Leadership Perspectives: Knowledge into Action

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Leadership Perspectives

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Leadership Perspectives Knowledge into Action Edited by Kim Turnbull James Professor of Executive Learning, Director of the Centre for Executive Learning and Leadership, Cranfield School of Management, UK

and James Collins Research Fellow, Centre for Executive Learning and Leadership, Cranfield School of Management, UK

© Kim Turnbull James and James Collins Individual chapters © contributors 2008 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2008 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 13: 978–0–230–51604–5 hardback ISBN 13: 0–230–51604–1 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Leadership perspectives : knowledge into action / edited by Kim Turnbull James and James Collins. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–230–51604–1 (alk. paper) 1. Leadership. I. James, Kim. II. Collins, James, 1957– HD57.7.L43444 2008 658.4′092–dc22 10 17

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Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

Contents List of Tables

vii

List of Figures

viii

Notes on the Contributors

ix

Thanks and Acknowledgements

xv

1

New Perspectives on Leadership: How Practical is a Good Theory?

1

Kim Turnbull James and James Collins

Part I 2

New Constructions of Leadership

The Event’s the Thing: Brief Encounters With the Leaderful Moment

13 15

Martin Wood and Donna Ladkin

3

Leadership, Spirituality and Complexity: Wilberforce and the Abolition of the Slave Trade

29

Peter Simpson and Clifford Hill

4

Sharing Thoughts on Leadership and Friendship

43

Robert French

5

How to Become a Globally Responsible Leader: Rites of Passage and Transitional Space

58

Maryse Dubouloy

6

Strategic Leadership

72

Kim Turnbull James, Cliff Bowman and Richard Kwiatkowski

7

Voluntarism, Representative Leadership and Organisational Democracy

86

Martin Clarke and David Butcher

Part II 8

The Importance of Context

Public Sector Leader Change Strategies: A Focus on Technical or Collaborative Solutions

103 105

Su Maddock

9

Leadership in the British Army – A Gendered Construct? Mike Dunn v

114

vi Contents

10

Leadership in Higher Education

130

Alan Bryman

11

Departmental Affiliation, Leadership and Leadership Development

144

Gareth Edwards and Doris Jepson

Part III 12

Leadership and Relationships

Leading with Political Awareness: Leadership Across Diverse Interests Inside and Outside the Organisation

161 163

Jean Hartley and Clive Fletcher

13

Political-Management Leadership

177

Simon Baddeley

14

Leaders and Their Self-Efficacy Beliefs: Why Working Relationships Matter

193

Joe Jaina

15

The Importance of Role Models in the Development of Leaders’ Professional Identities

208

Ruth Sealy and Val Singh

16

Distributed Leadership in Project Teams

223

Jitse D.J. van Ameijde, Patrick C. Nelson, Jon Billsberry and Nathalie van Meurs Index

238

List of Tables 7.1 7.2 8.1 9.1 9.2

11.1 11.2

11.3

Comparison of theories addressing organisational plurality Leadership behaviours Planning and control – Business model Comparison of female and male views on congeniality of the army for women Comparison of relative importance of MLF factors by women reporting on female leaders compared to men reporting on male leaders Definitions of the dimensions of the full range leadership model Correlations between dimensions of transformational, transactional and laissez-faire leadership and effectiveness for self-ratings by department Correlations between dimensions of transformational, transactional and laissez-faire leadership and effectiveness for subordinate-ratings by department

vii

88 95 111 122 126

147 153

154

List of Figures 1.1 9.1 13.1 16.1

‘Leadership Studies: Truth, Lies and Wishful Thinking’ Dialectical Analysis Model Governmental spaces Model of Distributed Leadership in Project Teams

viii

3 121 183 228

Notes on the Contributors Simon Baddeley works, as a perpetual student, from the Institute of Local Government Studies at Birmingham University. With an anthropological background, he has, when filming conversations between politicians and managers, striven to earn the trust of practitioners. With Kim James and Tanya Arroba he developed the ‘Owl, fox, donkey, sheep’ model of political skills for managers. He was a member of the 2005 SOLACE Commission, whose report ‘Leadership United’, examined how chief executives managed in political environments. Dr Jon Billsberry is Director of Research and a Senior Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour at the Open University in the UK. He received his PhD in Applied Psychology from the University of Nottingham. Jon is interested in the fit between workers and their employing organisation. In particular, he is studying what factors affect workers’ fit and whether organisations attract and select people that share their values. His other research interests are in recruitment, selection, leadership and the representation of management in visual media. Professor Cliff Bowman is Director of Research at Ashridge. Cliff is interested in the role of strategic leaders and the strategy process. He has been involved in executive development for over 20 years, and has consulted to top teams from many organisations. Professor Alan Bryman is Professor of Organisational and Social Research in the School of Management, University of Leicester. His main research interests lie in research methodology, leadership studies, and organisational analysis. He has written and co-authored many books and articles on the subjects of leadership and research methods in the social sciences. After a hiatus of several years during which he was only marginally involved in leadership studies, he has returned to the field in the context of studying leadership in higher education. Dr David Butcher has been in management education for over 20 years and is Director of Open Executive Programmes at Cranfield. He acts as a consultant in a wide range of contexts on an international basis, including investment banking, telecommunications and FMCG ix

x Notes on the Contributors

multinationals. His research interests lie in developing business strategy and leadership capability at senior executive levels, and the constructive use of managerial politics. Dr Martin Clarke has worked extensively in manufacturing and logistics and before joining Cranfield was a director of a European business information company. His experience lies in the area of leadership and organisational development, and his main interests and writing are in the role of management development and organisational politics in personal and organisational change. He is co-author of ‘Smart Management, Using Politics in Organisations’, written with David Butcher. Dr James Collins is a Research Fellow at Cranfield School of Management’s Centre for Executive Learning and Leadership. Before taking up academic study and research he spent over 20 years in the shipping industry, as a mariner, shipbroker, and marine insurance underwriter. His research interests include; leadership in the public sector, the politics of leadership, global leadership, leadership and learning across organisation boundaries, the evaluation of management learning, and research methodology. Dr Maryse Dubouloy is an Associate Professor in the Management Department at ESSEC Business School, Paris. Her research interests include individual, organisational and social transitional situations (such as careers, mourning, rites of passage, and change), and the consequences of change for individuals and teams. She is a social psychologist and psychoanalyst and acts as a consultant in these fields and the author of several articles and book chapters on these topics. Dr Mike Dunn is at the Department of Defence Management and Security Analysis – Cranfield University. He has two principal areas of research interest. The first is the relevance of New Public Management (NPM) thinking to the UK Ministry of Defence. The second is the study of modern military leadership. His broad focus here is the utility of contemporary leadership theory such as gendered leadership and the transformational/transactional model to the UK’s Armed Forces. Dr Gareth Edwards is Senior Researcher in the Centre for Applied Leadership Research at the Leadership Trust Foundation and is a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Portsmouth Business School. Gareth

Notes on the Contributors xi

also serves as a Course Director and tutor on leadership development programmes run by The Leadership Trust and works on programme design, diagnosis and evaluation. His research interests are transformational leadership, experiential learning and leadership, leadership and culture, and organisational, dispersed and distributed leadership. Dr Robert French is Reader in Organisation Studies at Bristol Business School, UWE, and also works as an independent organisational consultant. His interests include: issues of teaching and learning, leadership, friendship in organisations, and the application of psychoanalysis in groups and organisations. He has edited the papers of David Armstrong (Organisation in the Mind, Karnac, 2005), and co-edited, Rethinking Management Education (Sage, 1996, with Chris Grey), and Group Relations, Management, and Organisation (Oxford University Press, 1999, with Russ Vince). Professor Clive Fletcher is Honorary Professor at Warwick Business School, Professor Emeritus at Goldsmiths’ College, University of London, and Managing Director of Personnel Assessment Ltd. Prior to going into academia, he spent nearly seven years in Whitehall. Clive is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society and has published around 200 books, chapters, journal articles and conference papers. His current research interests centre on political skills in leadership, self-awareness and multi-source feedback. Professor Jean Hartley is Professor of Organizational Analysis at the Institute of Governance and Public Management (IGPM) at Warwick Business School, University of Warwick. She has particular interests in leadership with political awareness for managers in the private, public and voluntary sectors and also undertakes research and development work with formal political leaders and with public managers. Rev. Dr Clifford Hill is the founder of the Thornton Institute for Leadership and Business Ethics and Research Director of the Family Matters Institute. He was at one time a lecturer in sociology at the London School of Economics and Founder/President of the Newham Community Renewal Programme. Author of over 40 books, he has published on the Sociology of Religion and is a leading authority on William Wilberforce and author of The Wilberforce Connection (2004). Dr Joe Jaina is a Senior Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour at Cranfield School of Management. He commenced his career as an engineer in the

xii Notes on the Contributors

defence industry and subsequently undertook a variety of design, development and line management roles. Joe is a Chartered Psychologist. He has directed numerous organisational development projects principally in the area of organisational change following acquisition or restructuring in many commercial settings, across the globe. His research interests are primarily in the field of working relationships and self-efficacy beliefs. Dr Doris Jepson is a Senior Lecturer in Human Resource Management and Organisational Behaviour at Oxford Brookes University. Her main research interests focus on leadership discourse, leadership identities and leadership construction in private-sector organisations. Within her current research, Doris is particularly interested in investigating the importance of different national discourses and the diffusion of academic and intermediary leadership ideas on the development of leadership understanding and emergence. Richard Kwiatkowski is a Senior Lecturer in Organisational Psychology at Cranfield School of Management. He has worked as a psychologist and manager, in a variety of organisations including BT, the NHS, and more recently as a consultant to many PLCs and consultancies. His research interests centre on the application of psychology to organisations and individuals. He is a former Chair of the British Psychological Society’s Division of Occupational Psychology, and currently Chairs the BPS Ethics Committee. Dr Donna Ladkin is a Senior Lecturer in Organisational Learning and Leadership at Cranfield School of Management. Her research interests include exploring insights which might be gained through considering leadership from philosophical perspectives, such as ethics, moral philosophy and phenomenology as well as process thinking. Additionally she is involved in researching the role leadership plays in organising for environmental sustainability. Dr Su Maddock is currently Advisor on Innovation to National School of Government and Senior Fellow at Manchester Business School. Her book Challenging Women: Gender, Culture and Innovation (Sage, 1999) broke new ground illustrating the choices and tactics that women adopt when confronted by male work cultures. As Director of the MBS Change Centre she brokered dialogue between service users, practitioners, policy-makers and researchers. She is particularly committed in breaking down institutional barriers to public sector innovation.

Notes on the Contributors xiii

Patrick C. Nelson is a doctoral student in Organisational Psychology and a part-time Project Officer at the Open University. He received his MSc in Occupational Health Psychology from Utrecht University, the Netherlands. Patrick’s research interests include Person-Organisation Fit, leadership, and cross-cultural values. Before pursuing his PhD in Person Organisation Fit, Patrick was a Project Officer in the HR Division of the Open University. Ruth Sealy is a doctoral researcher at the International Centre for Women Leaders, Cranfield School of Management. She has spoken at many academic and practitioner conferences, and was nominated, with Val Singh, for a Best Paper Award at the American Academy of Management Conference, 2006. A qualified Business Psychologist, she is also a Management Development Consultant. In a previous career she set up, ran, and sold a small company in the travel industry with offices in London and the French Alps. Dr Peter Simpson is Director of Business Development and lecturer in Organisation Studies at Bristol Business School, University of the West of England. He consults to organisations in the public, private and voluntary sectors and has published widely on issues of strategic leadership and organisational change. At the present time he is particularly interested in issues of spirituality and complexity in leadership theory and practice. Dr Val Singh is Reader in Corporate Diversity Management, and Deputy Director of the International Centre for Women Leaders at Cranfield School of Management. Her research includes the Female FTSE Index of companies with women directors (presented at Downing Street), ethnicity of directors, gendered cultures in science and engineering boardrooms, diversity management, and women’s careers. She was Gender Editor of Journal of Business Ethics, and is Associate Editor of Gender Work & Organization. She was a judge of UK National Business Awards 2003–06. Professor Kim Turnbull James is Professor of Executive Learning at Cranfield School of Management and Director of the Centre for Executive Learning and Leadership. She is interested in how management learning and leadership development link to organisational goals, aligning leadership theories to appropriate learning designs. Her particular areas of interest include strategic and distributed leadership, leadership development in a global context, collaborative learning for

xiv Notes on the Contributors

leadership, organisation politics and the impact of group and organisation dynamics on organisation leadership. Jitse D.J. van Ameijde is a part-time Project Officer within the Human Resources Division of the Open University in the UK, where he conducts organisational research and evaluations of learning and development programmes. He is also presently a full-time doctorate student in Systems. He received his MSc in Organisational Psychology at Utrecht University in The Netherlands. His research interests include leadership, organisational learning and systems theory. Dr Nathalie van Meurs is a Senior Lecturer in Cross-Cultural Management at Middlesex University Business School, London. She worked as a Research Fellow at the Open University, exploring culture and Person-Organisation Fit. Before this, she lectured at the University of Oxford Brookes. She gained her PhD from the University of Sussex studying cross-cultural differences in conflict styles between Dutch and British managers. She is interested in both research and applied aspects of intercultural interaction and identity. Dr Martin Wood is Senior Lecturer in Social Theory and Organisation at York Management School, University of York, UK. Previously he was a member of faculty at Exeter and Warwick Universities. As an educator, researcher and consultant, Martin has worked his way deeper into the ideas and problems of management and organisation studies, as they relate to process-oriented social theory. Current research explores leadership in relation to philosophical issues of identity and difference.

Thanks and Acknowledgements Kim Turnbull James and James Collins

The editors are very aware that any book derived from a conference owes a debt of gratitude to everyone who was involved in that enterprise. Without presenters willing to share their latest insights, attendees willing to engage with those ideas and colleagues happy to chair these sessions, then the authors represented in this book would not have had an opportunity to fine tune and revise their work. This book is therefore a product of many people’s thinking and collective endeavour. Every conference requires good organisation for it to be successful. We are immensely grateful to Alison Cain who worked tirelessly for many weeks before the conference to ensure it went smoothly. Having, as she thought, said goodbye to the conference participants she was then given the ‘opportunity’ of helping to get many of their manuscripts ready for publication here! The conference plenary was an important impetus for the book and our thanks go to Jonathan Gosling who proposed the idea – new to this conference – and prodded us as organisers to make it happen and was happy to hold and co-chair the event. The speakers, Keith Grint, Jean Hartley and Robin Wensley spurred us to a good debate. We are particularly grateful to two conference presenters who have offered their papers for publication in this book; Alan Bryman who was our keynote opening speaker and Donna Ladkin, who with Martin Wood, won the best paper in conference award.

xv


1 New Perspectives on Leadership: How Practical is a Good Theory? Kim Turnbull James and James Collins

This book emerges from a conference held at Cranfield School of Management in December 2006. This was the Fifth International Studying Leadership conference held in the UK: this series of conferences initiated by Keith Grint whilst he was at Said Business School and subsequently held at Lancaster, Exeter, Cranfield and Warwick, has from its inception been an important annual meeting both for leadership scholars and practitioners concerned to keep abreast of the latest academic research. From its inception the conference attracted people in sufficient numbers to indicate the perceived importance of leadership studies and the desire amid this community to refresh our thinking in a field abundant with leadership theory and leadership development solutions. The aim of this book, and its companion, Leadership Learning – Knowledge into Action, is to capture some of the exciting new thinking discussed at the conference. More than 50 papers were presented and in this book we try to capture some of the themes emerging and indicate new departures in leadership thinking. The conference theme was Knowledge into Action – how new ideas about leadership would lead to new approaches to leadership practice, leadership learning and development. Taken together these two books will enable readers to refresh their thinking about leadership in a way which will inform their practice whether as researchers or as practitioners and consultants. Even two books cannot cover, nor do justice to, all that was available to conference attendees, but we have aimed to pull together the best papers to represent new trends, creative points of view and insights from research. We do not aim to cover the wide field of leadership studies but to provide new perspectives on this important field of theory and practice. This first book concentrates on new perspectives in leadership. The second focuses on leadership learning and development. The conference 1

2 Leadership Perspectives

theme of Knowledge into Action implies that there can be a clear link between research and practice. Research can be conducted which informs theoretical understanding of the phenomenon of leadership and which also speaks to the task organisations undertake in constructing leadership concepts and developing people to rise to leadership challenges in their organisation. Knowledge of practice can influence how we ask our research questions and what kind of research we conduct. Of course, there are a variety of opinions about how and whether research can be relevant and rigorous. From an organisation’s perspective the relevance of any theoretical study of leadership can be puzzling too. The potential split between studying leadership and practice can be demonstrated by an example: a large international organisation contacted a university business school to run a leadership programme. They explained they had recently re-thought their leadership model. What process had they gone through? They had worked with the new CEO as the primary source and then with the top team. They had then benchmarked their model against three other organisations – one quite different from them but very successful in turning around a struggling business, another in the same industry sector and a third, similar sized business with origins in their home country. Had they looked at the literature on leadership or talked with any university faculty? The response was curious – what might they have gained of practical interest by doing that? So – organisations do not always value academics’ work on theorising leadership. Whilst some research is hard to turn immediately into product or practical advice, none the less leadership scholarship, as witnessed at the conference and in this book, can provide new understanding which might prove vital for organisations seeking new leadership concepts to meet their current organisation challenges. This implies a willingness to challenge accepted wisdom. The conference hosted a debate held in full plenary: the plenary was co-chaired by Jonathan Gosling and Kim Turnbull James, with speakers Keith Grint, Jean Hartley and Robin Wensley. Conference had received a short paper from the co-chairs (‘Leadership studies: Truth, lies and wishful thinking’) and had an opportunity to debate some key issues for leadership research. An extract from this paper can be found in Figure 1.1. The plenary was asked to think about the relationship between research and practice – from an academic perspective are we too driven to find prescriptions, for example – and about the nature of leadership theory – is there really need to continue to theorise about leadership – surely it is already well enough understood? Our speakers briefly offered their ideas to plenary before it was opened up for discussion. The debate ranged

New Perspectives on Leadership: How Practical is a Good Theory? 3 Figure 1.1

‘Leadership Studies: Truth, Lies and Wishful Thinking’

(Extract from the ‘Studying Leadership: Knowledge into Action’ plenary debate proposal, chaired by Jonathan Gosling and Kim Turnbull James) Perhaps more than any other field, leadership studies appears to be caught between studying and advising. Many studies do not restrict themselves to describing and analysing leadership phenomena, but instead draw implications from their research about who should be appointed to leadership roles, how organisations should distribute authority and the behaviours that should be rewarded. The question for this conference is whether the pressures to advise practitioners on leadership and leadership development issues add up to a significant problem for leadership studies as a domain of academic endeavour. Does an enthusiasm for ‘ought’ produce unacceptable compromises in the attempt to describe, analyse and interpret ‘what is or has been’? … We propose a debate on this issue; the implications have wider significance for business and management studies in the light of the growing emphasis amongst research councils on clear policy and practice outcomes from state-funded research… Do we see leadership studies – such as those published in Leadership – contributing to new knowledge in sociology, politics, or psychology? Or is it contributing to newly colonised domains between and independent of traditional canons? Can there be a theory of leadership rather than contributions from various disciplines to understanding leadership phenomena? Are we, as leadership researchers, ahead of the game, or more compromised than our academic colleagues engaged in research that explicitly contributes to disciplinary knowledge? Or are we contributing to a better managed and more sanely led society, more effective services and more efficient businesses? Explanatory sciences aim to make generalisable claims about the nature of the phenomenon studied. John Adair, in an unpublished manifesto (personal communication) claims that we already know the universal principles governing leadership and its development, and so the proper contribution of leadership studies is to focus on the application of these principles to diagnose particular organisational woes and to prescribe the appropriate remedies. Adair’s claim may seem ridiculously optimistic. However, we note the confidence with which published studies expound their prescriptions, the didactic style of leadership studies classrooms, and the more or less explicitly normative content of many leadership development programmes. These seldom embody collaborative discussions of ‘what really matters’: are our truth-claims coherent with our methods? The THES (20 October 2006) reviewed the first years of Leadership, the journal with which this conference is most closely associated. Winston Fletcher describes leadership as ‘will-o’-the-wisp, impossible to pin down’. He sees no new theoretical developments in many years and argues that instead of more theorising, the journal should focus on case histories of leaders and leadership situations and ‘minimise the quasi-philosophical stuff’. Is it possible to make generalisable truth claims in a field which is impossible to pin down perhaps depending on the socially constructed meanings of participants in a specific leadership event? If we cannot, what is our real capacity to provide prescriptive solutions to organisations’ problems with their leadership capability?


widely over a number of issues; in particular several people spoke from the floor for managers’ desire for a quick fix and simplicity. Many simply do not have the time or energy to think their way through the implications of proposed changes to their behaviour, structure, etc. However, others in the audience spoke to their experience of managers who are thoughtful, prepared to work things through and make good use of the possibility to interact for an extended period of time with academic colleagues. But what of academic research – can it speak directly to problems managers are interested in? How does the debate about research/practice divisions relate to the studying of leadership and in particular what is new and exciting in leadership theory? This book has a number of emergent themes which confront many traditional perspectives on leadership and the divergence between traditional and new concepts may go some way to explaining how practitioners and researchers find it hard to engage with each other’s work and how we need new approaches to leadership development and learning to bridge the two. As the fascination with leadership has continued to grow in both the academic and popular press it seemed pertinent to ask why we still need to study leadership. Surely after the extensive research, theorising and publication on the topic in the previous century, it might be considered a theme which either has a theoretical basis to which little can be added or contrarily, since there are so many definitions of leadership with conflicting points of view, it is not even a researchable topic. A starting point for this is to reflect on what is most visible in writing about leadership: in the popular and business press there appears to be an endless fascination with famous leaders. Whether in HBR (Tichy and Bennis, 2007) or the news media, we are offered a parade of leaders who have made a difference – and are either lauded for their heroism with their life histories, the subject of celebrity scrutiny in a search for the ‘answer’ to the nature of good leadership – or subjected to ferocious vilification when they are perceived to fail. The idea of heroic leader must be deep in our collective psyche for the concept to hold such sway – or be a convenient untruth which enables individuals to be held accountable for collective failures. These two opposites both serve a similar purpose – they support a belief that if only an organisation can find the right leader (and perhaps only if it can find the right leader), it can succeed, turning around any downturn in their fortunes. Alternatively collective problems can be scapegoated by the expulsion of a failed hero and in a complex world of dilemmas and unsolvable problems, hard to identify systemic problems can be located at a dispensable individual’s door. This is not to say that great leadership has no

New Perspectives on Leadership: How Practical is a Good Theory? 5

place – but that the idealised notion of great leadership supplies an alternative purpose. One might have thought that great man (sic) theories of leadership were left behind in the 1960s but there is a whiff of this in the notion of visionary, charismatic and transformational leadership theories (e.g. Bass, 1985; House and Shamir, 1993; Conger and Kanungo, 1998). In contrast there is a growing interest in the leadership literature about other ways of conceiving leadership. For example, much is now written about shared, collective and distributed leadership (e.g. Locke, 2003; Pearce and Conger, 2003). Organisations too call for ‘leadership at all levels’ and ‘front line leadership’ and this surely points to a new requirement in leadership theory – it does not mean that we can throw out the need for competences or development of people who will take up senior leader roles in our organisations – but is does call for theorising about leadership which does not take the old world as a given. Post-heroic leadership (Fletcher, 2004) suggests rethinking our perspective on leadership away from the endeavour of identifiable individual leaders and focusing on the teams and the invisible actions of many in organisation achievements. The implication of all these new ways of constructing our ideas of organisation leadership means that we need to understand much more about how people relate to each other in order to engage in leadership behaviour and even rethink what we mean by leadership behaviour and practice. It also suggests that context is very important – if leadership is about a plethora of networks and relationships, and about ways of meeting organisation challenges we may need to know more about the differences in the meaning of leadership in different organisation contexts. Whether we add to the leader competence and capability lexicon or revise the relevance of thinking of leadership as a characteristic of an individual, this move to understanding leadership as embedded in a system and not just as a transferable skill enabling an organisation ‘under new leadership’ to turn things around or drive through change, could have profound impact on leadership learning events. Thus we have a paradox that whilst the leadership literature addresses questions about the kind of leadership that is needed in organisations for the 21st century, development programmes are often rooted in individual leader development separate from organisation context. Another perspective might be that the leadership literature is necessarily fragmented because it aims to address many different organisational challenges under the umbrella of leadership. Many organisations are developing their own leadership models. The idea of leaders having a ‘teachable point of view’ (Tichy, 1999) has led to the legitimisation of basing corporate


leadership frameworks on the current CEOs or top team’s view of leadership. These are almost all focused on leader behaviours, competences and capabilities. They reify leadership and locate it in the individual. The notion of leadership as organisational practices and routines, embedded in relationships in which leadership is exercised in many places is lost. A ubiquitous story in management development circles is that when programme participants are asked if they are followers, no one owns up to such a role. This fallacious question points to the poverty of our conception of leadership, as if there were a category of leaders and another of followers rather than highlighting our understanding of the complex roles and relationships involved. The dynamics of power, authority and differences in task that connect people, systems and organising principles that form the organisation, are all part of the idea of leadership – understanding leadership requires a theory of organisation as well as a theory of individual ability. In a highly complex field it is easy to find comfort in an endless debate about leadership vs. management, transformational vs. transactional leadership and definitions of leadership. We could perhaps instead consider the concept of leadership as a solution to organisation problems, located in time, place and task. When an organisation suggests that they need more or better leadership we might want to know more about the challenges they face and for which they believe the idea of ‘leadership’ is a solution. Because our implicit idea of leadership often equates to hero – or even the more prosaic transformational concept – many leadership models for development are couched in positive or even idealistic terms. This leads to some interesting observations in practice – for example, organisations who develop people against a competence framework which includes emotional intelligence and focus on people but promote to the most senior levels people who do not represent these competences. It also leads to dilemmas in intent – for example an organisation struggling to maintain staff belief in the value of their leadership framework when they were going through financial turmoil. The HR director explained they had to put their leadership model ‘on hold’ for a few years until they had got through the crisis. In other words they actually needed a different leadership solution to the one centred on leaders developing staff, showing genuine concern and paying attention to people’s motivation, that they had developed. Good leadership is not the same at all times – at this point they needed tough leaders whose job was to deal ruthlessly with the task of slimming down and taking the business back to its core. This led to the in-authenticity of, for example ‘letting people go’ – because the realities of leaders’ roles had been


made undiscussable and even if they did this task fairly and compassionately it did not fit with the way the leadership model was couched. Leadership at the apex of the organisation may look different from front-line leadership – whilst a set of leadership competences may be useful top to toe in the organisation, these do not describe the roles and relationship all these people engage in. These can only be adequately described by understanding leadership tasks derived from organisation demands – if you need to respond to customers rather than regulators, or to a changing world than a stable world you need a different leadership response. If you need leaders to meet global challenges and work internationally you may need a different leadership point of view than if you are a small locally-based start up – if you need to lead through a period of turmoil and crisis of existence you have a different problem than leading through expansion and hope. Leadership theory derived from any empirical study is also a description of the economic, social and political system in which it was observed. The idea of post-heroic leadership is of its time just as the managerial grid was of its – both may stand the test of time but only insofar as they relate to similar contexts. The wider context of leadership theorising needs to be considered. From this perspective leadership theory may never be finally established – it needs to evolve as contexts change. It requires a narrative rather than definition, it needs locating in the organisation as a whole, not disembodied from it. If we move away from leadership as a property of the individual’s ability to exercise a reified thing called leadership wherever they find themselves, we can move away from a personal deficiency model which is the impetus for much leadership development. We are more likely to be able to support those taking up leadership roles in exploring their context, understand the culture and history of the system in which they are expected to be a leader, and understand the organisational relationships and networks in which they are both leader and demand leadership from others.

