Popularized and commercialized leadership ideas are often criticized as mere fashions that dumb down leadership discourse, research, and learning. By contrast, we take leadership fashions seriously as an important vehicle for individual and collective leadership learning. We extend the neo-institutional theory of management fashions to define leadership fashions as a process that constantly reconfigures the rational norms and expectations attached to leadership, and that elevates certain approaches as the best way to fulfill those norms and expectations. Combining Weber’s broad understanding of rationality with our own concept of affective rationality, we account for the many different instrumental, practical, moral, and sometimes deeply personal and emotional norms and expectations that drive the leadership fashion setting process. This approach contributes a theoretical foundation for understanding the sociological significance of leadership fashions, for exploring the leadership industries that produce and promote them, and for researching further the ways that leadership fashions and the leadership industries influence leadership research, learning, and practice.

流行和商业化的领导观念经常被批评为愚弄领导力话语，研究和学习的时尚。相比之下，我们将领导时尚视为个人和集体领导学习的重要工具。我们扩展了管理时尚的新制度理论，以将领导时尚定义为一个过程，该过程不断重新构造与领导相关的理性规范和期望，并将某些方法提升为实现这些规范和期望的最佳方法。将韦伯对理性的广泛理解与我们自己的情感理性概念相结合，我们可以解释许多不同的工具性，实践性，道德性，有时甚至是深刻的个人和情感规范和期望，这些都是推动领导力时尚设定过程的因素。