In spite of the volume of theoretical attention paid to concepts of leadership, there has been little work investigating how assumptions included in concepts of organization have influenced work in the organizational leadership field. Specifically, the concept of exit from organizations, and individual post-exit relations with former groups, in particular, has seen little theory or empirical investigation. This article employs a critical literature review to show that assumptions inherent in concepts of organization, such as prioritizing efficiency and profit production, preclude organizational leadership theories from expanding upon concepts of exit. These assumptions begin with the Weberian concepts of Bureaucracy and continue today in studies of market exit and employee turnover. This review shows that these assumptions have restricted organizational studies research from expanding into additional fields and organizational types, such as religious, separatist, and political organizations. Additionally, this review points towards fruitful new areas of research, through an analysis of New Religious Movements as they apply to organizational leadership studies and the development of an improved survey for measuring turnover in organizations.

Although politically motivated suicides have spawned some of the largest and most impactful protest movements in recent memory, there remains a lack of research on similarities between events. Previously, each famous suicide has been taken to be a random phenomenon, which cannot be replicated. This paper serves to demystify the concept of politically motivated suicides, and to draw connections between events; this research is undertaken with the acknowledgement that these world shaping events are rarely the first politically motivated suicides in their time. Two main factors combine to spell success for these events. The presence of symbolic and powerful images, and messages from the death of an actor, combined with a social group which is able to harness and direct those images, determines the potential for a politically motivated suicide to escalate issues to a national scale. In this paper I connect litterature on the individual action of politically motivated suicide with the collective action field, and through a series of case studies investigate the importance of the action of suicide, and how social groups utilize the death of the actor. This change in thought reflects the concept that specific factors, not chance, combine to determine the outcome of these potentially nation changing events.