Distributed Leadership The Uses and Abuses of Power

Abstract

In about a decade the theory of distributed leadership has moved from a tool to better understand the ecology of leadership to a widely prescribed practice. This article considers how to account for its spread and dominance and what purpose it serves. The concept offers an enticing suggestion of including more in leadership, and even sometimes including staff members equally. The resulting issues around distribution of power are largely ignored or referred to in passing; a kind of inclusivity lite, which does not engage with, for example, issues of gender or ethnicity. Using a range of concepts of power, the article explores the ways power is enacted in how distributed leadership is theorized and how it has been promoted. It is suggested that opportunities to contribute to leadership are not equal and that distributed leadership remains silent on persistent structural barriers. The theory's confusions, contradictions and utopian depictions are argued to be a profoundly political phenomenon, replete with the uses and abuses of power. The conclusion suggests that the effect of distributed leadership theory is to maintain the power status quo.

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DOI: 10.1177/1741143213489288
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Jacky Lumby
Distributed Leadership: The Uses and Abuses of Power
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Article
Distributed Leadership: The
Uses and Abuses of Power
Jacky Lumby
Abstract
In about a decade the theory of distributed leadership has moved from a tool to better understand
the ecology of leadership to a widely prescribed practice. This article considers how to account for
its spread and dominance and what purpose it serves. The concept offers an enticing suggestion of
including more in leadership, and even sometimes including staff members equally. The resulting
issues around distribution of power are largely ignored or referred to in passing; a kind of
inclusivity lite, which does not engage with, for example, issues of gender or ethnicity. Using a range
of concepts of power, the article explores the ways power is enacted in how distributed leadership
is theorized and how it has been promoted. It is suggested that opportunities to contribute to
leadership are not equal and that distributed leadership remains silent on persistent structural
barriers. The theory’s confusions, contradictions and utopian depictions are argued to be a pro-
foundly political phenomenon, replete with the uses and abuses of power. The conclusion suggests
that the effect of distributed leadership theory is to maintain the power status quo.
Keywords
administration, distributive leadership, gender, leadership, management, power, race, schools,
shared leadership
The Theory of Choice
During the last 10 years, the concept of distributed leadership has swept through the theory and
practice of educational leadership. It has become the theory of choice for many. The literature con-
tinues to burgeon with multiplying taxonomies of methods of distributing leadership (Harris, 2009;
Leithwood et al., 2009; MacBeath, 2009) and of frameworks to position theoretical approaches
(Flessa, 2009; Hartley, 2010). In some of its manifestations, it has the ring of offering something
revitalizing and inclusive. Others have applied a more critical analysis, questioning the purpose
and impact of the distributed leadership industry.
This article’s aim is to consider how to account for the dominance of distributed leadership. Not
only its widespread enthusiastic adoption in schools and higher education, but also its relative
Corresponding author:
Jacky Lumby, Southampton Education School, University of Southampton, Building 32, University Road, Highfield Campus,
Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK.
Email: jlumby@soton.ac.uk
Educational Management
Administration & Leadership
41(5) 581–597
ªThe Author(s) 2013
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581

persistence suggests that distributed leadership currently serves some important function. The
premise of the article is that its purpose may not be primarily its publicly espoused efficacy in deli-
vering benefits for learners. The article suggests that, despite dissenting voices, distributed leader-
ship has been used largely to create a mirage, an apolitical workplace. It further situates this within
a historic and critical perspective, as an example of the ever-new ways that emerge to maintain the
status quo of power.
The article first traces the origins of distributed leadership in education and charts its rise and
change in use from a research frame of reference to a recommended practice. It notes the impli-
cations of distributed leadership for power distribution in organizations and explores what theories
of power might be relevant. The article goes on to consider the uses of power by individuals adopt-
ing or promoting distributed leadership, exposing as dubious the claims that distributed leadership
opens up new opportunities for staff or empowers them. It considers the notable silence about
unequal inclusion in leadership, for example related to issues of gender and race. The article argues
that distributed leadership, whether a lens to consider the complexities of leadership constructed by
many, or a description/prescription of practice, is in itself a use of three dimensional power;
distributed leadership reconciles staff to growing workloads and accountability and writes trou-
bling issues of the disempowerment and or exclusion of staff out of the leadership script.
The Resistible Rise of Distributed Leadership
1
The recent provenance of distributed leadership in the field of education can be traced to seminal
publications by Gronn and Spillane. Gronn (2000: 326) linked ideas of distributed leadership to an
intellectual project stretching back to the 1950s, relating it to distributed cognition and to activity
theory offering ‘an entirely new conception of workplace ecology’. Spillane et al. (2004: 4) simi-
larly suggested distributed leadership to be a lens through which to examine and understand better
the interrelationship of the social and physical environment and leadership actions ‘by identifying
dimensions of leadership practice and articulating the relations among these dimensions’.