Chapter presentations The themes we have outlined above are reflected in a variety of ways in the chapters that follow: the need to develop new constructions of leadership; the importance of context; leadership and relationships.

Part one: new constructions of leadership Describing leadership is ways that shift away from approaches that primarily focus on individual leaders or the dyadic relationship between


leaders and followers, Martin Wood and Donna Ladkin frame leadership as an unfolding process where contextual concerns such as culture and history play a crucial role in this emergent process. They describe this process as ‘a continuous coming into being’. Presenting the results of empirical research in which participants employed photography to capture what they describe as ‘the leaderful moment’, Wood and Ladkin, draw on theoretical ideas described in process philosophy. In a chapter that examines leadership and spirituality, Peter Simpson and Clifford Hill also describe the complexity of leadership as an emergent process. Examining leadership from a historical perspective – and then relating this to a modern context – they examine William Wilberforce [and the Clapham Group’s] involvement in the abolition of the slave trade. Of particular interest in Simpson and Hill’s analysis is the notion of ‘narrative themes’, – although describing Wilberforce’s prominent position within the abolition movement, rather than the character and behaviour of the individual leader, it is conversation and narrative themes that is the prime agent of emergent change. In his chapter Robert French comments on the pressures faced by leaders to focus principally on their organisation’s results and he discusses how this is frequently at the expense of concerns for people or for business ethics. Discussing leadership from a very different perspective, French examines classical and modern notions of friendship, and by reframing assumptions of friendship and linking these to leadership, suggests how new attitudes to leadership may be adopted and developed into new models of leadership action. Also challenging the notion of leadership as primarily a concern for the bottom-line, and the idea effective leaders simply need to acquire the necessary competences and knowledge, Maryse Dubouloy discusses responsible leadership. Relating to ideas from psychodynamic approaches, she describes the need for globally responsible leaders to rediscover their true self and reject conformism and false self. Dubouloy suggests that responsible leadership necessitates that the leader develops virtues such as autonomy, reflexivity, and compassion, and this requires that, as an individual, they embark on a tough journey down new paths. A psychodynamic perspective is also adopted by Kim Turnbull James, Cliff Bowman and Richard Kwiatkowski. Observing that much leadership theory is a concern for appropriate behaviours and competences, whereas the notion of direction is central to the strategy literature, the authors lament that leadership models often omit the integration of strategy into leadership theory. Turnbull James, Bowman and Kwiatkowski contend that this is particularly important as new conceptions


of leadership which capture ideas of shared, distributed and dispersed leadership challenge the accepted perceptions of where leadership in the organisation is exercised. They develop the notion of the ‘Main Idea’ – the clear direction which grounds, centres, inspires and gives a clear message about the intent of the organisation. Given that the ‘Main Idea’ integrates psychological and strategic action a psychodynamic perspective is adopted to explore the role of the strategic leader. In the chapter presented by Martin Clarke and David Butcher the theme that leadership takes place in a complex environment where multiple stakeholders hold diverse interests is continued. The authors describe how in such a complex environment organisations are faced by the difficulty of standardisation on the one hand while striving to build democratic practices that contribute to commitment and improve motivation on the other. In addressing their concerns Clark and Butcher introduce the concept of organisational voluntarism, and suggest that this can facilitate progress towards more democratic forms of managerial action.

Part two: the importance of context Placing importance on context and drawing on her experience of working directly with senior managers in the public services, Su Maddock reflects on a central paradox found in leadership of this sector. Although the collaborative practice found in transformational leadership is considered more congenial to innovation than transactional activity, most public sector managers continue to have a preference for the planning and control action that epitomises the transactional approach. Maddock suggests that this practice is perpetuated by a system that tends to reward and promote safe leaders – those who are more comfortable with planning and control – whereas there is a ‘graveyard full’ of innovative and collaborative leaders who tend to be more people centred. Examining how collaborative practice is taking place – albeit to a limited extent – at some local levels, Maddock discusses how central government need to properly embrace this practice to ensure it thrives at regional level and beyond. Also giving particular attention to context, Mike Dunn examines leadership in the British Army. The principal focus of the chapter considers the question of whether female Army officers lead in different ways to their male counterparts. Reviewing current research on leadership and gender, Dunn presents findings which reveal that women Army officers feel a tension about the lack of congeniality that they experience in the military environment. He presents a six factor


Military Leadership Factor model (MLF) which includes a construct that describes strategies for females in the military to manage and negotiate gender related issues in their workplace. The focus of Alan Bryman’s chapter is effective leadership in higher education in the United Kingdom. Although his empirical study principally focuses on leadership behaviour and he argues it is possible to establish from a literature review the kinds of leader behaviour that are conducive to leadership effectiveness, he finds that the translation of such findings into advice or programmes for practitioners is by no means straightforward. There is always the probability that contextual factors will inhibit the leader’s ability and possibly inclination to attend to the kinds of issues that he or she would prefer to focus upon. Context matters and as such places limits on the practical utility of isolating universal statements about the effectiveness of different kinds of leadership style. Macro influences influence leadership and as such leaders are as much prisoners as enablers of context. The need to consider leadership beyond the leader-subordinate dyad and to give a greater emphasis on context is also examined by Gareth Edwards and Doris Jepson. Examining leadership in groups the authors present the findings from two case studies – the first drawing on the notion of leader prototypicality taken from social identity theory, the second examining transformational, transactional and laissez-faire leadership. The findings show that leadership requirements and behaviour are not necessarily perceived to be common in different departments of an organisation and that departmental affiliation leads to shared prototypical perceptions of leadership needs – perceptions strengthened by daily social interaction with members of the same department. The authors argue that an awareness of the influence of departmental affinity should be considered when leaders are appointed from one group that may have to operate in another and other aspects or organisational activity such as cross-departmental communication.

Part three: leadership and relationships Examining leadership across the private, public and voluntary sector Jean Hartley and Clive Fletcher are critical of leadership approaches that fail to recognise that leaders engage diverse interests both inside and outside of the organisation. The authors outline a perspective of leadership which places focus on leadership of the organisation rather than in the organisation. The focus of the chapter is that relationships are important and Hartley and Fletcher argue for a perspective of leadership in which political awareness is crucial and present their framework


of political skills which they believe offers a new ways of thinking about leadership and leadership research. Examining leadership in government and making reference to the challenges of reform in the public sector Simon Baddeley describes the tensions and confusion that arise in the shared relationship that represent the overlap of political and managerial spheres of action. As the theme is leadership in local government the chapter could easily fit in the part of the book that examines the importance of context, but the focus of Baddeley’s work is that of the relationship between senior officers in local government. Drawing on his extensive data source of films he has made over more than 20 years of elected politicians and public service managers in conversation, the chapter explores the relationships between these individuals to describe how in local government, top leadership is socially constructed and jointly created between politicians and public service managers. Also examining the importance of relationships – in this case workbased relationships – Joe Jaina discusses the formation, maintenance and development of self-efficacy beliefs and how this links to successful leadership outcomes. Central to Jaina’s argument is the notion that leaders’ motivation and action can be based more upon subjective efficacy beliefs rather than on objectively verifiable facts. Thus even if leaders have the necessary skills to overcome problems within their organisations, it is the leaders with a greater sense of self-efficacy who are likely to exert greater effort to overcome these difficulties. Presenting the findings of case studies, in the profit and not-for-profit sectors, he describes how psychological similarity, attained through the construction of shared meaning supports leaders’ perceptions about self-efficacy. Examining leadership from a gendered perspective Ruth Sealy and Val Singh consider how role models are crucial to the formation of social identities and to social and cultural constructions of leadership. Commenting on the scarcity of female role models in leadership positions the authors argue that such a situation plays a major part in the persistence of the gender stereotypical construction of leadership – the view that this is primarily a domain populated by heroic heterosexual and powerful males. By way of illustration Sealy and Singh describe research that has examined the gendered nature of management education, with particular reference to the MBA. Here the lack of female role models, the masculine culture of MBA programmes and that of course content all serve to reinforce masculine constructions of leadership. The authors argue for a better understanding of how role models are crucial to the formation of


professional identity and how by doing so will enable leaders to develop their full potential. In the final chapter Jitse van Ameijde, Patrick Nelson, Jon Billsberry and Nathalie van Meurs examine leadership in teams. The authors critique leadership approaches in which the dyadic relationship between leader and subordinate is the principal focus, and discuss the emerging interest in distributed and shared leadership. Reporting research which examined successful and unsuccessful project teams in their own academic institution, van Ameijde and his colleagues present a model of distributed leadership – relevant to project teams – in which internal factors (for example behaviour within the group) and external factors (such as interaction with the wider environment) represent activities and processes at team and organisational levels respectively. Organisations are constantly faced with rapid change and new challenges. Leadership studies need to be abreast of the changing nature of organisations and contribute to understanding leadership as the demands on leaders change. This book is one contribution to the field of leadership studies and aims to provide the reader with an opportunity to reflect on what leadership means in this evolving context.

References B.M. Bass, Leadership and Performance Beyond Expectations (New York: The Free Press, 1985). J.A. Conger and R.A. Kanungo, Charismatic Leadership in Organisations (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998). J.K. Fletcher, ‘The Paradox of Postheroic Leadership: An Essay on Gender, Power and Transformational Change’, Leadership Quarterly, 14 (2004) 647–61. R.J. House and B. Shamir, ‘Towards the Integration of Transformational, Charismatic and Visionary Theories’, in M.M. Chemers and R. Ayman (eds) Leadership Theory and Research (San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 1993), pp. 81–107. E.A. Locke, ‘Leadership: Starting at The Top’, in C.L. Pearce and J.A. Conger (eds) Shared Leadership (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2003), pp. 271–81. C.L. Pearce and J.A. Conger, Shared Leadership (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2003). N.M. Tichy, ‘The Teachable Point of View: A Primer’, Harvard Business Review, 77(2) (1999) 82–3. N.M. Tichy and W. Bennis, ‘Making Judgment Calls: The Ultimate Act of Leadership’, Harvard Business Review, 85(10) (2007) 94–102.

Part I New Constructions of Leadership


2 The Event’s the Thing: Brief Encounters With the Leaderful Moment Martin Wood and Donna Ladkin

This chapter is grounded in a radical reconceptualisation of leadership based on the process philosophy particularly of Alfred Whitehead and Gilles Deleuze. Rather than focusing primarily on the individual leader, or even the dyadic relationship between leaders and followers, the lens of process philosophy frames leadership as an unfolding, emergent process; a continuous coming into being. Conceptualising leadership from this perspective, we suggest, stretches the field of potential contributors to its realisation, particularly encouraging a richer appreciation of the role played by contextual aspects, such as history, culture or geographic situatedness. In promoting this view, it joins recent work by Collinson (2005), Grint (2005), Shotter (2005), Wood (2005) and Koivunen (2007), as well as supplementing and extending the work of others in organisation and communication theory (Graen and Scandura, 1987; Hosking, 1988; Dansereau, 1995; Barker, 2001; Gronn, 2002; Pearce and Conger, 2003; Fairhurst, 2005) who are forging theoretical in-roads into how a less individualistic and more process-oriented approach might offer distinctive insights into what is the paradigmatically limited and limiting field of ‘positive’ leadership approaches (Bryman, 1986; Dansereau, 1995). This chapter moves beyond the theoretical domain, however, by offering some first steps into exploring these ideas from an empirical perspective. We invited five organisational consultants, managers and leaders to take photographs of those usually hidden elements, which they perceived as contributing to the experience of leadership in their workplaces. Here we present the results of that experiment, paying particular attention to the unexpected insights our co-researchers gleaned through undertaking the project. 15


We begin by outlining key informing ideas from Whitehead’s and Deleuze’s philosophies before describing our empirical explorations.

Leadership as an event: insights from process philosophy Process philosophy, or process thought, is a distinctive sector of philosophical tradition. Drawing particularly on the pre-Socratic cosmology of Heraclitus, whose basic principle was that ‘everything flows’, the process approach puts processes (becoming) before distinct things or substances (being). Process thinkers actually characterise the concrete reality of ‘things’ by the Humean idea of perpetual change, movement and transformation. In more contemporary times, the process-inspired worldview has become most closely identified with the British mathematical physicist turned philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, whose treatise Process and Reality, first published in 1929, explains the fundamental tenets of process philosophy. Other 20th-century philosophers including Gregory Bateson, Henri Bergson and Gilles Deleuze joined Whitehead in the description of the various elements of human experience as being in consistent relation with every other item of the universe. According to Whitehead, ‘how an actual entity becomes constitutes what that actual entity is. … Its “being” is constituted by its “becoming”’ (Whitehead, 1978, p. 23). The actual entities of reality thus are never static, but are rather a stream of momentary occasions in a process of becoming and ‘perpetually perishing’, one moment following another. Perception involves an appreciation of both the up-close appreciation of a particular moment, AND a larger awareness of the maelstrom from which it momentarily emerges. A way into understanding this concept is by considering the activity of observing. If you look at a great painting through a magnifying glass you would only see the texture of its paint. Similarly, if you look at a newspaper photograph close-up, you would only see disconnected dots (Wilson, 2006). In both cases you are bringing to bear the inhibition of simple occurrences on your perception. In order to appreciate the totality of the painting, you have to stand back and take a more long-range view of it, one that works on quite different principles from the closeup view (Whitehead, 1978). By closely attending to the experience of perception, we come to realise that our most aboriginal experience of it is as a continuous advance of ‘actual entities’ arising, satisfying and perishing. Extending from Whitehead’s perspective this continuous advance, or universal becoming, should be at the heart of a process-oriented

The Event’s the Thing: Brief Encounters With the Leaderful Moment 17

approach to leadership. Accordingly we must refrain from a functionally driven concern with the psychology of an individual ‘leader’ or simply occurring ‘leaders’ and ‘followers’. To do so only reveals a clumsy imitation of leadership. Furthermore, we argue that there is a significant difference between the inhibiting presumption of locating leadership solely in leaders and followers and our actual experience of it. The former focuses on immediate function, the later on wider meaning and value. Grasping the full effect of leadership always involves both processes. The long-range appreciation requires at each moment perception of the immediate present. Correspondingly, the close-up view of the present requires a symbolic sense making of the past from which it has emerged and for the future towards which it advances. When the two modes blend together perfectly a wonderful sense of meaning and value emerges. On such occasions the two are not merely intersected they are ‘fused into one’ (Whitehead, 1978, p. 18). This fusion is what we are describing as the ‘leaderful moment’. Thus, the leaderful moment is a relational element that ‘gives itself’, or ‘comes to us’ as part of the continuity of our everyday engagement with the surrounding world. Its ‘actuality’ is always the participation with – not merely the gazing upon – of one occasion in another. In other words, a process view recognises that leadership is not the thing; rather the playing out of leadership is the thing. The idea of the leaderful moment constituting itself as an event always anew, evidences clear links between Whitehead’s and Deleuze’s philosophies. In Deleuze’s metaphysics the event is neither something that simply occurs, such as an organised social occasion or a concert, nor something that simply reveals familiar definitions (Williams, 2003). An event does not mean that ‘a man has been run over’ or ‘a storm is coming’. ‘The event is … always missed if it is thought of in terms of essential characteristics’ (Williams, 2003, p. 154). Instead, the event is precisely about the re-arrangement of familiar identities, characteristics and relations (Deleuze, 1994). In this way, the event refers to a discontinuity, a break, split or fracture. It is an unexpected, anomalous, phenomenon. It sticks out from the mundane and takes us by surprise. It appears impossible or unlikely from within established forms of knowledge or ways of thinking and expresses change, an opening of the future and the possibility of something new (Williams, 2003). 9/11 and the 2004 tsunami were events, not because they expressed some essential internal truths about clearly identifiable actual things, but because they both were ‘the first sign of mutation or the first sensation that something anomalous is significant’


(Williams, 2003, p. 154). So, it is the incarnation of a wider system of (virtual) connections between emerging radical groups, commercial airliners and New York City on the (actual) occasion of 9/11 that is the event. As too is the apparently familiar and natural occurrence of winds, currents, air and sea temperatures and tectonic shifts, which developed the unexpected intensity and destructive force that accompanied the actual event of the tsunami. Both were ‘hard to digest occurrences requiring shifts in our established forms of knowledge or ways of thinking’ (Williams, 2003, p. 154). In a way the actual sensation of an event is accompanied by a change in the relation between familiar standpoints, elements or groups. It is made up of the happenings ‘in-between’ the identifiable properties of things. Returning to the example of leadership, process philosophy suggests that our focus should likewise turn to the constitutive relations between varying and temporary occasions and our own sense making of them in order to perceive more of the totality of the leadership experience. We propose that doing so can provide a richer account of leadership and foster possibilities for more diverse and novel choices which otherwise remain hidden. That claim can only be tested from an empirical basis, and our attempt to begin that work is presented below.

Exploring leadership as process from an empirical perspective Over the last several years we have introduced ideas about leadership as process to students undertaking a Masters in Leadership Studies in a UK-based business school. Through their prompts, and our own curiosity, we began to wonder how these ideas might be explored empirically. In particular, we wondered how attentiveness to aspects of context which contribute to the ‘leaderful moment’ might be developed. Five practicing managers/organisational consultants who either had completed the Masters, or were undertaking it worked with us on the project. They agreed to carry cameras with them and photograph things, people, or moments they perceived as being inextricably linked with the experience of leadership, but which might usually go unnoticed. We hoped this activity would enable them to ‘catch’ the constitutive elements of the ‘leaderful moment’, thus heightening their awareness of these habitually ignored aspects. Using photography as a method to explore the perceptual worlds of individuals follows the work of Buchanan (2001), Warren (2002), Belova (2006) and Pink (2007) who are moving on from more traditional anthropologic settings to use cameras to inquire into organisational


contexts. In our study, photographic data collection took place over six months, after which we interviewed each person over the telephone, asking how he or she decided what constituted the background to leadership, and also, how undertaking this project affected his or her awareness of leadership processes. Interview transcripts were analysed and themes common to all five co-researchers identified. In the following section two mini ‘case studies’ are presented, before additional themes, which arose from the research, are discussed.

Gerry’s story (Gerry is a senior manager in an NHS Trust) Having been sent cameras and the course director’s best wishes, I felt obliged to clutch these, alongside the mobile phone and Blackberry, wherever I went on the work circuit. However, it was not long before my feelings of obligation turned into a fascinating exploration into the ‘world of the workers’. Knowing the task that I was to fulfill, it almost became an obsession. I found myself peering round corners into meeting rooms whilst preparations were occurring, and asking for permission to take photos. Three things immediately hit me: how willing people were for this to happen, how flattered they were that somebody was actually bothering to take the time to find out what they were doing, and how interested they were in the study that I was undertaking. Why did this surprise me? Because, on further discussion, I learned how rare it was for many of these people to have any human contact at all in relation to those tasks – they were briefed by e-mail, or telephone, if they were briefed at all. I heard stories of the completely unrealistic expectations that management had of these ‘backroom boys and girls’ as they called themselves. Somehow they were meant to telepathically understand how many teas/coffees/lunches would be required for a meeting, or to know that projector bulbs were just about to ‘blow’. Why couldn’t they be at the reception desk to welcome people, when they were also meant to be preparing those refreshments, and setting up the projector as well? After a while I realised I was not just taking photos, I was listening and learning and, I will admit, feeling acutely embarrassed at the behaviours I heard about. … Photographing people was one experience, but photographing scenes took me to another level. I had never actually taken the time


to just ‘be’ in a room that was prepared and waiting for a Board meeting. It was actually the last Board meeting of that particular organisation before the NHS restructures began in July 2006. All of the nameplates were set up, the gavel and the chairs arranged for their owners to take their places for the last time as that group. I took the photos and then just looked. How would the Chair feel today, at the last meeting? What would happen to those nameplates, and the gavel, all engraved and having absorbed the atmosphere of many such high level meetings in many different places? How many decisions had been made, eventually affecting millions of people, by those people whose names were on the plates in this Boardroom? Suddenly, I wasn’t just taking photos I was recording history. Sounds arrogant, I know, but it actually felt a very humbling experience. I wasn’t just working for the NHS, I, and my colleagues, were a part of a huge, valued, and much-loved institution and everything that we did on a daily basis, from the cleaning of the toilets to the decision about the preferred treatment, was made by people who were totally committed, and highly conscientious, about what they were doing.

Sandra’s story (Sandra is a senior civil servant in a Government department) Almost immediately, my camera became a conduit to pick up previously unnoticed ‘happenings’. Not so much the actual scenes presented for capture, but more the underlying connectedness and relations between people, the environment and the ‘moment’. I became drawn strongly to ‘disjoints’, where somehow the people/ actions/situations did not ‘fit’. These seemed increasingly to present themselves to me, whether this was because they were happening more or just that I was noticing them more (the latter I came to believe) was fascinating to me. It was like I’d discovered an alternative world at times. One disjoint I noticed particularly I termed the ‘closed’ team and the ‘open team’. I had just moved teams into a new section. A ‘cubicle’ set-up defines each desk within this section. When I asked why the desks had such barriers (I can hardly see my co-workers, maybe just the tops of their heads when sat down), the classic Civil Service response: ‘oh, we don’t know, it’s just always been like that’, was given. Later I attended a team meeting where people moaned that the atmosphere was ‘dry and not very creative …’ I suggested


that it might be a good idea to remove the cubicles as this could be one of the causes of this perception. I was told though ‘they are handy for displaying things like calendars’. I have instructed facilities to take down my cubicle! Another small but meaningful event I felt compelled to capture was of another physical extension of leadership behaviour, that of our micro-managing director. Opposite my desk is the ‘pigeon-hole’ for all incoming and outgoing post for the directorate. … I had noticed that each time our director passes the pigeon-hole he stops, picks up the pile of post and sorts what he can into each pigeon-hole. It’s fascinating that this man never stops to speak to people or do any other relational activity (as an example he says in the front cover of our business plan that he has an ‘open door’ policy but in reality you need to book an appointment via his PA if you want to see him) but he stops what he is doing to spend a few minutes sorting through the post each day. I have not managed to capture this covertly on film yet (and have wondered why I feel I cannot ask to take a picture … or ask him why he does this task). There is one example though where the not-taking-a-photo became more interesting than if I had taken a photo. Each time I have been to the ‘top floor’ where the Secretary of State and Minister’s offices are, I have always been struck by the comparison between the ‘chaos’ and hive of activity in the outer offices (where all the assistants, press office and researchers live) and the ‘leaders’ offices themselves – a veritable ‘oasis of calm’, with not a piece of paper to ruin the eye-line between the potted plant and the picture on the wall. I was interested in this juxtaposition of power and wondered where the real ‘leadership’ takes place i.e. does leadership get decided, prioritised and presented in some prior way before it even reaches the minister? I asked whether it would be possible to take contrasting photos of both the outer office then the ‘inner sanctum’ and initially was told yes ‘but not when the Minister was in’. I was told that I would be telephoned when it was convenient to go up to take the photos. About three days later I was told that I would not now be able to take the photos as it was considered a ‘security risk should the photos get out’. … This in itself was more fascinating than ‘being allowed’ to take the photo and I have enjoyed pondering on this since in terms of leaderful expression. Reflecting back on this exercise, I found that although the photos only captured, literally, a ‘snapshot’ of an event or person, I could


use these to access memory and feelings from the more ‘scenariobased’, cultural undercurrent events I was drawn to (events that could not usually be defined in a photographic sense). By using the ‘eyes of a photographer’ I believe I started to see things in a different way, perhaps in a different focus (excuse the pun) than I had previously. It certainly helped me re-access the moment in a more meaningful way at a later date than if I had recorded it in a more traditional manner i.e. field notes.

‘The leaderful moment’: an empirical view Three key themes arose from Gerry’s and Sandra’s full accounts and were echoed in interviews with their colleagues: 1. How photographing de-centered a preoccupation with ‘the leader’; 2. How limitations of the photographic method highlighted further process aspects of leadership; 3. How engaging in the project affected collaborators’ perception of leadership.

1. How photographing de-centered the preoccupation with the leader Most of our research collaborators reported that by paying attention to the ‘surrounds’ of leadership, the actions of the leader no longer held central position in their appreciation of how leadership happens. They spoke of being able to recognise how relationships, symbolic elements of culture, and even inanimate entities such as rooms, chairs or tables, contribute to the actual experience of leadership. This enabled a wider field of vision from which to draw data and make judgements about what was going on. JR, for example, spoke of how the experience encouraged him to look backwards from the final ‘event’ of leadership in order to discover what contributed to it from a broader perspective. Sandra spoke of how she noticed the ‘disconnects’ and ‘disjoints’ in a more pronounced way. For instance, she noticed how the head of her department regularly ‘sorted the mail’, not the kind of thing she would normally expect to see her boss doing. Similarly, Gerry took a picture of a highly paid consultant doing her own photocopying. Gerry noted the irony of this organisational leader undertaking such a relatively menial task (and apparently, as she took the photo both she and the consultant remarked on how that particular photocopying was the most expensive the Trust would have done that day). That these disconnects


and disjoints were noticed demonstrates clearly the importance both of Deleuze’s (1994) rendering of the event as something that takes us by surprise and of Whitehead’s (1978) two-way process of perception: the close up view of experience, which is straightforwardly what is in front of us and the more difficult, long-range view, which displays a sense of the past from which these events have emerged and for the future towards which they travel. As we have argued already, Whitehead (1978) criticises the simple occurrence of ‘things’ as they appear to be at any given moment as, for example, with someone sorting the mail or doing their own photocopying. These moments are also imbued with meaning: our vivid apprehension of the relevance of the immediate present to the past and to the future. In the current example, these moments are events precisely because they do not show the simple occurrence of a familiar continuity. By contrast, they refer to an anomalous occurrence, in other words to a discontinuity. The fact that it is the head of the department sorting the mail, or a highly paid consultant doing her own photocopying makes these occurrences stick out from the mundane and the regular. They express an opening of established ways of thinking and offer the possibility of something new, for example: perhaps heads of departments can/should do ‘relational activity’ and highly paid consultants can/should appreciate ‘backroom’ work. These ‘disconnects’ and ‘discontinuities’ draw our attention to the wonderful sense of (in this case ironic) meaning when the two modes of experience – the immediate perception and its longer-term conception – don’t blend together perfectly. Collaborators also spoke of how taking photographs made them aware of ‘absences’, as well as ‘presences within the camera frame’. For instance, in the extract from her story, Gerry writes, ‘I took the photograph and then just looked’. She then writes about how her imagination took her to the future meeting, as well as to past meetings – somehow making her aware of the bigger process of organisational interactions of which the present moment was one part. In this way, her participation in the absent presence of what was (not) there enabled understanding of leadership as a transitive moment in the movement of the world whose ongoing processes are often imperceptible. In other words, the leaderful moment is done and undone with our apprehension of leadership as the process itself: it is grasped as a continuous creative process of becoming, movement, flows, stimulation and connections, rather than from a series of stable instances. As discussed below, this is not our accustomed way of looking.


