Friday 13 January 2012

Opinion leadership amongst Australian political leaders

Dr Richard Stanton looks at the different types of political leaders in Fleet-footed Abbott needs to be playmaker:
Homophily is a fundamental principle of human communication where ideas and innovations are more likely to be shared more frequently between people who are alike in beliefs, education and socioeconomic status.

The opposite of homophily is heterophily. This requires one to step outside ritual boundaries to take meaning from or communicate meaning to those with a different set of values or beliefs.

Monomorphic thought leaders tend to focus on a single issue. The alternative to a monomorphic thought leader is a polymorphic thought leader - obviously, one who is comfortable being across a variety of issues.

Abbott has accumulated several of the important characteristics of a thought leader - great exposure to news media; broad interpersonal networks; extensive contact with change agents; and the capacity to always be ''on the edge'', which means he is not on top of things but acts as a broker between groups.

These characteristics are representative of a homophilous monomorphic thought leader, which is not a bad thing in a business or corporate head. But it can be dangerous for a political head.
He goes on to write:
Abbott's monomorphic focus on specific issues during most of last year was a good strategy, but it will not hold for this year. He can no longer afford to act homophilously (preach to the choir) and expect to increase his coalition's vote.

The questions, however, are whether or not he knows he is on the brink and whether thought leadership and innovation really matter.
It's an interesting analysis. However, the Gillard Government seems to be so on the nose with the electorate that Tony Abbott probably doesn't need to change anything in his style to be re-elected. Even if, as the writer suggests, Tony Abbott does not have the appropriate characteristics to lead a nation he's probably going to win the next election anyway. The problem may well be what comes after.

Note, according to Wikipedia homophily is often expressed as "Birds of a feather flock together". The Wikipedia article on heterophily on the other hand notes that "This phenomenon is notable in successful organizations, where the resulting diversity of ideas is thought to promote an innovative environment".

Unfortunately I can't find entries for monomorphic or polymorphic in Wikipedia, at least in the context of opinion leadership. Wikipedia does have an article on the concept of opinion leadership. The opinion leader concept does, in my opinion, help explain the influence of people like Alan Jones and Andrew Bolt.

This website has definitions of monomorphic opinion leadership and polymorphic opinion leadership, although it's the context of marketing. Note that you can't read the entire page is parts of it are hidden by a login screen. If you disable JavaScript you should be able to copy the contents of the page.
BusinessDictionary.com defines monomorphic opinion leadership as:
A type of leadership in communication and media that leads to the spread of information concerning one particular, highly specialized topic rather than a broadly-based set of information. This can be a very narrow point of view and can lead to making decisions based on lack of full information. opposite of polymorphic opinion leadership.
It does not have a definition of polymorphic opinion leadership. I guess we just have to treat it as the opposite of monomorphic.

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