In both cases, distributed leadership was offered as a heuristic tool, not a type of or prescription
for practice. Such detachment swiftly gave way to explicit or implicit assertions by others that dis-
tributed leadership was a form of practice and, moreover, a recommended one. For example, the
title of a National College for School Leadership (NCSL) publication, Everyone a leader: Identi-
fying the core principles and practices that enable everyone to be a leader and play their part in
distributed leadership, (Bowen and Bateson, 2008) gives a flavour of the evangelical tone of much
writing on distributed leadership. This publication contains the statement:
in order to allow all children to reach their potential in terms of attainment and the wider Every Child
Matters (ECM) agenda, leadership should be distributed throughout the school. (Bowen and Bateson,
2008: 5, emphasis added)
By 2009, Seashore Louis et al. (2009: 157) conclude that distributed leadership had become ‘a
mantra for reshaping leadership practice’. They comment that more and more schools are trying to
adopt distributed leadership and that official agencies are encouraging them to do so (NCSL, 2011;
OECD, 2011). Despite the slipperiness of the concept and its uncertain relationship with pre-
existing theories, distributed leadership has metamorphosed from a means of refocusing leadership
research to a kind of leadership ideal. Day et al. (2010: 16) unequivocally claim, ‘There is a con-
nection between the increased distribution of leadership roles and responsibilities and the
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improvement of pupil outcomes.’ Initial caution in only claiming utility for distributed leadership
as a lens for research has, in many cases, been replaced by outright advocacy. Distributed leader-
ship has become an intentional practice and one that is promoted to improve schools: the theory is
no longer the new kid on the block, but almost the only child in sight.
Come On In: the Water’s Warm
Hatcher (2005) discerns two justifications for why distributed leadership has become so prominent
in the literature; first, that achieving the engagement of a wider group of staff is more effective in
implementing change, and second, that in a more complex world, the skills and experience of more
diverse people are necessary to create successful leadership. There is great emphasis on distributed
leadership opening up leadership to all those who have relevant expertise. Some texts go further
than merely claiming that distributed leadership creates wider opportunities, implying that the
opportunities are open to all, or even equal. For example, MacBeath et al. (2004: 13) assert that
’it creates opportunity for all members of an organization to assume leadership’ and: ‘It does not
necessarily give any particular individual or categories of persons the privilege of providing more
leadership than others.’ Bennett et al. (2003: 162) agree that ‘there are no limits built into the con-
cept’ in terms of who might be included.
Distributed leadership is presented as potentially replacing previous forms of leadership that are
critiqued negatively in relation to their ethics and or efficacy, such as heroic, charismatic, collegial,
top-down and transactional, with a novel kind of leadership. The new theory and practice are
depicted both as more inclusive and more effective, indeed more effective because more inclusive.
Consequently there appears to be a widely expressed belief that, whether facilitated by the head-
teacher or as a result of self-organization, distributed leadership potentially enables all to partici-
pate in leadership on the basis of capacity alone. A seductive invitation appears to emerge for staff
to share leadership for the benefit of learners.
Power
The assertion that everyone could lead is not generally accompanied by deep reflection on the
implications of this stance and what inclusion of more in leadership might imply. For example,
in the NCSL sponsored document Everyone a Leader (Bowen and Bateson, 2008), just two sen-
tences are given to considering inclusivity. The central issue of power surfaces only superficially,
if at all, in much of the literature. There are occasional references: Harris (2003: 75) suggests the
need for a ‘redistribution of power’; Macbeath et al. (2004: 15) refer to ‘the essential notion of
relinquishing power and ceding control to others’; and Murphy et al. (2009: 182) to ‘rethinking
conceptions of power’. These are usually references in passing, a kind of inclusivity lite. A redis-
tribution of power and or authority is not indicated as justifying much attention. Though chal-
lenged by a few (Flessa, 2009; Hartley, 2010; Hatcher, 2005; Storey, 2004), the major part of
the literature on distributed leadership tends not to problematize power, nor its relationship to dis-
tributed leadership. No mention is made of the kinds of structural barriers such as gender and race
that might provoke questions about including a wider range of people in leadership. Schools appear
to be staffed by ‘the gender-free, race-free, ageless, sexless, and un-embodied mythical ‘‘empty
slot’’ worker’ (Martin and Collinson, 2002: 246).
In contrast to this fantasy world of fluid, unproblematic power is the accumulated wisdom that
organizations do not function in this way (Milley, 2008). Organizations are ‘fields of power’
Lumby: Distributed Leadership 583
583

(Halford and Leonard, 2001: 26), ‘never politically neutral’, reflecting the ‘power laden nature of
all human association’ (Deetz, 2000: 144, 154). Commentators on distributed leadership might
protest that this is acknowledged, albeit briefly. What is not fully acknowledged or theorized is the
relationship between power and inequalities, and the degree of tension that may lie submerged
beneath the dominant normative narrative. Distributed leadership’s reference to inclusion of all
those with capacity is only likely to deliver on its implied promise if there is belief in the ‘disem-
bodied worker’ (Acker, 1990: 149). But workers are not disembodied. They operate within com-
plex structures of power that create and constrain their opportunities to lead.
