Showing papers in "Leadership in 2017"

Is critical leadership studies ‘critical’?:

Abstract: ‘Leader’ and ‘follower’ are increasingly replacing ‘manager’ and ‘worker’ to become the routine way to frame hierarchy within organizations; a practice that obfuscates, even denies, structural antagonisms Furthermore, given that many workers are indifferent to (and others despise) their bosses, assuming workers are ‘followers’ of organizational elites seems not only managerialist, but blind to other forms of cultural identity We feel that critical leadership studies should embrace and include a plurality of perspectives on the relationship between workers and their bosses However, its impact as a critical project may be limited by the way it has generally adopted this mainstream rhetoric of leader/follower By not being ‘critical’ enough about its own discursive practices, critical leadership studies risk reproducing the very kind of leaderism it seeks to condemn

Reimagining ethical leadership as a relational, contextual and political practice:

Abstract: Interest in ethical leadership has been spurred by the widespread reporting of corporate malfeasance and corruption in the last decade. Although ethical leadership theories have highlighted the imp...

Hubristic leadership: A review

Abstract: Hubristic leaders over-estimate significantly their own abilities and believe their performance to be superior to that of others; as a consequence, they make over-confident and over-ambitious judgements and decisions. The fact that hubristic leaders tend to be resistant to criticism, and invulnerable to and contemptuous of the advice of others further compounds the problem. In this article, we review conceptual, theoretical and methodological aspects of hubristic leadership research. We examine hubristic leadership from two standpoints: first, from a psychological and behavioural perspective, we review hubris in terms of over-confidence and its relationship to core self-evaluation and narcissism; second, from a psychiatric perspective, we review hubris as an acquired disorder with a distinctive set of symptoms (Hubris Syndrome), the onset of which is associated with the acquisition of significant power. In doing so, we draw distinctions between hubris and several related constructs, such as over-confidence, narcissism, core self-evaluation and pride. Methodologically, we review how hubris and Hubris Syndrome can be recognised, diagnosed and researched, and we explore some of the unique challenges and opportunities hubris research presents. We conclude by offering some directions for future inquiry and recapitulate the practical and pedagogical significance of this vitally important but under-researched leadership phenomenon.

Leadership-as-practice: Theory and application—An editor’s reflection:

Abstract: In this review article, the editor of the new Routledge volume, Leadership-as-Practice: Research and Application, describes the foundation, thematic attributes, and critical uniqueness of leadershi...

Critical leadership studies:a response to Learmonth and Morrell

Abstract: This article re-states the value of a dialectical approach to critical leadership studies: one that explicitly uses the ‘language of leadership’ to examine and illuminate workplace power and identity dynamics. Outlining an alternative view of what it means to be ‘critical’, this response questions the dichotomizing tendency in Learmonth and Morrell’s arguments and highlights their misrepresentation and misinterpretation of my 2014 article. Learmonth and Morrell’s article shifts in different places between Marxist structuralism and mainstream voluntarism. Their proposal to replace the language of leadership with a Marxist binary of manager and worker all but precludes the possibility of a critical approach to leadership studies, and leaves little, if any, conceptual space for the study of leadership whatsoever. They also suggest that critical studies of leadership are not critical enough. Yet, paradoxically, their objections draw on conventional, voluntaristic and uncritical conceptions of both leaders and followers. Rather than reproduce and reinforce further dichotomies, future critical work on leadership would be better served, in my view, exploring the dialectical asymmetries, situated interrelations and intersecting practices of leaders and followers and managers and workers in all their ambiguous, paradoxical and contradictory forms.

Locating and building collective leadership and impact

Abstract: This paper analyzes how collective leadership develops from more individualistic leadership through ethnographic analysis of the rise of urban environmental stewardship in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Longitudinal analysis of a 30-year period reveals how leadership shifted from being highly individualistic, to become more pluralistic, and ultimately more collective. I demonstrate how specifying the location of leadership action in the case addresses ambiguity regarding the definitions of and distinctions among collective, plural, and integrative leadership. I identify two processes that helped to relocate leadership from more individualistic to increasingly collective, emergent spaces, namely fueling a public imaginary and organizing inclusively. These processes were central to connecting and mutually advancing collective leadership and collective impact.

