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.

An Approach for Humanizing Leadership Education: Building Learning Community & Stakeholder Engagement

In recent years, scholars have become critical of mainstream leadership development approaches. In particular, Petriglieri and Petriglieri refer to the dehumanization of leadership, whereby leadership breaks its ties to identity, community, and context. The purpose of this paper is to present an approach for humanizing leadership using the case example of George Washington University’s Organizational Leadership & Learning (OLL) program. Embedded in the critical leadership studies (CLS) approach, the humanizing principles, and the humanistic leadership paradigm, the OLL program’s leadership learning approach focuses on building a learning community and stakeholder engagement. I describe its pedagogical goals and instructional strategies that help promote a psychologically safe space where learners build trusting relationships, integrate diverse perspectives through respectful dialogues, and develop a sense of the “common good” and culture of equity through issue-centered learning. Using classrooms as “identity spaces” and “leadership learning laboratory” allows learners in the program to practice the co-construction of ideas through mutual influence and interactions. This paper makes a valuable contribution to developing future leadership development programs.

Fifty-five years of managerial shared leadership research: A review of an empirical field

Managerial shared leadership is a practice that goes beyond traditional ways of organising leadership functions. It is an organisational phenomenon where a few individuals share responsibility for the tasks of a managerial position. This paper reviews 67 empirical papers published in scientific journals. The review covers 55 years (1965–2019). The aim is to contribute knowledge about managerial shared leadership as a research field and offer some relevant theoretical concepts. No review to date has specifically focused on managerial shared leadership, and this paper intends to close this knowledge gap. The paper details the start of managerial shared leadership as a research field, presents a bibliometric analysis and the methodological approaches used, and describes the structural characteristics of managerial shared leadership. The paper includes a thematic content analysis of necessary and enabling antecedents and outcomes. Historically, the imprecise use of concepts has hampered managerial shared leadership’s development into a cohesive research field, so this paper develops and uses theoretical concepts to form a theoretical construct for the entire field. This construct is briefly discussed in relation to general shared leadership theory and critical leadership studies. In practice, managerial shared leadership may provide leadership solutions where there is an imbalance between demands and resources while managing complex situations.

Leadership lessons untold: A new history of Robert McNamara’s World Bank

Leadership education can be reductionist and facile. Recent scholarship in management and organizational history has reexamined many of the most established business school concepts and literatures, rethinking the ‘lessons’ taught from – among others – Taylor, Maslow and the Human Relations School. This study similarly uses historical methods (oral historical and archival) to analyse the career of Robert S. McNamara, a major figure often portrayed simplistically in leadership literature. McNamara is often characterized as a ‘good manager but poor leader’, notorious for failures associated with micromanaging by questionable metrics. While this picture is partially accurate, it is far from complete. McNamara’s career – for all its management failures and weaknesses – also featured many traits associated with celebrated concepts of ‘leadership’, especially during his long tenure as President of the World Bank (1968–81). We develop an historical narrative that reevaluates and updates our understanding of this comparatively unexplored latter stage of McNamara’s career. The article argues against the construction of simplistic ‘leadership lessons’ that suffer from three weaknesses: (1) a poor grasp of historical events, (2) a weak understanding of history as a discipline and (3) a reliance on artificial constructs and dichotomies, such as leadership (good) versus management (bad). We suggest that there is much to learn from deepening the scholarly relationship between critical leadership studies and management history.

‘Unlocking Us’: Analyzing the US election and its aftermath

The American presidential election of 2020 ended in the early hours of Thursday 7 January 2021, when the US Congress counted and certified the ballots of the Electoral College in the aftermath of a violent, Trump-supporting mob breaching the US Capitol. The spectacle of this assault may be analyzed for years to come, yet it is immediately clear that it was the result of authoritarian impulses on the part of the defeated president. Critical Leadership Studies has concerned itself with the ‘problematization’ of leadership theory, often examining distributions of power both within society and within the discipline itself. This article takes its title from Brené Brown’s podcast, ‘Unlocking Us’, torqueing it in an effort to understand these events and their causes as a group dynamic that manifested between Trump and his supporters. I also make the argument that the anxiety fomented and falsely contained by Trump has its deeper origins in what Kuhn labeled ‘paradigm shifts’. To deconstruct the kind of leadership that took place in the run-up to and the aftermath of the 2020 election—darkly charismatic, authoritarian, and cultish—I employ three lenses of analysis: paradigm shifts as progenitors of crisis; ‘basic assumption’ patterns of work avoidance in groups; and ‘holding environments’ as the imposition of salutary boundaries that foster growth. In combination, these three lenses offer an interpretation of recent events in America that enhances the dialectical approach proposed by Critical Leadership Theory.

