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Where’s the agency in leadership-as-practice?
... Practice theories proved capable of offering a unique orientation to the study of leadership: one way of answering the need to account for the processual, relational and interactional character of the phenomenon by providing the theoretical and methodological tools to understand it as a social accomplishment. This meant de-emphasising the focus on individual agency typical of leadership notions and contextualising individual actions in wider bundles or texture of practices (Simpson, 2016). Concretely, this implied the need to look for situations in which leadership may emerge, rather than studying individuals identified as leaders before they even act. ...
... A processual understanding is open to divergence, contradictions and tensions in the ongoing production of direction -that is, of leadership. Understanding process in this way also implies that agency emerges in the practising itself, depending on how it plays out, and it is not solely a matter of individual intentionality (Simpson, 2016;Crevani, 2018; see Chapter 23, Process theory approaches to leadership). ...
... The former position has dominated leadership studies in general and is found in many studies of leadership practices in which we follow individuals acting (for instance, Case and Śliwa, 2020). The latter position is sustained by the leadership approaches articulated in relational constructionism (Hosking, 1988), pragmatism and performativity (see Simpson, 2016, for a discussion), but was already anticipated by Mary Parker Follett's distinction between power over and power with (1924). Simpson (2016) calls such a view leadership in the flow of practice and provides a vivid narrative of the rugby team All Blacks' leadership paying attention to the wholistic and continuous nature of the collective effort that transforms the meanings of situations (Simpson, 2016, p. 172). ...
This chapter focuses on the study of leadership and practice with the aim to foreground how different strands of practice theory have contributed to an alternate understanding of leadership as phenomenon by providing a unique orientation and sensibility for research. Practice theories have been one way of answering the need for accounting for the processual, relational and interactional character of leadership. In fact, practice theories not only offer the theoretical and methodological tools to understand leadership as a social accomplishment – but also, as we will argue, as a material accomplishment.
Conceptualising leadership in terms of practice is not new (Follett, 1919; Hosking, 1988). However, what is exactly implied in such conceptualisation can vary. In broad terms, practice can be understood to designate what people do together. Building on such a general idea, leadership scholars have increasingly focused on how leadership is performed and enacted in a distributed way through situated everyday actions. Leadership is thus not necessarily what leaders do. Rather, it is the practical collective accomplishment of direction in organising that is in focus. However, there is not one theory of practice but multiple, which implies that multiple lines of enquiry are imaginable for practice studies of leadership.
In this chapter, we describe how leadership studies have benefitted by (re)attending to practice theories. Practice theories are not presented as more valid theoretical alternatives than dominant leadership theories. Rather, we elaborate on how these theories have offered the possibility to develop new understandings of leadership by reimagining the study of this phenomenon.
The first section of the chapter presents an introduction to practice theories and their entrance in leadership studies. Then, in the second section, we illustrate what studies mobilising practice theories have contributed to. In the third section we dig into a discussion of the different positionings that researchers drawing on practice theories have taken, in order to provide the reader with the possibility to navigate the sensitising framework that these theories provide. The chapter ends with a discussion of criticalities and possibilities, including the possible need to advance our methodological tools.
... Moreover, instead of defining leadership as a process of social influence within stable power relationships, we adopt a strong process approach (Hernes, 2014;Langley & Tsoukas, 2016) and accordingly, focus on the continuous flow of experience. Specifically, we approach leadership as the production of direction in the flow of practice (Simpson, 2016). Upon this view, leadership is an 'ongoing coordinated accomplishment of work' (Simpson, 2016, p. 173) and puts the emphasis on experience of action and its consequences rather than on individuals seeking to influence each other. ...
... Upon this view, leadership is an 'ongoing coordinated accomplishment of work' (Simpson, 2016, p. 173) and puts the emphasis on experience of action and its consequences rather than on individuals seeking to influence each other. Such a strong process approach captures a central aspect of leadership work: leadership is about providing or creating direction in organizing processes (Crevani, 2018) through leadership moments (Simpson, 2016). Thus, our research question is as follows: How does collaborative leadership emerge within a strict hierarchical context? ...
... A strong process approach to leadership allows us to present a different perspective, one that emphasizes the flow or the reorientation of collective action (Simpson, 2016). As such, the question no longer concerns focusing on whether this or that person influences others but rather first examining the action itself and identifying its sources throughout the process, in order to uncover any reorientations that may have occurred. ...
This paper employs a strong process approach to leadership – one that focuses on leadership moments in action – to explore how collaborative leadership emerges within a hierarchical context. Drawing on observation in three Haute Cuisine restaurant kitchen brigades – highly hierarchical teams that deal with intense time pressures – we document empirically in the ongoing flow of experience how leadership moments reorient collective action as a response to an unstable environment. Moreover, we show how collaborative leadership emerges from a hierarchical structure, counterintuitively, during the most critical period of the service. Our contribution is twofold. We offer a novel conceptualization of the emergence of plural leadership within a hierarchical context, one that highlights the capacity to reframe the way of working together during the most critical moments of an unfolding situation. In addition, our work contributes to the strong process approach to leadership through the methodology adopted: rather than exploring how turning points are discursively enacted, we focus on these as manifested in action and in the non-verbal aspects displayed at such moments.
... Building on this, the approach we suggest acknowledges how humans and objects in time-space configurations together accomplish leadership in interactions, and thus how leadership emerges 'even through non-deliberate material-discursive practices' (Raelin, 2020, p. 496). Such a theoretical positioning implies decentring of agency from humans to practices (Simpson, 2016). We thus acknowledge the reflexivity of humans, but see human agential capability as a result of taking part in socio-material practices (Nicolini, 2009;Reckwitz, 2002) in the same way as non-human actors are part of sociomaterial practices (Gherardi, 2019a). ...
... Such a view of power focuses on its 'emergence in relationships' and on its consequences as it 'come [s] to possess a lived validity' (Gergen, 1995, p. 36). An illustration from the leadershipas-practice stream of research is Simpson's (2016) example of the New Zeeland rugby team All Blacks. Simpson illustrates how stories of the past, and the potential of leaving a legacy, is embodied in, for example, the teams' signature black jerseys. ...
... In both these examples, power emerges in the relationships and in interaction as events unfold; it is not an entity that can be held or wielded by autonomous entitative agents. Drawing on the terminology of Follett (1940), it is a question of power withnot power to or power over (Simpson, 2016). ...
This paper addresses the need for further developing an understanding of leadership as practice in its multimodality by means of theoretically motivated qualitative methods, allowing researchers to come close to the doing of leadership. Empirical studies of this kind are still relatively rare. By articulating a micro-ethnographic approach, we encourage short-term-focused engagements in empirical work and the writing of closed vignettes. Through this, current theoretical developments are connected to recommendations for fieldwork and for writing practices. We thereby articulate one possible coherent and consistent position from which to study the multimodality of leadership and to understand leadership as an accomplishment of direction.
... Recent developments in process philosophy and theorizing have clarified the distinction between process thinking as an ontological position and process thinking as an orientation to study organization and organizing, and they have highlighted several modes of process thinking and doing process research (Helin et al., 2014;Langley & Tsoukas, 2016;Sergi, Crevani, & Aubry, 2020). Performativity, articulated in different ways by various authors, is one of the most significant implications in adopting process as ontology; that is, all accomplishments are performative (Cabantous & Sergi, 2018;Gond et al., 2016;Introna, 2013;Simpson, 2016). Undertaking empirical studies of organizing with a process ontology is, however, extremely challenging because our spontaneous view of the world -including of processes -is entitative, not processual (Selg, 2020). ...