Don’t call me a leader, but I am one: The Dutch mayor and the tradition of bridging-and-bonding leadership in consensus democracies

Abstract: In some democratic contexts, there is a strong aversion to the directive, individualistic and masculine expressions of leadership that have come to dominate the study of political leadership. Such leadership is antithetical to consensus democracies in parts of continental Europe, where the antipathy to leadership has linguistic, institutional as well as cultural dimensions. Political-administrative and socio-cultural contexts in these countries provide little room for heroic expressions of leadership. Consequently, alternative forms of leadership and associated vocabularies have developed that carry profound practical relevance but that have remained underexplored. Based on an in-depth mixed-methods study, this article presents the Dutch mayoralty as an insightful and exemplary case of what can be called 'bridging-and-bonding leadership'; it provides a clear illustration of how understandings of democratic leadership can deviate from the dominant paradigm and of how leading in a consensus context brings about unique practical challenges for office holders. The analysis shows that the important leadership task of democratic guardianship that is performed by Dutch mayors is in danger of being overlooked by scholars of political leadership, as are consensus-oriented leadership roles in other parts of the world. For that reason, a recalibration of the leadership concept is needed, developing an increased theoretical sensitivity towards the non-decisive and process-oriented aspects of the leadership phenomenon. This article specifies how the future study of leadership, as a part of the change that is advocated, can benefit from adopting additional languages of leadership.

‘Should I stay or should I go?’:exploring leadership-as-practice in the middle management role

Abstract: This article explores dilemmas in middle manager work through the perspective of leadership-as-practice. An autoethnographic account is outlined of how a dilemma is addressed by a middle manager. T...

Sixty years of research on leadership in Africa: A review of the literature

Abstract: This paper reviews peer-reviewed research on leadership in Africa published from 1950 to 2009. The review has a dual purpose. On the one hand, it provides scholars with an entry point to the relati...

Being Native American in business: Culture, identity, and authentic leadership in modern American Indian enterprises

Abstract: Tribally owned American Indian enterprises provide a unique cross-cultural setting for emerging Native American business leaders. This article examines the manner in which American Indian leaders negotiate the boundaries between their indigenous organizations and the nonindigenous communities in which they do business. Through a series of qualitative interviews, we find that American Indian business leaders fall back on a strong sense of “self,” which allows them to maintain effective leadership across boundaries. This is highly consistent with theories of authentic leadership. Furthermore, we find that leaders define self through their collective identity, which is heavily influenced by tribal affiliation and tribal culture. We add to the literature on authentic leadership by showing the role that culture and collective identity have in creating leader authenticity within the indigenous community.

Indigenous African Leadership: Key differences from Anglo-centric thinking and writings:

Abstract: This article draws on historical explorers’ accounts, ethnography and organisational approaches to examine practices, discourses and perceptions of leadership in 12 prototypical indigenous communities in West and Central Africa. By so doing, it highlights how leadership meanings from this context differ from Anglo-centric thinking and writings. Key to this contribution is an unravelling of ways in which historical cultural hegemonies impose particular discursive formations, constructed practices and mind-programming in a non-Anglo-Saxon socio-cultural context. Dramaturgical power arrangement, lucid role substitution and the notion of leadership as non-human emerge as dominant themes in the analysis. Also, featuring significantly are representations of leadership in symbols, mythology and as transcendental and metaphysical. These conceptualisations are different from predominant Anglo-Saxon writings that frequently present leadership as linear hierarchies, dyadic (leader-follower) relationship, acts and be...

The perceived impact of sexual orientation on the ability of queer leaders to relate to followers

Abstract: As the body of research around diversity and leadership in the workforce continues to grow and develop, so does research around the queer experience in the workforce. Thus far, a great deal of research on the queer experience focuses on the costs and benefits of disclosure in the workplace. However, little work explores the intersection of leadership and sexual orientation. The aim of this qualitative paper is to focus on the specific work and/or volunteer leadership experiences of queer leaders within the context of their organizations. In particular, we focus on how queer leaders perceive the impact of their sexual orientation on their ability to relate to followers. Among the identified themes, issues of disclosure, advocacy, and temporal placement were the most consistent areas perceived to be impacted by sexual orientation. The implications and limitations of this study for future research are discussed.

Leadership, leadership development and all that jazz:

Abstract: This article critiques key elements of contemporary leadership theory and practice, notably the persistent modernist emphasis on heroic individualism in models of the leader and leadership and the highly instrumental and performative nature of the competence approach to leadership development. Against this, the article draws on the history of jazz as an improvisational art form to develop a view of leadership based on fluidity and adaptability, commitment, creativity and change, community and team enabling and the idea of mastery and wisdom. Leadership-as-practice, in this view, is “collective coherent thinking” based on a lifetime of preparation for exploring the spaces between the notes where creative interpretation meets and responds to uncertainty and unpredictability.

