds – that favour informal elites. These informal power structures and elites were then harder to name and address because of the belief in leaderlessness. But rather than seeing power inequalities as inevitable, having formal democratic structures may address power and status imbalances. Recent social movements, such as Extinction Rebellion, the Gezi Park protests in Turkey, or the 15M in Spain, have experimented with different ways of avoiding both formal and informal hierarchy. 28 | ’
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