Pub Date : 2021-06-01DOI: 10.1177/17427150211013967
Owain Smolović Jones, Sanela Smolović Jones, Daniel Haslam, Charles Barthold
As the world recovers from a pandemic, which has disproportionately harmed the poorest and most vulnerable amongst us, it is worth taking some time to reflect onwhether leadership studies is as relevant as it could be to the problems of our world. Does it need a reboot and if so, how drastic should this be and in which directions should we channel change? Notions of rebooting suggest something more than piecemeal or incremental alterations and instead evoke a foundational change to the operating system. In contrast, a reset is something we do with machines that have glitched so that we can return them to their regular modes of functioning. Which one of these does leadership studies need? The conference is hosted by the Open University’s Research into Employment, Empowerment and Futures academic centre of excellence, a group dedicated to exploring emancipatory futures of work. We invite submissions that offer insights into how leadership could be conceptualised or practiced for the future, through offering an innovative, critical or unusual interpretation. Submissions can come in the form of papers or workshop ideas. Bearing in mind the rebooting theme, we are open to ‘naı̈ve’ entries into our field from outside, by scholars who think leadership could be a useful framing for their work.We now offer provocations that we hope will stimulate but not restrict submission ideas.
{"title":"Leadership rebooting: The 19th International Studying Leadership Conference, 15–17 December 2021, brought to you virtually by the Open University (UK)","authors":"Owain Smolović Jones, Sanela Smolović Jones, Daniel Haslam, Charles Barthold","doi":"10.1177/17427150211013967","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17427150211013967","url":null,"abstract":"As the world recovers from a pandemic, which has disproportionately harmed the poorest and most vulnerable amongst us, it is worth taking some time to reflect onwhether leadership studies is as relevant as it could be to the problems of our world. Does it need a reboot and if so, how drastic should this be and in which directions should we channel change? Notions of rebooting suggest something more than piecemeal or incremental alterations and instead evoke a foundational change to the operating system. In contrast, a reset is something we do with machines that have glitched so that we can return them to their regular modes of functioning. Which one of these does leadership studies need? The conference is hosted by the Open University’s Research into Employment, Empowerment and Futures academic centre of excellence, a group dedicated to exploring emancipatory futures of work. We invite submissions that offer insights into how leadership could be conceptualised or practiced for the future, through offering an innovative, critical or unusual interpretation. Submissions can come in the form of papers or workshop ideas. Bearing in mind the rebooting theme, we are open to ‘naı̈ve’ entries into our field from outside, by scholars who think leadership could be a useful framing for their work.We now offer provocations that we hope will stimulate but not restrict submission ideas.","PeriodicalId":92094,"journal":{"name":"Leadership (London)","volume":"84 1","pages":"383 - 386"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77508756","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-05-24DOI: 10.1177/17427150211020850
Jennifer L. Robinson, P. Renshaw
Scholars within the field of Leadership-as-Practice (LAP) address the way that individuals ‘transcend their own immediate embeddedness’ to achieve volitional coherence known as collaborative agency. The process of collaborative agency is described as inseparable from LAP, yet it remains a nascent field of enquiry requiring additional empirical research. This article presents an investigation of collaborative agency through an abductive case study using video ethnography and interviews. To interpret our results, we turn to the Japanese ideogram for ‘place’, known as ‘Ba’. Rather than a physical reality, Ba is considered an existential space in which leadership groups weave together to create and ripen collaborative agency. Ba guides us to look across and around a group and its socio-material practice. We find that collaborative agency is trans-subjective in nature and sits on a spectrum on which we identify the outer reaches, from one end where Ba is woven through to the other end, called Collapse. We suggest that the place of leadership is within the warp and weft of collaborative agency, including but not limited to a special place woven in Ba where collaborative agency is high and where the group reports they are able to transcend their individualism.