... A useful starting point to understand process as ontology is offered by Dewey and Bentley's framework and vocabulary of 'self-action ', 'inter-action' and 'trans-action' (1949) to indicate modes of action and analyse conceptual distinctions between entitative and processual ontologies (Ansell, 2011;Selg, 2018;Simpson, 2009Simpson, , 2016. 1 Selg and Ventsel (2020, pp. 19-20) explain these different modes of action as follows. ...
... Trans-actors are beings and things that emerge from, or are constituted through, trans-actions as ongoing accomplishments and provisional effects. Trans-action departs from the other two modes of action at an ontological level and invokes a processual ontology (Simpson, 2016). ...
This article seeks to open up new possibilities for process organization studies to reimagine power and performativity by exploring the potential of Mary Parker Follett’s pragmatism as process philosophy. I revisit her body of work to show how she translated her process ontology into theoretical resources and practical insights that allow for new ways of understanding power and performativity together and explore them as mutually constituting processes of organizing. In particular, I mobilize Follett’s view of conflicts as emerging differences in the world and frictions as constructive conflicts with the potential to generate something new in order to introduce and conceptualize ‘performative power’, that is, the power emerging from relating and integrating differences in organizational situations that are experienced as frictions by people involved. Drawing on my ethnographic study of an entrepreneurship accelerator – a training programme for innovators and start-up projects – I discuss and illustrate empirically how performative power is generated from frictions that arise in ordinary lived experiences. This conceptualization of performative power is an attempt to develop a processual and performative understanding of power, and a useful lens to conduct process research. Making a connection between performative power and the experience of frictions provides a new way to see, talk and study processually power in contemporary organizations.
... There is a further distinction amongst process researchers whereby substantive ontologies assume that changes happen 'to things which retain their identity as they change' (Fachin and Langley, 2018: p. 3), whereas in non-substantive ontologies, the entanglement of agents leaves no one or thing unchanged. It is from the constitutive entwining and continuous refiguration of each other that leadership emerges (Shotter, 2006;Simpson, 2016). Sometimes this distinction is not clear as researchers use the same terms differently (Simpson, 2016). ...
... It is from the constitutive entwining and continuous refiguration of each other that leadership emerges (Shotter, 2006;Simpson, 2016). Sometimes this distinction is not clear as researchers use the same terms differently (Simpson, 2016). ...
... People do not remain static when in connectionothers have the capacity to move them and make new. Or collaborative agency may be 'trans-action' (Carroll and Simpson, 2012;Simpson, 2016) where agents both construct and are constructed by their social interaction. Both descriptions chime with the non-compositional and non-substantive ontologies discussed earlier. ...
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.
... Despite these advancements, the questions of what leadership is, what forms of agency brings it about, and the relationship between individual and collective leadership are far from settled. In her overview of the shift from an actor-view to a process-view of leadership, Simpson (2016) points out that this move implies a shift in the fundamental assumptions about what leadership is by understanding action and agency as performative rather than representative of reality. While both an actor-view and a processview have their merit in an analysis by opening up for different ways of conceiving of leadership, Simpson (2016, p. 175) warns that given the distinct ontological assumptions underpinning these different orientations, we should "be wary of any attempt to produce a grand unified theory of leadership." ...
... I have structured this section according to four interrelated analytical lenses: the individual leader, leadership through culture, leadership through process, and leadership through integration. Besides the Indigenous leadership literature presented below, this structure is informed by Igiugig community members' perspectives on the drivers of change in their community (Gram-Hanssen, 2019) as well as the different assumptions as to the nature of leadership within "mainstream" leadership research, as articulated by Simpson (2016). ...
... While there are some perceived tensions between actor-based and process-based conceptualizations of leadership, as highlighted by Simpson (2016), some scholars within "mainstream" leadership research are attempting to incorporate and expand the role of individuals within collective and processual understandings of leadership. For instance, instead of focusing on leadership as held either by individuals or collectives, Hernandez et al. (2011) suggest focusing in on the loci and the mechanisms of leadership in order to address the sources of leadership as well as how it is distributed. ...
Deliberately transforming society toward equitable and sustainable futures requires leadership. But what kind of leadership? While the dominant understanding of leadership often centers on the individual, the concept of collective leadership is receiving increased attention. Yet, the relationship between individual and collective leadership remains elusive and has been given limited attention in the transformation literature. In this study, I explore how leadership is understood and enacted in an Alaska Native community engaged in transforming community systems toward enhanced sustainability. I draw on Indigenous leadership research, organized through four interrelated analytical lenses: the individual leader, leadership through culture, leadership through process, and leadership through integration. I find that leadership in the community can be seen as something simultaneously individual and collective and argue that an Indigenous relational ontology makes it possible to imagine leadership as an “individual-collective simultaneity.” In the discussion, I highlight the connections to emerging theories and approaches within “mainstream” leadership research, pointing to the potential for bridging disciplines and paradigms. For leadership and transformation researchers to engage in this bridging work, we must reflect on and reconsider our assumptions as to what agency for transformation is, with important implications for how we work to support transformations. While “ontological bridge building” creates tensions, it is through holding and working through these creative tensions that we can start to see pathways toward equitable and sustainable futures.
... The practice lens in leadership theory shifts attention away from individual competencies to leadership understood as 'an agency emanating from an emerging collection of practices' (Raelin et al., 2018: 372). Simpson (2016) describes it in terms of a set of socially defined practices or situated 'doings', emerging in the ongoing flow of practice. L-A-P also considers the everyday, lived experiences and mundane work of leadership (Carroll et al., 2008;Kempster and Gregory, 2017;Raelin, 2016a), with the potential to articulate the intersection of individual agency and social systems and practices (Nicolini, 2013). ...
... But L-A-P is still in the process of conceptual articulation, operationalisation and debate, with scholars acknowledging limited empirical research from different contexts (Kempster and Gregory, 2017;Raelin et al., 2018). Influenced by the so-called practice turn within social and organisation theory (Carroll et al., 2008;Schatzki et al., 2001), L-A-P focuses on how leadership emerges within the continual flow of 'practice', where the world is understood as a processual, recurrent accomplishment (Kempster and Gregory, 2017;Simpson, 2016). It also explores leadership as 'a set of practices' (Crevani and Endrissat, 2016: 23, 31) through which things 'get done' (Raelin, 2016b). ...
... It also explores leadership as 'a set of practices' (Crevani and Endrissat, 2016: 23, 31) through which things 'get done' (Raelin, 2016b). This includes not only mundane, everyday, habitual practices (Carroll et al., 2008;Raelin, 2011), but also improvisations that unexpectedly disrupt and reorient the flow of activity (Simpson, 2016). The practice lens, therefore, illuminates how practices shape and are shaped by context (Endrissat and Von Arx, 2013;Fisher and Robbins, 2015). ...
Community leaders are expected to navigate different social and institutional contexts, but they must do so without the direction, authority or legitimacy available to leaders within formal organisations. In this article, we draw on qualitative data from a participation initiative to explore how community leaders get involved in everyday maintenance of public services in informal settlements in Cape Town, in order to understand how they fulfil this intermediary role. Applying the lens of leadership-as-practice, we identify four practices that connect the communities and city, and which facilitate access to public services. We unpack how these practices emerge in and are shaped by the service maintenance system and material conditions of informality. We argue that community leaders fulfil their intermediary role through everyday improvisations to find ‘what works’, and in the process, they also create and sustain relations of dependence and interdependence that reinforce those very roles.