Theorizing Power
There are two angles from which it may be useful to consider the relationship of power and dis-
tributed leadership. The first is how power is conceived in texts about distributed leadership. The
second is how the promulgation of distributed leadership theory itself may be an enactment of
power. A single, clear definition of power as a starting point for each perspective is not feasible.
Power, as Lukes (1974) says, is a concept that will be endlessly debated, contested, and continues
to defy conclusive definition.
In some conceptualizations, power is viewed as an attribute owned by an individual and evident
when the individual is able to intentionally prevent another acting, or to induce another to act in a
way that they would not otherwise have done (Dahl, 1961). Allied to this idea is the notion of
power as a zero sum game, where giving power to another decreases one’s own. The analogy used
by Parsons (1963) is that power is like money, circulating among a community, holding value and
given by one to another. The more you have, the greater your agency.
Others have rejected this simple engineering-type model of bending another into a desired
shape. Bachrach and Baratz (2002/1962) suggest that social structures and processes control infor-
mation and the agenda. Lukes (1974) depicts this as a two-dimensional view of power. Fear of
transgressing current boundaries of what is acceptable or rewarded leads to silence about things
that individuals might otherwise wish to raise. Speaking of that which others, however subtly, have
indicated that they do not wish to hear becomes perceived only as disadvantaging the speaker
rather than bringing benefits. Two-dimensional power silences.
Lukes also introduces a three-dimensional view, where individuals are socialized into accepting
that the interests of a dominant individual or group are also their own. Though there may be latent
conflict it is unlikely to surface, because people are thinking as others would have them. Foucault
(1974) suggests that power is deeply embedded in how reality is constructed and in people’s accep-
tance of or resistance to ‘truth’ and of the structures of society. The ultimate result is a perfect sys-
tem where one-dimensional power is rendered obsolete, as individuals oversee themselves as under
‘an inspecting gaze’, each individual exercising ‘surveillance over, and against, himself. A superb
formula’ (Foucault, 1974: n.p.).
Alternative conceptualizations focus on power as a facet of groups or of society:
Power is never the property of an individual; it belongs to a group and remains in existence only so long
as the group keeps together. When we say of somebody that he is in power we actually refer to his being
empowered by a certain number of people. (Arendt, 1970: 44)
Stretching back millennia to Athenian ideas of the polis and res publica, as Barnes (1988: 57)
expresses it, ‘much more power resides in a genuine society than resides in so many isolated
584 Educational Management Administration & Leadership 41(5)
584

individuals’. Power for Arendt does not, therefore, imply moving another to act against his or her
interests. Rather, it is a property owned in common.
The effects of power are not necessarily achieved consciously. School leaders do not generally
set out deliberately to marginalize or to privilege particular individuals over others. They may be
perfectly sincere in their wish to redistribute power, to be inclusive. This is not the point. The pre-
ferences of the dominant group may appear so normal, so everyday to themselves and others, that
both their dominance and their contestability does not even occur to people. To really prise apart
the mechanisms and effects of power and inequality, Deetz (2000) suggests that we need to look
beneath the apparently untroubled surface of organizations.
The educational leadership literature does not expansively engage with who holds power and
why. For example, reference to the exclusion from leadership of women and black and minority
ethnic (BME) staff is largely absent. The response of some may be that therefore there can be
no problem. The more complex conceptualizations of power would suggest otherwise. A few have
drawn attention towards the inadequate theorization of power in relation to distributed leadership
(Gronn, 2008; Hall et al., 2011; Hatcher, 2005) but generally more in relation to the use of power in
the service of the state, not in relation to deeper systemic issues such as those related to ethnicity
and gender. Race and gender blindness are the default position in most writing on educational lead-
ership theory, and distributed leadership is no exception.
There has been space only to offer a brief, selective pre´cis of a large and complex literature on
power, but some key perspectives can be distilled. First is the idea of power as something an indi-
vidual or group has and exercises in order to direct another, or to stop them acting in a particular way.
Halford and Leonard (2001: 27–28) refer to this as ‘episodic agency’, that is, ‘specific and observable
episodes where sovereign agents overcome the wishes and resistance of others in order to achieve
their will’: Lukes’ (1974) one-dimensional view of power. Second is a concept of power which is
not so much enforcement of people to act in ways desired by another in a conflict situation, as con-
flict avoidance. Contention is controlled and does not surface: two-dimensional power. Third, there is
a notion of power where people may think, hold values and act in ways that benefit others without
being conscious of the fact: three-dimensional power. Reflecting a contrasting perspective is
Arendt’s (1970) notion of the power of community, where leaders do not hold power but are empow-
ered by the will of the community. Finally, we can draw on Foucault (1974) to conceive power as a
fluid, constantly recreated construction embedded in the deepest structures of society.
