Organizational discourse analysis (ODA): Examining leadership as a relational process

There was a time when survey research was our only viable means of studying leadership processes. That is no longer the case. In its many forms, ODA offers a fly-on-the-wall methodology for researchers to see more of how leadership unfolds in a co-created process among relational beings. We showcase a discursive perspective and ODA as a broad set of methods for adding relational views to leadership research—and moving beyond leadership as a quality or characteristic of individuals. We begin with an overview of leadership as a relational process. From there we provide a primer on a discursive perspective and ODA, followed by a review of several types of ODA with examples. We conclude with a set of key questions leadership scholars might pose with respect to this broad class of approaches.     

Conceptualizing leadership perceptions as attitudes: Using attitude theory to further understand the leadership process

Leadership is one of the most examined factors in relation to understanding employee well-being and performance. While there are disparate approaches to studying leadership, they share a common assumption that perceptions of a leader's behavior determine reactions to the leader. The concept of leadership perception is poorly understood in most theoretical approaches. To address this, we propose that there are many benefits from examining leadership perceptions as an attitude towards the leader. In this review, we show how research examining a number of aspects of attitudes (content, structure and function) can advance understanding of leadership perceptions and how these affect work-related outcomes. Such a perspective provides a more multi-faceted understanding of leadership perceptions than previously envisaged and this can provide a more detailed understanding of how such perceptions affect outcomes. In addition, we examine some of the main theoretical and methodological implications of viewing leadership perceptions as attitudes to the wider leadership area. The cross-fertilization of research from the attitudes literature to understanding leadership perceptions provides new insights into leadership processes and potential avenues for further research.     

Leadership Development in Organizations: Multiple Discourses and Diverse Practice

Research on leadership development in organizations is abundant, as are the resources invested in developing their leaders. Although rarely made explicit, much of this writing and activity is driven by functionalist assumptions, with a primary concern for good design and enhanced corporate performance. Given the politically sensitive, culturally complex and institutionally embedded nature of leadership, as well as controversy over the way leadership itself is best defined and developed, the author argues that this reliance on a single perspective is potentially limiting. The aim of this paper is to enhance leadership development practice in organizations by proposing a fresh and theoretically informed approach for exploring the multiple meanings of leadership development. This is done, first, by clarifying the discursive assumptions underlying studies in this field and revealing the distinctive insights that arise from functionalist, interpretive, dialogic and critical discourses of leadership development; and second, by exploring how each of these discourses, or ‘readings’, might promote quite different approaches to leadership development in organizations.     

Bausteine systemischer Führungskräftetrainings

The article describes core dimensions of leadership trainings, such as communication, cooperation, decision making, self-authoritation and self-care from a systemic point of view. It illustrates how a systemic perspective on these issues can help relieving the leader. At the same time existing leeway and responsibility are clarified.     

组织结构变革中的路径依赖与路径创造机制研究——以联想集团为例

经典的路径依赖理论因具有较强的历史决定论倾向,因而无法解释重大的技术和制度变革以及新路径的产生,这些问题推动着研究者将研究视角转向了路径创造和路径突破。战略行为具有路径依赖的特征,根据"战略决定结构、结构跟随战略"的思想,组织结构系统内生地蕴含着路径依赖特性。从组织结构模式演进的角度对组织中的路径依赖形成机制和路径创造机制进行研究,并讨论了组织结构变革中的路径依赖和路径创造对组织运行的双重影响。以联想集团为例,探讨了联想集团组织结构模式选择演化历程中的路径依赖和路径创造。     

Relational Leadership Theory: Exploring the social processes of leadership and organizing

Relational leadership is a relatively new term in the leadership literature, and because of this, its meaning is open to interpretation. In the present article I describe two perspectives of relational leadership: an entity perspective that focuses on identifying attributes of individuals as they engage in interpersonal relationships, and a relational perspective that views leadership as a process of social construction through which certain understandings of leadership come about and are given privileged ontology. These approaches can be complementary, but their implications for study and practice are quite different. After reviewing leadership research relative to these two perspectives I offer Relational Leadership Theory (RLT) as an overarching framework for the study of leadership as a social influence process through which emergent coordination (e.g., evolving social order) and change (e.g., new approaches, values, attitudes, behaviors, ideologies) are constructed and produced. This framework addresses relationships both as an outcome of investigation (e.g., How are leadership relationships produced?) and a context for action (e.g., How do relational dynamics contribute to structuring?). RLT draws from both entity and relational ontologies and methodologies to more fully explore the relational dynamics of leadership and organizing.     

