Leadership and Machiavelli

Referring to relevant theories, critically discuss how this passage relates to the leadership of change

Although Machiavelli’s ‘the Prince’ was published back in 1532 (Rohrer 2007), it is still relevant today and can be used to highlight modern-day issues and theories of leadership of change.

To begin with, the exert needs to be translated in order for it to apply to recent theories and cases. ‘The Prince’ should be viewed as a symbol for an individual or a company. The ‘province’ should be perceived as a company or job role, with the ‘people ’and ‘nobles’ being seen as a metaphor for the employees.

With this translation it is clear that the passage centres on the issue of a new manager or leader entering into a new company or job role, and the effects of these changes on the rest of the organisation and employees. It highlights the struggle for power and control, and how the actions of the new manager or leader are perceived by the greater population. Machiavelli illustrates that these underlying factors of leadership, change, and control, ultimately have a substantial effect on the overall success and future success of the organisation.

This essay will aim to explore further into the issues highlighted in Machiavelli’s passage taking both a theoretical and critical evaluation standpoint. Through the use of both historical and up to date leadership and change theories, which can then be applied to real life cases and examples, this essay intends to bring Machiavelli’s passage into the 21st Century.

The concept of leadership is one of the most comprehensively written about and fragmented subject areas with thousands of articles, papers, and books on the topic having been examined, probing the subject from every conceivable angle (Conger 2010). A general definition of leadership comes from Pitsis (2007) who defines it as:

“The process of inspiring, directing, coordinating, motivating, and mentoring individuals, groups of individuals, organizations,...