... Despite this focus on formal leadership, the traditional notion of leadership as a stable and distinct characteristic of individual managers has been challenged and largely superseded by a dynamic and relational understanding of leadership as co-constructed in practice (Bolden, Hawkins, Gosling, & Taylor, 2011). Echoing the fluid and fast-changing nature of today's society, contemporary organisational theory has brought forth a notion of leadership that denies leader-centrism and its associated glorification of individual leaders (Simpson, 2016). However, scholars have recently started to question whether the idea of leadership-as-practice goes far enough and called for processual inquiries that offer insight into how particular conditions actually produce leadership in the flow of practice (Simpson, 2016;Simpson, Buchan, & Sillince, 2018). ...
... Echoing the fluid and fast-changing nature of today's society, contemporary organisational theory has brought forth a notion of leadership that denies leader-centrism and its associated glorification of individual leaders (Simpson, 2016). However, scholars have recently started to question whether the idea of leadership-as-practice goes far enough and called for processual inquiries that offer insight into how particular conditions actually produce leadership in the flow of practice (Simpson, 2016;Simpson, Buchan, & Sillince, 2018). ...
... With the turn toward social constructivist approaches scholars have, however, started to view leadership as something dynamically co-constructed in practice; as relationally enacted in interactions between leaders and followers (Bolden et al., 2011). Despite this focus on dynamics and interactions, this literature has been criticised for paying little attention to the ways in which leadership is (re-)produced in ongoing processes of leading and following (Simpson, 2016). In this processual view, leadership is neither a characteristic of distinct human leaders nor coconstructed in interactions but rather continuously emerging from within the flow of practice (Simpson et al., 2018). ...
The way we perform and organise work has undeniably changed and will continue to do so in the next decades. Work is becoming increasingly digital, independent, and performed outside of hierarchical organisations. These new forms of work, characterised by organisational independence, pose new challenges to management research and its theoretical conceptualisation of leadership. We report on an ongoing ethnographic study of independent digital workers. In particular, we focus on a range of senior workers that appear as leaders in their respective fields. In adopting an inherently processual vocabulary, our study shows how leaders continuously become followers and followers become leaders. We suggest that, in the digital work context, leaders are also always already positioned as followers. This work-in-progress leads to the development of a performative process theory that understands leaders and followers as continuously emerging from within material-discursive processes.
... This study is an effort to explore what lies inside the 'black-box' of leadership process to understand 'how' leadership is co-created, 'how' it emerges, and 'how' it is actually accomplished (Simpson et al., 2018: 645). The leadership-as-practice (LAP) literature has consolidated the idea that leadership is not something stable, cohesive, and unambiguous (Alvesson and K€ arreman, 2016;Raelin, 2016b;Simpson, 2016). It has also posed the challenge to scholars to theorise from the rough ground of 'practice' (Alvesson and Jonsson, 2018: 41). ...
... It has also posed the challenge to scholars to theorise from the rough ground of 'practice' (Alvesson and Jonsson, 2018: 41). 'Leadership as a set of practices', has also been differentiated from 'leadership in the flow of practice' (Simpson, 2016). Leadership as a set of practices is about inter-action, influencing others, and encompasses a relationality that is dyadic and networked. ...
... Leadership in the flow of practice, on the other hand, is processual and performative. It focuses on the ongoing coordinated accomplishment of work, involving temporally unfolding and mutually constituting relationships and trans-actions (Simpson, 2016). As Raelin (2016b: 12) notes: 'It is in the trans-action mode that we may find leadershipas-practice as a perpetually unfolding dynamic in which it is the action itself that re-orients the flow of practice towards new directions. ...
This study emerges from a co-constructed autoethnography by a practitioner and two academic facilitators studying the leadership-as-practice processes within a small-to-medium sized private wealth business. The study set out to explore the performative dynamics of conversation constituted in, and emerging from, socially engaged talk through leadership in the flow of practice, referred to as 'in-flow-ence'. The study proposes a dynamic metaphor theory that builds on inflow -ence to capture the complexities of conversation and offer thoughts about ways to reconstitute leadership practice to bring about changes in trajectories of social action.
... In this case, we investigated police managerial practices, characteristics of police manager interactions and the situations and contexts in which they operated. We were interested in the specific actions of police managers and how managerial work was accomplished as a team (for example, Nicolini, 2012;Raelin, 2016;Simpson, 2016). Our study was motivated by the gap between management theories and management in practice (Tengblad, 2012a). ...
... This may give police managers referent and expert power (Yukl, 2013). It also gives them legitimacy in terms of their agency to exercise their own will and to influence others as well as to facilitate joint accomplishment of work (Simpson, 2016). ...
... Knowledge is a valuable asset for many police managers as well as being a source of power (Yukl, 2013). Power thus appeared as a process and an aspect of ongoing self-action, interaction and trans-action (Simpson, 2016), meaning that opponents worked together and in tension with each other. Agency in the police service therefore comes in the form of power to, power over and power with (Simpson, 2016), depending on the action, interaction and context. ...
The purpose of this study was to uncover the realities of managerial work in the Norwegian police service. Observation and interview of 27 police managers showed that managerial work emerged and unfolded through specific practices, which occurred within a shared organisational practice shaped by police culture, context and mission. Managers practiced in a variety of ways rather than according to a universal set of managerial practices. Individual police managers developed proficiency by carrying out day-to-day work duties. These managerial practices were dependent on dynamic actions and interactions and were subject to expectations and pressures. Police managers earned legitimacy primarily through being foremost among equals. The current findings supported studies suggesting that managers face complexity and uncertainty in their work as well as those that downplay what managers ought to do, focussing instead on what it is possible to achieve. The implication of these findings for practice is that individual police managers need to develop their own ways of tackling personal, strategic, relational and operational challenges.
... Reflexivity has also been extended to the overall role of the business school in reproducing particular intersections of leadership and power (for some historical analyses, see Cooke & Alcadipani, 2015;Cummings, Bridgman, Hassard, & Rowlinson, 2017;Gosling & Mintzberg, 2006;Khurana, 2007;Starkey & Tiratsoo, 2007). For example, in one AMLE article on the contemporary state of leadership education, Petriglieri and Petriglieri (2015) were concerned that business schools have focused either on reducing leadership to a narrow set of disembodied skills and competencies, or on raising it to an elevated and romanticized position as an unattainable virtue (see also Endres & Weibler, 2017;Simpson, 2016). Petriglieri and Petriglieri (2015) instead suggested that until there is recognition of the everyday tensions and situated nature of leadership, the ambiguity, anxiety, and relational nature of leadership experiences are difficult to discuss. ...
... These are aspects that have been given some attention within the broad category of leadership-as-practice (e.g., Raelin, 2016a), although that category covers a broad range of positions that have not as yet been differentiated in terms of underlying assumptions. Most relevant to the relationist position articulated here are the works of Sergi (2016), Carroll (2016), and Simpson (2016). For example, Sergi (2016), like Sinclair (2005), has criticized the notion of leadership as something people have and as something that can exist a priori to context. ...
... Leadership is processual and mundane, emerging and unfolding as an effect of collective action by interaction of human and nonhuman agents and as a product that itself has directing, shaping, and ordering effects that can both mobilize and stabilize a project (cf. Simpson, 2016). Sergi (2016) discussed the particular effects of both team members and objects and tools, such as a planning document, used within a software development project and, for example, demonstrated how "[d]ocuments make a difference in the production of leadership" (Sergi, 2016: 124). ...
