Trying out loud: Leadership development as experimentalism

Where does leadership development turn if its heroic ideals are no longer tenable? This study takes leadership practice, not the classroom, as its point of departure. Leadership studies have demonstrated the romance in leadership theory of an individual, stable, and coherent leadership figure, even if this figure does not connect to actual practices. In other streams of research, practice increasingly appears to be a resource for less presumptuous theorizing about leadership. These more situationally sensitive approaches call for equivalent leadership development practices, and extant literature in particular has escaped the confines of the executive management classroom to only a limited extent. While experiential learning has proved an efficient means of instigating and harvesting in-classroom experiences for subsequent reflection and learning, translating these experiences into (later) leadership practice has proved problematic. The mundanity of practice rarely corresponds to the theoretical exposés emanating from classrooms. Using a leadership development program (LDP) as our case, we explore accounts from managers carrying out in-practice experiments and analyze these processes in light of Dewey’s notion of experimentalism. Identifying a series of attributes associated with the experimental intervention, we illuminate some future avenues for situated leadership development as well as offer considerations for leadership development practice.

Is leadership a myth? A ‘new wave’ critical leadership-focused research agenda for recontouring the landscape of educational leadership

Intentionally provocative, this study identifies weaknesses in mainstream educational leadership scholarship, and draws upon ‘new wave’ critical leadership studies to propose a new, potentially paradigm-shifting, direction for the field. The central argument is that educational leadership researchers, in focusing predominantly on how institutional heads and other formal ‘leaders’ may best ‘do’ leadership, are addressing the wrong questions and setting off from the wrong departure point. The unit of analysis should shift, it is argued, from leadership to influence, within a new research agenda that replaces surface-level, causality-assumptive ‘how?’ and ‘why?’ questions that have shaped mainstream educational leadership research for over thirty years, with more fundamental ‘who? and ‘what?’ questions, aimed at identifying who is in fact doing the influencing. An aspect of such inquiry is leadership scepticism and agnosticism, which confronts the question: Does leadership exist, or is it a myth that we have reified? A highly original feature of the proposed new research agenda is the adoption of the author's theoretical notion of a singular unit of micro-level influence as an ‘epistemic object’ – a concept derived from STEMM research, denoting a vague and undefined potential focus of inquiry that may (or may not) turn out to be significant.

Ensemble mentorship as a decolonising and relational practice in Canada

Inspired by collaborating on a shared vision of reconciliation, three authors explore ethical relationality and the practical ways in which their heterarchical ensemble mentorship serves to decolonise and advance a shared vision of reconciliation for university teaching and learning. As Indigenous and non-Indigenous educators, we are buoyed by those developing decolonising and Indigenising strategies in formerly colonised regions. Seen as a promising interruption to a neoliberal approach to education, the authors embrace the possibilities of imagining and creating an ethical space in universities where relationality is prioritised in service of social justice. While the complex nature of reconciliation within a Canadian context begets tension and highlights what are often conflicting value systems within academe, we maintain that innovations in teaching and learning are possible in what is now a globally disrupted terrain as students, faculty, administrators, and university leadership contend with the unknown, encounter collectivist Indigenous traditions, and tentatively explore decolonisation as an ethical avenue towards inclusive and empowering education. In imagining what is possible, we build upon Indigenous knowledge traditions and the work of leadership studies scholars to propose 'ensemble mentorship' between students and faculty as a collaborative and decolonising teaching and learning practice.

‘You can’t Google everything’: the voluntary sector and the leadership of communities of place

Responding directly to the themes of the Special Issue, this paper addresses a surprising absence to date of the voluntary sector’s important role in the constitution of place leadership. Drawing on an empirical study of locally rooted voluntary sector organisations in a district of the Midlands of England, we aim to untangle the complex relationship between leadership, place and the voluntary sector, building on recent advances in the collective and critical approaches to leadership studies. A thematic analysis of a rich qualitative dataset highlighted three core themes of the voluntary sector contribution to collective place leadership: their ability to draw on and mobilise local knowledge, their positioning in a web of dense local relationships, and the notion that their intrinsic characteristics are a key source of their distinctiveness and value to the local governance network that constitutes the district’s place leadership. In addition to contributing to a nuanced understanding of the voluntary sector’s place in both the leadership and place leadership studies corpus, our findings shed light on the multiplexity and tensions of leading in the collective, as well as the extent to which the voluntary sector is constrained by wider structures and macro-dynamics.

The missing link: Studying political leadership from the followers’ perspective

Recent political developments suggest that political followership has played increasingly vital roles in modern democratic politics. However, scholarship seemingly lacks proper conceptual and methodological tools for analysing why and how citizens follow their leaders, and what the role of this relationship is in personalised politics and political leadership. Addressing the research gap, this article turns to generic leadership studies for help and introduces its follower-centric models into the field of political science. This venture opens with a review and comparison of some of the different perspectives about political followers in the scholarship on political leadership and personalisation, taking account of their limitations. It then moves on to assess follower-centric models and their empirical results, focusing on observers’ perceptions about the characteristics and behaviours of leaders in the attribution of leadership. Based on these models, the article offers a balanced perspective about leader–follower relations. Recommendations for future research directions are presented in the concluding sections.

