Revitalising Leadership

Putting Theory and Practice into Context

Suze Wilson, Stephen Cummings, Brad Jackson, Sarah Proctor-Thomson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317418122
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Management

Revitalising leadership connects leadership theory and practice with context. It argues that the universal prescriptions favoured by most leadership scholars ignore the reality that context always matters in leadership practice – and so it should matter in leadership theorizing too. Addressing this gap, the book offers a novel framework that enables the development of context-sensitive leadership theory and practice. This framework directs theoretical and practical attention to the key challenges for leadership in different organizational contexts. It involves developing a specific purpose for leadership in a given context, as well as formulating the values, norms and domains of action which should guide leadership efforts in that context. Determining these various matters then informs the role, responsibilities, rights, behaviours and attributes relevant to leaders and followers for that context, and the focus, purpose and boundaries of the leader-follower relationship. Deploying this framework, six in-depth illustrative theorisations are provided, showing how leadership practice might best take shape in the contexts of supervisory management; HR management; innovation and entrepreneurship; strategy; governance; and leadership studies itself.

Revitalising leadership will appeal to diverse audiences, due to its theoretical novelty, its diversity of illustrative examples, its practice-focussed orientation and its clear, engaging style. These include leadership scholars concerned with the lack of attention being paid to context in leadership theorizing; organizational scholars wanting to learn how leadership thinking can be brought to bear on the different management functions the book explores; practitioners seeking leadership ideas that are tailored to the context they lead and follow in; and those involved in MBA or leadership development programmes who are looking to combine the personal reflection sought by such programmes with a thoughtful analysis of the context in which their leadership practice takes place.

1
Why Revitalise Leadership?

Introduction

[T]he leadership field over the past decade has made tremendous progress in uncovering some of the enduring mysteries associated with leadership…. The period that leadership theory and research will enter over the next decade is indeed one of the most exciting in the history of this planet.

(Avolio, Walumbwa & Weber, 2009, p. 442)

Researchers seem content to ask smaller and smaller questions about fewer and fewer issues of genuine significance, producing statements of the blindingly obvious, the completely irrelevant or the palpably absurd.

(Tourish, 2015, p. 137)

Our proposition is that the time has come to revitalise leadership, to radically rethink what should constitute its purpose, focus and the role it plays in our organizations. Far too often, those holding formal leadership positions, those who make the strategy, policy and resource allocation decisions, are leading in ways which frustrate or disappoint, or are pursuing objectives unlikely to provide a sustainably better life for those they claim to lead. Self-interest, not service to others, along with a focus on short-term results without regard to their longer-term consequences, takes precedence far too frequently.

We see these problems as being deeply systemic in nature, shaped in part by particular ways of thinking about and practicing leadership in organizations which have come to the fore in recent decades, and not simply the result of a few ‘bad apples’ in leadership roles. Convention now has it that organizational leadership takes for granted the primacy of a manage-rialist lens on organizational life and the capitalist imperative for endless growth (Alvesson, 1996; Parker, 2002). Often, only an individual leader’s personal ‘style’ and the short-term results achieved on their watch are given detailed attention, thereby reinforcing ways of thinking and behaving which are ‘functional’ but also fundamentally ‘stupid’, given the collective effort needed for long-term organizational (and planetary) sustainability (Alvesson & Spicer, 2012). Indeed, much of the focus of organizational leadership practice these days appears fundamentally directed toward enhancing profitability and preserving managerial status for the immediate future, whilst offering sufficient psycho-social support and developmental challenge to worker-followers to sustain their active involvement in this state of affairs. However, a questioning of the larger purposes and longer-term ends which organizational leaders pursue is increasingly necessary, given the problems posed to the capitalist ‘logic’ of never-ending growth and accumulation by climate change and the reality that ever-improving material wealth does not guarantee greater human happiness (Diener, Harter & Arora, 2010; Koch, 2015).

Simultaneously, though, in communities (and some organizations) all over the world, we are witnessing the growing incidence and impact of leadership which is not reliant on formal authority, rank and status, which speaks to shared concerns and often seeks to brings people together to advance otherwise forgotten or marginalised issues and interests (Kellerman, 2012). This kind of leadership effort is often focussed on achieving goals which reflect deeply held, value-based concerns. It is often grounded in a concern for larger purposes, such as securing justice, peace, democracy, freedom and empowerment of those whose interests are otherwise neglected, or the protection of the natural environment, and aims to mobilise and promote change for the betterment of all on a sustained basis (Eslen-Ziya & Erhart, 2015; Raelin, 2011, 2016). These developments, too, we understand as a systemic response to a changing world, one where many have grasped that ‘the centre cannot hold’ and that local initiative is both needed and can bring about real change. At the level of practice, then, we see both the best and worst of what leadership can offer all around us.