We argue that management educators can harness the critical potential of relational leadership through encouraging attention to the socio-material aspects of leadership work and discourses in organizational settings. We are motivated by persistent critiques of heroic and leader-centered—or leaderist—positions, and informed by arguments for doing leadership and leadership development “differently.” We draw on the practice turn in management and organizational studies to introduce socio-material relationism as an epistemology that can inform new critical engagements with relational leadership through management education. Socio-material relationism—in the form of relationist leadership—enables (a) greater consideration of material aspects of practice that may be denied or deferred in more social-relational approaches; and (b) a distinct identity to assist critical analysis of and education on the workings of leadership in contemporary settings. We demonstrate throughout how these contributions have implications for leadership development and teaching. To do so we recast leadership work as everyday managerial work that is developed through routine or emergent practice, done through the working of nonroutine practices, and as a subject that is itself worked by being constituted and potentially deconstructed through analysis of intersecting discourses.
... Compared to individualistic accounts of leadership focusing on entities (i.e., leaders), the ontological emphasis in L-A-P resides within the processes of interaction between actors and between them and their material accompaniments. Those who are working on an endeavor collectively are participants or collaborators whose mutual activities may or may not change a turning point in participants' shared knowhow, thus leadership may or may not ensue (Simpson, 2016). When it does change a turning point, which in turn may also precipitate a change in the trajectory in the flow of a given practice, it can be said that leadership has occurred by the inter-connected parties who have come together to accomplish a mutual endeavor. ...
... However, as long as there is collective reflection within the operating group, there is every chance that the re-direction and re-orientation will be of value to those participating. Simpson (2016) refers to this form of leadership as a trans-actional agency, an in-the-moment metaphoric wave resulting in a combined agency or a co-action. At any moment, anyone can contribute to the flow. ...
In this article the author uses the lens of leadership-as-practice (L-A-P) to analyze the concerns of the worker in the contemporary workplace and proposes both new insights and potential remediations through a post-humanistic leadership centered on practice. L-A-P is designed to probe underneath the accepted or "natural" human resource practices to uncover the power dynamics in the workplace that have led to challenges to the worker in the form of burnout, lack of autonomy, and detachment. After introducing the practice approach to the workplace, the paper interrogates the potential value of leadership being viewed as a collaborative agency constituting changes in the trajectory of prefigured work practices that can have affirmative consequences via its ethical and critical approach to human resource development.
... Compared to individualistic accounts of leadership focusing on entities (i.e., leaders), the ontological emphasis in L-A-P resides within the processes of interaction between actors and between them and their material accompaniments. Those who are working on an endeavor collectively are participants or collaborators whose mutual activities may or may not change a turning point in participants' shared knowhow, thus leadership may or may not ensue (Simpson, 2016). When it does change a turning point, which in turn may also precipitate a change in the trajectory in the flow of a given practice, it can be said that leadership has occurred by the inter-connected parties who have come together to accomplish a mutual endeavor. ...
... However, as long as there is collective reflection within the operating group, there is every chance that the re-direction and re-orientation will be of value to those participating. Simpson (2016) refers to this form of leadership as a trans-actional agency, an in-the-moment metaphoric wave resulting in a combined agency or a co-action. At any moment, anyone can contribute to the flow. ...
... Hard power, as noted above, presents itself when particular forces seek to deprive impacted groups of equitable benefits due to systematic stratification and exclusion. An important critique of some L-A-P studies is that in its effort to report on the historical practices occurring in situ, it may unwittingly ignore power differentials and continue to privilege institutionalized norms (Simpson, 2016). Further, some practices may have their roots within classic conditions of deprivation, such as, racism, sexism, and the like (Willmott, 2013). ...
... Leadership consequently can be characterized as a collective agency that can disrupt the regularity of routines. Simpson (2016) characterizes this mode of practice as a trans-action in which there is a continual flow of processes and engagements. In this mode engagements may transform the "trans-actors" as they incorporate new and unfolding meanings in their ongoing trans-actions. ...
This essay, through a curation of articles drawn largely from the archives of the Academy of Management, guides readers through the early foundations, principles, and theory of the new field of leadership-as-practice (L-A-P). The field is shown to have evolved through a history of leadership research culminating in a plural tradition with which the practice perspective is allied. Some of the critical issues in the present and unfolding state of L-A-P are exemplified, including their implications for ongoing leadership practice. The essay ends with some recommendations for future research in the field, along with opportunities for advancing theory and application that such study might afford.
... We approach Pragmatism by focusing primarily on Dewey's notion of social inquiry (Dewey, 1922(Dewey, , 1929(Dewey, , 1938(Dewey, [1991; Dewey & Bentley, 1949[1991) in connection with Mead's work on significant social gestures (Mead, 1910(Mead, , 1934. We further communicate with streams of research that explicitly apply a relational ontology to agency, whether in organizational research inspired by Pragmatism (Lorino, 2018;Martela, 2015;Shotter, 2017;Simpson, 2009Simpson, , 2016, relational sociology (Burkitt, 2016;Dépelteau, 2018) or the tradition known as the communicative constitution of organizations (CCO ) (Brummans, 2018;Cooren, 2018Cooren, , 2020Robichaud, 2006;Schoeneborn, Kuhn, & Kärreman, 2019). ...
... To borrow and extend language from Cooren (2018), our analysis illustrates the way people through social inquiry may grow their capacity and desire to act with and for others as well as from a burdening past and towards continued progress and hope for their organization and its beneficiaries. The resulting notion of agency is collaborative (Raelin, 2016;Simpson, 2016) and emergent as people manage to put themselves 'into relation with whole groups in the community whose attitudes have not entered into the lives of others in the community' (Mead, 1934, p. 256). ...
Research has provided limited knowledge of how people in organizations experience growth of agency during circumstances that seem hopeless and stuck, and how such growth emerges. Drawing from the study of the turnaround processes at a nursing home and the Pragmatism of Dewey and Mead, we contribute with a theory of how agency is produced in social inquiry. We suggest that the puzzling accounts of lightness in the experiences of people at this nursing home help explain how a field of social inquiry may be charged with creative and agentic force. We show how agency emerged through a series of action sequences related to inviting people into inquiry through the opening of a troublesome situation, the resulting voicing of needs and ideas for improvement, as well as the subsequent experimenting and surfacing of tales of meaningful progress from such actions. Furthermore, our empirical observations suggest that the emergence of collective desire to meet the needs of the Generalized Other is a central, yet understated, part of agency produced through social inquiry. Lightness of agency may be accentuated, paradoxically, by the weight of a more generalized situation—in this case that of institutionalized care for elderly—that the local inquiry exemplifies and in which it resonates.
... Using a collective lens draws attention to other understandings of the nature of leadership (Drath et al., 2008). As an example, studies that draw on a process ontology of leadership issue a fundamental challenge to the building blocks of classical leadercentered theories by beginning with a relational claim that process and not entities best represent what exists in the world, including human experience (Crevani et al., 2010;Fairhurst, 2016;Simpson, 2016;Wood, 2005). This would mean that 'leadership is found neither in one person or another, nor can it be simply located between several people . . . ...
... Interpretivist, constructionist studies may be grounded in different social theories such as relational constructionism (Hosking, 2011), pragmatism (Simpson, 2016), communication approaches like the communicative constitution of organizations (CCO) (Fairhurst and Connaughton, 2014), or practice theory (Raelin, 2017), among others. Likewise, while interpretivist studies have gained currency in the field, studies rooted in other constructionist approaches have also contributed to challenge traditional assumptions of classical leadership theory. ...
In this introductory article we explain the impetus for creating the Special Issue, along with its goals and the process by which we created it. We present a map of the terrain of collective leadership (CL) that builds on earlier frameworks, recognizing that the terrain is expanding and has become increasingly difficult to traverse. The map is comprised of two axes or dimensions. The first axis, the ‘locus of leadership,’ captures how scholars conceptualize where to look for manifestations of leadership. That is, does the leadership reside in the group or does it reside in the system? The second axis is the view of ‘collectivity’ that plots how scholars conceptualize the collective. Do they see it as an empirical type of leadership or a theoretical lens through which to study leadership? We then plot distinctive CL research into four cells, providing definitions and references to empirical work emblematic for each cell. In introducing and summarizing each of the five articles we have selected for this Special Issue, we show where each of these is located on the CL research map, and distil how each provides a clear connection between theory and method in a way that advances our understanding of CL.