{"title":"Place – The final frontier: Exploring the outer reaches of collaborative agency using the Japanese concept of Ba","authors":"Jennifer L. Robinson, P. Renshaw","doi":"10.1177/17427150211020850","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17427150211020850","url":null,"abstract":"Scholars within the field of Leadership-as-Practice (LAP) address the way that individuals ‘transcend their own immediate embeddedness’ to achieve volitional coherence known as collaborative agency. The process of collaborative agency is described as inseparable from LAP, yet it remains a nascent field of enquiry requiring additional empirical research. This article presents an investigation of collaborative agency through an abductive case study using video ethnography and interviews. To interpret our results, we turn to the Japanese ideogram for ‘place’, known as ‘Ba’. Rather than a physical reality, Ba is considered an existential space in which leadership groups weave together to create and ripen collaborative agency. Ba guides us to look across and around a group and its socio-material practice. We find that collaborative agency is trans-subjective in nature and sits on a spectrum on which we identify the outer reaches, from one end where Ba is woven through to the other end, called Collapse. We suggest that the place of leadership is within the warp and weft of collaborative agency, including but not limited to a special place woven in Ba where collaborative agency is high and where the group reports they are able to transcend their individualism.","PeriodicalId":92094,"journal":{"name":"Leadership (London)","volume":"11 1","pages":"13 - 39"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73462028","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-05-14DOI: 10.1177/17427150211016163
Kim Bradley-Cole
Authentic leadership has been developed with insufficient empirical challenge to its definitional components, and alternative conceptualizations have largely been ignored. The theory remains heavily criticized and its distinctiveness from other higher-purpose leadership theories remains in doubt, leading to a circular debate as to its usefulness in practice. In response to the call to return to the definitional drawing table, this article presents the findings of an interpretative phenomenological study that reimagines authentic leadership as a two-component moral and relational model that is closer to Heidegger’s notions of ‘being true’ and ‘care’. The study inductively explores how leaders themselves make sense of authenticity in practice, when it is enacted by their own leaders within the social exchange relationship. It richly describes how managers perceive and attribute authenticity to their leaders within the lived experience of contemporary work. The study also identifies that working for a leader who is perceived as authentic feels like a friendship and is beneficial to followers’ own psychological experience of work, facilitates their own authentic expression and is worthy of retention as a distinct leadership theory that explains how performance is enabled within proximal leader relationships.
{"title":"Friend or fiend? An interpretative phenomenological analysis of moral and relational orientation in authentic leadership","authors":"Kim Bradley-Cole","doi":"10.1177/17427150211016163","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17427150211016163","url":null,"abstract":"Authentic leadership has been developed with insufficient empirical challenge to its definitional components, and alternative conceptualizations have largely been ignored. The theory remains heavily criticized and its distinctiveness from other higher-purpose leadership theories remains in doubt, leading to a circular debate as to its usefulness in practice. In response to the call to return to the definitional drawing table, this article presents the findings of an interpretative phenomenological study that reimagines authentic leadership as a two-component moral and relational model that is closer to Heidegger’s notions of ‘being true’ and ‘care’. The study inductively explores how leaders themselves make sense of authenticity in practice, when it is enacted by their own leaders within the social exchange relationship. It richly describes how managers perceive and attribute authenticity to their leaders within the lived experience of contemporary work. The study also identifies that working for a leader who is perceived as authentic feels like a friendship and is beneficial to followers’ own psychological experience of work, facilitates their own authentic expression and is worthy of retention as a distinct leadership theory that explains how performance is enabled within proximal leader relationships.","PeriodicalId":92094,"journal":{"name":"Leadership (London)","volume":"54 1","pages":"401 - 420"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90354765","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-05-11DOI: 10.1177/17427150211018314
Valerie Stead, C. Elliott, Rita A. Gardiner
The rise of populist leaders in the political sphere mounts a challenge to normative understandings of leadership. To better understand this challenge, we examine how political leaders mobilize different forms of social capital in pursuit of leadership legitimacy, providing insight into the dynamics of how leadership norms are maintained. While research has tended to focus on specific forms of capital, this article considers capital as multidimensional and strategically mobilized. The article applies a multimodal analysis to examine interactions between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton during peak ‘Twitter Moments’ of the three 2016 presidential election debates. We theorize the paradoxical dynamics of the mobilization of multiple capitals and their intersection as a simultaneously disruptive and reproductive resource. While the mobilization of multiple capitals operates to disrupt traditional notions of who can claim legitimacy as a leader in the political field, their disruptive mobilization serves to reproduce implicit heteronormative leadership values. Hence, our theorization illuminates the resilience of implicit leadership values, and their intimate connection with heteronormativity, calling for the need to interrogate leadership legitimacy claims that promise ‘new’ approaches.