Power in the Narrative of Distributed Leadership
Notions of distributed leadership as an intentional action – ‘how it is distributed’ – (Firestone and
Martinez, 2007: 825) imply use of one-dimensional power. Someone distributes the power to act.
Acknowledging the use of episodic agency explicitly, some argue for the strong role of the head-
teacher in creating and shaping distributed leadership. Murphy et al. (2009: 186) assert that, ‘If
distributed leadership is to blossom, principals need to be assertive in reshaping structures in the
service of developing a deeper pool of leadership.’ In the empirical data they present from case
studies of school in the USA, entry to leadership is in the control of principals ‘appointing or
anointing teacher leaders’ (2009: 187). Bolden et al. (2009: 270) similarly refer to the need to
‘authorize’ individuals in UK universities.
By contrast, related to notions of distributed leadership spontaneously and fluidly emerging as
the synthesis of the community’s activity, is the idea of community volition (Lumby, 2003). This is
not located as the result of episodic agency, but rather accords somewhat with Arendt’s (1970)
Lumby: Distributed Leadership 585
585

notion of the power of community or, if Foucault’s concept is applied, as an embedded, constantly
mutating property. Although benefiting some and disadvantaging others, this is not necessarily the
result of individual, planned intention.
Some commentators imply that both episodic agency and community power are present, sug-
gesting that the leadership that emerges spontaneously, related to individual capacity and contin-
gent on the challenge in hand, is parallel to or shaped by the episodic agency of the headteacher or
vice-chancellor (Bolden et al., 2009; Harris, 2008). The use of the word ‘allow’ in the literature is
indicative of this ambivalence. Sometimes it is used to indicate that distributed leadership allows
for, that is, describes shared leadership by many, for example in Timperley’s work (2008: 830). In
other cases, shared leadership is allowed, that is, permitted by the senior authority figure (Chap-
man, 2003).
Several positions are evident:
1. The headteacher retains an authoritative leadership role, but ‘this is just the tip of the ice-
berg’ (Bolden et al., 2009: 259). Spontaneous leadership by the many runs beneath or in
parallel, over which the headteacher has no more control than other staff members.
2. The headteacher uses his or her individual power to create the environment in which dis-
tributed leadership can grow, by means of establishing structures and processes and build-
ing staff leadership capacity (Fullan, 2006; Harris, 2008).
3. The headteacher uses his or her individual power to take assertive or even aggressive action
to impel people into a leadership role with a distributed leadership justification (Murphy
et al., 2009; Storey, 2004).
In constructions of distributed leadership conceived as initiated and facilitated by the headtea-
cher, staff are shaped by the headteacher’s one-dimensional power. In notions of power flowing
from spontaneous adaptations of the community, leaders (including the headteacher), may be
empowered by staff. Power remains a commodity in each case, but is conceived as flowing in a
different direction. In neither case is power absolute. To some degree it is limited or increased
by the approval of others and exercised within boundaries related to the professional community,
legal constraints and the authority of other bodies such as the governing board, local authority or
district.
Empowering Staff
A fundamental premise is that staff, who may have no formal authority, nevertheless gain power
through distributed leadership. Depending on the conceptual perspective, power may be perceived
as donated or lent by those in authority roles, or seen as a spontaneous result of individuals’ mem-
bership of the community. What, then are staff enabled to achieve that they would otherwise not
have had the power to attempt? Empirical evidence of what staff do indicates commonplace activ-
ity. For example, in Murphy et al.’s (2009) case study, two members of staff are excited by the
opportunity afforded by the principal for them to undertake timetabling. Similarly, Firestone and
Martinez (2007: 6) attribute to distributed leadership the kind of activities that a wide range of staff
has undertaken for decades:
Some teacher leaders are involved in administrative work like setting standards for student behaviour,
deciding on budgets, and addressing personnel issues. Some serve as go-betweens or liaisons between
586 Educational Management Administration & Leadership 41(5)
586

administrators and teachers. Of most interest, others focus on issues of curriculum and instruction and
help their peers improve their own teaching.
Though these activities are fairly standard, they are suggested to be part of a different distrib-
uted leadership system because they are not allocated through a bureaucratic hierarchy. Instead,
they arise by means of volunteering or encouraging/appointing those with no formal responsibility
to undertake them (Harris, 2003). One might understand this to be progress in the sense both of
making use of a greater pool of expertise for school improvement and as offering opportunities for
job enrichment and greater satisfaction of the individual. This argument is widely offered in the
literature. A more critical interpretation might suggest that teachers are freely undertaking an
ever-increasing workload.