... Paralleling these developments, there is also a nascent literature that explores projects-aspractice (Blomquist et al., 2010;Hallgren & Soderholm, 2011). These recent studies draw on Whittington's (2006) pleasingly alliterative typology of Praxis, Practices, and Practitioners, but unlike strategy-as-practice (e.g., Chia & Holt, 2006;Hendry & Seidl, 2003;Jarzabkowski, 2005) or leadership-as-practice (e.g., Cunliffe & Hibbert, 2016;Shotter, 2016;Simpson, 2016), the philosophical underpinnings of practice remain underexplored in this field. Most project management scholars have thus far restricted their interests to the routine, measurable practices, and stabilized entities that are taken to be the constitutive elements, or building blocks, of projects. ...
... The performative force of Dewey's Inquiry draws attention to leadership as an ongoing social process that brings about transformation through transactional practice. At the same time, the traditional assumption that leaders are the source of leadership is overturned as the processual orientation of practice (verb) gives priority to the movements and flows through which leadership is accomplished and manifested in the continuity of coordinated work (Simpson, 2016). ...
This article contributes a practice-based approach to project management by opening up to the messiness and unpredictabilities involved in actually doing project work. Drawing on the Pragmatist ideas of John Dewey, we theorize projects-as-practices (noun) and projects-as-practice (verb) as complementary concepts that are built respectively on ontologies of being and becoming. For the purposes of this article, we define the notion of project as an emergent social process of becoming, bounded in time and space, and generative of novel outcomes. We also contribute methodologically by proposing Dewey’s Inquiry as a guide to shadowing the bounded becomingness of projects-as-practice (verb). Using an empirical illustration from a Health and Social Care Partnership in Scotland, we highlight the inherently emergent nature of projects as they bring about transformational change.
... However, there is a significant difference in the agent-agency perspective of leadership. While leader-centric approaches define a procedural relationship of leader-follower or leadercollaborators (Simpson 2016;Kempster 2009), Kan and Parry position leadership as emerging through an evolving process of group context and interaction, in other words leadership does not have a material or concrete presence but rather exists in potentiâ awaiting a call to manifest itself. This call is not a demand for specific action but rather an appeal for attention with multiple possibilities for understanding (Heidegger 1962). ...
... When we attribute the existence of leadership to traits and behavioral characteristics of an individual leader the focus becomes one of providing procedures for effective leadership. Rather than procedural, post-heroic theories such as L-A-P see the emergence of leadership as an evolving processual ontology (Simpson 2016;Kempster 2009). This distinction between procedural and processual and the understanding of leadership as ontologically emergent in turn calls for a similarly emergent epistemology. ...
Purpose:
The purpose of this paper is to introduce virtue epistemology as a complementary approach to how we learn and make wise decisions within organizations.
Design/methodology/approach:
Drawing on a philosophic history of intellectual virtue and recent research into virtue epistemology, this article presents an applied theoretical approach for practitioners to use in developing a more robust learning environment.
Findings:
With robust market and operational databases of information, organizations continue to face the difficult decision of what this data means and what they can do with it. This article suggests intellectual virtue as a tool to develop appropriate knowledge, informed practical actions and sustainable outcomes.
Practical implications:
Volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity have led to increasing rates of change in organizations. Organizations rely increasingly on their ability to observe, analyze, interpret and ultimately make decisions and act in ways that ensure sustainable results. This article provides an alternative perspective to complement traditional problem solving and decision-making processes.
Originality/value:
There is currently limited research into the applicability of intellectual virtue or virtue epistemology to the field of organizational development and learning.
... Practices, as per Pickering's definition (1995), refer to specific sequences of activities that may repeatedly recur, whereas practice refers to in-the-moment entanglements that tend to extend or transform meaning. Simpson (2016) links practices to an inter-actional mode of activity in which pre-formed entities-be they people or discourses or institutions-vie for influence over other "inter-actors." Practice, on the other hand, is associated with a more trans-actional mode characterized by a continual flow of processes where material-discursive engagements produce emergent meaning. ...
... Hard power comes into effect in cases of resource distribution when some practices lead to an unequal allocation of benefits due to systematic stratification on the basis of such identities as class, race, and gender. An important critique of L-A-P methodology is that in its effort to report on the historical practices occurring in situ, it may unwittingly ignore power differentials and continue to privilege institutionalized norms (Simpson, 2016). In this case, there is a concern that power asymmetries and embodied and material conditions may be overlooked (Ford, 2016). ...
This article is intended as a conceptual and practical foundation for those who wish to conduct research in the area of leadership-as-practice. Rather than offer a single methodology for studying how social and leadership activity is carried out in everyday life, it details a pluralistic set of methods and presents a series of theoretical guidelines through its phenomenological form of inquiry. In particular, it endorses discursive, narrative, ethnographic, aesthetic, and multimodal methods to attempt to capture concurrent, collective, and dialogical social practices. After providing an overview of praxis-oriented research as the methodological basis of leadership-as-practice, the article turns to the conceptual building blocks that can provide some guidance in selecting an appropriate methodology for study. These building blocks incorporate issues of agency, identity, materiality, context, power, and dialogue. The author hopes that researchers will take up the challenge of examining leadership dynamics “from within” to co-participate in working with actors engaged in projects of significance advance their mutual endeavors.
... However, there is a significant difference in the agent-agency perspective of leadership. While leader-centric approaches define a procedural relationship of leader-follower or leadercollaborators (Simpson 2016;Kempster 2009), Kan and Parry position leadership as emerging through an evolving process of group context and interaction, in other words leadership does not have a material or concrete presence but rather exists in potentiâ awaiting a call to manifest itself. This call is not a demand for specific action but rather an appeal for attention with multiple possibilities for understanding (Heidegger 1962). ...
... When we attribute the existence of leadership to traits and behavioral characteristics of an individual leader the focus becomes one of providing procedures for effective leadership. Rather than procedural, post-heroic theories such as L-A-P see the emergence of leadership as an evolving processual ontology (Simpson 2016;Kempster 2009). This distinction between procedural and processual and the understanding of leadership as ontologically emergent in turn calls for a similarly emergent epistemology. ...
The purpose of this article is to contribute to a more robust theory of leadership that shifts the frame of reference from leadership as exclusively facilitated through a single inspired leader to one that includes the view of leadership as an emergent and complex social phenomenon.
The article begins with a review of the leader-centric approaches that dominated much of twentieth century leadership studies then moves on to present contemporary critiques of leader-centric approaches leading to an alternative perspective of leadership as an emergent and complex social phenomenon. Viewing leadership as an emergent and complex social phenomenon changes our attitude regarding the roles that leaders and others play in the creation of leadership. A central theme of this article is the impact that the concept of emergence has on leadership theory. In response to this changing attitude, the article then moves to return to and reassess the ontological, epistemological and ethical grounds of leadership and concludes that there is an underlying philosophy that supports viewing leadership as an emergent social phenomenon and further suggests that recent work in virtue epistemology along with Calvin Schrag’s theory of communicative praxis and transversal rationality, can facilitate a better understanding of leadership as an emergent social phenomenon.