Can you be a follower even when you do not follow the leader? Yes, you can

In the ongoing debate in the area of critical leadership studies, the nature of leader–follower relationships is a thorny issue. The nature of followership has been questioned, especially whether followers can display resistance behaviours while maintaining their follower position. Addressing this issue requires a dialectical approach in which followers and leaders alike are primary elements in leadership co-production. Followers who face destructive leaders are of special interest when leadership is studied as a co-creational process. This context favours the emergence of a full range of behavioural profiles in which passives and colluders will illustrate the destructive leadership co-production process, and those who resist demonstrate that followers may not follow the leader and still keep a followership purpose. A two-step data analysis procedure was conducted based on the behaviour descriptions of 123 followers having a destructive leader. A qualitative analysis (i.e. content analysis) showed a set of behaviours and their antecedents that suggest three main groups of followers: resisters, obedient and mixed behaviour. Treating these data quantitatively (i.e. latent class analysis), six followers’ profiles emerged: active resistance, passive resistance, passive obedience, conflict avoidance, support and mixed. Our findings provide evidence that followers who resist may do it for the sake of the organisation. We discuss our findings in light of followership theory, whereby joining role-based and constructionist approaches allows us to argue that followers may still be followers even when they do not invariably follow their leader.

La lucha por el liderazgo adecuado en las organizaciones de los movimientos sociales: reflexión colectiva y reglas como base para la autonomía

This article analyzes how leadership is practiced in social movement organizations (OMS). Drawing on Critical Leadership Studies, and based on qualitative empirical research conducted in the organizations of the Spanish 15M protest movement, we analyze leadership perceptions, tensions and practices in dealing with these challenges. Our findings indicate that leadership practices in the investigated OMSs are autonomous, reflective and rule-based. Emphasizing collective reflection and rules highlights two aspects of leadership in OMSs that have been largely ignored in the discourses. Nevertheless, they turn out to be important means to address the challenges of autonomous leadership.

La lucha por el liderazgo adecuado en las organizaciones de los movimientos sociales: reflexión colectiva y reglas como base para la autonomía

This article analyzes how leadership is practiced in social movement organizations (OMS). Drawing on Critical Leadership Studies, and based on qualitative empirical research conducted in the organizations of the Spanish 15M protest movement, we analyze leadership perceptions, tensions and practices in dealing with these challenges. Our findings indicate that leadership practices in the investigated OMSs are autonomous, reflective and rule-based. Emphasizing collective reflection and rules highlights two aspects of leadership in OMSs that have been largely ignored in the discourses. Nevertheless, they turn out to be important means to address the challenges of autonomous leadership.

Introduction to the special issue: Why the coronavirus crisis is also a crisis of leadership

This editorial introduction argues that the coronavirus crisis is also a crisis of leadership theory and practice. Decision making is particularly hazardous when we have poor evidence to guide us and face unpredictable outcomes. Mainstream leadership theories are of little help, since an environment of radical uncertainty means that leaders have less information, expertise and resources to guide them than is often assumed. Undaunted, populist leaders exploit uncertainty to suggest that simple solutions will work. I suggest that the responses of such leaders have been characterised by incompetent leadership, denialist leadership, panic leadership, othering leadership and authoritarian leadership. I also consider the implications of the crisis for business leadership, suggesting that already strained relationships within organisations are likely to deteriorate still further. Critical leadership studies has an important contribution to make in challenging self-serving theories of business that have come to guide much leadership decision-making. We have an opportunity to do research that really matters, and participate in vital conversations about how the theory and practice of leadership can contribute to better outcomes from the coronavirus crisis, and others still to come.

Context and conditions matter: Stress and strain in the exercise of leadership power

Current research shows that a significant number of leaders suffer from strain which effects their application of power. This is a highly relevant leadership issue in today’s challenging business world. This study applies conservation of resources theory and the critical leadership studies approach to re-think leadership dynamics such as stressors and strain factors and their influence on power-related behaviour. The leader role, leader–member relations, workplace, organization and environment can be identified as resource passageways which create, maintain or limit the development of resources such as power-related behaviour. Research on the self-assessments of 43 German leaders from private sector shows that strain factors, leader role and leader–member relations can influence power-related behaviour. The data also show the importance of clarifying demands and expectations to prevent resource loss, otherwise overtaxed leaders are highly likely to use negative forms of power-related behaviour. The results demonstrate the need to improve understanding of the leader role with its increasing demands to be more flexible, agile and ambidextrous, but also to accept the human limitations of those who take on senior positions. Hence, the study findings demonstrate that context and conditions shape the situation in which leaders are embedded and therefore how to handle power is not only a problem for leaders themselves. The article also discusses the limitations of these findings and outlines possible directions for future research.