Visualizing the landscape and evolution of leadership research

Complementing prior quantitative and qualitative reviews of the leadership literature, we conduct a bibliometric analysis of leadership articles. Our bibliometric review provides a different perspective by portraying the landscape and developmental trajectory of leadership research over time via co-citation and co-occurrence analyses. Using a scientific visualization tool CiteSpace and 6528 leadership works collected from the Web of Science database from 1990 to 2017, we detect and visualize the landscape of leadership research and track how this landscape has evolved. After mapping the landscape, we discuss the insights gleaned from our bibliometric review, with a focus on open questions, future research directions, and implications. In doing so, our review provides readers with a systematic understanding of the development of the leadership field and a roadmap to spark leadership research and move this literature forward.     

What makes leadership,leadership? Using self-expansion theory to integrate traditional and contemporary approaches

Numerous traditional theories and paradigms of leadership purport to describe what leadership is. It is difficult to reconcile these traditional approaches, however, if each one alone, independent of the others, is viewed as capturing the actual identity of leadership. In this article, we take an integrative view of traditional approaches to leadership. To do so, we first identify some underlying ideas common to them. Next, we explain how these underlying ideas lead us to a fundamental theory about close relationships—that is, self-expansion theory, which refers to a psychological process in which an individual incorporates another into the self (Aron & Aron, 1986). We then review the traditional leadership theories to explore whether these theories may be linked through self-expansion theory and whether self-expansion may help to explain why boundary conditions have been discovered for all of them. In this process, we explore whether traditional approaches to leadership might also be linked with more contemporary approaches through self-expansion theory. Finally, we discuss the implications for future research and professional practice of the integration of traditional approaches to leadership.     

From Ideal to Real Risk: Philosophy of Causation Meets Risk Analysis

A question has been raised in recent years as to whether the risk field, including analysis, assessment, and management, ought to be considered a discipline on its own. As suggested by Terje Aven, unification of the risk field would require a common understanding of basic concepts, such as risk and probability; hence, more discussion is needed of what he calls “foundational issues.” In this article, we show that causation is a foundational issue of risk, and that a proper understanding of it is crucial. We propose that some old ideas about the nature of causation must be abandoned in order to overcome certain persisting challenges facing risk experts over the last decade. In particular, we discuss the challenge of including causally relevant knowledge from the local context when studying risk. Although it is uncontroversial that the receptor plays an important role for risk evaluations, we show how the implementation of receptor‐based frameworks is hindered by methodological shortcomings that can be traced back to Humean orthodoxies about causation. We argue that the first step toward the development of frameworks better suited to make realistic risk predictions is to reconceptualize causation, by examining a philosophical alternative to the Humean understanding. In this article, we show how our preferred account, causal dispositionalism, offers a different perspective in how risk is evaluated and understood.     

Developing the theory and practice of leadership development: A relational view

Organizations are demanding leadership development that is more sensitive to context and supportive of organizational transformation, and critics of current leadership development practices claim they are too narrowly construed to yield meaningful results. Relational views of leadership may be the disruptive idea that helps reconstruct leadership development in ways that meets these concerns. To better understand how these relational views can impact the practice of leadership development, we examined the use a specific relational framework in one leadership development organization. We found that leadership development professionals used the framework to convey a relational point of view on leadership to their participants, to facilitate collective identification and action on leadership issues, to develop leadership by focusing on leadership culture, and to enable the democratization of leadership development. We use these findings to advance a constructive-developmental perspective on the development of leadership development.     