... A further, but no less problematic response comes in the form of leadership-as-practice (Raelin, 2016). As Simpson (2016) demonstrates, this is an ambiguous concept because 'practice' may be used as either a noun, signifying the recurring discursive-material practices and routines enacted by leaders, or as a verb, where practising leadership is understood in terms of the ongoing flows and generative movements of change. Needless to say, it is the former nounal understanding that prevails amongst leadership-as-practice scholars when they regress to 'things' (e.g., leaders, followers, competencies, routines, objects, etc) rather than processes as their basis for describing the stuff of leadership. ...
... In L-A-P, leadership is understood as an emergent process which determines the direction of a group or organisation's work (Crevani and Endrissat, 2016). Leadership practice is defined as an assemblage of interwoven human and non-human elements that interact to create meaning, and these meaningful interactions make up a bricolage of activity which constitutes the process of leadership (Sergi, 2016;Simpson, 2016). It does not focus on leadership as the actions of individual leaders or on outcomes. ...
There is a growing body of research on small Voluntary Sector Organisations’ (VSOs) contribution to tackling complex social challenges. It focuses on how small VSOs work to address these challenges, as opposed to what the measurable impact of that work is. This article adds to that body of work by providing a new analytical account of how a small VSO works; in this case what shapes that work is the extent to which it is collaborative, responsive and collective, and voluntarily driven in nature. This article also takes the research to a new setting; that of small VSOs working to better the welfare of Asylum Seekers and Refugees (ASRs).
... As the process is highly experimental and based on interagential development, overly straightforward management could destroy it. From our perspective, the leadership of this kind of sustainability process can be better understood by emphasising collective leadership, practice and materiality (see Simpson, 2016). ...
... Collaborative agency is a phenomenon of togetherness for the advancement of a creative meeting as an "horizon of possibility" in which teammates work towards a joint goal (Lemos, 2017;Miettinen, 2010Miettinen, , 2013Van Oers & Hännikäinen, 2001). Leadership can be associated with an agentic process using collaboration and teamwork processes (Hennessy, 2020;Murray, 2017;Nykänen, 2019;Raelin, 2016;Simpson, 2016). This agentic process is based on intersubjectivity, which describes a process of sharing emotional, volitional, intentional and cognitive states between teammates (Crossley, 1996;Zlatev, Racine, Sinha, & Itkonen, 2008) with the purpose of building a 'we-centric' shared space (Gallese, 2003). ...
This study identified a framework of team-based leadership facing the change of future requirements of agile organizations and new work and aims to clarify the underlying mechanisms and how they work together and under what conditions. Data were collected from leaders in three separate surveys characterized by various countries, first languages and different ethnicity. A total of 401 completed interviews were collected and the results were analyzed at the individual level. All variables were modeled in a path diagram and tested applying structural equation modeling. The results show that leadership self-efficacy is a key mechanism that let team-based leadership emerge. Leadership self-efficacy is related to personal power, collaboration, teamwork processes and team task performance, but there is no direct effect on team contextual performance. Personal power is correlated with team task performance. Positional power is interrelated with team contextual performance and personal power. Teamwork processes partially mediate the relation between leadership self-efficacy and team task performance as well as team contextual performance. The study findings identified that the leader role perception by teammates can affect personal power and that organizational politics, expressions of narcissists personal characteristics or cross-cultural context dependency can have an impact on positional power. Theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed, together with limitations and recommendations for future research.
... From Raelin (2016), they refer to how the protagonist resultingly oriented the "flow of practice," so that others in the room began to "build on [his] moves." Further, amplifying the work of Raelin (2014), Simpson (2016), and Crevani (2019), the authors focus on how the protagonist used leadership learning to scrutinize who the human and non-human participants were, how agency emerged in sociomaterial interactions, and how it became distributed among fellow participants. ...
The field of leadership-as-practice (L-A-P) is beginning to mature as a theory of leadership in direct opposition to standard leadership, which views the individual as the mainstay of leadership experience. Nor does it focus on the dyadic relationship between leaders and followers, which historically has been the starting point for any discussion of leadership. Rather, it is concerned with how leadership emerges and unfolds through day-to-day experience. In this ongoing and evolving activity, questions of ethics arise which challenge what appears to be a flat ontology circumscribing its ethical applications. Using a case analysis, which according to the author takes significant liberties with some of the fundamental ethical principles and practices of L-A-P, this essay seeks to refine and delineate what constitutes business ethics from a leadership-as-practice perspective.
... Empathic leadership practice involves interaction between leadership actors. Empathic meaning is emergent from co-construction or transaction (Dewey andBentley, 1960/1975;Simpson, 2016) fundamental to the realization of leadership agency as 'ongoing coordinated accomplishment of work' (Simpson, 2016: 173). Second, leadership is assumed to be processual, 'not mechanically reversible and controllable' (Crevani et al., 2010). ...
Does empathy merely take place in leaders’ mind? How does it help us better understand and practice leadership? In the past, entitative relational leadership studies have mainly drawn on a mind-based understanding of empathy and focused on the association between individual empathy trait and leader emergence and effectiveness. Such an approach overlooks leadership practice of empathy as a constructive process. By integrating emerging research from diverse disciplines from philosophy to communication, the paper first offers a constructionist view of empathy, based on which empathic leadership practice is conceptualized. The paper explicates how leadership practice of empathy construction is rooted in relational ethics and takes place in both synchronic dyadic interaction through conversation as well as diachronic narrative practice with a collective other. By conceptualizing empathic leadership practice through a social constructionist approach to empathy, the paper makes significant contributions to our understanding of relational leadership.
... This extension in relation to leadership issues will be discussed next. Murray (2017); Raelin (2016); Simpson (2016) investigated leadership in the context of collaborative agency. Collaborative agency is realized through intentional social interaction within a collaboration setting which applies collaborative sense making. ...
This study highlights deficits in current leadership concepts; and offers new perspectives through the application of a critical realist analysis. Whilst today’s business world is changing and needs effective leadership to survive, nevertheless leadership is poorly understood, and current leadership research lacks a unified theory. The unified framework suggested here is based on a layered ontology of leadership. It argues that the causal configuration of leadership – the multiple interacting causes that result in its emergence – is best understood as the interplay between the key mechanism of power, along with human agency and collaborative agency, within specific structural and contextual conditions. This explanation requires a critical realist design of a layered ontology; it would not be possible from the perspectives of either positivism or constructivism.
... • Value and pursue diversity, multiple viewpoints, and mutuality. the actions or practices of individuals due to organizational structural conditions, positional placements, access to information and expertise, or proximity that will enable meaning making (Shotter, 2016;Simpson, 2016). This makes leadership the shared responsibility of the collective, and each and every individual in the collective (Ford, 2016). ...
This chapter focuses on the importance of equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) as critical workforce and leadership issues in health care. It highlights the business case for EDI, and shows how inclusivity leads to employee engagement that directly impacts services and outcomes. Inclusive leadership is offered as the best practice in optimizing diversity and creating cultures of inclusion where all people are valued equally with proportional representation and equitable inclusion. Four inclusive leadership competencies are singled out to be of particular importance in the health care context, namely: (1) engagement through relational practice, (2) enablement by creating environments for others to flourish, (3) empowerment by building confidence and communities, and (4) recognizing and developing talent. This chapter also features examples of everyday workplace triggering events that make inequity or discrimination noticeable, that might spark diversity-based conflict, and poses corrective boundary spanning organizational strategies to deal with these conflicts. The section on managing inequities and insensitivities focuses on practical applications dealing with LGBTQi issues and sexual harassment in the workplace and concludes with a case study of action taken by an exemplary health care institution in an effort to raise awareness about unconscious bias in light of the #MeToo movement. Lastly, this chapter identifies pearls and pitfalls in leading EDI and concludes with a clear message: The absence of effective EDI practices comes at a significant cost. Courageous and bold inclusive leadership action is needed to develop and sustain a strong EDI culture in the health care industry.
