Articles / The Leadership vs Management Debate: A Complete Scholarly Analysis
Leadership vs ManagementExplore the leadership vs management debate from Zaleznik to Kotter to Bennis. Understand the scholarly arguments and their practical implications for executives.
Written by Laura Bouttell • Tue 30th December 2025
The leadership versus management debate has shaped organisational thinking for nearly fifty years, beginning with Abraham Zaleznik's landmark 1977 Harvard Business Review article that provocatively asked whether managers and leaders are fundamentally different types of people. Understanding this debate—its origins, evolution, and current state—provides essential context for anyone seeking to exercise organisational influence effectively.
Zaleznik opened the debate by arguing that leaders and managers differ not merely in function but in personality, motivation, and fundamental worldview. Where managers seek stability and control, leaders tolerate chaos and ambiguity. Where managers maintain the status quo, leaders advocate change. This distinction sparked decades of scholarly discussion that continues to influence executive development, organisational design, and career thinking.
The debate matters practically because how we understand leadership and management shapes how organisations develop talent, structure roles, and value different contributions. If leadership and management are truly distinct, organisations need both—and must cultivate them differently. If they're complementary aspects of a single discipline, integration rather than separation becomes the goal.
The modern debate traces to a single provocative article published in 1977 by Harvard Business School professor Abraham Zaleznik.
Abraham Zaleznik's "Managers and Leaders: Are They Different?" appeared in the Harvard Business Review and challenged the prevailing assumption that leadership was simply good management. The article was significant enough to be republished in 2004, demonstrating its enduring influence.
Zaleznik argued that the traditional view of management omitted essential leadership elements—inspiration, vision, and human passion—that actually drive corporate success. He contended that the difference between managers and leaders lies in the conceptions they hold, deep in their psyches, of chaos and order.
Zaleznik characterised managers and leaders as fundamentally different personality types:
Managers:
Leaders:
Zaleznik charged that typical organisations omitted essential leadership elements from their concept and development of people. A manager, he wrote, is someone who seeks order, control, and rapid resolution of problems. A leader "tolerates chaos and lack of structure" and operates more like an artist.
This framing was revolutionary because it suggested organisations couldn't simply train managers to become leaders—the two might be fundamentally different kinds of people requiring different development approaches.
Following Zaleznik, several influential scholars contributed distinct perspectives that shaped how we understand the leadership-management relationship.
John Kotter of Harvard Business School emerged as another defining voice, arguing that leadership and management are two distinct yet complementary systems of action in organisations.
Kotter's core distinction:
For Kotter, the leadership process involves:
The management process involves:
Kotter argued that leaders produce the potential for dramatic change (including chaos and failure), whilst managers produce standards, consistency, predictability, and order. Both are essential; neither is sufficient alone.
Warren Bennis provided perhaps the most frequently cited formulation: "Managers are people who do things right, and leaders are people who do the right things."
Bennis also offered a deeper psychological distinction: becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself, whereas becoming a manager is becoming what a company wants you to become. This framing positioned leadership as authentic self-expression and management as adaptive conformity.
| Scholar | Core Distinction | Relationship View |
|---|---|---|
| Zaleznik | Personality types (chaos vs. order tolerance) | Different people |
| Kotter | Functions (change vs. complexity) | Complementary systems |
| Bennis | Orientation (right things vs. things right) | Different purposes |
Participants in the leadership-management debate divide into two broad schools with fundamentally different views on whether leadership and management are distinct or unified concepts.
The first school advocates a lucid difference between leadership and management, regarding these terms as distinctive. Authors including Kotter, Bennis, Zaleznik, and Maccoby belong to this perspective.
Key arguments:
This school suggests organisations need to identify, develop, and deploy leaders and managers differently—recognising that excellence in one doesn't guarantee capability in the other.
The second school argues that leadership and management are complementary aspects of a unified discipline—different emphases rather than different functions.
Key arguments:
This school suggests developing integrated capabilities rather than choosing between leadership and management tracks.
There has been a long-standing debate in the literature as to why and how leadership is similar to, or different from, management. Although several scholars have contributed, there seems to be an absence of pragmatic evidence. Hardly any study that attempts to differentiate leadership from management provides empirical findings to support the theoretical distinctions.
This empirical gap means the debate continues primarily at conceptual rather than evidential levels—leaving practitioners to navigate competing frameworks without definitive research guidance.
Given Zaleznik's foundational role, understanding his actual argument—rather than simplified versions—provides essential context.
Zaleznik didn't merely distinguish leadership and management functions—he argued they reflect different psychological orientations rooted in early life experience.
Managers, in Zaleznik's view:
Leaders, by contrast:
The difference between managers and leaders, Zaleznik wrote, lies in their deep psychological orientation to chaos and order:
Managers:
Leaders:
Zaleznik also distinguished how leaders and managers relate to goals:
This distinction positioned managers as reactive and adaptive, leaders as proactive and generative.