2. How limitations of the photographic method highlighted further process aspects of leadership In the interviews, our collaborators each spoke of how the pictures could not ‘tell the whole story’ they were trying to depict. Rather, each photograph needed interpretation in order for its significance to be conveyed. Much of this was on account of the relational, or the symbolic aspects of photographs which could not be deciphered by someone outside of the represented context. For instance, GF took photos of his driver and his personal assistant, two people who enable him to carry out his role in the Royal Air Force. He reported how doing this project made him notice more fully the impact these people had on what he was able to achieve. For instance, he reflected that his PA’s ability to put visitors at ease facilitated his chances of conducting business with them in a generative manner. The fact that interpretation is needed highlights the process reality of leaderful activity. It cannot be captured in a ‘still’ moment, because it is always part of a larger context. JR expressed this when he reported, ‘a drawback (of taking photos) is that you cannot capture the actual image – that is to say, you cannot capture the processes before/after the image.’ He went on to note how the impossibility of capturing the ‘actual image’ made apparent the nature of the leaderful moment as a culmination of a myriad of both visible and invisible factors. Sandra similarly spoke of the difficulties of ‘catching the moment’ inherent in using photography, but went on to suggest that even so, the photographs served as a way of prompting a memory of something, and thereby making it discussable. A third limitation of using photographs to convey the process of leadership was offered by Gerry, who noted ‘although the photos are good, they don’t capture “the buzz”, the sounds and the tension that were part of the ‘pre-meeting atmosphere’. These sensual aspects of aural and kinaesthetic impact also, she felt, contributed to the overall leadership process. For instance, one particular photograph she took depicts two men in suits standing and speaking with one another. At close inspection, one might be able to discern that one man is rather tense, and the other is more coolly responsive. In fact, as Gerry explained, the ‘cooler’ man is assuring the more fraught ‘leader’ that indeed everything needed for his presentation is in place. Key to understanding the significance of their exchange, Gerry explained, is all the noise and seeming confusion that was occurring in the background. What she wanted to convey through the photo, was that although a few minutes later, the ‘fraught’ leader would be making a


clear, calm and polished presentation, his performance was only possible because of the previous minutes’ frenetic activity. The role that activity played in creating that particular leaderful moment would otherwise have gone unnoticed, were it not for her attempt to capture at least its visual manifestation.

3. How engaging in the project affected collaborators’ perception of leadership One of our key purposes in undertaking this research was to discover the impact of noticing these habitually unseen process elements on those who did so. A limitation of this research for making claims about the impact of this kind of noticing is that our collaborators were already ‘sensitised’, through their involvement in a Masters in Leadership Studies, to considering leadership as a processual phenomenon. However, their comments of how undertaking this work affected them are still worthy of review. In her story, Gerry writes of how the project fostered an appreciation of the wider network of relationships, structures and history that come together to enable her to perform her job within the NHS. She writes that she had the experience of ‘recording history’, implying her recognition of the temporal context that helps shape and define perceptions and interpretations. GJ similarly spoke about how the experience affected his experience of time itself, commenting: Like Paul McKenna working with F1 drivers using hypnosis to slow time down – (doing this gave me the) time to notice the background, more time to see ‘connections’. Sandra also mentioned this affect, suggesting that taking the photos had enabled her to be more ‘sensitised and open to connections and relationships’ and further, that it had ‘switched on a way of looking more questioningly at things she’d previously taken for granted.’ She continues: Reflecting back on this exercise, I found that although the photos only captured, literally, a ‘snapshot’ of an event or person, I could use these to access memory and feelings from the more ‘scenariobased’, cultural undercurrent events I was drawn to. Using photography as a research method enabled our co-researchers literally to be aware of their framing of reality, as well as forcefully bringing


home the fact that: ‘we never look just at one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves’ (Berger, 1972 cited in Belova, 2006, p. 93, original emphasis). Hence, according to Warren (2002, p. 235), the potential role and utility of photographs taken by respondents as a method of collecting data about their own framing of leadership behaviour lies in ‘stimulating social interaction’. Photography may reveal as much about the life-world of the photographer as it does about what is photographed. In other words the relation between photographer and photographed comes to the front. This new perspective was not entirely comfortable, however, as GJ noted. He spoke of how he couldn’t continually notice all of the interrelations and connections in order to be able to perform his work as a consultant. He commented: The difficulty is you need to put the ‘blur’ of connections back in the background. You need to get back to things, but things are products of connections. Also not everything goes back the same way, once you have seen them as a product of connections. Things just don’t ‘snap back’ to the way they were before you perceived them in this way.

Whither the ‘leaderful moment?’ One of the apparent contradictions within the project undertaken here is between proposing the view of leadership as a continuous, ‘perpetual arising and perishing’ and exploring this notion by inviting coresearchers to ‘capture’ constitutive elements of that process by taking a series of snapshots, each representing a fixed attitude. Doing so, it would seem could serve to emphasise the ‘cinematographical character’ of our intellect (Bergson, 1983), which, although useful for the apprehension of life, is a ‘counterfeit of real movement’ and a ‘distortion’ of the actual world (Bergson, 1999, p. 44). Using photographs to portray a living picture might persuade us that leadership can be captured by a series of instantaneous views, rather than help make the point that leadership is ‘uncatchable’ when seen, statically or centred in an individual person, from without. In response to this contrivance our follow-up interviews suggested the cameras served as a mechanism whereby the photographers became more aware of the peripheral, often neglected aspects of leadership. The photographs themselves do not purport to be capturing leadership, in fact, without their informing stories they are rather mundane


and unremarkable. However, being invited to attend to and take photos of normally ignored aspects of leadership encouraged our co-researchers to place themselves within the actual moment and to notice their worlds in different ways. This allows a grasp of the inner becoming of leadership, and seems to have heightened their awareness of the larger canvas of potentials from which the leaderful moment arises. A question following on from this observation concerns the extent to which this attentiveness might enable individuals to exercise more effective choices within their roles as organisational managers and leaders. In the last quote of the preceding section GJ speaks of the difficulties associated with seeing the world ‘differently’ as a result of undertaking the project, and how the pieces ‘don’t fit so easily back in the same place anymore’. Does this reconfiguration lead to greater effectiveness, or could it result in paralysing confusion? How might theorising leadership as process, as well as empirically experimenting with it as process, contribute to leadership development? Is photography particularly helpful in encouraging reflexivity on the part of practitioners? Are there other modes of representation, such as video or journaling, which might yield further insights? These questions provide rich areas for further study. With this project, however, we have begun a process of trying to gain leverage on how to explore the idea of ‘the leaderful moment’ empirically. In doing so, we hope to foster a greater appreciation of those often faceless others, as well as the bundle or collection of different stories, symbols and circumstances without which the leaderful moment could not come into distinct, if only fleeting view.

References R. Barker, ‘The nature of leadership’, Human Relations, 54(4) (2001) 469–94. O. Belova, ‘The event of seeing: A phenomenological perspective on visual sense-making’, Culture and Organization, 12(2) (2006) 93–107. H. Bergson, Creative Evolution, Trans. A. Mitchell (New York: Henry Holt, 1983). H. Bergson, An Introduction to Metaphysics (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 1999). A. Bryman, Leadership in Organisations (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986). D. Buchanan, ‘The role of photography in organization research: A re-engineering case illustration’, Journal of Management Inquiry, 10(2) (2001) 151–64. D.L. Collinson, ‘Dialectics of leadership’, Human Relations, 58(11) (2005) 1419–42. F. Dansereau, ‘A dyadic approach to leadership: creating and nurturing this approach under fire’, Leadership Quarterly, 6(4) (1995) 479–90. G. Deleuze, Difference and Repetition (London: Athlone Press, 1994).

28 Leadership Perspectives G.T. Fairhurst, ‘Reframing the art of framing: problems and prospects for leadership’, Leadership, 1(2) (2005) 165–85. G.B. Graen and T.A Scandura, ‘Toward a psychology of dyadic organising’, Research in Organisational Behaviour, 9 (1987) 175–205. K. Grint, Leadership: Limits and Possibilities (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). P. Gronn, ‘Distributed leadership as a unit of analysis’, Leadership Quarterly, 13 (2002) 423–51. D.M. Hosking, ‘Organizing, leadership and skilful process’, Journal of Management Studies, 25(2) (1988) 147–66. N. Koivunen, ‘The processual nature of leadership discourses’, Scandinavian Journal of Management, 23(3) (2007) in press. C.L. Pearce and J.A. Conger, ‘A landscape of opportunities: future research on shared leadership’, in C.L. Pearce and J.A. Conger (eds) Shared Leadership: Reframing the Hows and Whys of Leadership (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2003). S. Pink, Doing Visual Ethnography (London: Sage, 2007). J. Shotter, ‘“Inside the moment of managing”: Wittgenstein and the everyday dynamics of our expressive-responsive activities’, Organization Studies, 26(1) (2005) 113–35. S. Warren, ‘“Show me how it feels to work here”: Using photography to research organisational aesthetics’, Ephemera, 2(3) (2002) 224–45. A. Whitehead, Process and Reality, D.R. Griffiths and D.W. Sherburne (eds) (New York: Free Press, 1978). J. Williams, Gilles Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition: A Critical Introduction and Guide (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003). C. Wilson, ‘Phenomenology as a mystical discipline’, Philosophy Now, 56, July/ August (2006) 15–19. M. Wood, ‘The fallacy of misplaced leadership’, Journal of Management Studies, 42(6) (2005) 1101–21.

3 Leadership, Spirituality and Complexity: Wilberforce and the Abolition of the Slave Trade Peter Simpson and Clifford Hill

Spirituality in the workplace and theories of complexity are two emerging fields of research that are making an important contribution to the study of leadership practice. In this chapter we take the opportunity of the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade in the former British Empire to reflect on related ideas from these fields and apply them to a study of leadership in this movement. Our focus is the influence in Georgian society of William Wilberforce and the ‘Clapham Group’ from 1789 until the passing of the Slave Trade Act in 1807. This case study is chosen because of the extensive literature that details both the overt role of spirituality in the practice of this group and the issues of complexity in this social and political campaign. In contrast to studies of Wilberforce that focus on his character as a leader (Guinness, 1999), this study of leadership and spirituality suggests an interpretation of transformational change as a complex process that is best understood as emergent rather than led (Stacey, 2003). From this perspective leadership is just one form of participation that is an important, but not determining, component of change as a process of self-organisation. This perspective has some links with the post-heroic models of leadership (Heifetz and Laurie, 1997; Badaracco, 2002), with an emphasis upon leadership as a shared, relational practice. However, because of the centrality of power relating in Stacey’s theory of complex responsive processes, the analysis is less benign than much of this literature (see Fletcher, 2004, for a helpful critique). We begin by describing the involvement of Wilberforce and the Clapham Group in the abolition movement. This is followed by a brief outline of Stacey’s theory of complex responsive processes, and 29


key themes from the growing body of literature on spirituality and leadership. Stacey’s theory draws our attention to narrative themes and a focus on conversation rather than on the character and behaviour of particular individuals. Two sets of narrative theme are identified that are common to the leadership and spirituality literatures: (i) values and beliefs, and (ii) community, connection and integration. Whilst a fundamental implication of Stacey’s theory is that the emergence of change cannot be understood as arising from the planned intentions of individuals, the theory does suggest that attention to certain factors by leaders may contribute to the potential for change to emerge. We will discuss three of these, the quality of conversation, participation, and diversity, in relation to leadership and spirituality in the practice of Wilberforce and the Clapham Group. We conclude with a review of the implications for the practice of modern day leaders.

Wilberforce and the Clapham group Wilberforce was born in 1759 to a wealthy family at a time when Great Britain was plagued by significant social problems. Friends with the rich and powerful, he entered parliament in 1780. However, a major transformation occurred in his life in the mid-1780s when he converted to evangelical Christianity. This led directly to his involvement in the abolition movement (Hill, 2004). Wilberforce came from the same privileged ruling classes who later in parliament opposed his arguments for abolition, many of whom had gained their wealth from the slave trade. Furneaux suggests that he had ‘lived a life of pleasure for which his wealth, gaiety and charm made him perfectly equipped’ (1974, p. 11). After graduating he spent £8,000, a small fortune, purchasing his seat as MP for Hull – a common practice of that period. At this time the evangelical movement was having a growing impact in the upper middle classes, as well as in wider society through preachers like Wesley and White. In October 1784 Wilberforce travelled by carriage around Europe with the clergyman Isaac Milner, an old friend. On this trip, just before they left Nice on the 5th February 1785 they decided to read and adopt as a theme for their conversation Doddridge’s Rise and Progress of Religion. Wilberforce later recorded in his diaries that these conversations with Milner had an unsettling effect upon him until: On October 25 [1785] he wrote: ‘[I] began three or four days ago to get up very early. In the solitude and self-conversation of the

Leadership, Spirituality and Complexity 31

morning [I] had thoughts, which I trust will come to something.’ In these times of serious reflection, ‘the deep guilt and black ingratitude of my past life forced itself upon me in the strongest colours, and I condemned myself for having wasted my precious time, and opportunities, and talents’ (Belmonte, 2002, p. 83). His popularity as a witty and engaging guest at the ‘best’ parties was replaced by a concern at his increasing melancholia. He met with John Newton, the ex-slave trader and writer of the hymn, Amazing Grace, who had converted to Christianity and became a clergyman. Under Newton’s influence Wilberforce committed to ‘real Christianity’. Newton encouraged him to foster his relationships with the Thornton family, evangelical Christians whom Wilberforce had known for many years. Following his conversion, through participation in a number of evangelical networks, Wilberforce was drawn in to the abolitionist campaign. One network of social-minded evangelicals would meet at Barham Court in Teston, the home of Sir Charles and Lady Margaret Middleton. The Middleton’s asked Wilberforce to lead the movement for abolition in Parliament. It was a year later, in 1787, at dinner with Thomas Clarkson and some other friends, that Wilberforce first went public with his intention to accept the Middleton’s proposition. He subsequently spoke with Prime Minister Pitt, who was supportive. Taking a public lead in the House clearly played to Wilberforce’s strength as an orator as well as his ability to mobilise support from his powerful friends. In the preceding years Thomas Clarkson had been busy amassing evidence of the slave trade so that any motion in Parliament might carry the weight of the brutal facts of the trade, as well as an accurate assessment of its economic significance. He had visited the ports, spoken to slave traders and gained detailed information on the conditions in which slaves were transported and the manner of their treatment. Travelling throughout the country he befriended the editors of local newspapers, converted them to the Abolitionist cause, and founded new branches of the Abolitionist society. Eventually he had acquired a mass of evidence, including the names and histories of 20,000 seamen (Clarkson, 1808). Clarkson worked with Wilberforce to prepare his first parliamentary speech on abolition in 1789. Belmonte (2002) suggests Wilberforce’s speech had a powerful impact on the House. Burke stated that the speech ‘equalled anything he had heard in modern


times…’ Pitt later said, ‘Of all the men I knew Wilberforce has the greatest natural eloquence’ (p. 112). Wilberforce’s leadership role as a hub for conversation was clear to his close friend and MP for Southwark, Henry Thornton, who encouraged a number of influential professionals to form ‘a colony of Saints at Clapham’. Furneaux (1974) argues that Thornton had a deliberate strategy for promoting the influence of evangelical Christianity in society through this group, and Wilberforce had a particular role: On the whole I am in hopes some good may come out of our Clapham system, Mr Wilberforce is a candle that should not be hid under a bushel. The influence of his conversation is great and striking (p. 117). Throughout the abolitionist campaign Wilberforce was the parliamentary figurehead for a large and organised movement. Whilst a number of early parliamentary motions for abolition were to be defeated, the work of the Clapham Group finally culminated in the abolition of the trade in 1807. The participation of James Stephen, a maritime lawyer and member of the Clapham Group, proved decisive when he developed a brilliant legislative strategy that successfully outflanked the parliamentary opponents of abolition.

Leadership and complex responsive processes The previous section outlined how Wilberforce came to occupy a position of leadership in the abolitionist movement. It also sought to locate his role and activity within a wider network of relationships, most notably through his conversion to evangelical Christianity. Stacey’s (2003) theory of complex responsive processes offers an explanation of the emergence of social transformation in the ‘micro processes’ of such relationships: Instead of macro processes (systems) of participation and reification, the theory of complex responsive processes is one micro process (one social act) of gesture-response in which meaning emerges. This micro process is at one and the same time communicative interaction and power relating (p. 355). It will be argued that the leadership of Wilberforce and others within the Clapham Group may be understood as aspects of a complex, emer-


gent social process. Our focus here will be on the role of evangelical spirituality in fostering a number of significant conversational themes, contributing to the emergence of an influential social movement. However, it should be noted that this focus does not suggest that the success of the abolitionist movement was achieved solely through those with an evangelical spirituality; in fact, quite the contrary. Different political groupings within parliament were compelled to cooperate in order to achieve the abolition of the slave trade. Stacey emphasises the importance of such diversity. Unlike approaches to complexity that employ systems thinking (Styhre, 2002; Fairholm, 2004), the individual is not the prime agent of emergent change in the theory of complex responsive processes. Narrative themes, not individuals, are the basis of emergent self-organisation, for it is not people but … themes organising conversations, communication and power relations. What is organising itself, therefore, is not individuals but the pattern of their relationships in communicational and power terms … (2003, p. 332). Stacey continues: … conversational processes are organising the experience of the group of people conversing and from them, there is continually emerging the very minds of the individual participants at the same time as group phenomena of culture and ideology are emerging (2003, p. 350). In seeking to understand the leadership of Wilberforce and the other members of the Clapham Group, Stacey’s theory draws our attention away from the individuals and puts our focus upon the conversational processes, the culture and, in this situation, the ideology of evangelical spirituality. However, more than this, the conversational processes of parliament, professional business, and wider social movements need also to be considered. It is in the interplay of all of these that we see a challenge to accepted values and beliefs emerging, and as a consequence a fresh and contemporary ideology coming to have an influence at all levels in society. Stacey suggests that it is necessary to give attention to the process of conversation, to its free flowing or repetitive character, and to the identification of themes. In the interplay of responsive processes, in


which themes become significant, interact with other themes, and change form, it is possible to understand organisation as a pattern of interdependence, in which power relations form and develop. These self-organising processes of communicating enact webs of power relations, which, depending upon the quality of various factors such as the quality of participation and the presence of diversity, will lead either to novel forms of organising, in free flowing conversation, or to stability, in stuck or repetitive conversation. The theory of complex responsive processes suggests an understanding of leadership as a theme in an emerging pattern of relating. The significance of positional leaders does not necessarily diminish, but power relations are understood differently. In particular, this view recognises that these individuals are not ‘in control’ and cannot present a blueprint for an innovative future (Stacey, 2003, p. 334). A process understanding of the role of positional leaders in conversations, and the importance of listening, is beautifully summarised by Chester Barnard in his now classic treatise on the Functions of the Executive: Many things a leader tells others to do were suggested to him by the very people he leads … this sometimes gives the impression that he is a rather stupid fellow … In a measure this is correct. He has to be stupid enough to listen a great deal … and he has at times to be a mere centre of communication (1948, p. 93).

Leadership and spirituality It has been suggested that our understanding of leadership in the abolition movement can be enhanced through an appreciation of the theory of complex responsive processes. It has also been argued that evangelical spirituality played a role in this movement, involving Wilberforce and the Clapham Group. We now turn our attention to the growing body of literature that is shedding light on our understanding of leadership and spirituality. This literature identifies a number of the narrative themes that help us to understand the complex responsive processes at play in the emergence of the abolition movement. Mirvis (1997), in his classic paper on ‘Soul Work’ in organisations, touches on many of the themes that are of importance in our discussion, not least with his emphasis on issues of conversation within communities. In making connections between leadership and spirituality he also draws attention to the importance of ‘leading from within’


(p. 198), which arises from finding a sense of meaning that has a mobilising effect upon the individual. We see an example of this in Wilberforce’s conversion experience, with his diary account recording the ‘inner conversations’ and the personal transformation that took place over the period 1784–86. A number of authors have suggested possible links between spirituality and organisational leadership (Fairholm, 1996; Strack et al., 2002). In one form or another, the link between spirituality and leadership is to be found in the experience of a deeper meaning in life. This is referred to in many different ways, but appears to have the common characteristic of something important engaging the self, which constitutes a spiritual transformation, and this in turn engaging others, which is the basis of leadership. Values are at the centre of Vaill’s (1998) conception of spirituality and form the basis of the connectedness between organisational members, including between leaders and followers. He argues that where others experience the leader’s values as able to stand up to scrutiny, then there is the potential for a deeper level of connection. These ideas are further developed in the literature on values-based leadership (Shamir et al., 1993; Bass and Avolio, 1994; Fry, 2003). Bennis and Nanus (1997) suggest that the ability to engage others is a function of ‘trust, integrity and positioning’ (p. 174), which combines core themes in the values-based leadership literature with Barnard’s notion of leaders as occupying a position at the ‘centre of communication’. In relation to issues of participation and diversity that will be discussed in more detail in the following section, there is an important debate in the current literature on spirituality and leadership concerning the relationship between religion and spirituality (Bell and Taylor, 2004). Some seek to distinguish between, indeed to separate, the two. Steingard (2005) argues for focusing on spirituality rather than religion in organisations ‘because we are far from realising any consensual religion in the so-called everyday life of the workplace’ (p. 228). In the Clapham Group we see religion and spirituality as strongly interdependent. This was sometimes overt in the way Wilberforce took up his leadership role in Parliament. For example, in his first major speech on the slave trade, on May 12, 1789, he spoke for three hours calling for the abolition, making his Christian beliefs and values a strong element in his argument that the trade was murderous and inhumane (Belmonte, 2002, p. 112). From the perspective of complex responsive processes, this interplay of religion and spirituality in leadership is both significant and


problematic. It is significant in the sense that the values and beliefs embodied in evangelical Christianity form the substance of the ‘deeper meaning’ for Wilberforce and for the wider conversations that the spread of this religion was having throughout Georgian society at this time. These are the conversational themes that, through complex responsive processes, contributed to the social transformation that has been described. Wilberforce was able to ‘lead from within’ because of his religious and spiritual conversion. These conversational themes engaged others for whom the expressed values also resonated, not only within parliament but throughout the country and beyond. This combination of religion and spirituality is problematic to the extent that religious language can be excluding and even offensive. It has the capacity to inhibit conversation as much as to facilitate it. Stacey argues that high quality conversation is essential for emergent change. This negative consequence of religion that Steingard identifies led directly to the fact that Wilberforce was unpopular with many in parliament. However, whilst clearly a source of some conflict, this case study of the abolition movement suggests that it is not always possible to separate religion and spirituality, even if some might prefer to. It is our contention that it is more important to give attention to high quality conversation and participation in the presence of a diversity of values and beliefs, including religious ideology. This is addressed in detail below where we discuss how the abolition movement ultimately managed to transcend religious rivalries.

Quality of conversation and participation The theory of complex responses processes suggests that the spiritual transformation in Wilberforce was essentially the same as the social transformation that was occurring within Georgian society. However, when considering transformation in an individual mind, the pattern of inner conversations must be considered. This is significant for our consideration of spirituality and leadership, because most forms of spirituality have developed some very specific forms of ‘inner conversation’, such as prayer, meditation and study. Stacey suggests that Mind is silent conversation, that action of a body directed to itself, which is private meaning, or consciousness. The silent conversation


is the same process as the conversation of gestures between bodies and in this sense mind is always a social phenomenon (p. 322). This is in keeping with Driver’s (2005, p. 1096) psychoanalytically informed view of the self: ‘that we construct our selves and our identities in discourse …’ Stacey elaborates: … power, ideology and emotion [are] at the centre of social relationships and therefore at the centre of conversation. All of these factors will, thus, characterise the silent conversations individuals have with themselves. Minds too will be taken up with power relationships, ideological and emotional interchanges of a body with itself, some of which will be the voices of group opinion (p. 326). Wilberforce’s two year struggle as he converted to evangelical Christianity may be better understood with an appreciation of this emotional mix of evolving power relations and shifting ideology. This was not an idle assent to a new set of values and beliefs, but a more profound re-orientation of his understanding of himself. This was the basis of Wilberforce’s leadership, ‘leading from within’ (Mirvis, 1997) with the capacity to connect deeply with others through being in touch with the deeper parts of himself (Vaill, 1998, p. 219). However, Wilberforce’s leadership, like the followership of those he led, is understood from the perspective of the theory of complex responsive processes as merely a part of a larger process. For our purposes, Wilberforce’s leadership is merely an expression, not the source, of an ongoing and emergent conversation. Wilberforce’s leadership as participation in a wider process is made clear by tracing the genesis of the abolitionist movement. Wilberforce took up the challenge in 1787, more than 100 years after the twin issues of the slave trade and slavery were raised at a meeting of German Quakers across the Atlantic in Germantown, Pennsylvania. Quaker friends were persistently advised to avoid the trade, until in 1774 a ‘decree of expulsion from the Society was passed on any Friend who should persist in concerning himself with the Trade. At the same time, manumission of existing slaves was recommended to all Friends and in 1776 it was made compulsory’ (Coupland, 1923, p. 76). This graphically describes for the Quaker community the ‘pattern of their relationships in communicational and power terms …’ (Stacey, 2003, p. 332). In Great Britain there were a number of lone voices speaking out in the late 17th century, including an Anglican clergyman named Godwyn,


and Baxter, a well-known non-conformist. However, it was again the Quakers who mobilised an organised movement against the trade in 1724. In 1761, like their Pennsylvanian counterparts, they passed a resolution to disown all friends who continued to participate in the trade. Over this period the Wesleyans followed the Quakers’ lead, with first Whitefield hinting that the slave trade was anti-Christian (1739); then John Wesley, in 1774, published Thoughts Upon Slavery (Coupland, 1923, p. 79). The values and beliefs of Quaker and evangelical Christian spirituality were increasingly mobilised to support the abolition movement, and the extent to which one was able or not to remain a part of these communities became an increasingly prevalent theme. Over this period the same theme is evident in the popular literature of the time. Basker (2002) collected 400 poems from more than 250 different poets, arguing that ‘poets were the most outspoken and persistent critics of slavery, and fostered massive changes in public perception and attitude.’ (p. xlvii). This is not a view merely promoted some two centuries later: both Thomas Clarkson (1808), a leader of the abolitionists, friend of Wilberforce and member of the Clapham Group, and Henri Grégoire (1808/1996) argued that writers played a central role in the demise of the slave trade and slavery.