... He finds that "leaders exercise considerable control and … their power can also have contradictory outcomes which leaders either do not always understand or of which they are unaware" (Collinson, 2005(Collinson, , p. 1435cited in Denis et al. 2010, p. 80). Simpson (2016) similarly finds that leaders cannot perfectly anticipate the context and outcomes of their actions, which turns leadership into a largely unpredictable practice. ...
This chapter provides important conceptual foundations for reconstructing leadership in networks from a practice-theoretical perspective. It introduces basic principles of practice and structuration theory, offers practice-theoretical definitions of inter-organizational networks and leadership, and explores the role and definition of reflexivity in network leadership.
... Second, the model understands leading in networks as the exertion of influence by one or several organizations in order to reflexively coordinate the activities in the network (Müller-Seitz & Sydow, 2012). If a network is formed by a bundle of inter-organizational practices, leadership denotes the distinct practice through which member organizations reflexively try to provide a sense of direction to these practices (Nicolini, 2012;Simpson, 2016;Sydow & Windeler, 1998). ...
This chapter offers a novel practice-theoretical model of reflexive leadership in inter-organizational networks. The model builds on practice-theoretical conceptions of networks, leadership, and reflexivity. At its core, it proposes that leadership action and structure are in a recursive relationship, assuming a duality rather than a dualism. As such, leading in networks cannot be attributed to the behaviors, traits, and activities of individual “leaders”, nor to certain structural features of a network. Rather, it conceives of leading in networks as a reflexive practice through which actors collectively question traditional inter-organizational practices and explore new ways of coordinating their activities across organizational boundaries.
... The intersubjective construction of meaning arises through social interaction and from knowledge emanating from our social reality. It is often an in-the-moment intra-actionnot inter, but intra-actionthat may produce a turning point that re-orients the flow of practice towards new meanings and direction, producing leadership agency (Simpson, 2016). Further, I would attest that if agency means making a difference in the world by transforming structure or mobilizing social action, it does not necessarily require an influencer and an influencee. ...
In this paper, we offer some conceptual building blocks, or rather conceptual flows, towards a radical processual rethinking of the type of agency that allows for the sustainable production and consumption of fashion. Appeals to principled decision making or calculating costs and benefits instrumentally fail to engender the necessary behavioural changes, and more importantly, our current conceptual apparatus cannot account for the relationality that fosters sustainable lifestyles. An empirical study of upcycling practices allows us to interrogate the agency involved in sustainable organising and acknowledge the complex forms of valuation that take place in and through the making process. Our data were analysed through the lens of John Dewey’s pragmatist perspectives on valuation and were brought into conversation with literature on ‘making’, more specifically through the anthropological work of Tim Ingold. We contend that current conceptualisations of sustainable organising are inadequate because they undermine the relational orientation that sustainable organising entails. We argue for a processual, relational approach to valuation, which allows for the accommodation of a plurality of ways of thinking about what sustainable organising may mean. To live sustainably, one has to stay close to materials, engage relationally with one’s histories and contexts, and allow valuation to present itself as part of everyday practice.
Scholars are increasingly examining how formal leaders of organizations change moral norms. The prominent accounts over-emphasize the role of rational persuasion. We focus, instead, on how formal leaders successfully break and thereby create moral norms. We draw on Dreyfus’s ontology of cultural paradigms and Williams’s moral luck to develop our framework for viewing leader-driven radical norm the change. We argue that formal leaders, embedded in their practices’ grounding, clarifying, and organizing norms, get captivated by anomalies and respond to them by taking moral risks, which, if practically successful, create a new normative order. We illustrate the framework with Churchill’s actions in 1940 and Anita Roddick’s Body Shop. Last, we discuss normative orders, when ordinary leaders change norms, evil, and further research.
This article constitutes an interview between a new researcher of the field of Leadership-as-Practice (L-A-P), Jenny Robinson, with one of the co-creators of the field, Joe Raelin. It is dedicated to providing an update and refinement of leadership-as-practice “practice theory,” which has gone through a fair degree of transformation since this journal’s first article on the subject in 2008. The call for such an update is precipitated by the need for emerging L-A-P researchers to appreciate the subject’s conceptual boundaries for more consistent and integrated exploration. In particular, L-A-P claims to differentiate not only from other plural traditions in leadership but from other “as-practice” approaches in the wider management field. Some of the other distinctions covered in this article comprise the role of theory in L-A-P, its contribution to leadership research and leadership development, its connection to other related fields, and its phenomenological, ethical, democratic, and post-humanistic foundations.
The IoT digital revolution has opened opportunities to resolve complex, economic, environmental and social issues. Digitizing efforts involve participating in an ecosystem of innovators, providers, evolving customer needs and government policies. Companies entering this world report experiencing complexities with realizing value for stakeholders. This study presents a critical inquiry into the IoT world in South Africa. A grounded theory methodology is applied to provide an understanding of the important mechanisms at play affecting uptake of IoTs in the ecosystem. We use the insights to develop a model relevant for IoT players and urban planners to enhance benefit realization for the ecosystem as a whole. The study provides insight into a missing, “Puppeteering” role, that is required to organize ecosystem participants in their pursuit of value. A significant finding is that this role is best played by technology owners so that they can co‐create and generate jointly‐developed power to realize potential value for the entire ecosystem. The role needs to synergistically organize ecosystem participants to capture and distribute value to sustainably grow the ecosystem; and to engage in the development of required capabilities to sustain this. We argue that this “puppeteer effect” has potential to foster an inclusive, sustainable IoT strategy.
Objective: Although midwifery-led continuity of care is associated with superior outcomes for mothers and babies, it is not available to all women. Issues with implementation and sustainability might be addressed by improving how it is led and managed – yet little is known about what constitutes the optimal leadership and management of midwifery-led continuity models.
Design: Following a systematic search of academic databases for relevant publications, 25 publications were identified. These were analysed, thematically to clarify (dis)similar themes, and lexically, to clarify how words within the publications travelled together.
Findings: The publications were replete with three key themes. First, Leadership – Important yet Challenged. Second, Management of organisational change; barriers and enhancers. Third, Promotors of sustainable models of care. Complementarily, the lexical analysis suggests that references to midwives and leadership among the publications did not typically travel together, as reported in the publications and were distant to one another, although management was inter-connected to both and to change. Leadership and management were not closely coupled with midwives or relationships with women.
Key Conclusions: Midwifery leadership matters and can be enacted irrespective of position or seniority. Midwifery-led continuity of care models can be better managed via a multipronged approach. Improved leadership and management can help sustain such care. Although there was a perceived need for midwifery leadership, there did not seem to be an association between leadership and midwives in the lexical analysis. Many publications focused on the style theory of leadership and the transformational style theory.
Implications for practice: Instead of focusing on leaders and the presumption of a leadership scarcity, it might be more beneficial to start focusing within, looking with a new lens on leadership within midwifery at all levels. It might also be constructive for the profession to investigate a more progressive form of leadership, one that is relational and focuses on leadership rather than on the leader.
This paper explores a teacher leadership development programme initiated by a university-based educational innovation centre that convened 40 teacher leaders from 22 different school districts across Florida for an 18-month voluntary professional learning experience. Underpinning this initiative was a theory of teacher leadership development aimed at developing a culture of professional learning at individual teacher, school and district level. It was designed to challenge, at both school and district level, a perceived ambivalence among senior leadership to teacher led-initiatives aimed at enhancing the professional knowledge and skill of their colleagues. Findings indicate that participation in a university-sponsored programme, as well as developing collaboration among teachers, served to promote a commitment to teacher-led leadership. Further, the researchers identified specific strategies which would encourage Fellows to explore new areas of learning. This also entailed confronting obstacles and disincentives employed by teaching colleagues and senior leaders at both school and district level. This article explores not only the conditions and practices that shaped the programme but also the larger contextual factors that determine when, how, and if teacher leaders are able to exercise leadership.