Aspects of Women’s Leadership in the Organisation: Systematic Literature Review

In most organisations, women are underrepresented in top positions. Many aspects of Women’s Leadership are studied in the literature for underrepresentation of women leaders. This study aims to analyse and consolidate the insights about those aspects of Women’s Leadership, which gives them a stable and secure position in the organisation, beyond the unseen walls of gender discrimination. These aspects are barriers, enablers, strengths and weaknesses of Women’s Leadership. The research method used for the study is a systematic literature review method. Peer-reviewed, scholarly journal articles and book references between 1990 and 2021 identified from the Scopus and Web of Sciences databases are considered for the study. The result showed much uniformity in the ‘Women’s Leadership’ phenomenon, globally. This research found that Women’s Leadership studies are mostly conducted in areas such as social sciences, business and management, medicine, education, etc. It also found that most women-leadership-related studies are conducted in developed countries where the percentage of women leaders is comparatively higher than in other industries. Still, women leaders in both developed and developing countries face similar barriers during their careers. The gender gap and the glass ceiling they have to break are some of the issues experienced by women in any organisation. Organisational bias, lack of assertiveness and poor networking also pose barriers to Women’s Leadership. Yet, there are some enablers for Women’s Leadership, such as mentoring, good training programmes and workplace culture. However, maintaining a work–life balance, working under pressure and excluding informal communication are considered as limitations for Women’s Leadership. Strengths, such as high emotional intelligence, empathy, democratic leadership style, sincerity and ability to make decisions under critical circumstances benefit the organisation. This study will help to get an integrated and consolidated theoretical review of different aspects of Women’s Leadership in the organisation. Moreover, the study can help to implement various organisational policies to increase the percentage of women in leadership roles.

Thinking differently about leadership: a critical history of the form and formation of leadership studies

<p>We have come to live in an age where leadership is the solution, regardless of the problem. Today, managers are called on to provide leadership which is ‘visionary’, ‘charismatic’, ‘transformational’ and ‘authentic’ in nature. This is what ‘followers’ are said to need to perform to their potential. The efforts of the academy in promoting these ideas means they are typically understood as modern, enlightened and grounded in scientific research. Taking a critical step back, this study examines why we have come to understand leadership in this way. Adopting a Foucauldian methodology, the study comprises three case studies which examine Classical Greek, 16th century European and modern scholarly discourses on leadership. The analysis foregrounds change and continuity in leadership thought and examines the underpinning assumptions, problematizations and processes of formation which gave rise to these truth claims. The relationship and subjectivity effects produced by these discourses along with their wider social function are also considered. What the study reveals is that our current understanding of leadership is not grounded in an approach more enlightened and truthful than anything that has come before. Rather, just as at other times in the past, it is contemporary problematizations, politically-informed processes of formation and the epistemological and methodological preferences of our age which profoundly shape what is understood to constitute the truth about leadership. Through showing how leadership has been thought of at different points in time, this thesis argues that far from being a stable enduring fact of human nature now revealed to us by modern science, as is typically assumed, leadership is most usefully understood as an unstable social invention, morphing in form, function and effect in response to changing norms, values and circumstances. Consistent with this understanding, a new approach to theory-building for organizational leadership studies is offered. This study shows, then, why we ought to think differently about leadership and offers a means by which this can occur.</p>

Thinking differently about leadership: a critical history of the form and formation of leadership studies

<p>We have come to live in an age where leadership is the solution, regardless of the problem. Today, managers are called on to provide leadership which is ‘visionary’, ‘charismatic’, ‘transformational’ and ‘authentic’ in nature. This is what ‘followers’ are said to need to perform to their potential. The efforts of the academy in promoting these ideas means they are typically understood as modern, enlightened and grounded in scientific research. Taking a critical step back, this study examines why we have come to understand leadership in this way. Adopting a Foucauldian methodology, the study comprises three case studies which examine Classical Greek, 16th century European and modern scholarly discourses on leadership. The analysis foregrounds change and continuity in leadership thought and examines the underpinning assumptions, problematizations and processes of formation which gave rise to these truth claims. The relationship and subjectivity effects produced by these discourses along with their wider social function are also considered. What the study reveals is that our current understanding of leadership is not grounded in an approach more enlightened and truthful than anything that has come before. Rather, just as at other times in the past, it is contemporary problematizations, politically-informed processes of formation and the epistemological and methodological preferences of our age which profoundly shape what is understood to constitute the truth about leadership. Through showing how leadership has been thought of at different points in time, this thesis argues that far from being a stable enduring fact of human nature now revealed to us by modern science, as is typically assumed, leadership is most usefully understood as an unstable social invention, morphing in form, function and effect in response to changing norms, values and circumstances. Consistent with this understanding, a new approach to theory-building for organizational leadership studies is offered. This study shows, then, why we ought to think differently about leadership and offers a means by which this can occur.</p>