Quality of diversity An understanding of the wide range of participation in the abolitionist movement also allows us to appreciate the diversity that existed in this movement. Stacey argues that diversity is essential for the emergence of novelty and change. We will consider the quality of diversity in two areas: firstly in the range of individuals, from differing professions, who shared Wilberforce’s evangelical spirituality, and worked actively within him against the slave trade; and, secondly, those other groupings who shared the ambition to abolish the trade, but held radically different, sometimes even opposing, beliefs and practices. Firstly, those who worked closely with Wilberforce in the fight against the slave trade included a large number of evangelical Christians. Some of those closest to him lived on Clapham Common, and are referred to as the Clapham Community. The ‘Clapham Group’ was a wider network spread throughout the country. They possessed a wide range of skills, professions and abilities, including lawyers, academics, educators, writers, clergy, merchant bankers, researchers and politicians. As we have seen the participation of this diverse range of individuals provided the basis for extensive and creative engagement with the


abolitionist cause. There was a third grouping in parliament, known a little disparagingly as ‘the Saints’, comprising 29 evangelical MPs who voted with Wilberforce on a number of key issues. These three groupings participated in a range of political, religious, and social movements, with connections to hubs of influence throughout the country and the wider empire. Secondly, ‘the Saints’ in parliament collaborated with parliamentary groups who had philosophies very different to their own, including the Whigs and Dissenters. This tolerance of diversity made them possibly the first in British parliamentary history to identify and use ‘cobelligerents’ to achieve their objectives. In the period of nearly two decades in which Wilberforce and the Clapham Group worked to bring about legislative change to abolish the slave trade there was extreme diversity of opinion and argument. The extreme positions represented both within parliament and within society as a whole were held by the abolitionists on the one hand and significant sections of the ruling classes on the other. The wealth of the latter had been and continued to be generated directly or indirectly through the slave trade. Importantly, the participation and support of those who were at neither extreme was of critical importance in the success of either side. Perhaps more than most organisations, this battle for change would come down, ultimately, to a vote. In this context it is interesting to observe the creativity that emerged in the actions of both sides as they sought to shift opinion in their favour. For example, in 1796 Wilberforce proposed the motion for abolition again. The first and second readings were both passed. On its third reading, however, it was defeated by 74 to 70. Wilberforce recorded in his diary: Ten or 12 of those who had supported me were absent in the country, or on pleasure. Enough [were] at the Opera to have carried it … His opponents, never ones to miss an opportunity, had given free opera tickets to some whom they knew would support his abolition bill (Belmonte, 2002, p. 134). It is a telling example of the nature of complex responsive processes that, ultimately, the abolition of the slave trade may have been delayed for over ten years by the micro process of the giving and receiving of a few opera tickets. Finally, after Pitt’s untimely death in 1806, at the age of 47, Wilberforce found himself working with Grenville, for whom he had some


dislike, and Fox, leader of the opposition. Perversely, it was a motion set before parliament by Grenville that was ultimately passed and in working with an old enemy Wilberforce finally saw the fruit of nearly 20 years work: The night of February 23, 1807 was unforgettable… The evening reached its climax when Solicitor-Captain Sir Samuel Romilly came to the closing remarks of his deeply moving speech. Romilly [stated that Wilberforce would be] … able to lie down in peace because he had ‘preserved so many millions of his fellow creatures.’ The House of Commons rose to its feet, turned to Wilberforce and began to cheer. They gave three rousing hurrahs whilst Wilberforce sat with his head bowed and wept. Then at four a.m., the Commons voted to abolish the slave trade by an overwhelming majority, 283 to 16 (Belmonte, 2002, p. 148). Whilst Wilberforce and the Clapham Group were overt about the religion that underpinned their own spirituality, they also worked actively with those of other beliefs (religious and secular) who shared a commitment to act, as Vaill suggests, ‘on values that transcend the sheer material conditions and events of the world’ (1998, p. 219).

Implications for leaders today This paper has explored the contribution that can be made to understanding leadership in an emerging social and political movement through the lenses of complex responsive processes and spirituality. Many of the insights derived from this study, from two centuries ago, are as relevant now as they were at the time. Implicit in Stacey’s theory is the importance of conversational processes that comprise a high quality of listening. We see this not only in a preparedness to listen to others and the themes that emerge in public conversation, but also in a preparedness to listen in the private conversations of the leader’s mind. Wilberforce was transformed by his inner conversations, and this transformation was important in his ability to play a role in an emerging social movement. This highlights the developmental potential for leaders of forms of meditative or reflective practice (see, for example, Jaworski, 1998) and the development of greater levels of self-awareness. Stacey refers to this development of self-awareness as ‘paying more attention to the quality of your own experience of relating and managing in relationship with others’ (2003, p. 422).


This is not necessarily a simple or pleasant process. There is a challenge to leaders to be prepared to serve (Greenleaf, 1977) and to pay a price in the struggle required to engage in the complex power relations that emerge and unfold. The two years of struggle in Wilberforce’s spiritual conversion were followed by participation in two decades of struggle in the cause of abolition. Similar modern day leadership exemplars include Ghandi and Mandela (Mandela, 1994; Nair, 1997). Underpinning the theory of complex responsive processes is an awareness of the essential connectedness of human beings. The literature on workplace spirituality identifies this as the basis of a value set that challenges self-centred behaviours, particularly in the exercise of power. Wilberforce and the Clapham Group sought to acknowledge their connectedness with others – whether slave or free – and to work from a values base that recognised equality as a basic human right. This form of principled leadership stands in contrast to the unethical behaviour that characterises the way some choose to participate in their organisations, illustrated by studies of Enron, WorldCom and Andersen. This connectedness is also significant at a time when many social and global conflicts are characterised by fundamentalism and exclusivity. The ability to engage in a high quality of conversation and participation and with increasing levels of diversity seem more essential than ever. This does not need to be at the expense of one’s own values and beliefs, but it does require a belief in the value of finding ways to talk and listen to one another.

References J. Badaracco, Leading Quietly (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2002). C. Barnard, ‘The Nature of Leadership’, in K. Grint (ed.) (1997) Leadership (New York: Oxford University Press, 1948). J.G. Basker (ed.) Amazing Grace. An Anthology of Poems about Slavery 1660–1810 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002). B.M. Bass and B.J. Avolio, Improving Organisational Leadership Through Transformational Leadership (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1994). E. Bell and S. Taylor, ‘“From outward bound to inward bound”: The prophetic voices and discursive practices of spiritual management development’, Human Relations, 57 (2004) 439–66. K. Belmonte, Here for Humanity. A Biography of William Wilberforce (Colorado Springs: NavPress Publishing Group, 2002). W.G. Bennis and B. Nanus, Leaders. Strategies for Taking Charge (New York: HarperBusiness, 1997). T. Clarkson, History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade, (1808), Available from http://oll.libertyfund.org/Home3/ Set.php?recordID=0591 [Accessed 1 December 2006].

42 Leadership Perspectives R. Coupland, Wilberforce. A Narrative (Oxford: OUP, 1923). M. Driver, ‘From empty speech to full speech? Reconceptualizing spirituality in organisations based on a psychoanalytically-grounded understanding of the self’, Human Relations, 58 (2005) 1091–110. M.R. Fairholm, ‘Spiritual leadership: Fulfilling the whole self needs at work’, Leadership and Organisation Development Journal, 17 (1996) 11–17. M.R. Fairholm, ‘A new sciences outline for leadership development’, Leadership and Organisation Development Journal, 25 (2004) 369–83. J.K. Flectcher, ‘The paradox of post-heroic leadership. An essay on gender, power and transformational change’, Leadership Quarterly, 15 (2004) 647–61. L. Fry, ‘Towards a theory of spiritual leadership’, Leadership Quarterly, 14 (2003) 693–727. R. Furneaux, William Wilberforce (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1974). R.K. Greenleaf, Servant Leadership. A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness (New York: Paulist Press, 1977). H. Grégoire, On the Cultural Achievements of Negroes. First published Paris. New Edition and Translation by Thomas Cassirer and Jean-François Brière. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1808/1996). O. Guinness, Character Counts: Leadership Qualities in Washington, Wilberforce, Lincoln, Solzhenitsyn (Grand Rapids: Baker Publishing Group, 1999). R.A. Heifetz and D.L. Laurie, ‘The work of leadership’, Harvard Business Review, January–February (1997) 124–34. C. Hill, The Wilberforce Connection (Oxford: Monarch Books, 2004). J. Jaworski, Synchronicity. The Inner Path of Leadership (San Francisco: BerrettKoehler, 1998). N. Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom (London: Abacus, 1994). P.H. Mirvis, ‘“Soul work” in organisations’, Organisation Science, 8 (1997) 193–206. K. Nair, A Higher Standard of Leadership. Lessons from the Life of Ghandi (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 1997). B. Shamir, R.J. House and M.B. Arthur, ‘The motivational effects of charismatic leadership: A self-concept based theory’, Organisation Science, 4 (1993) 577–94. R.D. Stacey, Strategic Management and Organisational Dynamics. The Challenge of Complexity (London: Prentice Hall, 2003). D. Steingard, ‘Spiritually-informed management theory. Toward profound possibilities for inquiry and transformation’, Journal of Management Inquiry, 14 (2005) 227–41. G. Strack, M. Fottler, M. Wheatley and P. Sodomka, ‘Spirituality and effective leadership in healthcare: Is there a connection?’, Frontiers of Health Services Management, 18 (2002) 3–45. A. Styhre, ‘Non-linear change in organisations: Organisation change management informed by complexity theory’, Leadership and Organisation Development Journal, 23 (2002) 343–51. P.B. Vaill, Spirited Leading and Learning: Process Wisdom for a New Age (San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 1998).

4 Sharing Thoughts on Leadership and Friendship Robert French

Preliminary thoughts It is not my custom to write academic papers for my friends, but just to share thoughts with them. Today, in your case, Dear Reader, I shall, therefore, just share thoughts with you, for I wish our friendship to be made perfect as soon as it begins. This greeting is adapted from the opening words of a letter by Marsilio Ficino (Letter 69), the great Renaissance master of friendship and leadership, and the chapter sets out to explore some perspectives on leadership and friendship from the classical, Western friendship tradition, which lies behind his words. The aim is to see aspects of leadership in a different way, by relaxing and reframing some of our more or less taken-for-granted assumptions about friendship. There is a constant pressure on leaders today to produce results – often without consideration for people or for ethical issues. These issues are central to the friendship tradition, and the hope, therefore, is that by reconsidering what we know about friendship, we may be able to adopt new attitudes to leadership and to develop new models of action. The chapter looks at what we might learn from the classical friendship tradition in terms of three questions: (i) What is friendship? – the key theoretical concept here is of friendship as a hexis, that is, a state of mind or disposition, rather than a feeling state or even primarily a relationship; (ii) What motivates friendship? – here Aristotle’s model of ‘levels’ of friendship suggests ways in which the basic concept of friendship as a state of mind comes to be enacted; 43


(iii) How to do friendship? – finally, some of the specific practices or actions of friendship will be discussed. Modern ways of thinking place friendship firmly in the private sphere and view a leader’s friendship networks with suspicion – even setting up legal frameworks to discourage such alliances or interest groups. From the perspective of the classical friendship tradition, however, the friendship-leadership pairing would not be viewed with suspicion. Rather the opposite: the leader to mistrust and to fear, as unpredictable and unreliable, would be the one who did not have, and work with and through, friends. At such times, leaders without a supportive friendship network might have been viewed with just the suspicion that we project onto leaders who appear to rely on – and to do favours for? – their ‘cronies’ (17th-century slang for ‘old friends’).

(i) Thoughts on the question: what is friendship? – basic conceptual frameworks I often write in public spaces, such as cafés, and people sometimes ask what I am writing. The answer – ‘I’m writing about friendship in the workplace’ – always prompts a response, generally one that suggests the issue really does matter to them, but that they have never heard it acknowledged as a theme that might be written about. In one case, for example, a plumber taking a tea break said, instantly and emphatically, ‘Important’, and added, ‘Don’t get on, you’re not ‘appy. You don’t do yourself no good.’ His themes – getting on and the link between happiness and the good – are, of course, central to classical philosophy generally (Hadot, 2002), and also specific to the friendship tradition. On further thought, he also raised a basic question about the relationship of friendship to leadership: ‘Not sure about the boss though. I’m not sure you can be friends with the boss.’ He knew that ‘having a drink with the boss’ could be problematic for relations with peers, who might see one as taking sides or trying to curry favour and hence as not trustworthy. However, he also reflected on what a different atmosphere there is, when a leader listens to and knows the workforce, takes an interest in them, understands them, and acts on that understanding. He concluded with a thought-provoking phrase: ‘I suppose that’s a kind of friendship …’ – and left. This turn of phrase suggests the most basic question, what is friendship? This must be explored, in order to establish what kinds of friendship we can allow, enjoy, use, or seek out and encourage, in relation to leadership.

Sharing Thoughts on Leadership and Friendship 45

Writers in the classical tradition1 were in no doubt about the personal and interpersonal pleasures (delectio) and pains of friendship. However – and strangely to modern sensibilities – friendship was not understood primarily in terms of the relationship between two people, nor even primarily as a particular form of affectionate bond, but rather as what Aristotle called a hexis, that is, a ‘disposition’ or ‘state of mind’, also sometimes translated as ‘habit’: ‘love is a feeling, friendship a state of mind’ (Nicomachean Ethics, Book 8, 1157b29). Rather than a more or less intimate relationship, therefore, it was seen as the state of mind in which the relationship was located, and out of which a friendship – in our sense – might grow. Remarkably, it was a view of friendship which did not necessarily even demand personal acquaintance, ‘for … we love, in a certain fashion, even those whom we have never seen’ (Cicero, Laelius: de Amicitia, 8.28, in Haseldine, 1994, p. 240). The predominant view of friendship in the modern world, by contrast, locates it firmly in the world of private relations, not role relations, a private not a public affair: ‘Friendship has been relegated to private life and thereby weakened in comparison to what it once was. … “Friendship” has become for the most part the name of a type of emotional state rather than a type of social and political relationship’ (MacIntyre, 1985, p. 1562). Allan Silver similarly describes the ‘historically unprecedented emphasis on personal intimacy’ in modern friendship (1989, p. 293), which tends, as a result, to be seen as personal, private, voluntary, unspecialised, informal, and non-contractual: Such friendships are grounded in the uniquely irreplaceable qualities of partners – their ‘true’ or ‘real’ selves, defined and valued independently of their place in public systems of power, utility and esteem. Friendships so conceived turn on intimacy, the confident revelation of the self to a trusted other, the sharing of expressive and consummatory activities. The behavior of friends to each other is appropriately interpreted through knowledge of the other’s inner nature, not the content or consequences of actions (Silver, 1989, pp. 274–5). Thus, the modern phrase ‘intimate relations’ emphasises inwardness to the exclusion of others, whereas friendship in the classical tradition demonstrates a psychic and emotional depth that is actually inclusive of others (see French and Moore, 2004). However, despite this modern emphasis on emotional, interpersonal intimacy and on the exclusion of friendship from ‘public systems of power’ and ‘political relationships’,


there are organisational contexts, which do still use the language of friendship, definitely extending even to ‘those whom we have never seen’. For example, many organisations, such as ‘Friends of the Earth’, include the word ‘friend’ in their names, although this ‘friendship’ has no personal basis. Members of such organisations call themselves ‘friends’, because, as with a ‘real’ friend, they wish to take supportive action for a cause or an idea, or to support those actually engaged in the work. Their commitment is not to an intimate other, but their loyalty might suggest that another person is indeed the object of the ‘friendship’; self-sacrifice for the sake of this ‘other’ may take the form of time, energy, ideas, creativity, organising skill or money. As an example, the Aims of the ‘Friends of East Surrey Hospital’ are: ‘To supplement the service provided by East Surrey Hospital for the comfort and welfare of the patients, staff and visitors by the provision of equipment and amenities, by running the hospital coffee shops, and generally supporting the voluntary work of the hospital.’ These echo the actions of friends towards each other – comfort and support, welcome and hospitality, all based on voluntary effort, not financial reward – but do not involve the emotional intimacy we generally associate with friendship. The only material reward for members of the Friends of East Surrey Hospital is to receive annual reports and accounts, and to be invited to the AGM. So organisations of ‘friends’ may be born out of interpersonal friendships – real friends, who share not only a passion for the cause, but also a passion for each other (Raymond, 1986) – but their actions engender something quite new. This new creation, in its turn, makes it possible for others – including, of course, complete strangers and many who, presumably would not even like each other, were they to meet outside the ‘friends-ship’ – to share in both the passion for the cause and, one might say therefore, indirectly in the friendship itself: ‘Since a man’s friend is another self, so to speak, the friend’s actions will be his own in a sense’ (St Thomas Aquinas in Schwartz, 2007, p. 4, n. 103). Thus, ‘friends-of’ organisations provide a clear example of the way in which friendship as a state of mind can underpin, or may, in some instances, even be inseparable from, leadership. It is a phenomenon which is also evident in other, less specialised, contexts. Historically, it was clearly fundamental to the formation of the Quakers – the ‘Society of Friends’ – and may help to account for their success, despite violent persecution. Similarly, in the story of the anti-slavery movement, the theme of friendship and the emotional and practical support it offers,


runs as a golden thread through the fabric of the relations between leaders: And it was by no means a one-sided friendship. Pitt wanted Wilberforce in those days to talk to, to confide in, just as much as he wanted Dundas later on. ‘Pray come to Wimbledon as soon as possible,’ he writes in the early days of his premiership to hasten him back from the Midlands: ‘I want to talk with you about your navy bills … and about ten thousand other things.’ (Coupland, 1923, p. 26). Once the matrix of friendship has been spotted in cases such as this, it becomes obvious in many others (see, for example, French and Thomas, 1999; Farrell, 2001). However, we tend to overlook the significance of such references to the leadership-friendship pairing. In part, this may be because of the familiarity of the language used – Pitt wanted Wilberforce ‘to talk to, to confide in’ – and in part as a result of the vacuum around friendship in the literature on organisations generally (though see Grey and Sturdy, 2007). A parallel context in which the link between leadership and the disposition of friendship is apparent is that of ‘start-up’ organisations, perhaps because they are all likely to face some form of resistance, if not direct persecution. Here friendship often provides the generative vision for the creation of a new enterprise, and then sustains them through difficult times and situations, internally and externally. Highly successful companies, such as Aardman Animations and Innocent Drinks, for example, were started and grew within the matrix of friendship. It is a phenomenon that seems to be particularly common among small businesses with a creative focus, such as design companies, and also voluntary or third sector organisations, as well as – more obviously, perhaps – co-operatives. Cases such as these demonstrate knowledge-into-action in two important ways. Firstly, the answer from the classical tradition to the question, ‘what is friendship?’ – namely that it is a state of mind – offers a lens with which to identify specific leadership phenomena and a framework for understanding them; it points to the creativity and innovation that this disposition towards self and other can generate. The leadership of any organisation in its early days almost certainly demands some of the themes noted above in relation to ‘friends’ organisations: selfsacrifice in the form of time, energy, ideas, creativity, organising skill, or financial support. Greiner’s model of organisational lifecycles suggests


that entrepreneurs ‘are usually idea people or technical experts rather than organisers’ (Hatch and Cunliffe, 2006, p. 119). What the dynamic and disposition of friendship may do is to buy some time, as it were; the new organisation can be ‘held’ by the friendship for long enough to develop the ‘organisers’ necessary for longer-term success, or to bring them in from outside, in particular administrative leaders (Simpson, 2007). The second point from these cases is, perhaps, less obvious and has two aspects. As a state of mind, friendship appears to be inseparable from action. For instance, all the ‘types’ of friend identified in Spencer and Pahl’s research, from simple to complex, imply action of some kind: associate, useful contact, favour friend, fun friend, helpmate, comforter, confidant, soulmate (2006, pp. 60–71). Action flows from friendship: we not only wish the best for our friends, but seek to do things that will benefit them – Aquinas’s benevolentia and beneficentia (Schwartz, 2007). However, there is, in addition, something not only containing but also challenging about the context created by the disposition of friendship: ‘Let [your friend] be to thee forever a sort of beautiful enemy, untamable, devoutly revered’ (Emerson, 1992, p. 104); or, as Blake so pithily put it: ‘Opposition is true friendship’ (Blake, 1972, p. 157). Because the atmosphere or culture created by friendship combines both support and challenge, it has the capacity to stimulate new thoughts, new knowledge, new plans, new ideas. Friendship can be the fulcrum for both the identification of new ideas and their realisation in action. To the extent that leadership is concerned precisely with innovation and action, this shared feature seems worthy of further consideration. This brings us to the second question – what motivates friendship? The primary theoretical notion of friendship as a ‘state of mind’ is the basis for the model of friendship developed by Aristotle to explain the different levels of commitment that can motivate different kinds of friendship.

(ii) Thoughts on the question: what motivates friendship? – Aristotle’s model of three ‘levels’: utility, pleasure, the pursuit of virtue One of the longest lasting foundations of the classical tradition is the idea that friendship can have different levels of motivation. Aristotle’s model is fundamental. It describes three different ‘levels’ of friendship, from ‘base’ to ‘ideal’, representing respectively the search for utility, for pleasure, and for virtue or the good – or ‘advantage, pleasure, or the


desire for mental communion’ (Stern-Gillet 1995, p. 37; for a fuller description, see French, 2007). Aristotle identified utility as the basis for the lowest of the three levels. This is because ‘those who love each other because of the useful do not love them for themselves, but in so far as some good accrues to each of them from the other’ (Nicomachean Ethics, Book 8, 1156a10). Thus the usefulness of friends has always been acknowledged as the underlying motivation for one type of friendship, fundamental in some respects, but traditionally seen as the most limited or underdeveloped: ‘the useful is not something that lasts, but varies with the moment; so, when what made them be friends has been removed, the friendship is dissolved as well, in so far as it existed in relation to what brought it about’ (ibid., 1156a21–2). The second level describes friendships based on pleasure or congeniality. This level does indeed involve affection, and was seen as superior to, and potentially more lasting than, mere utility. However, pleasure-based friendships still have as their true object not a person but the mutual enjoyment of similar likes: ‘Similarly, too, with those who love each other because of pleasure: people do not feel affection for the witty for their being of a certain character, but for the pleasure they themselves get from them’ (ibid., 1156a13). Although both of these types of friendship clearly value the friend, they value more what can be gained from the relationship for oneself: ‘In fact these friendships are friendships incidentally; for the one loved is not loved by reference to the person he is but to the fact that in the one case he provides some good and in the other some pleasure. Such friendships, then, are easily dissolved, if the parties become different …’ (ibid., 1156a17–18). With true friendship, vera amicitia or amicitia perfecta, a different level is reached: However, it is the friendship between good people, those resembling each other in excellence, that is complete; for each alike of these wishes good things for the other in so far as he is good, and he is good in himself. And those who wish good things for their friends, for their friends’ sake, are friends most of all; for they do so because of the friends themselves, and not incidentally (ibid., 1156b7). It would, however, be too easy simply to dismiss the lower levels. They were not thought of as mutually exclusive. The ‘higher’ form of true friendship was not opposed to self-interest, but was understood to


include the characteristics of the lower forms and to encompass both utility and pleasure – the higher the level, the greater can be the friends’ mutual pleasure and their usefulness to each other. The case of St Anselm – ‘the man of his century most gifted for friendship’ (Fiske, 1961, p. 259) – exemplifies all aspects of Aristotle’s model. First of all, Anselm was, by any measure, an outstanding leader. In terms of spirituality, his influence is still acknowledged: ‘the dialectic he fathered and the affective devotion he developed changed the whole atmosphere of Western spirituality for the rest of the Middle Ages and beyond’ (Ward, 1973, p. 81; see also Moss, 1999). In organisational terms, his success as a leader was not only marked at the ‘local’ level, as Abbot of the Northern French monastery of Bec, but also at the national and international level in his role as Archbishop of Canterbury. In this role, he had to deal with fraught relations between Church and State in England and with wider church relations between Canterbury and Rome (Southern, 1963, 1990; Vaughn, 1987). In all of this, friendship was his guiding principle. Fundamental to everything was amicitia perfecta, with the friend conceived of as another self: ‘Anselm loves his friend because of God, and because of the friend, not for Anselm’s own sake.’ (Fiske, 1961, p. 56). However, his understanding of the disposition of friendship also clearly extended to an awareness of how to use friendship politically. On his departure for England in 1093, for example, he wrote a final letter – a ‘blueprint for action’ (Vaughn, 1987, p. 12) – to his successors at Bec, in which he advised them above all to keep friendship as the central ideal in the management of their affairs and to devote time, energy and resources into cultivating friendships for the sake of the monastery: … you should hasten to acquire faithful friends from every side, striving after the good work of hospitality, extending kindness to all, and when this is not feasible, reaching out to please with affable words. Nor believe yourself ever to have enough friends, but gather all to you in friendship, whether rich or poor; so that this can both bring profit for the utility of your church and increase the safety of those you love (in Vaughn, 1987, p. 12). In modern jargon, one could say that Anselm is here proposing friendship to other leaders as the key to strategic leadership, to the management of internal and external relationships, and as the lynch-pin of a new policy agenda. Today, however, in an age that claims to view ‘people’ as an organisation’s ‘most important asset’ and stresses the


importance of ‘networking’, of ‘partnerships’ and of ‘stakeholder management’, it is hard to imagine present-day leaders openly recommending friendship, in this way. Has a senior management agenda ever included ‘an account of friendship’ alongside the ‘financial accounts’? And yet it is clear that friendship, based explicitly on the classical tradition, was a driving force in the extraordinary success of monastic culture in the 11th and 12th centuries – under St Bernard and St Aelred of Rievaulx, for example, as well as St Anselm – with all the advances that accompanied it, social, political, organisational, and technological (White, 1978), as well as spiritual and liturgical. The classical view of friendship has one striking implication for leadership: if the other – whether colleague, employee, partner, stakeholder, client, customer, maybe even competitor – is seen as a ‘friend’, that is, as ‘another self’, then ethical considerations become central to leadership. To see all of these as friends – in however utilitarian a sense – places demands on a leader that are in stark contrast to the demands of the market and to a culture of targets. When the ‘bottom line’ is the welfare of the other, the implications for action are immense. The lie is given, for example, to the fantasy that ‘downsizing’ and ‘employee welfare’ can coexist in the same ethical framework. So it is the combination of the ethical with the practical, which gives friendship its fundamentally social or systemic weight in the classical tradition. Aristotle’s recognition of the link between leadership and friendship in his ethical scheme is clear from his assertion that it is more important for leaders to strive for friendship than for justice, because ‘there is no need for rules of justice between people who are friends, whereas if they are just they still need friendship.’ (Nicomachean Ethics, Book 8, 1155a27). This brings us to the third and final question.

(iii) Thoughts on the question: how to do friendship? – the art of friendship The art – or practices – of friendship are not, by any means, only to be found in ‘projects for action’ that have a ‘certain magnitude’. Friendship is often, maybe even generally, expressed in the detail. Traditionally, such actions have included: letter-writing (now email?); mutual help of all kinds; ethical instruction; sharing advice; what today is sometimes called ‘critical friendship’, in which, as an alter ego, the friend can act as a mirror to one’s self; the offer of contacts in new cities or as an entrée into social or business circles, where a letter of recommendation can be the key


to acceptance; or simply a listening ear, offering a particular kind of confidentiality. All of these and more have, over the centuries, demonstrated the practical working out of the hexis of friendship in a variety of contexts. Alongside such general activities, however, two practices from the friendship tradition stand out as of particular relevance to leadership: hospitality and frankness of speech.

Hospitality Hospitality is one traditional art of friendship that still appears in the language of modern organisations: the ‘hospitality suite’ and the ‘hospitality budget’ might be taken as examples of the friendship-utility link in action – combined, perhaps, with pleasure. However, the performative culture of organisational life today means that hospitality is in danger of being subsumed as just another form of emotional labour (Hochschild, 1983): ‘And the traditional warm-hearted hospitality?’ ‘That too can be learned,’ replied Sir Jack. ‘And by being learned, it will be the more authentic. Or is that too cynical a notion for you, Martha?’ (Barnes, 1998, p. 108). At a most basic level, the presence – or absence – of the disposition of friendship is often demonstrated simply in the ways in which people are received into an organisation, a department, a group, or a room. Workshop leaders, for example, who greet participants with a handshake, a smile and refreshments could be thought of as motivated by friendship towards them; food and drink being archetypal symbols of friendship or ‘companionship’ (cum and panis, indicating someone with whom I am prepared to share my bread). The value of such simple, human gestures is not to be underestimated. Seen through the lens of friendship, anything that makes the other feel welcome may be seen as creating a context for conversation, ‘the practice and consummation of friendship’ (Emerson, 1841/1992, p. 102). There is a deeper level to hospitality. Illich and Sanders’ definition of friendship is in terms of the depth of relatedness that can be achieved through hospitality. They take their definition from a letter by the 12th-century mystic and theologian Hugh of St Victor: I was a foreigner and met you in a strange land. But the land was not really strange for I found friends there. I don’t know whether


I first made friends or was made one. But I found charity there and I loved it; and could not tire of it … (Illich, 1993, p. 27, his translation of the epigraph to Illich and Sanders, 1988, pp. v, 127). The direct opposite of this experience is described in his autobiography by the poet and novelist Jack Clemo. He attributes the moment of his father’s breakdown precisely to a lack of hospitality, using a phrase that is a remarkable inversion of Hugh’s experience: ‘the collapse came when he was friendless in a strange country’ (Clemo, 1988, p. 4, italics added). In our own day, these insights are reflected in the field of depth psychology. Psychoanalysis has demonstrated that our relationship to significant others is central to the creation of our most basic sense of self and of identity; as Gerhardt (2004) has so neatly put it: ‘love matters’ (See also Alvarez, 1992; Holmes, 1993; Fonagy, 2001). Illich’s exploration of the friendship tradition shows that ‘hospitality matters’ (See essays in Hoinacki and Mitcham, 2002; especially those by Garrigós, by Prakash, and by Illich himself). In addition to seeing it as central to friendship, he related it explicitly to this volume’s key theme of knowledge into action: Learned and leisurely hospitality is the only antidote to the stance of deadly cleverness that is acquired in the professional pursuit of objectively secured knowledge. I remain certain that the quest for truth cannot thrive outside the nourishment of mutual trust flowering into a commitment to friendship. Therefore I have tried to identify the climate that fosters and the ‘conditioned’ air that hinders the growth of friendship (Illich, 2002, p. 235).