Meanwhile, if we look to the scholarly and popular literature on organizational leadership, it seems as if we are drowning in a sea of leadership theories, be they formal or more anecdotal in nature. While substantively new and different ways of thinking about leadership have emerged in recent years (e.g., Grint, 2000, 2005a, 2005b; Ladkin, 2010; Raelin, 2003, 2016; Sinclair, 2007, 2015), the mainstream of scholarly effort largely comprises competing recipes prescribing how manager-leaders should craft their selves in bold and heroic terms in order to advance their careers (Alvesson & Kärreman, 2016; Wilson, 2016). This excessive and often exclusive focus on the personal characteristics or style of the leader both reflects and feeds a recognised leader-centric bias in our thinking (Meindl, Ehrlich & Dukerich, 1985). Simultaneously, it encourages a grandiose, narcissistic mindset amongst leaders (Alvesson & Gabriel, 2016; Tourish, 2013), crowds out a proper appreciation of the crucial influence of followers (Kelley, 1992) and pays scant heed to the varying contexts in which leadership work takes place (Osborn, Hunt & Jauch, 2002). Yet if ‘leadership’ is constituted as nothing more than a project of rendering the self more perfect so as to enable career advancement, shaping the self in ways that align to whatever approach or style constitutes the latest leadership fad, then something so self-absorbed in its focus likely offers little in terms of advancing collective well-being.

To respond to these various concerns, our argument is that we must revitalise leadership. We believe we must develop new and different ways of thinking about the purpose, focus and role of leadership in organizations, in order to help inform changes in leadership practice. We want to explore here how leadership can be crafted in a variety of ways that directly address the key challenges which arise in different contexts. This implies a re-appraisal of the expectations we have of leaders and followers, including the powers, rights and responsibilities we give to them. It means thinking, too, about the limits of leadership, resisting the temptation to romanticise its powers and potential or to treat it as the magic bullet that can solve every problem.

With this book, our goal is to demonstrate why we must and how we can revitalise leadership theory and practice. Our focus is on offering a new way of theorising leadership, theorising that can genuinely inform practice though paying attention to the particular matters which are of salience to leadership in different settings. Rather than another generic recipe intended to shape the self of the leader, what we set out here is a flexible suite of ingredients that addresses multiple dimensions of leadership, such as its purpose, underpinning values and norms, role and responsibilities, and demonstrating how these matters can be configured variably to meet the needs of particular organizational contexts. We formulate approaches to leadership shaped by the diverse range of challenges and needs which arise in the context of different organizational roles and functions. Our approach derives from what we call leadership-practice-in-context, the idea that leadership is only of value if it is shaped by, and responds to, the needs of a particular context.

For over a century, leadership scholars have, by and large, directed their efforts at producing theories which they claim to have universal applicability. They have assumed leadership is something ‘natural’, something that has an enduring ‘essence’—even though they also keep changing their minds about what that ‘essence’ might be (Kelly, 2013; Wilson, 2016). The predominant focus has been on the psychology of the leader—their behaviours, personality, cognitive habits, influencing and communicative style and such like. And, the concern has routinely been that of leader effectiveness considered narrowly in terms of its impact on worker productivity, morale and organizational commitment (Sinclair, 2007; Wilson, 2016).

All these matters have been examined extensively, but much less attention has gone to addressing the contextual dimensions which are salient to and shape leadership practice. The larger purpose and substantive results that leadership in a given context might be called on to achieve, beyond an effect on followers’ perceptions and feelings, has largely been ignored (Kempster, Jackson & Conroy, 2011; Porter & McLaughlin, 2006). Here, we reject the universalist, essentialist, a-contextual paradigm which has dominated leadership studies over the last century and instead offer a theoretical framework and exemplar theorisations which are grounded in a new approach—a contextualised theo-rising of leadership, where ‘leadership’ is understood as something that can be constructed or invented in an endless variety of ways (see also Wilson, 2016). We seek to build on and extend leadership research which has taken contextual issues seriously, resulting in formulations that have a direct and deep connection with specific settings (e.g., Faris & Parry, 2011; Hannah, Uhl-Bien, Avolio & Cavarretta, 2009; Quick & Wright, 2011).

