Understanding New Power Communities and Leadership in Medicine and Health Professions: A Review of Concepts and Literature

Abstract

The authors’ review scholarly works in leadership studies and other fields and apply concepts and literature related to Heiman and Timms’ seminal work, New Power (2018), in order to understand the evolving area (as described by Heimans and Timms) of “new power communities.” New power communities can be found in medical and health professions organizations today. Moreover, the importance of social media, crowdsourcing, and the impact of broad-based mass movements in democratic polities, along with the use of new technologies, has caused a reorientation of human networking and interaction. The article discusses the following literature: Naím’s The End of Power (2013), Jefferson, et al.’s “New Power through the Lenses of Leadership Studies, Psychology, and Politics” (2016), Shultz’s Learning from Experience (2016), and Slaughter’s The Chessboard & the Web (2017). Each of these works can inform our analysis of “new power,” community, leadership, and other concepts that helps us analyze and contextualize Heimans and Timms’ New Power in ways that allow us to not only understand the concept of “new power” better, but also understand how leadership, community, and power impact medicine and the health professions. Methodologically, this review study employs a qualitative systematic review approach (see Anh and Kang, 2018). In attempting to understand better the concepts of “new power” and “new power communities,” the authors provide an empirical analysis of new power communities in digital spaces emerging in various contexts including medicine and health professions.