Parrhesia, or frankness of speech The second ‘art’ of friendship, of particular relevance to leadership, is that of parrhesia or frankness of speech – what Foucault (2001) called ‘fearless speech’. In our age, where leadership is in constant danger of ‘infection’ from the culture of celebrity and ‘spin’, this straight talking may be one of the most immediately useful, although also challenging, aspects of the friendship tradition for modern leaders. Here the theory meets practice in a way that can be adopted without any reference to the word ‘friendship’. The ability to challenge and the capacity to be challenged were captured in this term parrhesia. Frankness of speech was seen as essential


to the disposition of friendship. Foucault gives a vivid summary of both concept and practice: [Parrhesia is] verbal activity in which a speaker expresses his personal relationship to truth, and risks his life because he recognises truth-telling as a duty to help improve or help other people (as well as himself). In parrhesia, the speaker uses his freedom and chooses frankness instead of persuasion, truth instead of falsehood or silence, the risk of death instead of life and security, criticism instead of flattery, and moral duty instead of self-interest and moral apathy (2001, pp. 19–20). This is an idea of friendship that is robust not fragile, and one which appears once again with the Quakers, or ‘friends’, in their idea of ‘speaking truth to power’. Far from being afraid of losing the friend as a result of saying what one thinks, the friendship tradition argues that – when such friendships are real – ‘they are not glass threads or frostwork, but the solidest thing we know’ (Emerson, 1992, p. 99). The problem for leaders, that has always been associated with frankness of speech, is its parody, flattery. For example, it was recognised that the most skilled flatterer would put on an act of frankness, appearing to tell a leader uncomfortable truths while really telling them just what they thought they wanted to hear: A friend is nowhere near a flatterer, and is furthest removed in this, that the one praises everything, while the other would not go along with you when you are erring; … the former … is not impressed with you, but with your money or your power (Themistius, 4th century C.E., quoted in Konstan, 1997, p. 153; see also Fitzgerald, 1996; Glad, 1996; Konstan, 2001).

Conclusion: thoughts into questions None of these thoughts is intended to be prescriptive, but only suggestive. They probably raise more questions than they do answers. For example, does it even help to use the word ‘friendship’ in relation to leadership? Maybe as a provocation, yes – but the word has so many everyday associations, that it may be more helpful to use some of the frameworks and ideas without using the term itself, in order to probe into the real ‘state of mind’ being displayed in such common cousins of friendship as ‘networks’, ‘stakeholders’, ‘partnerships’, ‘colleagues’.


The classical tradition suggests that friendship can be both the method and indeed the purpose of meeting, and hence both the texture and the aim of organising and of leadership. This is a hypothesis that each of us might test against our own experience: To what extent has friendship been for us the motivation or context for the creation of learning, for the translation of that learning into action, and then, to complete the cycle, also for the depth of reflection necessary to translate back from action into new knowledge?

Notes 1 Although I write here as though there was a unified and agreed friendship tradition in the classical world, it was, in fact, made up of different, sometimes contrasting, strands of thinking and practice. For a fuller discussion, see French, 2007. 2 For an in-depth analysis of current attitudes to, and experiences of, friendship in the UK, see Spencer and Pahl, 2006. 3 For the original description of the friend as ‘another self’, see Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book 9, 1166a31–2; 1170b6–7.

References A. Alvarez, Live Company: Psychoanalytic Pschotherapy with Autistic, Borderline, Deprived and Abused Children (London: Routledge, 1992). Aristotle, [350 BCE]. Nicomachean Ethics. Tr. S. Broadie and C. Rowe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). J. Barnes, England, England (London: Jonathan Cape: 1998). W. Blake, 1972 [c. 1790–93]. ‘The marriage of heaven and hell’, in G. Keynes (ed.) Blake: Complete Writings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), pp. 148–60. J. Clemo, Confession of a Rebel (London: Spire, 1988). R. Coupland, Wilberforce: A Narrative (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923). R.W. Emerson, ‘Friendship’, in T. Tanner (ed.) Essays and Poems (London: J.M. Dent, 1992 [1841]), pp. 94–107. M.P. Farrell, Collaborative Circles: Friendship Dynamics and Creative Work (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001). M. Ficino, The Letters of Marsilio Ficino, Vol. 1. Translated from the Latin by members of the Language Department of the School of Economic Science, London. (London: Shepheard-Walwyn, 1975 [1495]). A. Fiske, ‘Saint Anselm’, Studia Monastica, 3(2) (1961) 259–90. J.T. Fitzgerald (ed.) Friendship, Flattery, and Frankness of Speech: Studies on Friendship in the New Testament World (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996). P. Fonagy, Attachment Theory and Psychoanalysis (New York: Other Press, 2001). M. Foucault, Fearless Speech (Los Angeles, CA: Semiotext(e), 2001 [1983]). R. French, ‘Friendship and organisation: Learning from the western friendship tradition’, Management & Organisational History, 2(3) (2007) 255–72. R. French and P. Moore, ‘Divided neither in life, nor in death: Friendship and leadership in the story of David and Jonathan’, in Y. Gabriel (ed.) Myths, Stories and

56 Leadership Perspectives Organisations: Pre-Modern Narratives for Our Times (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 101–15. R. French and J.J.R. Thomas, ‘Maturity, education and enlightenment – An introduction to Theodor Adorno and Hellmut Becker: “Education for maturity and responsibility”’, History of the Human Sciences 12 (1999) 1–19. A. Garrigós, ‘Hospitality cannot be a challenge’, in L. Hoinacki and C. Mitcham (eds) The Challenges of Ivan Illich: A Collective Reflection (New York: State University of New York, 2002), pp. 113–25. S. Gerhardt, Why Love Matters (London: Routledge, 2004). C.E. Glad, ‘Frank speech, flattery, and friendship in Philodemus’, in J.T. Fitzgerald (ed.) Friendship, Flattery, and Frankness of Speech: Studies on Friendship in the New Testament World (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996), pp. 21–59. C. Grey and A. Sturdy, ‘Friendship and organisational analysis: Towards a research agenda’, Journal of Management Inquiry, 16 (2007) 157–72. P. Hadot, What is Ancient Philosophy?, Tr. Michael Chase (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002). J. Haseldine, ‘Understanding the language of amicita: The friendship circle of Peter of Celle (c. 1115–1183)’, Journal of Medieval History, 20 (1994) 237–60. M.J. Hatch and A.L. Cunliffe, Organisation Theory: Modern, Symbolic, and Postmodern Perspectives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). A. Hochschild, The Managed Heart (Berkeley: University of California, 1983). L. Hoinacki and C. Mitcham (eds) The Challenges of Ivan Illich: A Collective Reflection (New York: State University of New York, 2002). J. Holmes, John Bowlby and Attachment Theory (London: Routledge, 1993). I. Illich, In the Vineyard of the Text: A Commentary to Hugh’s ‘Didascalicon’ (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993). I. Illich, ‘The cultivation of conspiracy’, in L. Hoinacki and C. Mitcham (eds) The Challenges of Ivan Illich: A Collective Reflection (New York: State University of New York, 2002), pp. 233–42. I. Illich and B. Sanders, ABC: The Alphabetization of the Popular Mind (London: Marion Boyars, 1988). D. Konstan, Friendship in the Classical World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). D. Konstan, Parrhesia: Ancient Philosophy in Opposition, paper presented at the Fourth World Conference of the International Society for Universal Dialogue (Cracow, Poland: Jagiellonian University, July 12–16, 2001). A. MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 2nd edn (London: Duckworth, 1985). D. Moss, ‘Friendship: St Anselm, theoria and the convolution of sense’, in J. Milbank, C. Pickstock and G. Ward (eds) Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology (London: Pitman, 1999), pp. 127–42. M.S. Prakash, ‘A Letter on Studying with Master Illich’, in L. Hoinacki and C. Mitcham (eds) The Challenges of Ivan Illich: A Collective Reflection (New York: State University of New York, 2002), pp. 141–52. J. Raymond, A Passion for Friends (London: The Women’s Press, 1986). D. Schwartz, Aquinas on Friendship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). A. Silver, ‘Friendship and trust as moral ideals: an historical approach’, European Journal of Sociology, 30 (1989) 274–97.

Sharing Thoughts on Leadership and Friendship 57 P. Simpson, ‘Developing Rowe’s model of strategic leadership’, working paper (2007). R.W. Southern, Saint Anselm and His Biographer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963). R.W. Southern, Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). L. Spencer and R. Pahl, Rethinking Friendship: Hidden Solidarities Today (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006). S. Stern-Gillet, Aristotle’s Philosophy of Friendship (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1995). S. Vaughn, Anselm of Bec and Robert of Meulan: The Innocence of the Dove and the Wisdom of the Serpent (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1987). B. Ward, The Prayers and Meditations of St Anselm (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973). Jr. L. White, Medieval Religion and Technology: Collected Essays (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978).

5 How to Become a Globally Responsible Leader: Rites of Passage and Transitional Space Maryse Dubouloy

This chapter treats the idea that to become a globally responsible leader (EFMD, 2006), it is not enough for the future CEO to acquire traditional skills and knowledge, or even to gain in open-mindedness, relational abilities, self-awareness and intuition, in the successive steps of his boundaryless career. He or she must develop ‘virtues’ such as autonomy, reflexivity, compassion, and attain wisdom. Simultaneously, a leader’s real need is to rediscover themselves, their own desires and creative potential, when they are heading for conformism and false-self. They can achieve this by turning their progress into a true initiatory itinerary. The individual is the only one who can find into themselves the required resources for this transformation. However it could not be a utopia to imagine that companies can also contribute to this fundamental change, implementing, for each stage of this tough journey, rites of passage (Von Gennep, 1981) and transitional space (Winnicott, 1971) which help people to go through and work out renunciation and ordeals. I shall illustrate this with the example of expatriation. First I shall give some characteristics of these new ‘paths’ and of the people who travel all over them.

From top executive managers to globally responsible leaders Boundaryless careers: the Royal Path for false-self Most careers of executives have become Protean (Hall, 1996). Each stage brings its share of changes affecting not only the individuals’ working and personal life, but also their identity. These changes often take the form of crises, trials and challenges to be overcome by the apprentice executives. Because of the blurred boundaries, nothing any longer plays a role of reassuring, containing structure (Kaës, 1987). 58

How to Become a Globally Responsible Leader 59

For some high-potential managers, the beginning of their career is simply an extension of that journey which the French call the Royal Path, that brought them to the top business schools to the most prestigious posts … until that path comes to an abrupt end before they have reached the heights they were aiming for. The ‘managinary’1 system provides offthe-peg responses to people who do not dare or want to raise the fundamental question of their deepest desires (Aubert and de Gaulejac, 1991). They thus become prisoners of a lazy conformism encouraged by corporate methods of socialisation and evaluation (Schein, 1988). The official discourse may ask managers to be more autonomous, responsible, and permanently reinventing themselves, but they reproduce, consciously or otherwise, the thing they are supposed to be helping to change. Most are simply reinforcing an unconscious false-self instigated in childhood in response to an environment they already found threatening (Winnicott, 1965; Enriquez, 1998; Dubouloy, 2004). Most of them do not succeed in escaping from this ‘destiny’. Some rush headlong into an idealised future that only exists in their fantasies. Yet others let life and other people make their decisions for them. Others, in contrast, fail to move, becoming stuck in a mire of endless questioning, prisoners of their own conflicts and paradoxes. Some carry on repeating in the present the formulas that brought them success in the past, neglecting the reality of the world in which they find themselves; while others blindly conform to the norms of the group they must become part of, considering the price to pay for autonomy too high. In an ever-more unstable, unstructured world, it is up to the individual to find their way, build their own locus of stability. Career transitions carry considerable risks of breaks, regression, becoming inward-looking and maybe even self-destructing, not to mention the associated suffering and distress. While these times remain conflictual and difficult, for some they are opportunities to gain greater autonomy and maturity, giving their illusions up and accepting to face the complexity of reality. This is all the more likely when they are experienced as transitional spaces, structured with a dynamic of rites of passage.

From technocratic skills to global responsibility While a few decades ago, the main requirement made of a manager was to be good at managing material resources, gradually dealing with human resources, interpersonal and communicational skills moved to the fore. Intuition, hitherto rejected, came to be highly valued: leaders had to be visionary. Self-awareness became fundamental skills for the new dynasty


of managers (Boyatzis and Van Oosten, 2003). Previously, manages were required to be able to anticipate and adapt to a future that could be unpredictable; now, they were being asked to take risks, control uncertainty, and guarantee security for all – employees, equity providers and a whole range of business partners. In fact, the managers of today have to be ‘globally responsible’. A company can no longer be content simply with making profit. It cannot remain on the sidelines of society, if that society is in collapse. The stake became caring human beings instead of managing human resources. Simultaneously, while these new managers are being asked to take into consideration changes in the state of the planet over the next halfcentury and invest accordingly, equity providers are requiring them to turn in ever-increasing profits in ever-shortening timescales. While the limits of responsibility and liability are pushed well beyond the walls, those who desire to be CEO have to remember that their personality and innermost self are concerned (Hirschhorn, 1988; Dubouloy, 2002), noone could help them acquire these new skills. However, they must not mistake the role, the status or the function for the person. Skills are not enough to do with such paradoxes and dilemmas. For a successful career, it is no longer enough to develop more skills or even improve performance; it is necessary to be a self-fulfilled human being, whose dreams have been achieved, because dreams are more than plans for people’s actions (Turnbull James and Arroba, 2005). Managers must attain wisdom and greatness. Unsurprisingly, the word ‘virtue’ appears, sometimes acting as a substitute for the term ‘skill’ (Trevino et al., 2003).

The new old virtues An etymological approach to the word reminds us that ‘virtue’ derives from the Latin ‘virtus’ meaning ‘courage’, ‘moral energy’. Globally responsible leaders must develop those new virtues: self-knowledge, critical thinking, reflexivity, courage, compassion, strong ethical principles, a visible commitment to become a real force for common good (EFMD and The Global Compact, 2006) and wisdom.

Critical thinking and reflexivity: to be part of the world Critical thinking is an individual and rational approach of the world. The philosopher Pascal bequeathed us a guide for behaviour: ‘Let us work on thinking well, such is the principle of morality’. Critical thinking enables us to fight against ‘la pensée unique’, i.e. readymade, fixed ‘politically correct’ thought, instead of thought that is perpetually


searching and under construction. For managers, caught up in urgent tasks and the diktat of immediate responses, rapid results, high performance, it is particularly difficult to develop critical thinking. Often their knowledge and past experiences soon turn into certainties. While critical thinking questions assertions, reflexivity consists of questioning oneself and one’s own representations, practices and interactions within a contextualised environment. But reflexivity is not only introspection. Reflexivity is ‘anti-narcissistic’, to borrow Bourdieu’s expression (2001). It encourages a subjectivation/objectivation movement. It is the ability to turn attention outwards (obvious and visible events, but also « beneath-the-surface ») but also to tune into the internal world and to be aware of what thoughts and feelings are present (Turnbull James and Arroba, 2005). Reflexivity retroactively enables the individual focused on action to take a step back from one’s acts and the situation and to perceive the complexity of the world, the leeway, the areas of autonomy and creativity that urgent action has left in the shade. Reflexivity is often a brave, painful process whereby the comfort of what is known is distanced and relinquished.

Compassion and caring: working on iniquity and suffering ‘Compassion is about allowing one’s feelings to guide one’s actions in response to pain experienced by others’ (Frost et al., 2000). The decisions taken (or not) by the managers because of the turbulences of the outside world often provoke change, crisis and rupture which oblige personnel to leave their comfort zones. Feelings such as rivalry, jealousy, ambition, fear, or being underappreciated also contribute their share of suffering and anxiety on a daily basis. It is up to the leaders to anticipate and intervene in the system to reduce the harmful effects of this environment and to provide the necessary impetus to make the company a less anxiety-provoking and more containing place (Kaës, 1979). The virtue of compassion is more necessary than ever, for it fights rationalism, individualism, withdrawal into oneself and indifference. Compassion which has its roots in the love of one’s fellow men and in interpersonal trust can become an extraordinary reserve of creativity, and potentially of efficiency. This virtue, which recreates the link between men, is essential for global responsibility.

Wisdom: the prize virtue Referring to Aristotle or to Confucius, managerial literature defines wisdom as a mix of knowledge and action (Beck, 1999). According to Socrates, the first step towards wisdom is self-knowledge; ‘Know


yourself, you will know the gods’ … and your limits. Real virtue is first and foremost responsibility of oneself bearing the consequences of our actions, without making others bear the burden of our thoughtlessness. However his real concern is the world and the ‘Common Good’: ‘wisdom is not merely a result of inquiring and reflecting on the relationship between self and society, but it is also the embodiment of action taken to transform self and society towards a better whole’ (Bierly et al., 2000, p. 603). Wisdom is the capacity of integrating the opposites in a perspective of mutual complementarity and solidarity between rationality and affectivity, self and the others, between past, present and future, here and there. It is an ideal of the balance and serenity to be achieved after the trials along the road. It allows the individual to explore tensions, contradictions and paradoxes. Certain stages in careers can be more conducive to acquisition of such virtues, because they can be an opportunity to unsettle people from their habits and certitudes and weaken their mechanisms of defence. After a short presentation of my research methodology in the next section, I shall show how some designs of career support measures encourage progress towards wisdom through one stage of their stage of their trajectory: expatriation.

Methodology This research is the result of several different research projects. The first one was a research on high potential managers’ false-self (Dubouloy, 2004). Then I continued with a research project about expatriation as a transitional space (Cerdin and Dubouloy, 2004). I also interviewed a CEO for a research project on creativity (Dubouloy and AlexandreBailly, 2003) and six others for an exploratory research project on psychoanalysis and global responsibility. In all, I interviewed 45 high potential managers and 12 CEOs. Meanwhile, as a professor in charge of pedagogy, I conducted unpublished research on student ‘education in a French business school and the lack of rites of passage’, interviewing 11 students and organising three panels. After this last research, working with a group of people on the theme of ‘Globally Responsible Leaders’ (EFMD, 2006), the idea emerged that the concept of rites of passage could be meaningful to speak about the professional trajectory of some ‘high flyers’ and leaders. Then I reworked the data. In all the cases, a psycho-sociological clinical research methodology was used. The aim was not so much to validate hypotheses as to uncover,


from listening to individuals’ narratives, the meaning of the situations experienced in the individual, collective and organisational complexity. After listening to the story-telling instigated by an introductory phrase ‘Can you tell me …’, I continued my interviews with a dialogue, where I asked questions to deepen some themes and finished them discussing the ‘hypothesis’, and general interpretation. The narratives can discover or (re)discover meaning of situations experienced totally subjectively in the hurried present (Ricœur, 1984; Boje, 1991). Narratives are one of the fundamental tools of reflexivity. They help to establish intersubjectivity and openness to others. They ‘limit a representation of the self as a coherent whole, and open up to alteration as well as otherness’ (Giust-Desprairies, 2000). The interviews were then fully transcribed and submitted to the interviewees, who could make any modifications they wished. Finally, I met with some of them individually or in groups for further discussion, after drafting an initial write-up of my research.

Expatriation and rites of passage In this section I intend to show how the dynamics of rites of passage can help the future executive to become a globally responsible leader. Although each stage in a career involves its own rites of passage, here I will focus on expatriation as an illustration.

Rites of passage All societies use coded, repetitive and structured activities – rites – to develop and maintain their own structures. Rites thus have a major socialisation, even normalisation, role (Goffmann, 1974; Segalen, 1998). All companies develop practices and procedures which, while they are not defined as rites, structure interpersonal relationships, punctuate time, participate in individuals’ identity dynamics, and are part of the corporate culture. However, most of the time, if they are useful, they are no longer meaningful; they have lost their symbolic dimension. In the early 20th century Van Gennep (1981) identified a very specific category of rites: rites of passage that ‘punctuate the progress of human life from the cradle to the grave’ (Belmont, 1986, p. 10). In the abundant literature on career transitions, the question of rites of passage is beginning to carve itself a place (Trice and Morand, 1989; Altman and Holmes, 2005). All rites of passage are structured around three successive, separate stages: preliminaries, liminaries and post-liminaries


(Turner, 1969; Von Gennep, 1981), each of these stages marking the crossing of a threshold.2 – Preliminaries mark the time of separation and renouncement that enables the individual to abandon the prerogatives and behaviours of the universe he is about to leave. One of the raisons d’être of rites of passage is to take charge of and make bearable the suffering that goes with any separation, containing emotions, and anxiety in facing uncertainty (Turner, 1969; Belmont, 1986; Segalen, 1998; Fellous, 2001; Goguel d’Allondans, 2002). – Then come the liminaries. These represent the intermediate stage, the margin. It is a period of wandering, a state of being on the edge. Often, the period is inaugurated by all sorts of tests and trials. It is also the place of all doubts, and therefore of all potential. The individuals are no longer what they were before, but no-one yet knows what they will become. They will have to determine themselves. As these tough periods are lived through in a peer group, this passage creates collective identity and undoubtedly solidarity, among individuals who before could be rivals. – The post-liminaries represent the final stage. They involve integration rites where the persons are initiated into the new codes defining the new social group they are joining. Rites of passage play an essential role in these transition periods, allowing people to leave one social group to join another, creating new relations among the individuals in transitions. More generally, rites of passage participate in the long journey towards wisdom, as they mobilise critical thinking, reflexivity and compassion.

When expatriation loses much of its meaning Even if expatriation no longer occupies the same place in the career of future executives, expatriation is an opportunity for true metamorphosis (Osland, 1995; McCall and Hollenbeck, 2002). It tests the vital abilities of adjustability, autonomy and open-mindedness in those who live and work in another country, and the courage to pass through losses (Weiss, 1990; Cerdin and Dubouloy, 2004), all virtues found along the path to wisdom. However, companies do not consider social, cultural and psychological support and accompaniment for expatriates as a priority. They help people to anticipate difficulties and bring a touch of reality to their fantasies. Generally, future expatriates are offered


readymade answers on the matters of a foreigner’s place, difference. Nobody help them to question the nature of their attachments, and the ‘real’ reasons for going. Worse still, in reassuring them, administrative procedures, those rites devoid of meaning, reinforce their favourite defense mechanisms: rationalisation and the false-self.

Transforming preparations into preliminaries Most interviewees see the preparations for expatriation as nothing other than administrative problems (dealing with issues of pensions, taxes, insurance, etc.), practical concerns (accommodation and school for the children). However, beyond the future managers’ assertions that expatriation is a ‘career requirement’ or attributable to ‘curiosity about other countries’, it is possible to hear the much more complex unconscious issues and dynamics these assertions conceal (Cerdin and Dubouloy, 2004). It could be an opportunity to add a chapter to the family saga, to take over the dreams a parent was unable to achieve. For many, expatriation is a solution to the unconscious conflict between their Ideal Ego and their Ego or to break away from an over-strict Superego by seeking elsewhere spaces of freedom they cannot find in their own country. Future expatriates are often in situations of avoidance of intrapsychic conflict, rejection of ambivalence, repression and denial of the pain of separation. Leaving, ‘cutting ties’ relates to illusion, acting out, rather than to awareness and construction of experience. Without any framework or mirror to provide a reflection of their discourse, reflexivity is beyond the grasp of most.

Liminaries of the sojourn in a foreign country The theoretical model of international adaptation developed by Black et al., (1991), cannot explain the internal maelstrom that the encounter with difference can be for a new expatriate. Foreign countries can be effective revealers of deeply buried selves. All the interviewees spoke with emotion about the sensation of liberation, the people they met, friendships made, the responsibilities they had, the risks they took, but also about periods of loneliness, missing their family, loss of certain illusions and anxiety over their return. For lack of psychological elaboration, the majority of these experiences are anecdotal and superficial. In a way, they continue being ‘foreign to themselves’ (Kristeva, 1988), unable to discover their true self. For some others it is a real opportunity of maturation and discovering themselves and the world and their place in it: ‘When you come back, you’re yourself, not just the name on your passport. And the face in the mirror is you, not the dominant model’.


The disappointing return can not be post-liminary Practically all expatriates find the return disappointing. The stage of integration into a new community, with its rituals marking access to a new status, is rarely immediate. The period of wandering extends into a new ‘terra incognita’: the head office, the destination for almost all returning expatriates. Where they were expecting promotion and recognition, they embark on a trial of patience and persistence. … Instead of promotion they find regression.

Reintroducing rituals to restore meaning If expatriation is considered as a rite of passage, it would be interesting to offer, for those who wish, places and spaces in the form of seminars providing a suitable environment where meaningful rituals, rich in questioning and symbolism would be offered. It is important that these designs should be collective, for others with their own experiences and questions can act as mirrors for each person’s reflection, and in order they can build collective representation, identity and solidarity. The place, structure, name, organisation, rituals and if possible the trainers of such seminars should not change, because the rite provides structure and a container for the emotional outpourings and a framework through the constancy of its basic elements. Rituals provide a home for the imaginary and the symbolic. At that occasion, working on life stories and socio-professional trajectories is an approach rich in discovery and understanding of each story: the family, professional, social, economic and cultural determinants that contributed to construction of the individual’s identity. Through revisiting their past, participants are better prepared to face a future period in a foreign country and all the possibles available to them. Why, during the sojourn abroad, do the companies not provide more help for developing their reflexivity? Reports of surprise can encourage the ‘self-reflexivity that fosters alternative perspectives of self’ (Brown and Starkey, 2000, p. 110). The period of expatriation may be punctuated by other reports in a form to be defined, which would help to put experiences into perspective. Agenda could be synchronised during school holidays, when expatriates visit their home country, in order to organise collective workshops, based around narratives of events and situations experienced during their time abroad. When the time comes to return, the company could once again support the expatriate in a process of ‘working through’ (Bridger, 2001) and


mourning, necessary prerequisites for integration into a new social and professional group. Elaboration of disappointment and frustration could perhaps reduce the conflicts, ruptures and resignations that are often nothing more than acting out. If liminality is the period of all the renunciations and pains, if rituals may help people to pass through them is not possible to conceive them in order people feel secure?

