Italy and leadership: psychopathology or culture of a nation?

Abstract

Leadership is a rapidly evolving field of study blending together often distant perspectives and disciplines. Italy, with its history and socio-cultural complexity, offers a paradigmatic case which display, in their full force, leadership paradoxes and apparent conceptual intricacies. While approaching Italian leadership from an historical perspective, this essay aims at raising questions on national favorite leadership characteristics: whether they are psychological or cultural. Showing the paradoxes of Italian leadership the essay concludes that while on the surface Italian leadership seems to be a kind a national psychopathology, on the contrary, it stems out from deep and historical cultural factors that have shaped a nation still in its adolescence.

Keywords

• leadership, culture, normative and descriptive dimension of leadership, leadership development