{"title":"Leadership legitimacy and the mobilization of capital(s): Disrupting politics and reproducing heteronormativity","authors":"Valerie Stead, C. Elliott, Rita A. Gardiner","doi":"10.1177/17427150211018314","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17427150211018314","url":null,"abstract":"The rise of populist leaders in the political sphere mounts a challenge to normative understandings of leadership. To better understand this challenge, we examine how political leaders mobilize different forms of social capital in pursuit of leadership legitimacy, providing insight into the dynamics of how leadership norms are maintained. While research has tended to focus on specific forms of capital, this article considers capital as multidimensional and strategically mobilized. The article applies a multimodal analysis to examine interactions between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton during peak ‘Twitter Moments’ of the three 2016 presidential election debates. We theorize the paradoxical dynamics of the mobilization of multiple capitals and their intersection as a simultaneously disruptive and reproductive resource. While the mobilization of multiple capitals operates to disrupt traditional notions of who can claim legitimacy as a leader in the political field, their disruptive mobilization serves to reproduce implicit heteronormative leadership values. Hence, our theorization illuminates the resilience of implicit leadership values, and their intimate connection with heteronormativity, calling for the need to interrogate leadership legitimacy claims that promise ‘new’ approaches.","PeriodicalId":92094,"journal":{"name":"Leadership (London)","volume":"64 1","pages":"693 - 714"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72783118","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-05-06DOI: 10.1177/17427150211015845
M. Larsson, J. Clifton, S. Schnurr
The concept of authentic leadership is increasingly the focus of much leadership scholarship, and many have called for a review of the basic assumptions that underpin it. Taking an interactional approach to authentic leadership (AL) and using naturally occurring workplace interaction as data, we seek to question two basic assumptions of AL scholarship, namely (1) that authentic leadership emanates from the atomized leader and (2) that there is a causal logic to it so that authentic leadership behaviours are the cause of follower outcomes. Addressing the research questions – what is the nature of the empirical phenomenon that is called AL and where can this be ontologically located? – our findings indicate that these two fundamental assumptions that underpin current AL research are not justified. Rather, what is taken to be AL is better understood as a collective and collaborative achievement, which can neither simply be attributed to the leader nor can the leader’s actions alone lead to follower outcomes.
{"title":"The fallacy of discrete authentic leader behaviours: Locating authentic leadership in interaction","authors":"M. Larsson, J. Clifton, S. Schnurr","doi":"10.1177/17427150211015845","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17427150211015845","url":null,"abstract":"The concept of authentic leadership is increasingly the focus of much leadership scholarship, and many have called for a review of the basic assumptions that underpin it. Taking an interactional approach to authentic leadership (AL) and using naturally occurring workplace interaction as data, we seek to question two basic assumptions of AL scholarship, namely (1) that authentic leadership emanates from the atomized leader and (2) that there is a causal logic to it so that authentic leadership behaviours are the cause of follower outcomes. Addressing the research questions – what is the nature of the empirical phenomenon that is called AL and where can this be ontologically located? – our findings indicate that these two fundamental assumptions that underpin current AL research are not justified. Rather, what is taken to be AL is better understood as a collective and collaborative achievement, which can neither simply be attributed to the leader nor can the leader’s actions alone lead to follower outcomes.","PeriodicalId":92094,"journal":{"name":"Leadership (London)","volume":"19 1","pages":"421 - 440"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88052460","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-30DOI: 10.1177/17427150211015779
D. Ladkin
Although journal articles often take pride of place on many academics’ CVs in our contemporary academic context, books still offer a format in which important ideas can be introduced and fully developed. There is a satisfaction associated with following an argument through a number of chapters, delving into the weft and weave of how a construct is formed and anticipating its implications, which is hard to experience within an 8000 word journal article. Think of seminal ideas in leadership and organizational studies: could James MacGregor Burns have conveyed the nuances of transforming leadership in a form other than a book? Imagine what would have been lost had Gareth Morgan’s Images of Organization been slashed to a journal article or two. The landscape of a book enabled these authors and so many others to steadily unfold their ideas in the unhurried way possible in texts of over 50,000 words. Books provide the space to convince, to transform a reader’s worldview and maybe to rearrange something in their hearts as well. Through re-introducing book reviews to the Journal, Leadership re-commits itself to engaging with significant ideas which books can address more fully than is possible in a journal article. Although we will be looking to review recent publications within the field of leadership and related fields, we also invite reviews of significant books written in earlier times, which a reviewer may wish to reassess in relation to more current thinking and theorizing. Our aim is to stimulate thoughtful conversations about leadership ideas both old and new, and how they can help us to address the many pressing issues we face today. In particular, we welcome reviews of books with a ‘scholarly content’ that is, they must be more than ‘how to’ manuals or victory narratives. We are especially interested to see reviews which:
{"title":"From the editors: Introducing Book Reviews to Leadership","authors":"D. Ladkin","doi":"10.1177/17427150211015779","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17427150211015779","url":null,"abstract":"Although journal articles often take pride of place on many academics’ CVs in our contemporary academic context, books still offer a format in which important ideas can be introduced and fully developed. There is a satisfaction associated with following an argument through a number of chapters, delving into the weft and weave of how a construct is formed and anticipating its implications, which is hard to experience within an 8000 word journal article. Think of seminal ideas in leadership and organizational studies: could James MacGregor Burns have conveyed the nuances of transforming leadership in a form other than a book? Imagine what would have been lost had Gareth Morgan’s Images of Organization been slashed to a journal article or two. The landscape of a book enabled these authors and so many others to steadily unfold their ideas in the unhurried way possible in texts of over 50,000 words. Books provide the space to convince, to transform a reader’s worldview and maybe to rearrange something in their hearts as well. Through re-introducing book reviews to the Journal, Leadership re-commits itself to engaging with significant ideas which books can address more fully than is possible in a journal article. Although we will be looking to review recent publications within the field of leadership and related fields, we also invite reviews of significant books written in earlier times, which a reviewer may wish to reassess in relation to more current thinking and theorizing. Our aim is to stimulate thoughtful conversations about leadership ideas both old and new, and how they can help us to address the many pressing issues we face today. In particular, we welcome reviews of books with a ‘scholarly content’ that is, they must be more than ‘how to’ manuals or victory narratives. We are especially interested to see reviews which:","PeriodicalId":92094,"journal":{"name":"Leadership (London)","volume":"75 1","pages":"253 - 254"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86047903","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-27DOI: 10.1177/17427150211005578
M. Fotaki, H. Foroughi
This article interrogates the idea of leadership in a decentralized organization, using Extinction Rebellion (XR) as a case study. Through close observation of this environmental movement, we problematize the notion of leaderless organizations and question whether the idea of a hierarchy- and power-free ‘decentralized organization’ is a fantasmatic endeavour. Psychoanalytic analysis of discussions between XR members following two disruptive actions during XR’s International Rebellion in October 2019 reveals that these actions temporarily provoked members to question the attainability and effectiveness of XR’s so-called ‘leaderless autonomous organization’. This article contributes to psychoanalytic studies of leadership and to the social movements literature and argues that the power relations present in any form of organized endeavour must be recognized in order to develop effective and democratic activism.
{"title":"Extinction Rebellion: Green activism and the fantasy of leaderlessness in a decentralized movement","authors":"M. Fotaki, H. Foroughi","doi":"10.1177/17427150211005578","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17427150211005578","url":null,"abstract":"This article interrogates the idea of leadership in a decentralized organization, using Extinction Rebellion (XR) as a case study. Through close observation of this environmental movement, we problematize the notion of leaderless organizations and question whether the idea of a hierarchy- and power-free ‘decentralized organization’ is a fantasmatic endeavour. Psychoanalytic analysis of discussions between XR members following two disruptive actions during XR’s International Rebellion in October 2019 reveals that these actions temporarily provoked members to question the attainability and effectiveness of XR’s so-called ‘leaderless autonomous organization’. This article contributes to psychoanalytic studies of leadership and to the social movements literature and argues that the power relations present in any form of organized endeavour must be recognized in order to develop effective and democratic activism.","PeriodicalId":92094,"journal":{"name":"Leadership (London)","volume":"33 1","pages":"224 - 246"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81520710","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-27DOI: 10.1177/17427150211012499
R. Fix
This commentary piece discusses the important and harmful outcomes that would have followed the recently signed United States’ Executive Order 13950—Combatting Race and Sex Stereotyping. Put simply, the Executive Order would have seriously restricted federal diversity training content, and federal funding toward training and research work of federal contractors, on structural racism, sexism, and implicit bias. Executive Order 13950 was revoked by President Biden on his Inauguration Day; still, more needs to be done to address structural racism. Below, I describe why trainings that target implicit bias and structural racism and related research—are necessary for the public good. I also talk about critical next steps in trainings, research, and policy for key leadership toward reduction of structural racism. Given the recent change in US presidential administration, this timely paper has important implications for research focused on structural racism. Additionally, this discourse addresses how those in leadership positions within public health, through evaluation and modification of policies, can dramatically hinder or promote racial equity.