Liminality as a transitional space: matrix of all renunciation Winnicott proposes a model for analysis of separations that can be used as a model for the separations that punctuate the career of future executives (Winnicott, 1971; Carr and Downs, 2004). In the first few weeks of life, the infant in an intensely close, ‘fusional’ relationship with his mother, makes no distinction between himself and his mother and the surrounding world, between the ‘Me’ and the ‘Not Me’. Totally dependent on an attentive ‘caring and holding’ mother who responds to his every need however small, he is in the omnipotent illusion that every situation is produced and created by him. This illusion of omnipotence is counterbalanced by feelings of absolute impotence when his mother is no longer there to satisfy his needs. It is the deep security due to the care given by the ‘good enough mother’ that will enable the infant to bear the frustration and disillusionment that his mother will inflict on him when she does not respond to his needs immediately. Winnicott uses the term ‘transitional space’ to name this experience of giving up the intense mother-and-child relationship and the all-powerfulness it engenders. It is a place where the infant develops his creativity, inventing his own solution to face the reality which is neither good nor bad. It is vital to introduce a design relevant to each individual. I do not refer to ‘orthopaedic’ coaching to set people back on the straight and narrow path of conformism and performance. The type of coaching I mean is based on reviewing and working through (Dubouloy et al., 2004). The purpose of this approach is to grasp the psychological, interpersonal, organisational and environmental complexity of situations, and the interconnection of these different levels of their conflictuality. The aim is to face up to the dilemmas and responsibilities of decision. It should be noted that the coach adopts the posture of the ‘good enough mother’, meaning that he/she: – Obliges the person to analyse situations in all their complexity: systematically takes into consideration the fourfold psychological, psychosociological, organisational, and environmental dimension;


– Encourages reflexivity, sense-making of situations rather than sensegiving; is never in a position of knowing, but of questioning; – Frustrates when he/she refuses to give advice; – Encourages the person to invent his/her own answer; – Helps the person to develop compassion and personal engagement. Finally, the coach, above all people, takes care that this space is not a space of normalisation (Amado and Ambrose, 2001).

Conclusion: from critical thinking to compassion The past decades have given us a host of visionary leaders with great strategic skills. For the coming decades, we will need globally responsible leaders. To become outstanding leaders full of wisdom, managers must travel a road full of trials and pitfalls. It is essential that the difficulties and suffering encountered, instead of making them harden and withdraw into themselves, offer them opportunities to develop their reflexivity and creativity, making them receptive to the suffering of others and the compassion the world so much needs. To achieve this, designs need to be introduced at every stage of this career path to manage those times without being merely administrative procedures to manage ‘potential’. What is required is proper accompaniment for the persons in what they are in their innermost self, without setting them apart from the world. This means many administrative procedures or rituals devoid of meaning, which generally do nothing more than reinforce the individual’s falseself and conformity, must be transformed into genuine rites of passage, transitional spaces, opportunities for the person to advance in wisdom and develop his self-knowledge and reflexivity, as well as compassion. The conditions for a successful transformation are as follows: – These designs must be organised and structured in a strictly-defined, fixed setting which will form a locus of stability for individuals in a state of wandering, and act as ‘containers’ for strong emotions that can make the person and his environment fragile; – They must be the most collective possible, so that individuals are confronted with others, become receptive to the dialectics of similarity and difference and open up access to each person’s ‘true-self’; – They must allow relationships to be formed with others where the instrumentation and competition that destroy the weakest and


disperse the strongest give way to the solidarity that enables everyone to progress – some more than others; – All these transitions need ‘passeurs’, mentors, coaches, tutors, trainers who can take up the position of the ‘good-enough-mother’, respectful of the person, their intelligence, their emotions and their future. A Utopia? Maybe! But it is time to think of limiting the enormous wastefulness, for individuals and the community, that many highpotential managers’ careers become.

Notes 1 A contracted combination of ‘management and imaginary’. 2 The Latin ‘limen’ means threshold.

References Y. Altman and L. Holmes, ‘The rites of passage of cross-disciplinary concepts reflections on “rites, right? The value of rites de passage for dealing with today’s career transitions”’, Career Development International, 15 (2005) 67–70. G. Amado and A. Ambrose, The Transitional Approach to Change (London and New York: Karnac Books, 2001). N. Aubert and V. de Gaulejac, Le coût de l’excellence (Paris: Seuil, 1991). U. Beck, ‘Confucius and Socrates: The teaching of wisdom’ (1999). N. Belmont, ‘La notion de rite de passage’, in P.C.J. Hainard (ed.) Les rites de passage aujourd’hui. actes du colloque de Neuchâtel 1981 (Paris: L’Âge d’Homme, 1986), pp. 9–19. P.E. Bierly, E.H. Kessler and E.W. Christensen, ‘Organisational learning, knowledge and wisdom’, Journal of Organisational Change Management, 13(6) (2000) 595–618. J.S. Black, M. Mendenhall and G. Oddou, ‘Toward a comprehensive model of international adjustment: An integration of multiple theoretical perspectives’, Academy of Management Review (1991). D.M. Boje, ‘The storytelling organisation: A study of story performance in an office-supply firm’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 36(1) (1991) 106–26. P. Bourdieu, ‘Science de la science et réflexivité’, Cours du Collège de France 2000–2001 (Paris: Edition Raison d’Agir, 2001). R. Boyatzis and E. Van Oosten, ‘A leadership imperative: Building the emotionally intelligent organisation’, Ivey Business Journal, 67(3) (2003) 1–5. H. Bridger, ‘The Working Conference Design’, in The Transitional Approach to Change (London and New York: Karnac Books, 2001), pp. 161–72. A.D. Brown and K. Starkey, ‘Organizational identity and learning: A psychodynamic perspective’, Academy of Management Review, 25(1) (2000) 102–20. A. Carr and A. Downs, ‘Transitional and quasi-objects in organisation studies: Viewing Enron from the object relations world of Winnicott and Serres’, Journal of Organisational Change Management, 17(4) (2004) 352–64.

70 Leadership Perspectives J.-L. Cerdin and M. Dubouloy, ‘Expatriation as a maturation opportunity: A psychoanalytical approach based on “copy and paste”’, Human Relations, 57(8) (2004). M. Dubouloy, ‘From the high potential’s loneliness to the capacity “to be alone”’, (Melbourne, Australia: ISPSO annual colloquium: Negotiating Difference: Psychoanalytic explorations of working with the ‘other’ in organisations, 20–22 June, 2002). M. Dubouloy, ‘The transitional space and self recovery: A psychoanalytical approach of high-potential managers’ training’, Human Relations, 57(4) (2004). M. Dubouloy and F. Alexandre-Bailly, ‘Approche psychanalytique de la créativité des dirigeants’ (Grenoble: ‘GRH: Innovons!’, XIV Congrès de l’AGRH, 20– 22 November, 2003). M. Dubouloy, G. Arnaud and H. Zannad, ‘Quand la recherche se fait intervention: les apports de la psychosociologie clinique et de l’analyse des récits’ (Bologne: AIPTLF, 26–29 August, 2004). EFMD and The Global Compact, ‘Globally responsible leadership a call for engagement’ (2006). E. Enriquez, ‘De la solitude imposée à une solitude solidaire’, Topique, l’Esprit du temps, 64 (1998) 5–24. M. Fellous, A la recherche des nouveaux rites; rites de passage et modernité avancée (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2001). P. Frost, J. Dutton, M. Worline and A. Wilson, ‘Narratives of compassion in organisations’, in Fineman (ed.) Emotions in Organisations (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 2000), pp. 25–45. F. Giust-Desprairies, ‘Raconter sa vie: la quête ontologique du sujet’, Revue Internationale de Psychosociologie, VI, 14 (2000) 89–101. E. Goffmann, Les rites d’interaction (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1974). T. Goguel d’Allondans, Rites de passage, rites d’initiation (Laval: Les Presses de l’Université de Laval, 2002). D.T. Hall, ‘Protean careers of the 21st century’, The Academy of Management Executive, 10(4) (1996) 8–16. L. Hirschhorn, The workplace within: Psychodynamics of organisational life (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1988). D. Kaës, ‘Introduction à l’analyse transitionnelle’, in Crise, rupture et dépassement (Paris: Dunod, 1979), pp. 1–81. R. Kaës, ‘Réalité psychique et souffrance dans les institutions’, in J.B. c. R. Kaës (ed.) L’institution et les institutions, études Psychanalytiques (Paris: Dunod, 1987). J. Kristeva, Etrangers à nous-mêmes (Paris: Fayard, 1988). M.W. McCall and G.P. Hollenbeck, Developing Global Executives (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2002). J. Osland, Adventure of Living Abroad: Hero Tales from the Global Frontier (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1995). P. Ricœur, Temps et récits (Paris: Seuil, 1984). E.H. Schein, ‘Organisational socialisation and the profession of management’, Sloan Management Review, 30(1) (1988) 53–65. M. Segalen, Rites et rituels contemporains (Paris: Nathan, 1998). L.K. Trevino, M. Brown and L. Pincus, ‘A qualitative investigation of perceived executive ethical leadership: Peceptions from inside and outside the executive suite’, Human Relations, 56(1) (2003) 5–37.

How to Become a Globally Responsible Leader 71 H.M. Trice and D.A. Morand, ‘Rites of passage in work careers’, in M.B. Arthur, D.T. Hall and B.S. Lawrence (ed.) Handbook of Career Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 397–416. K. Turnbull James and T. Arroba, ‘Reading and carrying: A framework for learning about emotions and emotionality in organisational system as a core aspect of leadership development’, Management Learning, 36(3) (2005) 299–316. R.H. Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Chicago: Aldine, 1969). A. Van Gennep, Les rites de passage, étude systématique des rites (Paris: Picard, 1981). R.S. Weiss, ‘Losses associated with mobility’, in S. Fisher and C. Cooper (ed.) On the Move: the Psychology of Change and Transition (West Sussex: Wiley & Sons 1990), pp. 3–12. D.W. Winnicott, ‘Ego distortion in terms of true and false self’, in The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment (London: Hogarth, 1965), pp. 56–63. D.W. Winnicott, Playing and Reality (London: Tavistock, 1971).

6 Strategic Leadership Kim Turnbull James, Cliff Bowman and Richard Kwiatkowski

A re-conceptualisation of leadership at the top is necessary, in part because of the increasing understanding of the prevalence of shared and distributed leadership in organisations. Many leadership concepts (transformational, authentic, responsible, global), in contrast to the idea of distributed leadership, do not explicitly address where leadership is exercised. Once distributed leadership is engaged, the role of top leaders changes. Leadership may be dispersed but some aspects of leadership cannot be distributed or delegated. This chapter considers how strategic leaders such as CEOs may think about their role by bringing together the often separated fields of strategy and leadership. In this chapter we develop the concept of the ‘Main Idea’, the intent around which the strategy coalesces – it grounds, centres, inspires and gives a clear message. Moreover, it has psychological significance, containing anxiety arising from the risks associated with changing direction or having a new strategic imperative. Strategic leaders must embody the ‘Main Idea’: they must be personally credible and must demonstrate understanding of the organisation context. Strategic leadership is not a set of leader behaviours or competences but is conceptualised in terms of the role of a top leader – both psychological and strategic. A psychodynamic perspective is adopted to explore the strategic leader’s role.

Where is the ‘strategy’ in leadership? Leadership is about taking people and organisations on a journey and towards a goal. However, how an organisation’s destination is to be determined is hardly addressed in the leadership literature. This is odd because as Grint (2007) points out, the origins of our word leadership 72

Strategic Leadership 73

lie in the Norse word ‘laed’ – to set a direction for a ship. In contrast, direction, is central to the strategy literature. These two literatures represent deep differences in our view of organisations; strategy from a rational perspective with roots in economics: leadership constructed around competences, behaviours and relationships, acknowledged to have an emotional component and with roots in psychology. Whilst the Viking crew would have mutinied against a captain who could not ‘laed’, our leadership models and development activity often omit the integration of strategy and leadership, with few guides as to how this might be done. Whilst this separation may have been less important when leadership was considered the domain of the top levels of an organisation, it is important to (re)connect these in the context of distributed leadership in organisations: leadership may be exercised at all levels, but it is not the same at all levels. We use the term ‘strategic leadership’ to bring together the ideas of leading people and creating direction at the top of an organisation, not as simply another new leadership style for all leaders to adopt.

Developments in the concept of leadership Much of the leadership literature is concerned with leaders’ characteristics and behaviours, for example, the idea of transformational leadership (Bass and Avolio, 1994; Alimo-Metcalfe and Alban-Metcalfe, 2001). The notion of charismatic, visionary or heroic leader still has a vivid hold on our imagination (see for example Kets de Vries, 1998, and indeed many articles in the popular media). Newer terms such as shared and distributed leadership are widely used to describe a concept of leadership exercised by a group of people collaborating together (shared leadership) and by individuals at many levels in an organisation (distributed leadership), and is central to ‘post traditional’ leadership models (e.g. Pearce and Sims, 2000; Kouzes and Posner, 2003; Pearce and Conger, 2003; Raelin, 2003). Whilst leaders at the top are often cited in organisational success, Fletcher (2004) argues that in practice these ‘visible heroes’ are in fact underpinned by leadership shared across the organisation. This collaborative aspect is frequently not recognised and is often mistaken for individual achievement. Fletcher calls for ‘post heroic’ models of leadership, involving distributed leadership practices such as collaboration between those identified as leaders with those who enact leadership but may not be labelled leaders.


However, the emergence of the concept of distributed leadership corresponds to the emergence of interest in strategic leadership. Indeed it is becoming clearer that you cannot have the one without the other (Denis et al., 2001). Sosik et al. (2005) argue that outstanding strategic leadership creates a culture of shared leadership, in which the organisation as a whole shares and participates in the leadership tasks of the organisation. This contributes to an organisation’s ability to adapt. Strategic leadership requires an element of distributed leadership and strategic leaders are thought to be more effective when they are willing to learn along with others (Ireland and Hitt, 2005). The top leader paradoxically needs to strengthen and revise their role, not simply delegate but rather really involve others in sharing that leadership (Huffington et al., 2004; Turnbull James et al. 2007). Without good strategic leadership, distributed leadership cannot achieve the aim of responsiveness and adaptability. Locke (2003) identifies the difference between top-down, bottom-up, shared egalitarian and integrated models of leadership. He argues for the integrated form in which a top leader works with staff, and staff with each other, to lead an organisation, but the top leader’s role remains distinct. Locke’s integrated model is valuable as it draws attention to two aspects of this new approach to leadership. First, collaboration is essential if the organisation is not to be fragmented, and second, the top leader’s role is different from others’ and is not eroded but made more complex. This is an important development in leadership theory and helps to differentiate the leadership roles needed in the organisation rather than focusing on leadership styles. CEOs, Presidents and Managing Directors have a very different role from leaders at other levels in the organisation. The strategic leadership role is not simply transformational leadership practised at the top of the organisation. The strategic leader role needs to be understood in relation to leadership throughout the organisation.

A psychodynamic perspective on top leader roles Strategic leadership is not solely concerned with the rational side of organisation life but also with the emotions that drive group and organisation dynamics. Obholzer and Miller (2004) identify the leader’s role as including reviewing the organisation’s primary task – keeping this from being corrupted by the emotionality present in the organisation, having a boundary-keeping function, avoiding the enactment of unconscious personal dynamics which interfere with institutional functioning and paying attention to organisational dynamics. The idea of the primary task


was explored by Miller and Rice (1967) and has a number of important aspects. Groups need to know the primary purpose/task that brings them together. Applying psychoanalytic concepts to the organisational systems allows us to understand just how difficult it is to work with others and in groups whilst actually sticking to the primary task – underlying emotionality about working in a group can easily take a group off task. A group can easily and inappropriately redefine the task (displacement activity, such as concern with internal bureaucratic procedures is a well-known example) and so a leader’s job includes making sure the group can both tolerate working closely – the relations are manageable as well as making sure that the group works at the real task, not some interpretation that is more comfortable. Huffington et al. (2004) discuss the new organisational dynamics arising from distributed leadership and suggest that, whilst there are considerable potential benefits to be gained, simultaneously there are anxieties and conflicts that need to be contained. Distributed leadership changes the leadership dynamics and where the individual leader may have been felt to hold the organisation together, once leadership is distributed among many the top leadership team must also integrate across the organisation. Where distributed leadership is expected top leaders must contain potential fragmentation in which people may go in a comfortable direction of their own choosing to avoid conflict and evade responsibility. As Kets de Vries argues (1999, p. 75), however participatory one might like to be as a top leader there is always a need from the top for clear direction and priorities in a (reassuringly) authoritative rather than authoritarian manner. So is strategic leadership simply about understanding the figurehead role and its psychological components? Leaders at the top must define the primary task for the organisation. In the case of Apple, a company built on the notion of making computers more user friendly than their competitors, John Scully, as CEO, changed the nature of the business to compete in the low cost market against DELL and IBM. Under this new strategy the company did not prosper. When Steve Jobs returned to the post he reconfigured the business around the idea of innovation. Did Scully simply mis-read the market? We need to bring in the ‘strategy’ piece of strategic leadership.

Where is the ‘leadership’ in strategy? Perhaps the first point we should make is that the strategy literature typically refers to strategic management as a subject or domain of interest.


Certainly, the overwhelming majority of textbooks use this term. This seems to imply that strategy can and should in someway be a managed activity, and this managerial orientation is reflected in the content of these texts. Most place a good deal of stress on rational analysis, and ‘planning’ processes; there is little coverage of intuition and emotion. The field does helpfully distinguish between the content of strategy i.e. the intent, strategy or plan itself, and the processes of strategy, which would include both the formulation process and the processes involved in implementing any required changes to the organisation. In terms of the leadership requirement to set a direction the field proffers prescriptions with respect to both strategy content and strategy process. Content prescriptions may in some ways pre-empt the requirement to engage in any elaborate strategy formulation process, other than to undertake some form of diagnosis of the organisation’s extant situation. These prescriptions tend to be overly simplistic e.g. ‘become the lowest cost producer’ (Porter, 1980), develop ‘customer intimacy’ (Treacy and Wiersema, 1993), ‘stick to the knitting’ (Peters and Waterman, 1982) and some border on the banal e.g. ‘get the right people on the bus’ (Collins, 2001). One wonders quite what strategic leaders are to make of these nostrums. They seem to offer a substitute for thinking, but because the guidance is so abstract there would seem to be little here to help the strategic leader to provide clarity of direction. Process prescriptions tend to advocate extensive phases of analysis that require the gathering of data about the organisation and its environment. Through the application of analytical devices e.g. Porter’s ‘five forces’ model, alternative strategies can be derived, evaluated and the ‘right’ one selected. There are more sophisticated process prescriptions which recognise the ambiguities and uncertainties involved in strategising e.g. Quinn’s (1980) ‘logical incrementalism’. But we have to conclude that overwhelmingly strategy is approached from a rational positivist perspective, and as the primary concern of strategy writers is the profit seeking firm, both content and process prescriptions reflect the strong economics underpinnings of the field. The field also distinguishes between intended strategy and ‘realised’ strategy (see e.g. Mintzberg and Waters, 1985). Intended strategies tend to be the outcome of deliberate attempts to set direction e.g. ‘planning’ processes, but they may reflect the personal vision of the chief executive. In contrast realised strategies are essentially a description of the extant disposition of the organisation, whether this position was the result of deliberate ‘planning’ or more emergent processes. Thus the realised strategy is in some sense embedded in the organisation,


whereas intended strategies can exist in either an ‘embodied’ form or a ‘disembodied’ form. What we mean here is that a ‘strategy’ may exist as an organisational artefact e.g. in the form of a document, the ‘five year plan’, in which case it is certainly separate from the individuals involved in drawing it up. Alternatively, a strategy may be ‘embodied’ insofar as an individual or a group not only derive the strategy, they espouse it, ‘live it’: the embodied strategy is enacted. So where we encounter embodied strategies we may be moving closer towards strategic leader behaviour. We would argue that embodied strategies that are enacted by the leader are most likely to be derived from essentially intuitive processes that involve conscious or unconscious processing of past experiences, rather than being the outcome of rational analytical processes. Moreover, we would expect embodied strategies to exhibit emotional commitment from the leader. True belief must involve some emotions as the leader has to consciously reject alternative strategies that may on some criteria be ‘superior’. Thus there is a personal relationship between the strategy and the leader. The leader who can inspire an organisation to recover or grow is offering more than a cogent argument. Martin Luther King famously did not say ‘I have strategic plan’.

The ‘Main Idea’ A concept that pulls these themes together is the ‘Main Idea’. What is interesting to us is the fact that the concepts related to the ‘Main Idea’ appear to be emerging from a number of sources; Hirschhorn (1998) refers to something related called the Basic Idea whilst Purcell et al. (2003) refer to the Big Idea. It has links to Hirschhorn’s (1999) notion of primary risk in which the task of the leader is to choose the task. The organisation must define itself in terms of its task and therefore what it does not do (‘we focus on upmarket food and are not pursuing household items anymore’; ‘we are a niche player and we don’t go after high volume’, ‘we stop just manufacturing “kit” and offer product life service’). This means that the team is committing itself to a strategy that may well lose some business or goodwill and certainly upset some stakeholders in order to pursue the ‘right strategy’ which they believe will lead to future higher gains. The top team, in committing to the new strategy is deciding not only what direction to follow, but also involves an implicit decision taken not to follow another direction – and this choice inevitably creates a high level of anxiety.


Atkins PLC When Keith Clarke took up his role as the new CEO at Atkins in October 2003 he began, as many other leaders have, by setting out to gain an in-depth understanding of the company. He discovered that the organisation operated across many business sectors, with a very broad spectrum of projects being undertaken in both UK and non-UK locations. He discovered that the business was described in numerous ways internally and externally ranging from ‘the largest engineering consultancy in the UK’, through listing a very long list of clients, to ‘that’s very difficult’. Over the next year or so as Keith went about getting more intimate with the business he began to reflect more and more on what he had discovered in those relatively early days. He had already been able to provide greater clarity of direction however, increasingly he realised that the strategic leadership from him needed to be built and embedded around the fundamentals of what Atkins is and needs to be. He found a relatively simple way of describing what Atkins does. In very broad terms – Plans, Designs and Enables the delivery of complex capital programmes for clients in the public and private sectors across the globe. This insightful description now enables the company, its staff and all stakeholders to understand the organisation’s ‘reason for being’. Clarke then went about enhancing and embedding this clarity by explaining through the idea of a formula why and how this concept informs business practice: Identity + Excellence = Growth. His view was that whilst the strategic choice for Atkins would be growth this cannot be ad hoc, or scattergun, in fact quite the contrary. His ‘formula’ means that a clearer understanding of identity – what Atkins does and doesn’t do – and then striving for excellence in that identity, produces growth. So in recent times the organisation has increasingly challenged what it does, moving away from what it’s not good at, striving continuously to build on its strength capabilities seeking excellence in its core activities. Thus the CEO has been able to provide clarity, direction and real leadership by articulating a Main Idea that resonates with organizational traditions. In a world characterised by increasing global competition and rapid change in patterns of market, demand and customer preference, it is imperative for Atkins to understand their core business (Identity). The organization can continually challenge and innovate around that core to provide excellence that beats the competition, but the continuity given by the Main Idea of Plans, Designs and Enables, offers a sense of relative security to staff and stakeholders.


It is important that the ‘Main Idea’ is not confused either with strategy – a rational conception of the organisational trajectory – or with vision, which has a dream-like or messianic potential. For us one of the key additional aspects is that it is firmly rooted in sense making in the organisation as a key aspect of initiating change (Gioia and Chittipedi, 1991) and the ‘Main Idea’ runs through all of the organisation’s activity and decision-making informing the grounded choices that are made. Creating the ‘Main Idea’ is one of the leadership tasks that cannot be distributed or shared, and it is not a mission statement. The ‘Main Idea’ is the intent around which the strategy coalesces – it grounds, centres, inspires and gives a clear message; ‘this is the direction, it’s what we are about and it’s what we’re going to do’, and by implication ‘what we are not going to do’. It is articulate and elegant, and needs to be first articulated by the leader and then repeated by others. It must be congruent with how the leader is perceived by staff, and, more than convincing, it needs to be persuasive. The leader must be seen as being the right person to take the organisation into this future as incarnated in the ‘Main Idea’. In short the leader must embody the ‘Main Idea’ and the ‘Main Idea’ encapsulates the leader’s confidence that the risk is worthwhile and has been created by someone in touch with reality, rather than leadership centred on an essentially narcissistic personality (Maccoby, 2000). The ‘Main Idea’ is associated with the leader and in turn with the top team whom the leader has gathered together to deliver on it. The ‘Main Idea’ and leader are synonymous in the early adoption of the ‘Main Idea’. Thus the ‘Main Idea/leader’ offers a temporary sense of relief and protection from the anxieties created by an ambiguous and uncertain future. The leader takes the risk of deciding which path to follow on behalf of the organisation and must do so in such a way that people can feel that success and survival are possible and even probable. They can get on with the job and redefine their work as necessary whilst acting in synchrony with the ‘Main Idea’. Eventually the ‘Main Idea’ becomes embedded and part of the organisation milieu (unlike top-down company culture statements which tend, in our experience, to be ignored). The ‘Main Idea’ as embodied by the leader operates both at the level of inspirational instruction (that is it has a concrete or real quality) and as a transitional object (something that can represent a feeling of security and safety and which can be carried from a safe to an unsafe place; a teddy bear for grown ups!) (see Winnicott, 1965). The leader is able to provide the secure feelings that enable the organisation to move purposefully from the known present to an unknown/unknowable, but, now, enticing future. It can allow thinking and development, progress and


excitement rather than uncertainty and doubt that can paralyse progress. For the ‘Main Idea/leader’ to be effective a number of criteria need to be met: • The concept embodied in the ‘Main Idea’ must reflect the organisation’s identity sufficiently for people to be able to recognise and then identify with it and own it; • The direction is at the edge of what people already do or understand – it is not a complete change or entirely new but a shift; • The leader is credible in making that choice because they have had to make choices which are perceived to be similar/parallel in their past; • The leader takes on the risk – thus reducing the anxiety levels in the organisation as a whole – the leader’s behaviour must convince people that their self-confidence is well founded; • The articulation of the ‘Main Idea’ enables others to begin to take up leadership roles – their roles in the enterprise (what’s in/out) and areas of responsibility can be defined in terms of the ‘Main Idea’ – the potential chaos and anarchy that the idea of distributed leadership potentially engenders can be avoided; • In taking up their leadership roles people can feel motivated and inspired – the leader is a reference point (almost an internal mentor) and a figurehead (which engenders positive emotions such as reassurance or excitement). Thus in this concept of strategic leadership the notions of psychological aspects of leadership roles, anxiety containment and distributed leadership are brought together with strategic choice. The ‘Main Idea’ articulates the choice the leader has made; it resonates with the organisation membership (‘yes – that’s what I joined to do’). We could suggest that the content of the ‘Main Idea’ needs to deal with the critical strategic parameters facing the organisation. We would suggest that for a business the critical parameters would be about how the firm makes money in a competitive environment. So the idea needs to articulate answers to key questions like: what markets are we trying to compete in? How do we think we can effectively compete in those markets? Those in corporate leadership roles need to have a clearly articulated view about the value adding logic of the corporation i.e. they must have thought through the reasons why the corporation contains this particular mix of businesses. So the ‘Main Idea’ at corporate level would articulate a view about what synergies are being sought and how these might be realised.


