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Substitutes for Leadership Discussion

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There's a body of literature devoted to a concept called "SUBSTITUTES FOR LEADERSHIP". Basically, the idea is that organizations can develop a set of structural characteristics and cultivate characteristics in their members such that actual "leadership" on the part of particular individuals is either unnecessary or, in some cases, actually undermined. There are three sets, briefly:

Characteristics of Subordinates: Ability and experience, Need for independence, professional orientation, and Indifference towards rewards
Characteristics of Tasks: Routineness, Availability of feedback, and Intrinsic satisfaction
Characteristics of Organization: Formalization, Group cohesion, Inflexibility, and Rigid reward structure

Are leaders always really necessary, or can we make things work OK even if we don't have them? What sorts of situations might be helped by cultivating such a "substitute leadership" environment? Are there situations where this might be a bad thing? What about you personally - do you want a leader, or would you prefer essentially to be your own leader? It's one way to make organizations less political - but is it worth it?

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The solution discussed some aspects of the questions posed and goes into a defense of leadership.

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As a c-level executive, and MBM candidate Harvard University, I most strongly disagree with anyone who supports this "substitutes for leadership" approach. A good way to think of this, is running your organization such that it is full of lemmings (if you aren't familiar with lemmings, here's a quick link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemmings_(video_game))

Of course, this is my personal opinion, however it seems that very few organizations actually prescribe to this. Although, in practice, it tends to happen quite a bit. I will give a Lemming Approach example for you, and a much better run company example.

The Walt Disney Company is one of the world's largest and well-known companies. They have over 99,000 ...

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