Another question is to what extent such activities are or are not leadership. The mirage-like
form of leadership within the distributed leadership narrative is evident. In Murphy et al.’s
(2009: 207) case study, presented as an example of successful distributed leadership, ‘curiously,
a leadership task performed by teachers would be labelled teaching while the same task performed
by administrators would be labelled leadership’. It seems that anyone ‘can be a leader, although
still most teachers don’t see it as leading something’. So, either teachers are mistaken and they are
in fact leading, or those who are interpreting activities undertaken by teachers as leading are mis-
taken. Lakomski (2008) argues forcefully that leadership is no more than folk mythology, such is
the shakiness of its conceptual and philosophical bases. Sturdy et al. (2006) similarly suggest a lack
of substance. They conclude that, rather than a means of acquiring new skills, leadership develop-
ment is largely a matter of gaining confidence in the language needed to project an approved iden-
tity, a trick of confidence or a confidence trick. So, in distributed leadership, empowerment does
not seem to equate to the ability to do new things that would otherwise be impossible. Rather, the
activities that have always constituted the work of educators continue, but have been spread to
volunteers and rebadged as ‘leadership’ by those in authority roles and by researchers.
Is empowerment achieved by changing not the kind of activities, but who decides what is done
and how? Is it perhaps a change in power distribution when a larger group has more autonomy and
control over what they undertake? Much evidence is against this. Where staff perspectives are
described, evidence of a hierarchical framework of control leaks out of the data. Sometimes this
is explicit; Storey’s (2004) case study gives ample evidence of a headteacher restricting the auton-
omy of a head of department in what the case school described as distributed leadership. In Bolden
et al.’s (2009: 265) study, several in authority roles ‘found it difficult to ‘‘let go’’ of control, power
and responsibility’. In Murphy et al.’s (2009: 23) study, teacher leaders ‘were largely the creatures
of the districts’.
Residual control by those in authority is not always depicted as a failure; rather it is presented as
a requirement of successful distribution. If greater autonomy is granted to others, it is on particular
terms, in order putatively to ensure benefit to students. Harris (2008: 178) makes it clear that
‘autonomy’ nests within the imperative of the official agenda: ’Those to whom leadership is dis-
tributed may have different agendas from the ‘‘official’’ or positional leaders threatening the coher-
ence that is so crucial for the success of school improvement initiatives.’
Subterranean staff attitudes and views that run counter to the dominant organizational agenda or
the narratives of success are perceptible in some studies. In one case study school, a staff member
explained ‘we don’t have everyone on board’ (Murphy et al., 2009: 207, 209), and another referred
tellingly to those ‘who don’t totally buy into it’ as ‘the biggest culprit at this point’. Threatening
coherence and not buying into it are clearly depicted as transgressions. Two-dimensional power is
Lumby: Distributed Leadership 587
587

in operation, setting what is permissible. One member of staff claims ‘we all have a voice and
everyone is valued’, alongside testimony from others on the presence of colleagues who are ‘left
out, that don’t feel like they are part of what is going on, the decisions being made in this school’
(p. 198), and another where ‘a lot of leadership roles that are given to faculty [are] still falling on
the shoulders of the same people’. The dominant narrative that emerges from the data in this case
study is of the principal’s and the school’s success by means of distributing leadership. This over-
rides the counter-narratives of carefully orchestrated leadership that excludes some and does not
allow dissent. For example, one member of staff volunteered for an initial meeting to introduce
a particular initiative because s/he was strongly against it. The individual does not seem to have
made it onto the organizing committee. The principal is depicted by one member of staff as ‘she
trusts that the individuals that she has chosen will do what they need to do’ (op cit.: 206), yet for
another ‘there is not any constant checking or things like that, but I’m sure there is feedback going
there somehow, somewhere. Plus with her collaborative logs and other things, the meetings that we
have, those get back to her’. A system of surveillance appears to work alongside a narrative of trust,
valuing and inclusion.
Some have presented distributed leadership as analogous to jazz, where the basic rhythm of
agreed goals provides a framework within which individuals fluidly take control of different sec-
tions (Harris, 2004). The evidence reviewed here suggests that it is much closer to traditional
orchestral music, led by a conductor with a score controlling all parts.
Distributed leadership literature is littered with contradictions. It rejects previous heroic, hier-
archical models of leadership, yet also acknowledges the persistence of such leadership, and even
supports its necessity and value. Its rhetoric about distribution and empowerment, and the accla-
mation of the headteacher using one-dimensional power to enable others to lead, appears alongside
evidence of two-dimensional power so that ‘autonomy’ is offered with a leading rein. Arguably,
the evidence reviewed here suggests that distributed leadership can be used as an obscuring
mechanism. The headteacher’s one-dimensional power is evident. Two-dimensional power sets
the frame by pressure towards ‘coherence’ and ‘buy in’. Finally, for example in the testimony
of staff who wholeheartedly appear to argue for distributed leadership and against those who wish
to retain ‘the norms of autonomy and privacy’ (Murphy et al., 2009: 191), there are indications of
three-dimensional power, where individuals have fully accepted the prevalent conditions as their
own choice and in their own interests, even though an external view may see inherent disadvan-
tages for them.