For those leading not-for-profit (NFP) organisations like schools, charities, defence organisations, etc., the strategic challenges are typically greater than those leading in the for-profit sector. This stems from the absence in most NFPs of an agreed purpose for the organisation. Typically there are many and often conflicting views about purpose that reflect the differing agenda of stakeholders in the organisation. So whereas in a firm the end is a ‘given’, (making profits for its owners), and the ‘Main Idea’ merely has to articulate how this goal might be achieved, life is not so straightforward for those leading NFPs. We would argue that NFP strategic leadership must perforce include the setting of both ends and means. However, some clarity can be achieved if the leader can at least identify the primary beneficiaries of the organisation e.g. children, in the case of the school, rather than other ‘stakeholders’ like potential employers, organised parent groups, national government, teachers, governors, etc. Then alternative strategies, resourcing and other decisions can be guided by the leader’s articulation of this basic mission. It may be that the governors of the school may disagree with the head’s ‘Main Idea’ centred on the interests of the students, and this may lead to conflicts. However, this clearly illustrates the benefits and challenges of strategic leadership and the importance of the ‘Main Idea’ in providing purpose and direction to the staff of the school. The role of the strategic leader is to absorb uncertainty and ambiguity and to set direction for others.

Bringing strategy into leadership (or leadership into strategy) – the top team contribution The notion of strategic leadership as opposed to the two separate concepts of leadership and strategic competence, suggests that the leader and the strategy are closely entwined. People need to identify with a credible leader who understands the organisation, the sector or the challenges, who can deliver on an agenda which is inspiring yet in tune with people’s perceptions of their own and the organisations capabilities and aspirations, and which is carefully timed at a point when the organisation is ready to take a risk, learn and change. The articulated strategy is, at least in the beginning, ‘of the leader’. It is embodied and alive. The leader must have a capacity to make sense of both the emotionality of the organisation and the realities of the organisation and its context. They must manage the emotions of followers that are projected towards them and manage their own anxieties as they reflect realistic confidence back (Huy, 1999). They must be able to have the personal resources to contain anxiety (Frost and Robinson, 1999). To have a realistic sense of confidence they must have insight to discern what their own


capabilities are and to understand the origins of their aspirations and dreams: are they driven out of a personal agenda – and is that in tune with the realities the organisation finds itself in – or is their ‘Main Idea’ delusional and even dangerous. A key aspect for development is sense making. Sense making in this context means personal insight; reading the organisational dynamics that impact on the leaders; understanding the capacity of the organisation to change and the strengths and weaknesses that can be built on; being in tune with the organisation members – their experiences and their tacit knowledge about the organisation. For the leader to be able to do this ‘sense making’ activity, they must develop very special relationships with their top team. For example, top team members must be able to tell the leader what they know about the organisation and to manage their competitiveness with each other for influence over the CEO. Development of top teams often focuses on executive coaching for individual members and too often focuses on competences rather than how members conjointly take up their team roles. Strategy away days often focus on the rational aspects of strategic analysis. Teams in trouble are willing to look at their relationships but they often leave this examination well beyond the point of repair. Unfortunately, some team development activity with a new CEO can be too superficial in terms of building relationships because they are one offs rather than a commitment to ongoing review of working practice. Top teams need to be able to work with leadership as shared and collaborative activity and, simultaneously, as the top leader within their own business units. The specific dynamics of top teams are rarely discussed and team members often talk ‘as if’ they share assumptions and agenda whilst needing to individually shape the CEOs thinking and support the CEOs agenda. Competition for resources and influence may result in a top team resembling the sibling dynamics of the family – where fear of being replaced by the ‘younger’ child or hatred of the older sibling is un-discussible. Whilst much will have been learned in a career leading to a position in a top team little elsewhere prepares people for these complex unconscious political dynamics.

Conclusions The concept of strategic leadership is different from extant models of leadership personified by strong traditional heroic leaders (who also have great strategies). Instead it must address the complex role of the top leader particularly when distributed and collaborative leadership


are necessary. Many frameworks of leadership focus on leader behaviour or competences and there is a popular fascination with charismatic leaders, for instance in the popular press. Perhaps in a world which is globalising and devolving power and leadership responsibilities to more and more people it is crucial to feel that the ‘centre will hold’. We think it is more important that those at the centre have the capacity to contain others’ anxieties, to work and ground their ideas for the organisation in the everyday experiences and realities of the organisation than to have specific characteristics or traits. Charisma, though attractive, is not necessarily an indication of containment ability, or strategic leadership capacity. There is a paradox; strategic leadership and distributed leadership are both simultaneously needed, and that strong strategic leadership allows (or perhaps creates) the possibility of healthy and effective distributed leadership. Strategic leadership is contextual. It focuses on organisation dynamics and the leader’s role, both practical and symbolic, rather than a checklist of desired individual characteristics. The ‘Main Idea’ supports the psychological needs of containing anxiety and providing a safe psychological space for others to exercise their leadership: it is a crucial aspect of strategic leadership and is not simply a strap line for marketing the organisation or a strategic plan. The ‘Main Idea’ should be deeply rooted in sense making and the organisation’s history and context. To embody the ‘Main Idea’ the leader needs to be credible and radiate self-belief based, crucially, on a secure contact with reality. It may not be enough for managers to attend strategy courses, where the rational, cognitive, model-based aspects of strategy are covered, or attend leadership development that emphasises personality, insight relationships and self-awareness. Similarly, it may not be enough for top teams to separate out these two aspects of strategic leadership – it is magical thinking to hope that some form of integration will take place after such events. Working with the top team, and coaching for the CEO must take this complexity into account. Finally, any planned integrated intervention must be tempered by the realisation that the individual CEO, able to dovetail these very different intellectual and psychological requirements, gain acceptance of their ‘Main Idea’ and create a top team which can deliver this agenda is actually a rare individual indeed.

References B. Alimo-Metcalfe and R. Alban-Metcalfe, ‘The development of a new TLQ’, Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 74 (2001) 1–27.

84 Leadership Perspectives B.M. Bass and B.J. Avolio, Improving Organisational Effectiveness through Transformational Leadership (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1994). J. Collins, Good to Great (Random House, 2001). J.L. Denis, L. Lamothe and A. Langley, ‘The dynamics of collective leadership and strategic change in pluralistic organizations’, Academy of Management Journal, 44(4) (2001) 809–37. J.K. Fletcher, ‘The paradox of postheroic leadership: An essay on gender, power, and transformational change’, Leadership Quarterly, 15 (2004) 647–61. P. Frost and S. Robinson, ‘The toxic handler; organisational hero-and casualty’, HBR, July (1999). D. Gioia and K. Chittipeddi, ‘Sensemaking and sensegiving in strategic change initiation’, Strategic Management Journal, 12(6) (1991) 433–48. K. Grint, ‘Learning to lead: Can Aristotle help us find the road to wisdom?’, Leadership, 3(2) (2007) 231–46. L. Hirschhorn, ‘The psychology of vision’, in E.B. Klein, F. Gabelnick and P. Herr (eds) The Psychodynamics of Leadership (Madison, Connecticut: Psychosocial Press, 1998) pp. 109–25. L. Hirschhorn, ‘The primary risk’, Human Relations, 53(1) (1999) 5–23. C. Huffington, K. James and D. Armstrong, ‘What is the emotional cost of distributed leadership?’, in C. Huffington, D. Armstrong, W. Halton, L. Hoyle and J. Pooley (eds) Working Below the Surface: The Emotional Life of Contemporary Organizations (London: Karnac, 2004). Q.N. Huy, ‘Emotional capability, emotional intelligence, and radical change’, Academy of Management Review, 24(2) (1999) 325–45. R.D. Ireland and M.A. Hitt, ‘Achieving and maintaining strategic competitiveness in the 21st century: The role of strategic leadership’, Academy of Management Executive, 19(4) (2005) 63–77. M.F.R. Kets de Vries, ‘Charisma in action: The transformational abilities of Virgin’s Richard Branson and AAB’s Percy Barnevik’, Organizational Dynamics, 26(3) (1998) 6–21. M.F.R. Kets de Vries, ‘High performance teams; Lessons from the pygmies’, Organizational Dynamics, 27(3) (1999) 66–77. J. Kouzes and B. Posner, The Leadership Challenge (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2003). E. Locke, ‘Leadership: Starting at the top’, in C. Pearce and J. Conger (eds) Shared Leadership: Reframing the Hows and Whys of Leadership (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2003), pp. 271–84. M. Maccoby, ‘Narcissistic leaders’, Harvard Business Review, 78(1) (2000) 68–77. E.J. Miller and A.K. Rice, Systems of Organisation (London: Tavistock Publications, 1967). H. Mintzberg and J.A. Waters, ‘Of strategies, deliberate, and emergent’, Strategic Management Journal, 6 (1985) 257–72. A. Obholzer and S. Miller, ‘Leadership, followership, and facilitating the creative workplace’, in C. Huffington, D. Armstrong, W. Halton, L. Hoyle and J. Pooley (eds) Working Below the Surface: The Emotional Life of Contemporary Organizations (London: Karnac, 2004), pp. 33–48. C.L. Pearce and J. Conger, Shared Leadership: Reframing the Hows and Whys of Leadership (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2003).

Strategic Leadership 85 C.L. Pearce and H. Sims, ‘Shared leadership: Toward a multi-level theory of leadership’, in M. Beyerlein, D. Johnson and S. Beyerlein, Advances in the Interdisciplinary Studies of Work Teams (New York: JAI, 2000), vol. 7, pp. 115–39. T.J. Peters, and R.H. Waterman, In Search of Excellence (New York: Harper and Row, 1982). M.E. Porter, Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analysing Industries and Competitors (New York: Free Press, 1980). J. Purcell, N. Kinnie, S. Hutchinson, B. Rayton and J. Swart, Understanding the People and Performance Link; Unlocking the Black Box (London: Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, 2003). J.B. Quinn, Strategies for Change: Logical Incrementalism (Homewood, IL: Irwin, 1980). J.A. Raelin, Creating Leaderful Organizations: How to Bring Out Leadership in Everyone (San Francisco, CA: Berrett- Koehler, 2003). J.J. Sosik, D.I. Jung, Y. Berson, S.D. Dionne and K.S. Jaussi, ‘Making all the right connections: The strategic leadership of top executives in high-tech organizations’, Organizational Dynamics, 34(1) (2005) 47–61. M. Treacy and F. Wiersema, ‘Customer intimacy and other value disciplines’, Harvard Business Review, 71 (1993) 84–94. K. Turnbull James, J. Mann and J. Creasy, ‘Leaders as lead learners; a case example of facilitating collaborative leadership learning for school leaders’, Management Learning, 38(1) (2007) 79–94. D.W. Winnicott, The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment (New York: International Universities Press, 1965).

7 Voluntarism, Representative Leadership and Organisational Democracy Martin Clarke and David Butcher

There seems little doubt as to the plurality of interests at work in contemporary organisation forms. Such is the rate of change, complexity and interdependence in the business environment that organisations have to be responsive to a plethora of stakeholder interests in order to survive. In such pluralist settings, ‘harnessing the capabilities and commitment of knowledge workers is, it might be argued, the central managerial challenge of our time. Unfortunately, it is a challenge that has not been met’ (Manville and Ober, 2003, p. 48). For at the same time as organisations strive to build the commitment of their employees, they are engaged in a second objective tugging in the opposite direction, one of coherence, standardising procedures, integrating systems and creating consistent corporate cultures. The rational bureaucratic model of organising, implicit in this objective, runs deep in managerial mindsets. How can business leaders improve on such a well-developed concept of the way in which human beings collectively best accomplish their objectives? In recent years there have been a number of discourses that have illuminated the problem of managing this tension, of reshaping hierarchy to take account of a plurality of competing interests. Each makes a helpful contribution to the debate. However, Clarke and Butcher (2006) argue that such theories deal inadequately with four key requirements which are central for the development of theory in this area. That is, they fail to address one or more of the following needs to (i) reflect a genuinely pluralistic perspective on organisation form; (ii) acknowledge the centrality of power relationships in organisational working; (iii) address the individual motivations of leaders to work with alternative models of organising and, (iv) provide clear outcomes for improved organisational performance. This chapter will provide an 86

Voluntarism, Representative Leadership and Organisational Democracy 87

overview of an approach that seeks to make good these shortfalls, firstly by drawing on political philosophy to provide an alternative conception of hierarchy and secondly, of particular interest for this volume, by considering its operationalisation as a form of ‘representative’ leadership. Evidence of this approach in practice will be provided and the theory assessed against the four criteria above. Effective organisational governance is ever more concerned with finding the synergy between, ‘unity, solidarity, community, rules, integration and efficiency … and diversity, differentiation, individual autonomy, individual liberty, disintegration and experimentation’ (March and Olsen, 1995, p. 168). How these tensions are managed reflect core values about organisational democracy. This chapter is concerned ultimately with how this ideal may be furthered in practice by more voluntaristic approaches to leadership and governance.

A changing organisation context There is substantive evidence to support the notion that we are experiencing substantial shifts in the nature of the social institutions around us. Gratton and Ghoshal (2003) describe this ‘revolution’ in terms of a desire for individuals to express their potential, the need for protection from the arbitrary use of power, and involvement of people determining the conditions of their association (2003, p. 1). These types of change are consequently transforming individual relationships with institutions at all levels, but at their core reflect the primacy of individuals and their capacity to act with autonomy. For an increasing number of commentators, the need to respond positively to this plurality of legitimate employee interests substantially changes the role and function of organisational hierarchy to a degree that executives cannot ignore (Cloke and Goldsmith, 2002). The question as to what will characterise this organisational form has stimulated rich research and conceptual speculation but four perspectives in particular have shaped this debate: stakeholder theory, organisation citizenship behaviour (OCB), communities of practice (COP) and co-evolution/complexity theory. Whilst each provides a useful contribution to understanding the interplay between coherence and plurality, Clarke and Butcher (2006) argue there is as yet no approach that satisfactorily accounts for all four of the criteria described above. This position is explicated in Table 7.1 but in brief, stakeholder theory has given insufficient focus to the requirements of employees and other stakeholders, whilst OCB has neglected the issue of power and politics in the conceptualisation of citizenship. The latter has

88 Leadership Perspectives Table 7.1

Comparison of theories addressing organisational plurality Stakeholder Theory

OCB Theory

Increasing plurality and need for individual autonomy

Plurality and success central but tended to underemphasise range and nature of certain stakeholders (Friedman and Miles, 2002)

Plurality Organisations as implicit, but community of greater communities of emphasis on interdependent subordinating learners critical individual for competitive interests to advantage corporate good (Brown and (Graham, Duguid, 2001) 2000)

Embeddedness of social relationships and power

More emphasis UnderLearning as a needed on emphasises socially situated organisation issue of process but role as a dynamic challenge and of power system of political action underdeveloped social central to (Fox, 2000) relationships citizenship (Hendry, 2001) (Graham, and on the 2000) relative power of different stakeholders (Friedman and Miles, 2002)

Social connectivity central to co-evolution (Ashmos et al., 2002) but role of power and politics underexplored

Links to organisation performance

Inconsistent results (Jawahar and McLaughlin, 2001)

Includes links between participation, goal plurality and performance (Ashmos et al., 2002), semi structures and product innovation (Brown and Eisenhardt, 1997)

Correlation between some dimensions of OCB and organisation success but what is direction of causality? (Podaskoff and MacKenzie, 1997)

COP Theory

Strong links to innovation (Brown and Duguid, 2001)

Complexity and Coevolutionary Theories Plurality of interests central to multidirectional causality of action (Lewin and Volberda, 1999)

Voluntarism, Representative Leadership and Organisational Democracy 89 Table 7.1 continued

Comparison of theories addressing organisational plurality –

Stakeholder Theory

Practical implications for managers and motivators for action

OCB Theory

More research Varied and required inconclusive (Hendry, explanations – 2001), e.g. impression managers not management yet grasped (Bolino, 1999) practical implications of collaborative stakeholder relationships

COP Theory

Complexity and Coevolutionary Theories

Learning communities are a forum in which individuals create and sustain identity (Brown and Duguid, 2001)

Action guided by desire for autonomy, choice, freedom to improvise (Brown and Eisenhardt, 1997) but little detailed research on individual cognitions

also largely been an omission in COP theory, albeit that more recent treatments are seeking to redress this position. Co-evolutionary theory reflects well the issues of social connectivity but provides insufficient insight into the motivations of individual actors to work with or encourage greater levels of participation, and how these cognitions are influenced by dominant power relationships. Nor do any of these approaches provide senior leaders with practical principles about reconfiguring the role of hierarchy, without resorting to unitary values that implicitly undermine the value of the plurality the approaches seek to establish.

Organisational voluntarism In attempting to address this issue, the arena of political philosophy provides an instructive parallel debate. In the political discourse surrounding the basis for a ‘good’ democratic society, the same polarised tension between coherence and plurality can be identified. Should society rely on the state to shape good citizens, as social conservatives would have it, or should good citizens be the product of a liberal moral pluralism? Writers such as Etzioni (1995) and Putnam (2000) promote a third, communitarian approach, to tackling this issue that has many parallels for the debate about the role of organisational hierarchy. From


a communitarian perspective, in the good society the moral voice that determines the nature of good citizenship is the product of a diversity of voluntary associations. These associations range from membership of local community action groups to political parties, and serve to mediate between the private world of individuals and the institutions of society. The opportunity to participate selectively in associations, free from state influence, is fundamental to the creation and preservation of liberty. Most importantly, a good society is determined by such voluntary associations implicitly inculcating a level of self-control in their members by introducing them to particular values that reinforce individuals’ normative commitments to that society. The application of this model in an organisation setting is, as yet, in embryonic form. Nonetheless, it is evident in a growing body of theoretical discussion. It is premised on the idea that unofficially constituted groups in organisational settings are able to provide the level of self-control necessary for the maintenance of organisational congruence; a multiplicity of stakeholder agendas does not necessarily create organisational incoherence (Ashmos et al., 2002). Furthermore, these groups are more likely to exhibit self-control when they can express voice and contest views about which organisation values are important to them without the intervention of formal authority. As with voluntary associations, such arrangements bring people together to pursue interests through collective action, serve to distribute power, and mediate between individuals and the organisation, thereby creating a sense of involvement. Some groups may be focused on issues of critical organisational concern; others may be more parochial in outlook. Crucially however, they collectively and voluntarily facilitate the flow of information between different groups and the organisational connectivity required to stimulate innovation (Ashmos et al., 2002). Thus, organisational voluntarism redefines hierarchy as a process to encourage voluntary groups and individuals to deliberate and decide upon their own identity, minimising regulation through institutional control. This may still take the form of praise, reward or support, but avoids coercion towards unitary priorities in order that these groups themselves in turn influence the establishment of organisational core values. Extending the parallel with democratic governance, the role of hierarchy would also be to mediate between deserving causes, challenging constituents to justify the significance of their agendas and their demands for resource. The role of top management would remain to provide fundamental organisational framing, but this would take into consideration different voices, and require the justification of any


conclusions and actions to relevant organisational constituents. In this way, voluntarism can be viewed as a synthesis of both a ‘managed’ and a non-coercive process of participation. Although in the early stages of development in the field of organisations, the concepts of voluntarism and communitarianism are not without their detractors. For example, communitarianism has often been seen as taking insufficient account of institutionalised power relationships (Reynolds, 2000). Critical theorists have been keen to highlight the dark side of communities that tend to imply or assume consensus at the expense of individual difference. Thus, it is important to stress that the conception of voluntarism discussed here is very much concerned with the ‘politics of difference’ (Reynolds, 2000, p. 71), where individual conflicts and differences are accepted as being inevitable and not always resolvable. This orientation is similar to the notion of an ‘arena’ described by Burgoyne and Jackson (1997) in the context of management learning, in which ‘differences “meet”, are fought over and reconciled and reconfigured into new groupings, factions and alliances’ (1997, p. 61).

Voluntaristic leadership What then does this voluntaristic approach mean for business leaders faced with the task of mediating the need for strategic coherence and the need to be responsive to organisational plurality? In conceptualising voluntaristic leadership in an organisational context, this research field has been further informed by seeking parallels between institutional and organisational governance. In other words, the leadership of political institutions provides an obvious yet surprisingly underexplored starting point for understanding the orientation required for working with a plurality of interests. The focus on the role of leadership per se, as opposed to the structures and mechanisms of democracy, is premised on the view that governance is legitimate when it allows people to exercise degrees of influence over their collective destiny. Leadership is implicit in this endeavour. As Ruscio confirms from a liberal political institutional standpoint, ‘it is impossible to imagine a strong healthy democracy without leaders’ (2004, p. ix). Yet at face value, the validity of political institutional leadership as a basis for considering organisational leadership appears dubious: there are significant distinctions between both contexts. Organisations do not reflect the structural characteristics of modern democracies; representation, accountability and participation are not intrinsic to


the governance of work organisations. Despite the increasing interest in stakeholder theory, the idea of business leaders representing the interests of a constituency, other than that of shareholder, seems as yet embryonic. Most fundamentally, whilst protecting the rights of democratic participation is central to political leadership, this is not reflected in a business context. The stewardship role of business leaders has become institutionalised as a concern for organisational wealth and shareholder return, rather than democratic principles of governance. However, these are arguably differences of degree rather than substance. Thus, on the one hand, political leaders within the institutions of democracy make considerable use of formal authority in their role as party officials or committee members. Political parties and the executive institutions of government are organisations with hierarchies, and formal authority has a role in enabling political leaders to create coherence. On the other hand, from a stakeholder theory perspective, the formal authority of business leaders co-exists with their role as de facto representatives of constituent interests. As organisations become more complex and fragmented, the role of informal power derived from relationships and networks across the organisation increases in importance and leadership thus becomes evermore the product of an informal social process (Barker, 1997). The appointment of leaders to senior positions is therefore dependent upon representing the interests of a whole range of relationships, which if not recognised can lead to political turnover. Business leaders are therefore required to become representative in their approach, a process further reinforced by increasing public scrutiny of corporate affairs. As it is for political leaders in democratic institutions, the requirement both to coalesce and distribute power can only be achieved on the assumption that the leadership of organisations is intrinsically a political process. Since there is ample evidence that this is the case (Buchanan and Badham, 1999), it follows that business leaders need to and, indeed, appear to embrace behaviours that not only include debate, lobbying and coalition building, but also more contentious activities such as information management and covert action. In other words, if some level of cohesion around core organisational values is to be achieved, these behaviours need to become as integral to business leadership as open dialogue and debate about differences. As has increasingly been recognised, political behaviour in organisations, far from being dysfunctional, is central to the achievement of managerial goals. Moreover, it can constitute a vehicle to strengthen the social


responsibility of managers. And as with the leadership of political institutions, responsible political behaviour can only be predicated on the assumption that business leaders possess civic virtue, that is, the ability to forego personal interests in the pursuit of collective outcomes (Starrat, 2001). There is no evidence to suggest that managers are any less motivated by just causes, any less willing to forego self-serving ends, or any less prepared to distinguish between ethical and unethical means, than elected politicians (Michalos, 2001). Thus, whilst political institutional leadership does not mirror all aspects of its business counterpart, it arguably offers a basis from which to consider how managers might work more effectively with complex and varied competing interests. If businesses are increasingly characterised by similar tensions, an appreciation of how to manage the conflicts between cohesion and productive differences, and between self-interest and ‘civic virtue,’ offers a useful parallel to consider. Indeed, Hendry views the traditions of responsible political leadership and governance as ideal for enabling managers to develop an identity that ‘empowers them to exercise judgement, to reconcile interests, and to build and lead communities of trust’ (2006, p. 278). In summary, political institutional leadership is commensurate with a voluntaristic mindset in which managers recognise the need to engage in debate and action to represent matters of individual and organisation concern, irrespective of hierarchical position or explicit authority. The term ‘representative’ leadership (RL) is suggested to emphasise the micro-political dimension of this behaviour. It does not refer to a formal process of representation. In practice, RL behaviour is more akin to principles of participative democracy, that is, encouraging difference, voice, self-organisation and decision-making. As in civic affairs, these discursive practices are predicated on the basis that they help to form local identities and influence organisational values.

Representative leadership in organisations At this stage, this view of voluntarism and RL represents an exploratory contribution to theory, but one that reflects emerging organisational practice in pluralist organisational settings. For example, a recent coevolutionary study by Galunic and Eisenhardt (2001) reveals how senior managers have crafted an organisational form where diversity and autonomy of action are greatly encouraged, but an appropriate degree of alignment is still achieved. This culture is the result of decentralised and self-organised behaviour. Business units are free to shape their own


portfolios, including the warrant to contest other divisions for control of different products and markets. In response, senior managers reward winners and good ‘corporate citizenship’ but also help losers to improve. Most importantly, such decisions are guided by social considerations about fairness as well as economic imperatives for profit and growth. However, in this study, as with much of the discourse on co-evolution, the role of power remains under-explored. In contrast, Denis et al. (2001), in their study of leadership and strategic change in the pluralistic setting of hospital administration, note, how leadership is necessarily a political process. In a situation where power is diffuse and objectives divergent, levels of coherence are achieved by constellations of leaders who are sensitive to the needs of different constituencies in order to gain credibility and support. Constructive political activity, in terms of compromise, lobbying, alliances and collaborative solutions are central to how support is mobilised. In particular, Denis et al. note the role of ‘creative individuals and committed unified groups in proactively moving to make change happen’ (2001, p. 834) in situations where the legitimacy of change initiatives cannot be taken for granted. Further evidence of the way in which such communities can stimulate change and innovation is provided by Swan et al. (2002) who demonstrate how radical innovation in the health care sector was achieved against a backdrop of diverse professional interests and uneven power relations. Coherence in approach was achieved through a discursive strategy, which sought to align competing agendas in the innovation process through the rhetoric of community, and engagement with the diverse interests that constituted that community. Also, much as with the Galunic and Eisenhardt case, the management team were able to balance commercial interests with the broader values of other groups by sublimating purely economic considerations in the cause of community building. Research by Ashmos et al. (2002) suggests that this type of engagement helps to generate multiple perspectives of the environment. In turn, this alters an organisation’s predisposition to new challenges and opportunities, thus stimulating innovation and continual adaptation. Similar conclusions are reached by Ravasi and Verona (2001) in their analysis of the Danish company Oticon. In Oticon, innovation is sustained by structural ambiguity and voluntary project initiatives, and strategic coherence is the product of continual negotiation amongst a plurality of coordinating groups and roles. Clarke’s (2006) case analysis of senior executives attempted to identify how managers cope with such competing demands. The research

Voluntarism, Representative Leadership and Organisational Democracy 95 Table 7.2

Leadership behaviours

From (Rational Leadership)

To (Representative Leadership)

Preference for formal meetings and processes

Extensive use of informal processes, e.g. covert activity, corridor meetings

Focus on senior management approval/buy-in

Focus on working with personal agendas

Relationship building focused at senior levels

Relationship building and networking at all levels

Debating and challenging amongst small coterie

Encouraging debate and challenge at all levels

Carefully prescribed delegation and empowerment

Providing others with space and autonomy to experiment, stimulating bottom-up change

Tendency to influence through operational control

Influencing by focusing on broad direction

Working on formally agreed priorities/issues

Working outside of agreed responsibilities, often on unofficial initiatives

Challenging through established processes

Challenging the status quo, irreverent and subversive

Exclusive and involving of few

Inclusive and involving of many

Representing legitimate organisation interests e.g. own department, customers

Representing the interests of quasi legitimate constituencies, often external to own responsibilities, e.g. other functions, unofficial issues

identified a range of individual approaches to working with plurality of interests. These behaviours are represented on a continuum ranging from ‘rational’ to ‘representative’ (see Table 7.2). At one end, leadership behaviour reflects the use of formal processes, such as meetings and management presentations, to position causes and influence colleagues. This was also characterised by a tendency to limit debate and challenge to a small coterie of senior managers and to prescribe delegation and empowerment within well controlled guidelines. At the other end of the range, managers employed behaviours broadly consistent with the conceptualisation of voluntarism and RL. These included working with individual agendas, the use of covert activity, representing the interests of quasi-legitimate constituencies, sometimes working within their organisations goals/values, sometimes against them.