When we speak of contextualised theorising, we mean theorising which hones in on, and is tailored to, particular contexts and issues. We are taking leadership theory local, you might say, enabling us to pay attention to the challenges of leadership-practice-in-context in different organizational settings, using this to craft a leadership approach designed for the particular demands of various roles and functions within organizations. For us, the context is the stage, the setting in which leadership occurs, so we therefore take it as the starting point for our thinking about what approach to leadership is likely to be of value. The salient aspects for leadership of a given context are, of course, contestable, as is what is constituted as leadership (Grint, 2000), so recognising the futility of prescriptive precision our theorising is deliberately heuristic in tenor.

When we say we understand leadership as something constructed or invented, we connect to the philosophical stance of nominalism and to post-modernist, post-structuralist perspectives more generally, in two key ways. Firstly, we understand social reality as itself being (constantly) constructed or invented, rather than the inevitable consequence of natural causes. For us, social reality has an historically specific yet fluid form and is open to competing interpretations (Blaikie, 2000, 2007; Dickens, 2013; Potter, 2013). Arising from this, ‘leadership’ is likewise something that is (constantly) constructed rather than derived from nature and is historically specific, fluid and open to competing interpretations.

Secondly, we treat what is commonly said and believed to be true—discursive regimes—as influential forces shaping how social reality gets constructed, irrespective of whether a given discourse is empirically correct or not (Foucault, 1977, 1978). This means ideas about leadership matter regardless of their veracity, for discursive regimes shape what is accepted as constituting leadership. As a consequence of these understandings, it becomes possible to conceive of ‘leadership’ as something that has already been constructed and invented in many different ways, ways that can be found in the various discursive regimes which speak of leadership—and to which we now add our efforts.

In our approach, rather than simply maintain the conventional focus on the self of the leader, we seek to be more expansive in the factors our theo-rising addresses. Consequently, we consider the kinds of challenges thrown up by different organizational contexts, to which leadership may be constructed to offer some response. Specifically, we examine leadership in the context of operational-level supervision, the HRM function, innovation and entrepreneurship, strategy, governance, and leadership studies itself, arguing each of these settings offers specific challenges and possibilities for how leadership can be conceived and practiced. We explore the purpose of leadership in these different contexts and the values and norms that we argue, normatively, ought to inform it, as well as the domains of action within that context where it might usefully contribute. We identify personal attributes and behaviours that, given the preceding points of analysis, we see as especially salient to those engaging in leadership work in each of these different contexts, whilst recognising that someone’s identity as ‘leader’ or ‘follower’ is fluid and contestable. We also look at the roles, rights and responsibilities of both leaders and followers in these different contexts and the nature of the relationship to be forged between them.

We are concerned, then, about the substantive results to which leadership efforts may contribute and how those results are to be achieved. In this approach a concern with psychological issues of individual behaviour has a role to play, but does not dominate the scene. Instead, we bring in sociological, political, ethical and philosophical concerns about what leadership does for and to us. However, what emerges as salient is not presumed universal in nature but, rather, varies in the different contexts of leadership practice that we will explore.

Our approach is informed, also, by our commitment to the constructive value of critical thinking—thinking which questions what is normally taken-for-granted. This critical orientation is not about being hostile to leaders or leadership, but it does mean we question the faith which many now seem to have that leadership is the answer to every problem (Alvesson & Kärreman, 2016; Wilson, 2016). Consistent with the broader tradition of critical social science, it also means we are attentive to issues of power in its many and various forms, as well as issues of justice, equality, freedom and democratic participation (Alvesson & Deetz, 2000; Alvesson, Bridgman & Willmott, 2009). These are issues which any serious effort to examine leadership cannot avoid, in our view, as to hold a leadership role is to be in a position of power relative to others, while participating in leadership work which advances a particular outcome carries with it the ethical duty to consider what means may legitimately be use...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables, Boxes, Diagrams, Figures and Images
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Why Revitalise Leadership?
• 2 A Framework for Revitalising Leadership
• 3 Leading in Supervisory Management
• 4 Leading in Human Resource Management
• 5 Leading in Innovation and Entrepreneurship
• 6 Leading in Strategy
• 7 Leading in Governance
• 8 Revitalising or Revolutionising? Leadership Scholarship
• Index