The private life of CEOs; A strategic leadership perspective

Major events in the private lives of CEOs have been a source of fascination for decades. However, despite gaining traction, studies on the relevant phenomena (e.g., marriage, divorce, parenthood, illness) remain scattered in parallel across disciplines. We thematically review the interdisciplinary evidence on the fast-emerging literature on CEO private life events (72 unique studies) to consolidate our understanding of how private life events can become reflected in the professional domains of CEO influence. Through this approach, we comprehensively intersect empirical progress on CEO life events with key strategic leadership outcomes (i.e., performance, strategy, socio-ethical issues, innovation, governance), allowing us to identify key gaps and highlight inconsistencies. We then propose several research opportunities and challenges to move the field from phenomenon-driven standalone studies to a more coherent research program on the blurred boundaries between the private and professional lives of CEOs.     

Contextual constraints on prototype generation and their multilevel consequences for leadership perceptions

It has become increasingly evident that no single prototype or style of leadership applies to all situations. In fact, we argue that definitions of leadership depend upon innumerable situational and contextual factors related both to the leader being perceived and to the broader external environment. To date, however, there is no theoretical framework that easily explains how perceivers integrate such a broad range of factors. In the current paper, we first present a model, based on recent advances in cognitive science, that allows for the simultaneous cognitive integration of multiple factors influencing the definition of leadership. We contend that this model can be used to understand both the stability and flexibility that is witnessed in the application of leadership prototypes. The framework is then integrated with the idea of alternative levels of analysis, providing a new perspective on how levels of analysis issues can be explored. Finally, we discuss the practical implications of our framework.     

Followership theory: A review and research agenda

While theory and research on leaders and leadership abound, followers and followership theory have been given short shrift. It is accepted wisdom that there is no leadership without followers, yet followers are very often left out of the leadership research equation. Fortunately this problem is being addressed in recent research, with more attention being paid to the role of followership in the leadership process. The purpose of this article is to provide a systematic review of the followership literature, and from this review, introduce a broad theory of followership into leadership research. Based on our review, we identify two theoretical frameworks for the study of followership, one from a role-based approach (“reversing the lens”) and one from a constructionist approach (“the leadership process”). These frameworks are used to outline directions for future research. We conclude with a discussion of conceptual and methodological issues in the study of followership theory.     

Autocratic leaders and authoritarian followers revisited: A review and agenda for the future

Despite a long history within the field of leadership, the subject of authoritarianism and how it influences leadership and leadership processes has been neglected in recent decades. However, recent global events make it clear that a better understanding of authoritarianism is needed and that leadership researchers would benefit from a renewed interest in studying why followers embrace autocratic leaders. The nature of authoritarian character, how authoritarian values develop, and how it is measured will be discussed. We will also review autocratic leadership, the factors that make it more likely, its consequences for followers, and the moderators of its effects. A future research agenda for the study of authoritarian character and autocratic leadership will be provided.     

From genes to minds to cultures: Evolutionary approaches to leadership

Evolutionary perspectives are part of any comprehensive explanation of leadership and, more generally, hierarchy formation in groups. This editorial describes contributions to a special issue on the theme of “The evolution and biology of leadership: A new synthesis”, and we reach four main conclusions. First, leadership has been a powerful force in the biological and cultural evolution of human sociality. Humans have evolved a range of cognitive and behavioral mechanisms (adaptations) that facilitate leader-follower relations, including safeguards against overly dominant leaders. Second, how these adaptations interact with local ecological and cultural contexts produces cultural variation in leadership preferences, and in the structure of human organizations more broadly. Third, an evolutionary perspective creates consilience between the social and natural sciences, by integrating leadership theory from diverse fields such as biology, psychology, neuroscience, anthropology, economics, and political science. Fourth, evolutionary approaches – and specifically the collection of articles in this theme issue – produce and test novel hypotheses, such as regards (i) the critical role of leadership in cooperation, (ii) the importance of contextual factors in leader emergence and effectiveness, (iii) interactions between genetic and cultural influences on leadership, and (iv) obstacles and opportunities for women leaders.     