Inclusive leadership creates and fosters conditions that allow everyone in diverse groups, workplaces, and communities across and with their differences and without having to subsume or hide valued identities—to be at and to do their best, to see the value in doing so, and to belong and participate in ways that are safe, engaging, appreciated, and fair. Inclusive leaders facilitate participation, voice, and belonging—without requiring assimilation and while fostering equity and fairness across multiple identities. Inclusive leadership is the fulcrum of inclusion because it plays a pivotal role in magnifying inclusion within and transmuting inclusion across levels of analysis: it brings societal and organizational goals, values, and policies related to inclusion to life in everyday behavior and interactions, and detects and highlights relevant micro-level experiences and behavior, giving them meaning and addressing them at the organizational and societal levels. This chapter (1) defines inclusive leadership through the lens of diversity, inclusion, and equity in a multilevel systems perspective; (2) discusses its pivotal role as a fulcrum or force multiplier, fostering and magnifying inclusion at micro and macro levels and connecting micro and macro aspects of inclusion, and (3) outlines key elements of inclusive leadership, including focal inclusive leadership behaviors.
This article contributes to the growing body of literature developed within the leadership-as-practice perspective, focusing on issues of learning and power. It draws on a co-constructed (auto)ethnographic account of an individual’s longitudinal experience of leadership in the context of an international development project in Laos. This person’s circumstances as a non-Lao-speaking foreigner provided him with a unique opportunity to learn about and participate in the embodied, sociomaterial unfolding of leadership practice in an unfamiliar setting. The analysis examines (1) what ‘leadership learning’ involves when viewed through an ‘entative soft’ leadership-as-practice lens and (2) how individual attempts at exercising power and influence can be understood and represented in leadership-as-practice terms. The study highlights that participants are not given equal scope to exercise power within the emerging, hybrid agency orienting the flow of leadership, and that one task of leadership learning at an individual level is to develop reflexive knowledge about one’s own and others’ contribution to the unfolding of leadership process. Such knowledge draws increased attention to the responsibilities commensurate with attempts to exercise influence within leadership practice.
The promise of leadership being spread across levels and parts of an organisation beckons scholars and practitioners alike, yet the theory and practice of it remains partial and elusive. We show how cross-hierarchical leadership understanding and practice might be better embedded in organisations through discursive resources with the potential to connect groups, even temporarily, across asymmetrical power relations. Our study empirically draws on a rare leadership development workshop bringing together chief executives and frontline leadership to explore the complexities of leadership in a health and safety context. This inquiry draws iteratively between workshop interactions and subsequent interviewing of those present to identify discursive resources firstly hindering and secondly contributing to moments of pluralising and spreading leadership. Whereas frontline leadership drew on discourses of embedding, collaborative and grounding leadership, and chief executives alternatively on analytic, overseeing and cascading discourses, our interest was provoked by the shared discursive resources of reframing identities, constructing intermediaries, overcoming distance, sparking engagement and inviting translation with the potential to loop hierarchy and bring power relations across hierarchical differences into (re)negotiation.
A theoretical problem has haunted organization studies for decades: How can we move from the “micro” level of individual sense-making and action to the “macro” level of organizational sense-making and action? The very dichotomy micro–macro refers to a dualist opposition between “individual” and “organizational” which has been criticized as static and irrelevant. This critique has prompted many organization scholars to look for a more relational and dynamic perspective, abandoning the traditional view of organizations as structures and replacing it with a dynamic view of organizations as organizing processes that continuously adapt the relationships between actors, artefacts and situations. But the theoretical frameworks available to study organizations must then be thoroughly revised. This chapter examines the potential contribution of the pragmatist concept of trans-action to a processual and relational approach to organizations. It applies this approach to the analysis of a merger between two large retailers and its concrete impact on ordinary logistic tasks, for example loading and unloading pallets. Controversies do not only lead to new work methods, but also to an emergent and radical redefinition of the situation and of its participating entities, including human actors. Apart from a deep renewal of organizational theory, the trans-actional framework supports research methods based on exploratory inquiries that involve field actors and researchers as co-inquirers.
This paper explores the value of using a practice lens to explore how leadership happens in a rural school. I contend that examining leadership-as-practice provides an alternate means of understanding the phenomenon of rural school leadership, which transitions the focus of study away from the traits and behaviors of individual school leaders, by providing insight into how leadership unfolds, as school actors work together. To advance this argument, I provide an overview of traditional approaches to studying leadership, and identify some of the drawbacks of these approaches. Drawing on the turn to practice in social theory as a reference point, I then draw attention to the study of leadership as a socially constructed phenomenon and use an illustrative case to demonstrate the value of a leadership-as practice lens. An overview of the methodological implications of studying leadership-as-practice is provided, with attention being paid to its potential to expand the focus of rural school leadership studies.
Examining a decade of research and practice, this book makes the case for a radical reappraisal of leadership, learning, and their interrelationship in educational policy. Discussing whether policy direction is progressively constraining the professionalism and initiative of teachers and school leaders, it challenges conventional understanding and argues the case for thinking differently about the way to lead learning. Based on the Leadership for Learning (LfL) Project, the book clarifies, extends, and refines LfL principles and practices, and their contribution to ameliorating some of the difficult conditions encountered in the contemporary educational policy environment. It starts by discussing the direction and influence of current education policy and its subsequent consequences; chapters then move on to explore the framing values informing the LfL Projects, particularly focusing on what they imply for commitments to social justice, children’s rights and breadth in student learning, and considering how to create favourable conditions for learning. Identifying a disconnect between seminal principles and the nature of day-to-day practice, Strengthening the Connections between Leadership and Learning challenges school policy and practice at national and local levels. It is an essential read for postgraduate students, especially those studying leadership in education, as well as for teachers and policymakers in schools.
The construction of “strategic coherence,” defined as the development of a system of mutually compatible meanings among organization members about desirable organizational directions, is clearly a crucial issue for organizations. Yet, how to achieve it is in part an open question. While previous studies have considered how strategic coherence may emerge across top levels of management through strategic planning activities and negotiations among senior leaders, we know much less about the contribution of other actors and processes behind the scenes (in non-strategy roles). Drawing on an ethnographic study of a public hospital's planning and project management practices, this paper therefore focuses on the bundles of practices, people and tools through which strategic coherence can emerge across different levels and sectors in mundane activities. We build on the concept of “enabling leadership”, grounded in practice theories of leadership, as our analytical lens. The study reveals how strategic coherence is socially constructed by practices of ‘fueling’, ‘shaping’ and ‘entwining’ mutually compatible meanings, in interactions among diverse people and tools. We propose a grounded model of the construction of strategic coherence as the progressive socialization of meanings about organizational direction that is not just administered from the top, nor naturally emergent from the grass-roots, but that is a collective and inherently socio-material accomplishment of enabling leadership.
We address ideas and talk about leadership in a research and development (R&D) company. The meaning that middle and senior managers ascribe to leadership is explored. We show how initial claims about leadership values and style tend to break down when managers are asked to expand on how they perceive their leadership and account for what they actually do in this respect. We raise strong doubts about leadership as a construct saying something valuable and valid about what managers do in this kind of setting. We also argue that thinking about leadership needs to take seriously the possibility of the nonexistence of leadership as a distinct phenomenon with great relevance for understanding organizations and relations in workplaces.