The leadership-management debate has shifted considerably since Zaleznik's original provocation.
Early responses tended to embrace Zaleznik's distinction, developing taxonomies of leader versus manager characteristics. This period produced:
Kotter's contribution moderated the debate by reframing leadership and management as complementary rather than competing. His framework:
This synthesis influenced practical application by suggesting organisations needed both capabilities—potentially in the same individuals.
Current scholarship tends toward integration, arguing:
| Era | Dominant View | Practical Implication |
|---|---|---|
| 1977-1990 | Distinct personality types | Identify leaders vs. managers |
| 1990-2010 | Complementary functions | Develop both capabilities |
| 2010-Present | Integrated practice | Context-dependent blending |
Beyond academic interest, how organisations resolve this debate affects talent development, role design, and career paths.
If leadership and management are truly distinct:
If leadership and management are integrated:
The debate affects how organisations structure authority and responsibility:
Distinction-based design:
Integration-based design:
For individual professionals, the debate raises questions:
The distinction school suggests aligning career with inherent orientation. The integration school suggests developing comprehensive capability regardless of natural tendency.
Despite decades of debate, empirical research on the leadership-management distinction remains surprisingly limited.
Research consistently notes that studies attempting to differentiate leadership from management rarely provide empirical findings. Most work operates at theoretical or conceptual levels, arguing from logic rather than data.
This gap exists because:
Available research indicates:
The research gap means practical guidance must draw on accumulated wisdom rather than definitive findings:
Given unresolved academic questions, how should practitioners think about leadership and management?
Rather than choosing between leadership and management identities, develop comprehensive capability:
Different contexts call for different emphases:
Leadership emphasis appropriate when:
Management emphasis appropriate when:
Regardless of natural orientation:
The leadership vs management debate concerns whether leadership and management are fundamentally different functions, requiring different capabilities and possibly different personality types, or whether they represent complementary aspects of a unified discipline. Initiated by Abraham Zaleznik in 1977, the debate has involved major scholars including John Kotter and Warren Bennis, and continues to influence how organisations develop talent and design roles.
Abraham Zaleznik argued that leaders and managers are fundamentally different personality types with different psychological orientations. Managers seek stability, control, and rapid problem resolution; they're uncomfortable with ambiguity and focus on maintaining organisational equilibrium. Leaders tolerate chaos, delay closure to understand issues fully, adopt personal attitudes toward goals, and inspire others with their energy. The difference lies in deep conceptions of chaos and order.
John Kotter argued that leadership and management are distinct but complementary systems of action. Leadership copes with change—developing vision, aligning people, and motivating action. Management copes with complexity—planning, organising, and controlling. Both are necessary; neither is sufficient alone. Leaders produce potential for dramatic change; managers produce standards, consistency, and predictability. Effective organisations need both functions operating together.
Warren Bennis offered the memorable distinction: "Managers are people who do things right, and leaders are people who do the right things." He also argued that becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself—authentic self-expression—whilst becoming a manager is becoming what the company wants you to become. This positioned leadership as identity-driven and management as role-adaptive.
The distinction remains influential but increasingly contested. Contemporary scholarship tends toward integration, recognising that effective executives demonstrate both capabilities contextually. However, the conceptual distinction continues to shape development programmes, role design, and career thinking. The absence of strong empirical evidence means practitioners must navigate the debate using judgement rather than definitive research findings.
Yes—and most effective executives demonstrate both capabilities. Whilst Zaleznik's original argument suggested personality-type differences might make integration difficult, subsequent scholarship (particularly Kotter's) positioned leadership and management as complementary functions that individuals can develop and deploy situationally. Research suggests people can grow in both dimensions with appropriate practice.
Neither is universally more important; context determines which emphasis matters most. Stable environments requiring operational excellence may need more management emphasis. Changing environments requiring transformation may need more leadership emphasis. Most situations require both. The practical question isn't which is more important but how to blend both capabilities appropriately for current circumstances.
The leadership versus management debate has enriched organisational thinking by forcing careful examination of what different contributions look like and require. Zaleznik's provocation opened questions that Kotter, Bennis, and subsequent scholars elaborated into sophisticated frameworks for understanding influence.
Yet the debate's greatest practical contribution may be highlighting that organisations need both vision and execution, both inspiration and control, both change and stability. Whether we call these leadership and management, or view them as integrated aspects of effective influence, matters less than developing comprehensive capability.
For practitioners, the implication is clear: don't get trapped choosing between identities. Develop the capacity to articulate compelling visions AND create actionable plans. Build skills for inspiring others AND managing complexity. Learn to drive change when needed AND maintain excellence when appropriate.
The scholars who opened and developed this debate gave us language and frameworks for thinking about influence. The task now is using that framework practically—developing integrated excellence that draws on whatever the situation requires, whether we call it leadership, management, or simply effective practice.