Exploring traditional Indigenous leadership concepts: A spiritual foundation for Blackfeet leadership:

Abstract: Historically examining the cultural foundation for traditional leadership within the Blackfoot Confederacy, composed of the Blackfeet (Pikuni or South Piegan) in Montana, USA, and the North Piegan, Blood (Kainai), and Blackfoot (Siksika) in Alberta, Canada, reveals that authority for leadership is grounded in tribal spirituality. This spiritual authority is integrated within traditional and complex structures that organize the social structures of the Blackfeet, a structure of extended family, bands, and societies that all influence leadership. Traditional leadership authority arises through medicine bundle rituals, ceremonial rites, and protocols that exist within the Niitsitapi (Blackfeet people) worldview. Understanding the complex foundations of traditional tribal leadership facilitates future research and understanding of Indigenous leadership, especially when international borders separate tribes.

Reflexive work and the duality of self-leadership

Abstract: The concept of self-leadership is known and accepted, but still under-researched. By considering the reflexive work involved in the process of self-leadership, we seek to understand what factors are relevant for managers to be effective in a sustainable and productive way. We ask how managers engage in self-leadership. Empirically, we find that self-leadership is a process that can be translated into the capability of handling and sustaining four dualities: challenge and routine; self and others; nonwork and work; mind and body.

Writing through the labyrinth: Using l'ecriture feminine in leadership studies

Abstract: Metaphors enable us to understand organisations in distinctive ways and explain the paucity of women in leadership positions, and yet, when gender discrimination is addressed via metaphor, women’s responses, resistance and agency are rarely included in such analyses. In this article, I employ a narrative writing practice inspired by the work of Helene Cixous as a way of exploring how we might research and write differently in leadership studies. Cixous invites women to reclaim their sexuality and subjectivity through a feminine mode of women’s writing and what she defines as l'ecriture feminine can be interpreted as a liberating bodily practice that aims to release women’s repressed creative agency and transform phallogocentric structures. Using the Greek mythology of the Minotaur and the Labyrinth, this article weaves together these seemingly disparate concepts of myth, metaphor and feminist writing practices with leadership discourse to explore the ways in which academic women experience the university ...

The language of leadership in Laos

Abstract: This paper responds to recent calls in the leadership studies literature for anthropologically informed empirical research on leadership phenomena in non-Western and non-Anglophone settings. The au...

Leaders as ventriloquists. Leader identity and influencing the communicative construction of the organisation

Abstract: Traditionally leadership studies have focussed on psychological and quantitative approaches that have offered limited insights into the achievement of leader identity as an interactional accomplishment. Taking a discursive approach to leadership in which leaders emerge as those who have most influence in communicatively constructing the organisation, and using transcripts of naturally occurring decision-making talk, the purpose of this paper is to make visible the seen but unnoticed discursive resources by which leader identity emerges in talk. More specifically, using actor network theory as a methodology, this paper focusses on how the director of an organisation ventriloquises (i.e. makes another actor speak through the production of a given utterance) other entities to do leadership. Findings indicate that leadership is achieved by making relevant to the interaction hybrid presences of actants that allow certain organisational players to influence the communicative construction of the organisation and...

Collective leadership as institutional work: interpreting evidence from Mound Bayou:

Abstract: In this article, we refine and extend the conceptualization of collective leadership by examining how institutional work can play a central role in the emergence of collective leadership success or failure through conflict. Specifically, based on historical traces collected from the first African American town in Mississippi, Mound Bayou, which was founded and led by a group of ex-slaves, we conceptualize collective leadership as a compilational process and elucidate the development of collective leadership amid the relational and inspirational aspects of conflict that arose among this cadre of historical collective leaders. We selected the case of Mound Bayou because the specifics of the case allowed us to explore how collective leadership emerged, and over time, led to conflict engendered by issues that arose within the institutional processes of formation, maintenance, and transformation of the town. We used interpretivist epistemology into which we incorporated and utilized historiometric methodology ...

How did that happen? Making sense of the 2016 US presidential election result through the lens of the ‘leadership moment’

Abstract: This article analyses the victory of Donald Trump in the 2016 US election through the lens of the ‘leadership moment’. A phenomenologically based framework, the ‘leadership moment’ theorizes leader...

Conflicting prescriptions for ‘ethical’ leadership in complex institutions: Perspectives from US collegiate athletic administrators

Abstract: This research sought to demonstrate how institutional complexity within the field of college athletics in the United States offers conflicting prescriptions for ethical leadership. With college athletics serving as the context for this investigation, data were collected from 14 athletic administrators at four universities. Participants suggested that ethical leadership in college athletics consisted of prioritizing the institution while integrating servant leadership. We discussed how these two logics are conceptually incompatible, thereby creating conflicting perspectives as to what it meant to be an ethical leader. By incorporating an institutional logic perspective, we demonstrated that conceptions of ethical leadership are subjected to engrained ideals that may not always be compatible as they lend themselves to differing ethical frameworks. The contextual implications as well as the broader discipline implications of this research are discussed.

