When Leadership Terminology Collides: A Spirited Comparison of Adaption-Innovation Theory and Adaptive Leadership

As researchers, scholars, and practitioners, leadership educators apply an intellectual inquiry process, identifying what is known and understood, and what is not. Often, this requires seeking clarity around terms and considering how similarities might be contextualized differently between theory and practice. Exemplified through research and teaching, both Adaption-Innovation (A-I) Theory and Adaptive Leadership share similar vocabularies surrounding the concept of adaption. Both are concerned with how individuals and groups solve varying types of problems and navigate change, but one emphasizes individual differences in cognitive style while the other prescribes a series of leader/group processes. This moderated panel affords opportunity for a deep dive into the nuanced overlap of terminology with the premise that leadership educators often teach and model theoretically sound concepts in practice-based contexts. An examined comparison of A-I theory to Adaptive Leadership may illuminate this valuable example of connecting rigorous, empirically supported theory and pragmatic practice.