‘No More Heroes’: Critical Perspectives on Leadership Romanticism

This paper revisits Meindl et al’s (1985) ‘romance of leadership’ thesis and extends these ideas in a number of inter-related ways. First, it argues that the thesis has sometimes been neglected and/or misinterpreted in subsequent studies. Second, the paper suggests that romanticism is a much broader and more historically rich term with wider implications for leadership studies than originally proposed. Arguing that romanticism stretches beyond leader attribution, we connect leadership theory to a more enduring and naturalistic tradition of romantic thought that has survived and evolved since the mid-18th century. Third, the paper demonstrates the contemporary relevance of the romanticism critique. It reveals how the study of leadership continues to be characterized by romanticizing tendencies in many of its most influential theories, illustrating this argument with reference to spiritual and authentic leadership theories, which only recognize positive engagement with leaders. Equally, the paper suggests that romanticism can shape conceptions not only of leaders, but also of followers, their agency and their (potential for) resistance. We conclude by discussing future possible research directions for the romanticism critique that extend well beyond its original focus on leader attribution to inform a broader critical approach to leadership studies

Critical Leadership Studies:A Response to Learmonth & Morrell

This article re-states the value of a dialectical approach to critical leadership studies: one that explicitly uses the ‘language of leadership’ to examine and illuminate workplace power and identity dynamics. Outlining an alternative view of what it means to be ‘critical’, this response questions the dichotomizing tendency in Learmonth and Morrell’s arguments and highlights their misrepresentation and misinterpretation of my 2014 article. Learmonth and Morrell’s article shifts in different places between Marxist structuralism and mainstream voluntarism. Their proposal to replace the language of leadership with a Marxist binary of manager and worker all but precludes the possibility of a critical approach to leadership studies, and leaves little, if any, conceptual space for the study of leadership whatsoever. They also suggest that critical studies of leadership are not critical enough. Yet, paradoxically, their objections draw on conventional, voluntaristic and uncritical conceptions of both leaders and followers. Rather than reproduce and reinforce further dichotomies, future critical work on leadership would be better served, in my view, exploring the dialectical asymmetries, situated interrelations and intersecting practices of leaders and followers and managers and workers in all their ambiguous, paradoxical and contradictory forms

The clubhead and hand planes in golf draw and fade shots.

Swing planes in golf have become a popular area of research. Cochran and Stobbs (1968) examined the motion of the clubhead and hands qualitatively. Subsequent quantitative analyses have included investigations of the planarity of the whole club (Coleman & Anderson, 2007) and clubhead (Shin, Casebolt, Lambert, Kim, & Kwon, 2008). The aim of this study was to investigate the motion of the clubhead and hands in the downswing quantitatively, and to compare these motions for the fade and draw (as suggested by Coleman and Anderson, 2007). In conclusion, both the clubhead and hand planes in the late downswing were found to differ significantly in relation to the target line between the draw and fade shots. Greater differences were found between golfers, rather than between shots, in the relationship between the clubhead and hand motion during the downswing. Nevertheless, further detailed analysis is warranted of how the motions around impact – especially the clubface orientation – differ between the two types of shot

The clubhead swing plane in golf draw and fade shots

It has become popular to characterise a golf shot in terms of a ‘swing plane’. However Coleman and Anderson (2007) showed that the motion of the whole club in the downswing could not be represented by a single plane in all players. Shin et al. (2008) found that the clubhead motion was consistently planar between the club being horizontal in the downswing and follow-through. Coleman and Anderson (2007) also suggested that the club plane might differ between draw and fade shots. The purpose of this study was to compare draw and fade shots, with a focus on the clubhead motion in the late downswing. The late downswing clubhead plane differs between a draw and a fade shot, even when differences in address angles are accounted for

Resistance through difference:the co-constitution of dissent and inclusion

This article argues that discursive constructions of difference can shape practices of organizational resistance. Drawing on an inductive study of international teams in a global leadership programme, the paper reveals how difference is discursively produced and reproduced in team members’ talk. In conditions of normalizing control, the majority of teams engage in individuating practices that reinforce internal differences, preclude group cohesion and marginalize certain members. One team, however, explicitly resists programme stipulations in ways that express members’ heterogeneity and simultaneously reinforce group solidarity. Referring to these oppositional practices as ‘resistance through difference’, the article describes how dissent challenges the hierarchies and disciplinary practices embedded in the leadership programme, and theorizes the co-constitution of inclusion and resistance. By examining the construction of difference not as ‘a problem’, but as a productive resource, the paper also addresses the generative outcomes of this managerial resistance. We argue that ‘resistance through difference’ is an important form of dissent that could well become more prevalent as globalized business processes expand

Men, masculinities and gendered organizations

Even though gender and gender analysis are still often equated with women, men and masculinities are equally gendered. This applies throughout society, including within organizations. Following pioneering feminist scholarship on work and organizations, explicitly gendered studies on men and masculinities have increased since the 1980s. The need to include the gendered analysis of men and masculinities as part of gender studies of organizations, leadership and management, is now widely recognized at least within gender research. Yet, this insight continues to be ignored or downplayed in mainstream work and even in some studies seen as ‘critical’. Indeed the vast majority of mainstream work on organizations still has either no gender analysis whatsoever or relies on a very simplistic and crude gender analysis. Research on men and masculinities has been wide-ranging and has raised important new issues about gendered dynamics in organizations, including: cultures and counter-cultures on factory shopfloors; historical transformations of men and management in reproducing patriarchies; the relations of bureaucracy, men and masculinities; management-labour relations as interrelations of masculinities; managerial and professional identity formation; managerial homosociality; and the interplay of diverse occupational masculinities. Research has revealed how structures, cultures and practices of men and masculinities continue to persist and to dominate in many contemporary organizations. Having said this, the concepts of gender, of men and masculinities, and of organization have all been subject to complex and contradictory processes that entail both their explicit naming and their simultaneous deconstruction and critique. This is illustrated, respectively, in: the intersectional construction of gender; the pressing need to name men as men in analysis of organizational dominance, but also deconstruct the category of men as provisional; and in the multiplication of organizational forms as, for example, inter-organizational relations, net-organizations, and cyberorganizations. These contradictory historical and conceptual namings and deconstructions are especially important in the analysis of transnational organizations operating within the context of globalization, transnationalizations, production, reproduction, and trans(national)patriarchies. Within transnational organizations such as large gendered multinational enterprises, the taken-for-granted nature of transnational gendered hierarchies and cultures persists in management, maintained partly through commonalities across difference, gendered horizontal specializations and controls. Transnational organizations are key sites for the production of a variety of developing forms of (transnational) business masculinities, some more individualistic, some marriage-based, some nation-based, some transcending nation. These masculinities have clear implications for gendered practices in private spheres, including the provision of domestic servicing often by black and minority ethnic women. The growth of the knowledge economy brings further complications to these transnational patterns, through elaboration of techno-masculinities, and interactions of men, masculinities, and information and communication technologies. This is particularly relevant in the international financial sector, where constructions of men and masculinities are impacted by the gendering of capital and financial crisis, and gender regimes of financial institutions, as in men financiers’ risky behavior. Further studies are needed addressing the ‘gender-neutral’ hegemony of organizations, leaderships and managements, especially in transnational arenas, and organizations subject to changing technologies. Other key research issues concern analysis of neglected intersectionalities, including intersectional privileges; male/masculine/men’s bodies; and the taken-for-granted category of “men” in and around organizations. Keywords gender, gender relations, knowledge, management, masculinities, men, multinational enterprises, organizations, transnationa