The words leader/líder and their resonances in an Italo-Latin American multinational corporation

Abstract: The problems of ‘lost in translation’ are well known. Yet some terms of English managerial vocabulary, which are perfectly translatable in other languages, remain untranslated. One explanation of this phenomenon is what Linguistic anthropology call negative semantic resonances. Semantic resonances focused on the issue of which meanings can or cannot be expressed by a single word in different cultures. In this paper, based on an organisational ethnography of Latin American expatriates working for an Italo-Latin-American multinational corporation (Tubworld), we analyse the resonances of the word leader/lider and director, direttore, capo, guida, coordinador, caudillo among a group of expatriates; all Italian, Spanish or multilingual speakers who use English as a second language in their everyday interactions. The paper explains how the different uses contribute to create a meaning of what a leader should and should not be; someone who leads without leading, sometimes a manager. The authors, an Italian nativ...

Authentic leading as relational accountability: Facing up to the conflicting expectations of media leaders

Abstract: This research is focused on understanding the ethical implications of conflicting expectations faced by leaders in the media industries Though the “blended leadership” approach proposed by Collinson and Collinson discusses the existence of these conflicting expectations, we argue that work remains to be done on how this impacts leaders’ authenticity and accountability Can leaders who respond to these varied demands still consider themselves authentic and accountable to a broad range of stakeholders? As our analysis of data gathered through an empirical study in Europe and the USA shows, the pursuit of profit does not always sit comfortably with the insistence on journalistic integrity, and decisiveness does not always foster openness toward experimentation We explore the literature on authentic leadership to argue that its references to relational transparency make it difficult to deal with the “blended” nature of leadership reality In response, we propose that relational accountability could be a mor

Almost “Nothing New Under the Sun”: American politics and the election of Donald Trump:

Abstract: Donald Trump’s surprising 2016 election as President of the United States was unusual both in the set of states he won and in clearly winning the electoral vote while decisively losing the popular ...

Gender and political leadership: Turkish experience:

Abstract: Women’s political leadership has been ignored both in actual political scene of world’s democracies and by the studies of political leadership. The common perception in both areas has long been that gender difference makes women unfit leaders. More recent studies of gender and leadership as well as various women politicians, on the other hand, emphasized women’s fitness for leadership due to their gendered characteristics. This paper argues that using gender as a determining factor for good or bad political leadership endangers future leadership opportunities for women. An exploration of the experience of Turkey in the 1990s with a woman political leader, Tansu Ciller, and her leadership style in relation to her gender, demonstrates that while gender stereotypes make women’s political leadership to be perceived as ineffective, any argument that is made in its favor in gendered terms faces the risk of being refuted by actual experience hence delegitimizing women’s leadership altogether. Using Crosby and Br...

Ways of leading in non-Anglophone contexts: Representing, expressing and enacting authority beyond the English-speaking world

Abstract: The English language has for some time dominated academia worldwide (Steyaert and Janssens, 2013) and become accepted and institutionally embedded as the international language of academia. This is illustrated within the field of leadership studies where, since its beginnings in the early part of the Twentieth Century, research into leadership has largely been pursued by scholars in the USA and the UK working in the English language. Consequently, the sub-discipline of ‘leadership studies’ has been developed and theorised within Western traditions of research, which have produced predominantly Anglo-centric linguistic interpretations of the concept (Jepson, 2010). This dominance of a culturally and linguistically ‘naturalised’ Anglo-centric view of leadership has heavily informed the development of leadership and management knowledge and practice. Such ethnocentricity, furthermore, has resulted in tacit assumptions regarding the general applicability and transferability of knowledge beyond English language speaking contexts. As a consequence, other culturally situated notions of leadership, leading and managing have been comparatively marginalised (Schedlitzki et al., 2016).

Leadership in opera : Romance, betrayal, strife and sacrifice

Abstract: What, if anything, does opera tell us about leadership, leaders and followers, that social research or indeed other art forms do not tell us? This is the question I address here. I argue that opera is a highly political genre, able to depict political events involving leaders and followers in sharply illuminating ways. In particular, through the device of the chorus it is able to represent the political actions and sentiments of large multitudes of people in their complexity and ambiguity. It is also capable of portraying many of the contradictions of leadership in a critical light. In particular, I argue that opera offers powerful insights into the psychology of leaders confronted by crisis and strife. It highlights the sacrifices they make, the distance and isolation that frequently afflicts them, the different ways in which they wield power and handle conflicts and the tensions between their private and public lives. In showing them meting out favours and punishments, opera warns of rulers’ perennial temptation to abuse their power and highlights some of the dark sides of leadership.

The student voice in Critical Leadership Education: An exploration of student–faculty partnership learning in sustainability education:

Abstract: Leader-centric, uni-directional leadership theory and practice are persistent despite increasing critique, and research shows that students conflate leadership with both power and virtue. It has be...