Distributed Leadership as an Enactment of Power
It is difficult to discern anything new in the practice of leaders in the distributed leadership school.
Headteachers have long-time both developed leadership skills in others and asked or encouraged
them to undertake particular objectives or projects. Teachers themselves have taken the initiative
to develop schools, although often with the implicit or explicit agreement of the headteacher, as
remains the case in the current distributed leadership school. Lomax (1990) includes accounts
of teachers claiming they are deciding what should be done and how it should be done, and using
action research to develop the management of schools. Hart (1995) suggested that more varied
leadership models were evolving in response to changing demands on schools and that ‘teachers
play an increasingly important role in school leadership and inclusive interactive and reciprocal
models of leadership’. Other roles than those in the senior leadership team have commonly been
involved in leading school improvement (Turner and Bolam, 1998).
588 Educational Management Administration & Leadership 41(5)
588

One issue in tracking back through the literature is the change in terminology. Usage of the term
‘management’ was current until ‘leadership’ became the more fashionable expression (Bush, 2008;
Hall et al., 2011). This change did not necessarily indicate a shift in activity, but rebranding, shift-
ing from a term that had negative connotations with mundane everyday operations and manage-
rialism. The more glamorous and positively viewed concept of leadership was substituted.
Distributed leadership offers yet another nuanced rebranding, anchoring the nebulous concept of
leadership to a seemingly fresh and inclusive activity. In so doing, as other critiques have dis-
cerned, it provides a mechanism to reconcile educators to the increasingly tight constraints of
central control of curriculum, market competition and surveillance (Flessa, 2009: Hatcher,
2005; Youngs, 2009). It accommodates the psychographic preferences of educators, capturing
positives such as capacity building, inclusion, opening opportunities and autonomy. Its product
positioning and the penetration it has achieved over a decade are remarkable. It has no unique sell-
ing point (USP) in terms of practice, but in relation to policy and politics its USP is its success in
enrolling staff willingly into a regime of control, while appearing to loosen the bonds. In this
respect it is a highly effective use of two-dimensional power.
Challenging the Openness Narrative
Much distributed leadership literature speaks enthusiastically of opening opportunities to a wider
range of staff to contribute to leadership, thereby benefiting both learners and staff. The stance
implied has been characterized at the start of this article as inclusivity lite. It does not seriously
consider the implications of a change in practice to include staff with a wider range of character-
istics, for example in age, experience or background. Even a brief consideration of literature on
gender, race and diverse leadership teams would expose the naivety of the distributed leadership
claims. The apparent openness of leadership to all with the expertise and capacity to contribute
ignores accumulated research that shows that, whether officially appointed or self-nominated,
leadership is unequally open to people, particularly in relation to gender, ethnicity and other minor-
ity characteristics (Blackmore, 2006; Bush et al., 2006).
The reasons for under-representation of women and BME groups are contested (Coleman,
2005) but, whatever the reasons, it seems likely that they will influence entry to informal as well
as formal leadership roles. Foti and Miner (2003: 84) conducted a meta-analysis of evidence and
conclude that ‘followers use their implicit theories and leader prototypes to decide whether or not
an individual is judged to be an emergent leader’. Prototypes are not neutral. Emergent leadership
is intimately linked with notions of ethnocentrism, prejudice and discrimination as much as
appointment to formal roles. It seems therefore that the open emergent leadership feted by some
distributed leadership literature seems unlikely. Indeed, it does not appear to be happening. If there
were such an effect, one would expect it to be evident in the data on the representation of women
and minority groups and this is not the case. Despite some obfuscation in the way official statistics
are presented
2
it is evident in government figures from the 1990s that women remain proportio-
nately less likely to reach senior leadership positions in all phases of education. Workforce figures
from the DfE (2012) at time of writing show that 17 per cent of male teachers in nursery and pri-
mary are headteachers, compared to 7 per cent of female teachers. At secondary level it is 11 per
cent of men and 6 per cent of women. Fewer women are paid the highest salaries. There is also
considerable evidence that BME staff find it harder to achieve leadership roles and are disadvan-
taged when leading (Bush et al., 2006; Mackay and Etienne, 2006). Ogunbawo (2012) presents
evidence that BME teachers were considerably under-represented in leadership roles ten years ago
Lumby: Distributed Leadership 589
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when distributed leadership theory was becoming popular, and that this situation persists. More-
over, she draws on NCSL (2009) analysis to show that, although the recruitment of BME teacher
trainees has increased to 5 per cent, appointment to headship has not shown an equivalent rise.
BME teachers have been and remain underrepresented in leadership roles. The statistics suggests
that distributed leadership has not assisted in opening up leadership roles. In ignoring issues of race
and gender while making claims of openness, distributed leadership may be a new manifestation of
colour and gender blindness that serves the purposes of the privileged (Gallagher, 2003; Simpson,
2008). Under the camouflage of promoting inclusion there may be an ideological project at work.
