26 August 2025
STEEN HILDEBRANDT Professor, Ph.D.
In 1975, 30 years after the end of World War II, the need for a better future was clear. Anker Jørgensen (1922–2016) became Prime Minister of Denmark for the second time, replacing Poul Hartling (1914–2000). In the United States, Gerald Ford (1913–2006) had taken over from Richard Nixon (1913–1994) the year before. The Vietnam War had ended.
Petrol-free Sundays in Denmark from 1973–74 were still fresh in people’s memories. In 1972, Denmark established the world’s first Ministry of Pollution Control, later the Ministry of the Environment. That same year, Limits to Growth was published, and a major UN conference on the human environment was held in Stockholm. Representatives from 114 countries participated, adopting an action plan with over 100 recommendations. It marked the beginning of the global struggle for sustainability – a struggle that continues today and will remain ever-present.
The greatest Danish management researcher and thinker, Professor of Economics, Ph.D. Erik Johnsen (1928-2013), published a ground-breaking book in 1975, The Theory of Leadership. In the book, Johnsen developed and described 27 leadership roles, which he meticulously maintained over the years.
Erik Johnsen took up a professorship in business management at the Copenhagen Business School in 1969. He was Denmark’s first professor of management; for many years, he was Denmark’s most prolific writer on management. He was Scandinavia’s leading management researcher.
Following World War II, the American Marshall Plan provided support to several European countries, enabling several Danish leaders and researchers to travel to the United States to study management/leadership, rationalisation, operations research, and related fields. Among them, Erik Johnsen was likely the first Dane to translate operations research – also known as management science – into a Danish context.
He not only introduced operations research in Denmark but also developed a distinct Danish approach and understanding of the field. This work became the foundation for his book Multiobjective Decision Models, his concept of the 27 leadership roles, and his extensive writing on leadership and strategy.
From 1975 onwards, there was an explosion in Danish and Scandinavian leadership research, management publishing, and, more generally, the field of leadership began to attract much greater attention.
Of course, leadership had existed before that. It has existed for as long as people have worked together to solve tasks and problems. There was always someone who took the lead, initiated actions, planned and coordinated work, gave orders, and rewarded or punished those who acted as followers or workers – or as soldiers, since in the military domain the art of war, leadership (strategy, tactics, operations) has always been known, developed, and respected.
But outside of the military context, there was – at least until the 1970s – no particularly developed or impressive body of leadership literature or formal leadership education. That changed. It began here.
Over the past 50 years, the world has been transformed. The global population has grown by nearly 4 billion people. Back then, leadership as a field was only just beginning to take shape. There were fewer theories, fewer embellishments. In many places, the word “leadership” was rarely used at all. Instead, people spoke of administration, inspection, or supervision, and titles reflected this: administrator, manager, inspector, master, manufacturer, shipowner, wholesaler, superintendent, officer, or principal. Today, the title is simply: CEO.
We love leadership titles and management concepts. In the old days, the only way to learn leadership was through apprenticeship – learning on the job alongside an experienced leader. You observed what leaders said and did, and eventually, you could do it yourself. You were learning leadership—perhaps without even realising that that was what you were doing. Today, all of this has been professionalised. Leaders take exams, attend programs, courses, and certifications. Nowadays, you get a license to be a leader – at least on paper.
Today, we are not just talking about leadership, but about dynamic leadership—dissipative, regenerative, sustainable, heartfelt, humanistic, effective, strategic, value-based, goal-oriented, loving, distributed leadership – and beyond that: quality leadership, change leadership, talent leadership, diversity leadership, crisis leadership, top-level, middle, self-directed, visionary, project, cultural, facility, androgynous, operational, personnel, democratic, authoritarian leadership, and so on.
There are no limits to how the concept of “leadership” has been interpreted.
Throughout the 1970s and beyond, the field of leadership evolved in ways that no one could have imagined just a few decades earlier.
Then it exploded. Leadership became a profession. It became a diverse, chaotic, vibrant, and popular field, where economists, psychologists, engineers, mathematicians, statisticians, anthropologists, astrologers, sociologists, military officers, educators, and many other professionals and occupational groups explored a landscape so varied and, in many ways, so mysterious that there was room for all kinds of approaches, hypotheses, claims, models, and tools. There still is. There has always been—and continues to be—space for a little bit of everything.
The number of books, journals, trade magazines, tools, models, associations, courses, positions, and more seemed limitless. Almost anything was possible. Denmark saw significant imports, particularly from the USA, but leadership books and models also came from the UK and other countries.