{"title":"Pernicious executive order 13950 revoked, yet structural racism looms large","authors":"R. Fix","doi":"10.1177/17427150211012499","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17427150211012499","url":null,"abstract":"This commentary piece discusses the important and harmful outcomes that would have followed the recently signed United States’ Executive Order 13950—Combatting Race and Sex Stereotyping. Put simply, the Executive Order would have seriously restricted federal diversity training content, and federal funding toward training and research work of federal contractors, on structural racism, sexism, and implicit bias. Executive Order 13950 was revoked by President Biden on his Inauguration Day; still, more needs to be done to address structural racism. Below, I describe why trainings that target implicit bias and structural racism and related research—are necessary for the public good. I also talk about critical next steps in trainings, research, and policy for key leadership toward reduction of structural racism. Given the recent change in US presidential administration, this timely paper has important implications for research focused on structural racism. Additionally, this discourse addresses how those in leadership positions within public health, through evaluation and modification of policies, can dramatically hinder or promote racial equity.","PeriodicalId":92094,"journal":{"name":"Leadership (London)","volume":"17 1","pages":"747 - 751"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89976562","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-22DOI: 10.1177/17427150211010600
J. Heath, Leo McCann
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.
{"title":"Leadership lessons untold: A new history of Robert McNamara’s World Bank","authors":"J. Heath, Leo McCann","doi":"10.1177/17427150211010600","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17427150211010600","url":null,"abstract":"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.","PeriodicalId":92094,"journal":{"name":"Leadership (London)","volume":"118 1","pages":"606 - 627"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89539691","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-04-01DOI: 10.1177/1742715021994352
G. Goethals
Though Donald Trump decisively lost the 2020 US presidential election, his mob-inciting charisma created a large and devoted base unusual in American politics. Insights from Sigmund Freud’s account of the emotional connections between leaders and followers, and later reframing of those views, suggest some of the dynamics that create the intense attachment expressed by Trump supporters, and his resulting ability to get his most loyal followers and allies to believe and do almost anything, no matter the evidence revealing his lies and the extremity of his demands. Essential elements include qualities of a leader and the leader’s message that make followers unable to countenance any criticism of their loved, overvalued messenger; followers’ uncritical willingness to believe whatever the leader says; and followers’ capacity to rationalize whatever actions they take as a result of those claims. The troubling implications for democracy of both the Electoral College and the Republican Party’s embrace of Trump and his message are discussed.
{"title":"The 2020 election and its aftermath: Love, lies, and ensorceling leadership","authors":"G. Goethals","doi":"10.1177/1742715021994352","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1742715021994352","url":null,"abstract":"Though Donald Trump decisively lost the 2020 US presidential election, his mob-inciting charisma created a large and devoted base unusual in American politics. Insights from Sigmund Freud’s account of the emotional connections between leaders and followers, and later reframing of those views, suggest some of the dynamics that create the intense attachment expressed by Trump supporters, and his resulting ability to get his most loyal followers and allies to believe and do almost anything, no matter the evidence revealing his lies and the extremity of his demands. Essential elements include qualities of a leader and the leader’s message that make followers unable to countenance any criticism of their loved, overvalued messenger; followers’ uncritical willingness to believe whatever the leader says; and followers’ capacity to rationalize whatever actions they take as a result of those claims. The troubling implications for democracy of both the Electoral College and the Republican Party’s embrace of Trump and his message are discussed.","PeriodicalId":92094,"journal":{"name":"Leadership (London)","volume":"129 1","pages":"240 - 250"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91002391","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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