Distributed leadership theory renders discriminatory practice invisible. Just as a child shutting
her eyes believes she has removed a threat because it is no longer visible, so distributed leadership
removes inequality ontologically. It encourages all to think that equality is a given. Three-
dimensional power demands that individuals and communities commit to action as being for the
best motives and of advantage to them, when this may not be case. The distributed leadership
industry is one such use of power, sincerely promoting a system in which there is a belief that open-
ness is in operation. The literature does not even engage with the resulting issues of equality.
Rather statements about the openness of leadership are presented without a flicker of doubt. When
Bennett et al. (2003: 7) summarize their review of distributed leadership literature as indicating
‘openness of the boundaries of leadership’, the wilful disregard of all the reasons why the bound-
aries are not open is significant. It implicates distributed leadership theory in longstanding main-
tenance of a false narrative of equality. As Cavanaugh (1997: 45) asserts, ‘hegemony never takes a
break’.
Challenging the Improvement Narrative
Regarding any benefits to the organization, relevant evidence undermines the simplistic claim of
distributed leadership that including a larger number and range of staff will benefit the school.
Milliken and Martins (1996) reviewed studies on the impact of more heterogeneous staff. Their
research relates to visible staff differences, for example, ethnicity or gender, but also less visible
characteristics such as educational background and a host of other factors. They conclude that
greater diversity has the potential to create both organizational advantage and disadvantage.
Including a wider range of people in leadership may therefore result in gains for the organization
or the opposite. Since then, empirical studies have only strengthened the ambivalence of the evi-
dence (Pendry et al., 2007; Van Dijk et al., 2012). Potential detriment to the organization is not
because of diverse individuals themselves, but because of failure on the part of leadership to capi-
talize on diversity by adequately adjusting practice in response to greater heterogeneity. In its
avoidance of engagement with the implications of more heterogeneity in leadership, much distrib-
uted leadership theory and practice appears likely to result in the kind of negative results high-
lighted widely in research (Kochan et al., 2003).
Leadership Theory’s Tradition of Silence
The field of educational leadership and management has a history of avoidance of issues of inclusion
in leadership. Focusing momentarily on gender is useful to surface some of the issues. Feminists have
commented for decades on the apparently unshakeable dominance of ‘malestream’ leadership the-
ory. A sample in chronological order illustrates the time over which the point has been made repeat-
edly and forcibly: Shakeshaft (1989), Ouston (1993), Acker (1994), Hall (1996), Coleman (2007),
590 Educational Management Administration & Leadership 41(5)
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Sobehart (2008), McTavish and Miller (2009) and Moorosi (2010). The pertinence of masculinities
as well as femininities have been largely written out of mainstream theory (Whitehead, 2002). In a
review of the last forty years of the leading British journal on educational leadership, Coleman’s
(2012) findings echo those of a similar review 15 years before (Hall, 1997), that gender remains mar-
ginal to leadership research and theory. Distributed leadership has joined this unsatisfactory chroni-
cle. Organizational theorists have argued that researching institutions without taking note of gender is
in effect researching organizations that do not exist (Martin, 2006). Consequently, theory based on
such research is fundamentally flawed. Much of the way gender is ‘done’ in workplaces is unreflex-
ive (West and Zimmerman, 1987). To overlay this with leadership research and theory that is equally
unreflexive of the place of gender in organizational dynamics embeds a particular use of power:
‘Theories that represent work processes as gender free (or ‘race’ free) obscure gender’s role in the
social organization of work and do harm when taught to students and bureaucrats as accurate por-
trayals of organizational life’ (Martin and Collinson, 2002: 247).
Distributed leadership theory is a case in question, and Martin and Collinson’s point is that those
who promote opening leadership through distributed leadership while remaining silent about gen-
der, race and other characteristics that may prevent inclusion in leadership may be actively perpe-
tuating inequality.
The Uses of Power
What, then, can be said in conclusion about the dominance of distributed leadership and its rela-
tionship to power? It has been evident for some time, as Lakomski (2008: 161) points out, that
‘even the most cursory scanning of recent literature on DL makes it pretty clear that there is a prob-
lem’. The problem has been variously analysed, commentators acknowledging primarily the
confusing overlap with other theory (Harris, 2008; Woods and Gronn, 2009). More critical voices
have pointed out distributed leadership’s political use in providing a mechanism by which staff
members willingly commit to a new world order of ever-increasing workload and surveillance
(Hatcher, 2005; Storey, 2004; Youngs, 2009). Hartley (2010: 279) claims that it is ‘little more than
an emancipatory rhetoric’. But rhetoric matters a good deal.