The number of researchers, experts, consultants, advisors, and analysts grew explosively, and there were few limits to what could be sold – ranging from rigorous, serious advice to gimmicky, pop-psychology tools of all kinds for a hungry market.
Apprenticeship is no longer sufficient. Leadership today demands more: education.
Leadership training has become a solid and well-established field. Increasingly, leaders are enrolling in comprehensive and widely structured leadership programs.
And I dare say: there is a real need for this. Professional experience and formal education alone are no longer enough. Some people may believe otherwise, but it is not true. The world has become too complex, and the demands of leadership too great, to rely solely on apprenticeship, intuition, or technical expertise.
I recently spoke with a young leader at one of Denmark’s largest companies—undoubtedly a talented leader. He said, “What has surprised me most in my time in business is how many bad leaders I have met.” One could debate that, of course. I would respond: “I have met both extraordinarily skilled and surprisingly poor leaders.” And that is precisely why I maintain: there is an unquestionable need for leadership programs.
Ever since Frederick W. Taylor (1856–1915) published his seminal book Scientific Management in 1913, it is worth remembering that scientific approaches have informed the development of the full range of leadership concepts and models discussed above. Science and research have always played a central role.
In the realm of defence and the military, systematic training and education of leaders has always taken place, stretching far back into history. This is also an area where extensive research has been conducted worldwide, both in the past and continuing today.
In recent years, we have been experiencing a leadership shift – a true watershed. The term “paradigm shift” has become somewhat worn out; otherwise, it might have been the right word.
Looking back over the 50 years discussed here, we primarily see a mindset of separation, a matrix-based mindset, and a focus on local optimisation.
Everything revolved around the individual company and its isolated, narrowly defined, and calculated profits—owner’s profit, company profit, or whatever label was applied to this promised phenomenon.
Globally, business economics and management were all about maximising the profits of individual companies, in the short term and sometimes also in the slightly longer term. Profit maximisation—whatever the cost.
There was no consideration for nature. Birds and fish, water and air, and other resources were plentiful, so the prevailing attitude was simply to use them freely. And that is exactly what was done. There was an unapologetically raw approach to nature and the world’s resources. There seemed to be enough of everything.
In 1976, the economist Milton Friedman (1912–2006) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics. He had strong opinions on business, management, and more. He served as an advisor to President Ronald Reagan (1911–2004), and in 1970, he emphasised in the New York Times that “the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits.”
It is hard to find a more raw form of liberalism, a more short-sighted, parochial, and painfully simplistic approach to business than the one Friedman advocated.
In fact, this thinking was in many ways symptomatic of the entire period we are talking about here – the latter half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century. One could almost label this era with the names F.W. Taylor and M. Friedman: 1900–2000.
Right now, we are in the midst of a serious confrontation with the worldview, the approach to nature, people, and business mindset that defined this era.
It is not happening quietly. That is why it is worth examining this period – to understand what we are confronting and what we are leaving behind.
We are moving away from a narrow, profit-focused mindset and a simplistic approach to economic calculations, which the world has used to base billions of decisions on—calculations that ignored nature and natural resources. You could pay your way out of anything. You could pollute and damage the environment as long as you paid; the principle was called “the polluter pays.”
But when basic calculations fail to account for the world’s ecosystems, and when companies do not voluntarily refrain from certain harmful activities, global growth will come at the expense of ecosystems. This is what has happened and continues to happen – and it is occurring on such a massive scale and at such speed that the world is waking up and responding. A loss of biodiversity cannot be bought back with money.
A new leadership mindset is emerging. Concepts such as sustainability, global responsibility, profit for life, a leap in global empathy, regeneration, and more are shaping a paradigm that stands in stark contrast to the narrow, raw, and purely competitive thinking of Milton Friedman.
It’s no longer about profit at all costs; it’s about, as Joseph H. Bragdon put it a few years ago in a book title, Profit for Life. Economics, revenue, profit, and liquidity still matter, but no longer in a single-minded way.
To put it simply: there is no way around sustainability, no way around respect for life and life processes.
Businesses are social organisms within global ecosystems. Businesses are part of the whole, and the whole is planet earth. We haven’t realised this yet, but we’re getting there.
Milton Friedman’s crude liberal thinking was a parenthesis that has cost us dearly, and in the words of a well-known leader, the long-time chief executive of Unilever, Paul Polman, it is not about making as much profit as possible, whatever the cost.
Instead, it’s about making a net positive contribution to the whole that every company is a part of: Planet Earth.
A company should not exist if it makes a net negative contribution to the world and the whole that it is a part of and exists in.
This is the leadership challenge and opportunity for the future.