Framing strategy under high complexity: Processes and practices of ongoing reframing in the becoming of strategy

Framing is a key concept in research on how strategists legitimize and win support for strategic change by establishing a frame of reference for that change. This article advances research on strategy framing by showing how, under conditions of high complexity and uncertainty, strategists continuously reframe strategy in relation to shifting constellations of stakeholders. It presents the findings of an ethnographic study of strategizing in the highly complex context of the digital transformation journey of a global manufacturing firm. It shows how (re)framing practices are combined to iteratively shape strategy formation in ways that sustain strategic influence in the face of constant threats to legitimacy. By accounting for how (re)framing practices reach back and forth in time, the ethnographic findings refine the conventional understanding of how framing resources of past strategizing enter and reworked in present strategy work. Finally, the article contributes empirical insights into how information systems specialists, often marginalized as strategic actors, frame and pitch strategic projects to gain and exert influence in strategy formation processes.     

The intersection of leadership and entrepreneurship: Mutual lessons to be learned

Leadership scholars are quite familiar with the often convoluted and problematic path that leadership theory has taken. Despite these challenges, leadership is currently considered a “mature field” [Hunt, J.G., & Dodge, G.E. (2000). Leader Deja Vu all over again. The Leadership Quarterly, 11 (4), 453–458] even though this maturity has not been achieved without considerable growing pains. Similar to the path that leadership scholars have taken, those who study entrepreneurship also struggle with issues associated with a field in its early stages. This review examines the intersection between the fields of leadership and entrepreneurship with an emphasis on how the path taken by leadership research can inform entrepreneurship and possibly lessen this young field's growing pains. We first identify several areas where these fields theoretically converge (both in the models employed and the research questions addressed). Next, we take a historical perspective of leadership and entrepreneurship by identifying the life cycle stage of each construct or domain. Finally, we conclude with some thoughts on how the entrepreneurship field may avoid (or is avoiding) the pitfalls experienced by those who study leadership.     

Management Buyouts and Restructuring Japanese Corporations

This article presents the first examination of management and leveraged buyouts as a tool for restructuring Japanese corporations. Using archival research, a survey of private equity firms and management buyouts and case study evidence, this article examines the issues concerning the pressures for change. It studies what factors are facilitating the use of buyouts in the Japanese economy and how buyouts might contribute to the restructuring process. It argues that pressures in Japan are more likely to give rise to revitalising buyouts than buyouts focusing solely on efficiency improvements.     

Building cross-disciplinary bridges in leadership: Integrating top executive personality and leadership theory and research

The top executive personality literature has grown significantly in recent years. We review this literature, consider its contributions to leadership research and practice, and discuss how future research on top executive personality should draw more heavily on the broader leadership literature. The paper first describes the top executive context and highlights the advantages and challenges of studying top executives. We then review the top executive personality literature in four areas that capture the bulk of the research: leadership of human resources, ethical leadership, strategic leadership and corporate governance, and firm performance. We examine how the top executive personality research in each area compares with other research on leaders' and their personalities that has been conducted on similar topics. The paper concludes with a future research agenda, which identifies other leader, team, and contextual considerations to advance our understanding of top executive personality and its influence. We also address methodological challenges related to measurement and endogeneity, because they are important for theory development and have received much attention in top executive personality research. In short, our paper examines how the literatures on top executives and leadership inform one another, and it helps lay a foundation for integrating these literatures more thoroughly.     

Working with Language: A Refocused Research Agenda for Cultural Leadership Studies

This paper critically reviews existing contributions from the field of cultural leadership studies with a view to highlighting the conceptual and methodological limitations of the dominant etic, cross‐cultural approach in leadership studies and illuminating implications of the relative dominance and unreflective use of the English language as the academic and business lingua franca within this field. It subsequently outlines the negative implications of overlooking cultural and linguistic multiplicity for an understanding of culturally sensitive leadership practices. In drawing on lessons from this critical review and the emergent fields of emic, non‐positivist cultural leadership studies, this analysis argues that the field of cultural leadership studies requires an alternative research agenda focused on language multiplicity, which enables the field to move towards emic, qualitative research that helps to empower individual cultural voices and explore cultural intra‐ and interrelationships, tensions and paradoxes embedded in leadership processes. The paper concludes by offering suggestions on methodological approaches for emic cultural leadership studies that are centred on the exploration of language as a cultural voice.