Distributed leadership as:
1. a lens to consider the complexities of leadership constructed by many, and
2. descriptions/ prescriptions of practice
are both manifestations of three-dimensional power. In the case of distributed leadership as a
lens, Hartley (2010: 279) concludes that, if the focus is the interaction between people and not the
individual, then ‘the individual leader logically has no ontological status, no discrete personality,
no attributes’. This form of distributed leadership takes the notion of a ‘disembodied worker’
(Acker, 1990: 149) to an extreme. Issues of inclusion and exclusion are not confronted because
they are erased from thinking. They are written out of the cognitive script. Prescriptions for dis-
tributed leadership go further still and actively construct a world of apparent openness and poten-
tial equality to which enthusiastic proponents subscribe. Distributed leadership mobilizes bias
towards perceiving equality (Bachrach and Baratz, 2002/1962).
Some may question the empirical basis for such conclusions. However, there is another problem
here. If the thesis is correct and distributed leadership is a manifestation of three-dimensional
power, the kind of research that surveys or interviews staff is likely to offer results in line
Lumby: Distributed Leadership 591
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with the normative thinking constructed by such use of power. Feminists have grappled with
the issue of the status of evidence from those who are socialized into particular beliefs and
values (Lumby and Azaola, 2013; Mahmood, 2001; Nussbaum, 2003). In contrast, research
on educational leadership has frequently treated self-report, whether from interview or survey
data, as unproblematic (Lumby and Morrison, 2010). For example, Hallinger and Heck (2010:
873) surveyed staff to investigate the impact of distributed leadership, asking a series of ques-
tions on ‘To what extent does school leadership ...’ If issues of exclusion and unequal access
to power and to leadership have been excised from thinking, then these issues are unlikely to
emerge in research findings. There is a necessity to grapple with finding methods to surface
‘conflicts which do not happen, pulling out latent experiences which are overlooked’ (Deetz,
2000: 160). Reluctance to accept this necessity from organizations that have invested much in
promulgating distributed leadership and from the individuals whose professional identity is
similarly invested will prove a formidable barrier. Researchers and practitioners reap rewards
and approval for staying within the game, not from questioning the very nature of the playing
field (Flessa, 2009; Morrison, 2012).
The Politics of Distributed Leadership
The article has argued that distributed leadership, while originally introduced to educators as
merely a lens the better to understand leadership, has grown into a theory and frequently prescribed
practice which promotes a fantasy apolitical world in which more staff are supposedly empowered,
have more control of their activity and have access to a wider range of possibilities. The article has
suggested that there is little evidence to support distributed leadership’s achievement of such
outcomes.
The aim of the article was to account for the dominance of distributed leadership, Popper (2002)
suggested that science proceeds not by logical thinking, but by a kind of survival of the fittest the-
ory. Distributed leadership has proved admirably fit and adapted to the needs of the early 21st-
century school environment, both in reconciling staff to neoliberal conditions in the workplace and
as part of a much longer propensity whereby troubling underlying power structures are written out
of thinking. Contrary to the suggestion in some literature that power is being redistributed, the cus-
tomary uses of episodic agency by those in authority endure, as do more subtle forms of two- and
three-dimensional power.
This article has adopted a critical stance as a counter to the relatively large body of normative
work promoting distributed leadership. The theory is an easy target in some ways. Its confusing
overlaps with earlier theory, contradictory formulations and utopian depictions are transparent.
Nevertheless, this should not lead analysts to underestimate its power to enact inequality. It is not
‘little more’ than rhetoric (Hartley, 2010: 279); it is far more insidious. Arendt (1970) argued that
the persistence of unequal and unjust systems is located in banal, everyday choices not to think
critically, to be comfortable, and to go along with current majority choices. Having reviewed the
uses of power in distributed leadership, Arendt’s (1958: 5) words can be used to encapsulate the
implications of this article: ‘What I propose, therefore, is very simple: it is nothing more than to
think what we are doing.’ There is, arguably, no such thing as an apolitical theory in education.
Ignoring politics can be interpreted as a political act as much as overt engagement. In its avoidance
of issues of power, distributed leadership is a profoundly political phenomenon, replete with the
uses and abuses of power.
592 Educational Management Administration & Leadership 41(5)
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Marianne Coleman and Ann Briggs for their constructive comments on an early draft.
Notes
1. With acknowledgement to Brecht’s (1941/1981) play, The Resistible Rise of Arturi Ui
2. National statistics are presented in ways that do not always make under-representation apparent. For exam-
ple, describing the percentage of headteachers in the nursery and primary sector who are men and who are
women makes it appear that women are well represented. Figures which show the proportional chance of
becoming a headteacher or deputy relative to the number of teachers of their gender in the age phase would
give an entirely different picture (Lumby, 2011).
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Author biography
Jacky Lumby is a professor of Education at the University of Southampton in the UK. Her main
interests are in educational leadership and management, and particularly the structures and pro-
cesses which result in unequal opportunities for learners and staff. This has led her to engage with
issues of diversity, gender and power. Her work encompasses a range of viewpoints, including crit-
ical theory and comparative and international perspectives.
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