Organisational voluntarism as emerging theory However, notwithstanding these examples, central to the focus for this chapter is the desire to stimulate broader debate and theory building about the reconfiguration of organisational plurality and coherence. So to what extent might the concept of voluntarism make good the shortfalls in existing theory building by meeting the four criteria identified by Clarke and Butcher (2006)?

(i) The centrality of organisational plurality At a time when organisation plurality is only likely to increase, the concept of voluntarism clearly assumes the inevitability and value of plurality, greater autonomy and choice as being central to organisational success. Diversity of interest and autonomy of individual action are prerequisites for voluntarism. Reflecting as they do, broader changes in society, these factors may ultimately be the most significant drivers for the adoption of voluntaristic principles. In this way, voluntarism can be viewed as a natural stage in the evolution of organisational form.

(ii) The embeddedness of social relations and power in organisational working Voluntarism directly reflects the centrality of social relationships, community and power in the structuration of action, and thus provides a basis for understanding how institutional power distributions both influence and are influenced by the enactment of these voluntaristic principles. The centrality of power reflected in the dualism of hierarchy and participation, embodies the structuration of resources, and cognitive and moral rules upon which managers draw that both constrain and enable what they do (Giddens, 1984). With organisational voluntarism, power and its negotiation through political discourse is positioned as an explicit leadership activity. For example, Denis et al. (2001) highlight how leaders in pluralistic settings mobilise a range of symbolic and material resources to create influence and ‘strategic couplings’ which include aligning with widely held perceptions about organisational issues and environmental constraints, the use of positional authority, secrecy, leveraging the credibility of acknowledged performance, and maintaining appropriateness of behaviour in the eyes of significant support groups. Through such practices, over time, managers are able to constitute and reconstitute what they do and who they are as contextual forces evolve (Denis et al. 2001).


(iii) Accounting for the motivations of managers to pursue actions in contravention of traditional approaches Of particular significance to the concept of voluntarism is the question of why individuals might engage with ideas that, at least in the short term, are at odds with the dominant bureaucratic approach to organising. What are the interpretive schemata that manager’s draw upon to make their work meaningful in pluralistic settings? Clarke’s (2006) study suggests that in the absence of any formally agreed model of working, RLs largely ‘made it up for themselves’. That is, in seeking to work with the tensions of plurality, they arrived at their own conclusions irrespective of organisational circumstance. In consequence, they tended to see themselves as independent of the goals of the organisation, whilst also working within them. This cluster of managers was delineated from the rest of Clarke’s sample by a combination of factors. Firstly, they each viewed diversity of interest as a critical organising principle to be encouraged in order to enhance organisational effectiveness. Secondly, this orientation encouraged a mindset in which individuals felt able to make a personal difference, to pursue their own goals legitimately. However, this perspective was balanced by an orientation in which personal success was inextricably interwoven with the success of others’ agendas, suggesting that these managers attached real value to the achievement of others’ goals. This approach brought them into conflict with their colleagues. Thirdly, therefore, in order to ameliorate accusations of self-interest, individuals attached importance to building legitimacy of action through transparency of motive. The resulting actions were nevertheless highly political and reflected an implicit acceptance of the centrality of power and politics in their activities.

(iv) The need for clear organisational benefits This final criterion requires providing strong linkages to improved organisational performance, for without which there is little incentive for senior management to adopt voluntaristic principles. In this regard, the idea of voluntarism fits well within co-evolutionary discourse, in which the need for organisational flexibility and the continual reconfiguration of strategic capabilities is viewed as critical to sustainable competitive advantage. The concept of voluntarism and its themes of local autonomy and diversity reflect well emerging views as to the importance of self-organisation in allowing for a dynamic feedback between the organisation and its environment in order to co-evolve


(Ashmos et al., 2002). The self-organisation inherent within the voluntaristic form clearly facilitates the process of rapid reconfiguration to respond to different market circumstances (Child and McGrath, 2001). Perhaps, most acutely for senior managers, the concept of voluntarism also provides a framework for capitalising on diversity in the pursuit of innovation. Local communities, being at the interface of the organisation and its environment are seen to be a rich source of innovation (Brown and Duguid, 2001). However, above all else, the concept of voluntarism potentially provides senior managers with a model for merging hierarchical structure with greater egalitarian practice. Whilst co-operation declines as organisation size increases, voluntary group discussion in value setting leads to increased commitment and contribution. Such communication also enhances group identity and personal responsibility, which are powerful mechanisms of self-control. By acknowledging the tension between, for example, the seemingly contradictory relationships of hierarchy and participation, or local autonomy and strategic coherence, the resulting ‘organised dissonance’; the ‘strategic union of forms presumed to be hostile’, can produce critical levels of organisational resonance (Ashcraft, 2001, p. 1304). Indeed, voluntarism may come to be considered as one of the few simple but often contradictory rules that are believed to guide the development of successful co-evolution (Galunic and Eisenhardt, 2001).

Conclusion There has been a growing concern amongst some commentators about the disconnection between the apparent increase in organisational plurality, and the relatively limited facets of democracy practised in the workplace (Rousseau and Rivero, 2003). Despite a range of forces promoting greater democratic practice, most western organisations still rely on traditional top-down hierarchy for most of their strategic decisions. This disconnection underscores the question posed by Rousseau and Rivero (2003) as to what sort of behaviours and organising principles are required to enable leaders to become more responsive to a plurality of stakeholder interests. Whilst it is not the intention here to develop yet another theory of leadership, the purpose is to consider the value of a voluntaristic and institutional leadership lens in answering this question. Clarke’s empirical study suggests three particular considerations for managers and researchers. Firstly, the study suggests that some managers appear able to negotiate the dissonance between plurality and coherence in a way that


encourages a democratic orientation to leading. Central to this disposition is the notion that some managers conceive their role as an activity to further the interests of others, as well as themselves. Contrary to the views of authors such as Cloke and Goldsmith (2002) who emphasise the importance of a similarity between individual and organisational values, democratic behaviour in Clarke’s study was facilitated by a disposition in which individuals often saw themselves as being independent of the goals and values of their organisation, sometimes working within them but equally at times undermining them. Secondly, in keeping with the growing accumulation of theory in this field, Clarke’s findings provide further insight as to the role of organisational politics in democratic activity, and lie in contrast to the idea of politics undermining workplace democracy. The orientation of RLs towards politics is supportive of Novicevic and Harvey’s (2004) view of organisational politics as a ‘democratic asset’ which represents the varying capacity of employees to influence the way they are governed. From this perspective the use of political negotiation serves as a check and balance against the undue influence of self-serving interests rather than reinforce them. In the empirical study, this was achieved by behaviours that included transparency of motive, searching for win-win solutions, and openness to dialogue. Thirdly, the research also provides insight as to how this disposition may serve to facilitate progress towards more democratic forms in circumstances where such ambitions are far from being perceived as legitimate. For some authors, such as Coopey and Burgoyne (2000) this goal is seen as being accelerated through the establishment of formal systems of political, social and civil rights. Clarke’s findings suggest that progress towards democratised forms may also be made through voluntaristic and informal private projects; actions that can create pockets of participation, which in turn may act as role models for further action. Specifically, this approach emphasises how progress can be made by encouraging voluntary processes of group formation and identity that do not create untenable chaos. Levels of control are still achievable through behaviour that seeks to balance individual and organisational agendas. What significance, then, does the concept of voluntarism hold for managers and students of organisation? Whilst rational organisation has guided managerial values for at least two centuries, if not much longer, in the last 20 years there has undeniably been serious debate and experimentation with new organising principles. As with any large scale social change, the evolution discussed in this chapter must be


seen as but the beginning of a process with the potential to accelerate. In the context of one organisation, individual and isolated group agendas appear insignificant, yet they provide a point of departure in legitimising alternatives. They can initiate change precisely because they are real and relevant to the challenges of everyday work. But whilst progress towards voluntarism as an organising principle can be made by exploiting the contradictions of the rational mindset from within, in terms of creating a wholesale shift in organisational form, the process is a gradual one. Put another way, if voluntarism has efficacy as a guiding principle of contemporary organisation form, this will be determined only as an emergent empirical reality.

References K. Ashcraft, ‘Organised dissonance: Feminist bureaucracy as hybrid form’, Academy of Management Journal, 44(6) (2001) 1301–22. D. Ashmos, R. Duchon, R. McDaniel and J. Huonker, ‘What a mess! Participation as a simple managerial rule to “complexify” organisations’, Journal of Management Studies, 39(2) (2002) 189–206. R. Barker, ‘How can we train leaders if we do not know what leadership is?’, Human Relations, 50(4) (1997) 343–63. M. Bolino, ‘Citizenship and impression management: Good soldiers or good actors?’ Academy of Management Review, 24(1) (1999) 82–98. J. Brown and P. Duguid, ‘Knowledge and organisation: A social practice perspective’, Organisation Science, 12(2) (2001) 198–213. S. Brown and K. Eisenhardt, ‘The art of continuous change: Linking complexity theory and time paced evolution in relentlessly shifting organisations’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 42(1) (1997) 1–34. D. Buchanan and R. Badham, Change, Power and Politics, Winning the Turf Game (London: Sage, 1999). M. Burgoyne and B. Jackson, ‘The arena thesis: Management development as a pluralistic meeting point’, in M. Burgoyne and M. Reynolds (eds) Management Learning (London: Sage, 1997) pp. 54–70. J. Child and R. McGrath, ‘Organisations unfettered; organisational form in an information-intensive economy’, Academy of Management Journal, 44(6) (2001) 1135–48. M. Clarke, ‘A study of the role of “representative” leadership in stimulating organisational democracy’, Leadership, 2(4) (2006) 427–50. M. Clarke and D. Butcher ‘Voluntarism as an organising principle for “responsible” organisations’, Corporate Governance, 6(4) (2006) 527–44. K. Cloke and J. Goldsmith, The End of Management and the Rise of Organisational Democracy (San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 2002). J. Coopey and J. Burgoyne, ‘Politics and organisational learning’, Journal of Management Studies, 37(6) (2000) 869–85. J. Denis, L. Lamothe and A. Langley, ‘The dynamics of collective leadership and strategic change in pluralistic organisations’, Academy of Management Journal, 44(4) (2001) 809–37.

Voluntarism, Representative Leadership and Organisational Democracy 101 A. Etzioni, New Communitarian Thinking, Persons, Virtues and Communities, (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995). S. Fox, ‘Communities of practice, Foucault and actor network theory’, Journal of Management Studies, 37(6) (2000) 853–67. A. Friedman and S. Miles, ‘Developing stakeholder theory’, Journal of Management Studies, 39(1) (2002) 1–21. D. Galunic and K. Eisenhardt, ‘Architectural innovation and modular corporate forms’, Academy of Management Journal, 44(6) (2001) 1229–49. A. Giddens, The Constitution of Society (California: University of California Press, 1984). J. Graham, ‘Promoting civil virtue organisational citizenship behaviour: Contemporary questions rooted in classical quandaries from political philosophy’, Human Resources Management Review, 10(1) (2000) 61–79. L. Gratton and S. Ghoshal, ‘Managing personal human capital: New ethos for the “volunteer” employee’, European Management Journal, 21(1) (2003) 1–10. J. Hendry, ‘Economic contracts versus social relationships as a foundation for normative stakeholder theory’, Business Ethics: A European Review, 10(3) (2001) 223–32. J. Hendry, ‘Educating managers for post bureaucracy, the role of the humanities’, Management Learning, 37(3) (2006) 267–81. I. Jawahar and G McLaughlin, ‘Toward a descriptive stakeholder theory: An organisational life cycle approach’, Academy of Management Review, 26(3) (2001) 397–414. A. Lewin and H. Volberda, ‘Prolegomena on coevolution: A framework for research on strategy and new organizational forms’, Organization Science, 10(5) (1999) 519–34. J. March and J. Olsen, Democratic Governance (New York: Free Press, 1995). B. Manville and J. Ober, ‘Beyond empowerment: Building a company of citizens’, Harvard Business Review, January (2003) 48–53. A. Michalos, ‘Ethics counsellors as a wew priesthood’, Journal of Business Ethics, 29(1–2) (2001) 3–17. M. Novicevic and M. Harvey, ‘The political role of corporate human resource management in strategic global leadership development’, The Leadership Quarterly, 15(4) (2004) 569–88. P. Podaskoff and S. MacKenzie, ‘Impact of organisational citizenship behaviour on organisational performance: A review and suggestions for future research’, Human Performance, 10(2) (1997) 133–51. R. Putnam, Bowling Alone (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000). D. Ravasi and G. Verona, ‘Organising the process of knowledge integration: The benefits of structural ambiguity’, Scandinavian Journal of Management, 17(1) (2001) 41–66. M. Reynolds, ‘Bright lights and Pastoral idyll’, Management Learning, 31(1) (2000) 67–81. D. Rousseau and A. Rivero, ‘Democracy, a way of organising in a knowledge economy’, Journal of Management Inquiry, 12(2) (2003) 115–34. K. Ruscio, The Leadership Dilemma in Modern Democracy (Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2004).

102 Leadership Perspectives R. Starrat, ‘Democratic leadership theory in late modernity: An oxymoron or ironic possibility?’, Leadership in Education, 4(4) (2001) 333–52. J. Swan, H. Scarborough and M. Robertson, ‘The construction of “communities of practice” in the management of innovation’, Management Learning, 33(4) (2002) 477–96.

Part II The Importance of Context


8 Public Sector Leader Change Strategies: A Focus on Technical or Collaborative Solutions Su Maddock

The quality of leadership in the public sector has long been an issue for politicians, being critical to service improvement and to new strategic arrangements within localities. Local authorities have improved as chief officers have adapted to partnership and matured in their collaborations with other agencies. New collaborative models of leadership are emerging in local government in particular – however, how to embrace innovation remains a challenge across the public sector especially in central government. Critical barriers to change include a lack of alignment between local leaders and national performance frameworks and the tension between chief executives with very different approaches to change and service innovation. The tension between leaders who seek control and resort to system’s change and those engaging with staff and communities can be seen in most organisations. Although attitudes to engagement with staff and communities are changing; those with a preference for ‘planning and control’ are more in line with government’s own performance management regime – which means that the collaborative leaders are at a disadvantage. In addition, as it is women who seek out collaborators but are thwarted by conventional male gender cultures, collaborative models in the mainstream are even slower to develop. While the majority of public sector managers and leaders adopt both transactional and transformational ways of working, most continue to have a preference for ‘planning and control’ rather than for ‘collaborative practice’, which is a problem for government when the latter is the more congenial to innovation (Bentley, 2007). Research shows that innovation rarely catches on if it is driven purely from the top or through a system’s approach to change (Mulgan, 2007); it depends on a spread through networking and active relationships, 105


that take time and are less predictable, but provide a much stronger anchor from which to improve institutional systems. In earlier stages of reform the divide was between those leaders who are actively driving change and those who were more passive in their leadership role. Most public sector executives are now actively concerned with transforming their organisations; it is the way they do it that distinguishes them. They either have faith in people or technical management systems. The ‘management system enthusiast’ prefers ‘planning and order’ to ‘doing and collaboration’. In this chapter I suggest that the lack of alignment between collaborative leaders with government management frameworks is a problem for the next stage of reform which surely demands a more innovative public sector. The question for policy-makers is which leadership approach is more likely to support public innovation and address the growing concerns in communities?

Context There is little critique making sense of public leadership in practice and even less evidence about the impact of leadership development and whether it is effective (Blacker and Kennedy, 2004). What is an appropriate approach in one organisation is highly debatable in another. Leadership is a contested arena, although some would like to wrap it up in generic competences, leadership in action is very context specific and there are significant differences between innovative executives in their thinking and behaviour. The views presented here are based on the author’s research and experience in the public sector, especially in local government. Working closely with local authorities over the past 15 years generates sensitivity to cultural shifts. In the 1980s managers who wanted to collaborate were seen as weak, merely wanting a discussion was a sign of incompetence. Such days have gone. Partnerships are now commonplace and collaborative leadership is becoming fashionable, if not always in evidence. However, there remains much more talk than action, more ‘planning than doing’ and a preference for a form of transactional leadership that accepts existing management and practices systems within the public sector and government. A positive sign is that most public sector chief executives gave-up believing in one management guru’s message some time ago, they have become more confident in their own judgement knowing that leadership is contextual and about appropriate actions, not magic

Public Sector Leader Change Strategies 107

recipes for instant success. Benington (2004) talks of the need for ‘adaptive leadership’, others of distributive or transforming leaders. What is emerging is an acceptance of the need for more leaders who listen and collaborate rather than for charismatic, heroes; unfortunately public managers work within organisations governed by an overarching public administration framework that mitigates against a critical mass of collaborative leaders emerging. A problem for some practitioners is that it is not clear what leading internal change or working in partnership means, and many directors remain uncertain of their role and find changing their habits and behaviours difficult. What is emerging is a difference between how corporate directors and policy leads envisage change and the strategies they adopt to achieve their objective of reform. While the media searches for heroes and scapegoats, public sector chief executives seek conversations with others in public organisations, business and charities; whilst being aware of the distinctiveness of the public work environment, constantly juggling priorities from government, communities and staff. Local authority executives also have to manage their relationships with local politicians, who are themselves struggling to understand the wider context in which they are working. The differences between chief executive change strategies within local government and in health organisations are elaborated below.

Public leader’s change strategies Leadership is not only about style it also about what leaders do and their approaches to change. Different approaches to change and improvement are underpinned by philosophical assumptions about ‘what is possible’ and ‘what is not’. Fox and Broussine (2004) have noticed two quite distinct approaches to organisational change and service improvement among local authority chief executives. Walshe (2006) also observed that the reason why so many chief executives in the NHS were transactional leaders with a preference for ‘planning and control’ over engagement and development was because their approach was in tune with central government’s own performance management framework. This is unsurprising given that executives in health and local government have to cope with a high degree of turbulence and many find comfort in the certainty of neat frameworks which reinforce a model of control rather than one of creativity. The British government’s targets, financial incentives and short-termism have had a negative impact on the way


public sector leaders and policy-makers behave. Experienced managers who want to keep their jobs ‘go with the flow’ and align their behaviour to government performance management demands. The tension between ‘system enthusiasts’ and more ‘adaptive’ and collaborative leaders can be observed in almost all public bodies (Maddock, 2006). At the extreme end of the spectrum, are those with a faith in people and confidence in their capacity while at the other are those who prefer formal and controlled work environments and specified transactions. The micro-environment within traditional public organisations reveals a small scale power struggle between these two types of leaders. In the past, similar tensions were described between those who focused on their own careers or on service outcomes, or were more inward or outward looking. These are not the same but reflect the same sort of tensions about how to achieve change. This struggle doesn’t concern finance and resources; it concerns the tension between the individual manager’s focus on personal achievement and the more outward relational focus of those committed to shared practice and changing practice (Fletcher, 1998). ‘Planners and controllers’ tend to be enthusiastic about performance management systems and strong believers in the role of performance management in change. They tend to be: • • • • •

Planners rather than ‘doers’; Seek efficiency and system perfection; Are uncomfortable with uncertainty, risk and emergent networks; Prefer formalities and protocols; Have a tendency to ‘tell’ rather than inquire.

They tend to approach ‘change’ as a logical and linear process, in spite of evidence to the contrary. They are often irritated and frustrated by poor staff morale and uninterested in the fact that human resources issues are not on the corporate agenda. Policy regimes have nurtured this approach and the view that public administrations are machines that can be understood as closed and static systems. Most of government’s reform initiatives have been introduced to tackle the problems caused by this structural and functional model; restructuring, marketisation, new agencies, internal change were all attempts to release staff from hierarchical control in order to make public bodies more responsive. Those most successful leaders are more open and responsive than


in previous eras and have become less dominated by formal protocol and adaptive developing more interactive styles of leadership (Hartley, 2006). More responsive leaders are adaptive and interpret their role in transformation as demanding a need to: • Involve staff and communities in the changes they want to make; • Aspire to involving service users much more in service design and delivery; • Relate to place and other partners in their localities; • Are aware of local and historical dynamics in their organisation and in the locality; • Handle ambiguity and change and not assume control; • Be open to criticism and new ideas; • Able to integrate people issues with financial, performance and operational management; • Accept the role of diversity in innovation. Those closest to the dynamics of organisations and local problems appreciate the need to involve people in transformation and are less convinced by precise planning and top-down structural change. They adapt to circumstance and learn through conversations with staff and by ‘walking about’; they also rely less on paper plans until they are certain what is a realistic plan would look like given the context. They are aware of the connection between front-line staff and service innovation; they also try to be transparent, and cope with ambiguity; encourage team-building and value diversity. More radical leaders recognise that transformation cannot be squeezed through conventional cultures and practices and requires new practices and forms of organisation. There are, however, examples of leaders who have successfully adopted non-conventional approaches. Women chief executives, for example, who are now recognised as transforming leaders, report that in the past they had been perceived as mavericks by their colleagues; many had struggled with male gender cultures and were aware of their own tactical choices between being challenging or compliant earlier in their careers (Maddock, 1999). The environment is now much more comfortable for you to be yourself, it you are a woman; women were previously seen as mavericks if they wanted change. Now they are cultivated for wanting change. There is a greater degree of openness and directness about the


organisation and women are not so frightened to ask for what they want. (District Council leader in Fox and Broussine) In local government it is noticeable that many of the most innovative chief executives are women and that a significant number run the most challenging authorities, either failing, vulnerable or having uncertain political control (Fox and Broussine, 2004). Many of these women have a particular commitment to disadvantaged communities which shapes their strategies; they also (in contrast to senior women in the past) are encouraging of other innovative leaders and demonstrate a small shift towards a more deliberative style of leadership. Innovative women are aware that the key to sustained improvement is through front-line staff in particular working much more closely with communities, and that new practices emerge from real connection, not the other way around (Lucas, 2006). It will help us to become a more organic organisation, and we want to develop a less ‘laddish’ organisation, which is flatter, more open, more responsive and innovative. This will take several yeas and we have only been on the journey for two (Fox and Broussine, 2004). The tension between those who assume change will follow from mergers, restructuring and efficiency-based business models and those who conceptualise change as a dynamic process of building relationships has become an ‘elephant in the room’; a barrier to change when denied as a reality. These differences reveal deep emotional and philosophical differences that influence executive beliefs about ‘what will and will not’ lead to positive change. If an executive does not believe that in people’s potential to organise but do believe that restructuring and performance management systems will drive cultural change, then, he or she will follow the latter strategy. Staff will follow the lead of the chief executive’s style and adjust their own behaviour. These two leadership approaches are not just a matter of different personal styles they also influence practice and are replicated in business models. ‘Planning and control’ enthusiasts tend to approach service modernisation with an efficiency business model, which in principle calls for staff involvement, in reality, leaves little space for emergent practice. The business model adopted by more adaptive leaders tends to be a strategic process rather a plan, more a map-based business strategic cycles, which focuses on outcomes and impact.

Public Sector Leader Change Strategies 111 Table 8.1

Planning and control – Business model

Planning and Control Model

Adaptive Model

Directive top-down

Negotiated

Focus on efficiency

Focus on outcomes

Assume compliance

Assumes participation

Change through existing practices/ structures

Outcomes drive new practices

Seeks solutions too quickly

Listens for solutions to emerge

Tells and informs

Inquires and collaborates

Many in government now recognise that merely making operations and systems more efficient does not necessarily produce more responsive or radical services (NSG Prime Minister’s Conference 2006) and that responsive services demand new approaches to change across the public services. Planning and control regimes and efficiency business models tend to gain dominance too quickly because they appear to offer easy solutions to difficult issues, which most often involve tensions between people working within dysfunctional systems. Quick and easy solutions are usually those that fit in with existing government funding and performance management systems and can be easily measured. In the early 1990s public employers were in the thrall of total reengineering programmes, and yet even then it was obvious that these transformation programmes only succeeded when accompanied by commensurate staff engagement. Since this time, government and local government have become convinced of the need to work much more closely with communities and through a closeness to customers staff, become more responsive. There is in 2007 a much greater willingness among public service staff to be more flexible in their relationships appreciating why responsiveness to users is necessary. However, corporate management systems have not caught up with the changes and do not register and reward those staff who have become more responsive. This is especially true in central government.

Implications A cultural shift in leadership practice is already evident within the public services, particularly within local government – but the development


of a critical mass of more collaborative leaders is hampered, not by local incompetence but by the government’s own public management framework and practices. Politicians recognise the need for radical change in Whitehall but the pace of the change is slow (IPPR, 2006). Whitehall departments are since 2006 subject to scrutiny through the Capability Reviews, and these reveal the continuing commitment to departmental fiefdoms and insular thinking in central government and the lack of joint working across government. The question for policymakers is how to incentivise forms of collaborative public leadership that are more adaptive, less controlling and risk averse? Chief executives in local government have matured in their partnership relationships; but they report that government is still inadvertently rewarding and promoting, not collaborative leaders, but safe pairs of hands, more comfortable with planning and control than with people. There is a graveyard full of more innovative chief executives in the public sector who spent time working with people and not guarding their backs. Greg Dyke, former chief executive of the BBC would fall into this category. Some local authority chief executives are becoming much more strategic at the sub-regional level and in some places explicitly developing collaborative leadership models, such as in Greater Manchester, Yorkshire and Humberside. The more innovative amongst them are gaining control over local agendas, working with communities in a more open way and relying less on long-term planning and more on strategic partnerships. However such horizontal alignment is less visible in central government which makes the task of local leaders all the more difficult. There is a clearly a need for both politicians and civil servants to reflect on the impact of ring-fenced funding and performance management regimes. The message to Whitehall is to learn to listen and ‘let go’ and to embrace collaborative leadership where it exists in the regions. Those leading local partnerships and forging collaborative practices are often women or those from the black and minority ethnic communities (BME) communities who are experienced in networking, communicating with diverse communities and in making connections; skills desperately required in institutions struggling to transform their formal practices. Transforming the public sector is no longer a matter of individual agency improvement it requires an alignment between central and local government strategies and business models, and an alignment of collaborative rather than competitive leadership practice. Public inno-


vation is more likely to emerge when those at the centre of government embrace the wider public sector and a whole system perspective – and start to reward collaborative and adaptive leadership.

References F. Blacker and A. Kennedy, ‘The design and evaluation of leadership programmes for chief executives from the public sector’, Management Learning, 35(2) (2004) 181–20. J. Benington, ‘Adaptive leadership’, Green Futures (May, 2004) http://www. greenfutures.org.uk/supplements.aspx T. Bentley, ‘Evolving the future, in the collaborative state’, S. Parker and N. Gallagher (eds) (London: Demos, 2007) http://www.demos.co.uk/files/ Collaborative%20State%20-%20web.pdf J. Fletcher, ‘Relational practice: A feminist reconstruction of work’, Journal of Management Inquiry, 7(2) (1998) 163–86. P. Fox and M. Broussine, Women at the Top: A Study of Women Chief Officers in Local Government (UWE, 2004). J. Hartley, Innovation and Improvement in Local Government, www.ipeg.org.uk (2006). IPPR (2006) Whitehalls’ Black Box: Accountability and performance in the senior civil service. I. Lucas, Personal Communication (2006). S. Maddock, Challenging Women, Gender, Innovation and Change (London: Sage, 1999). S. Maddock, ‘Women leaders in local government’, British Journal of Public Sector Management (2006). G. Mulgan, Ready or Not, Taking Innovation in the Public Sector Seriously NESTA 03 (2007). K. Walshe, ‘Leadership in the NHS’, ESRC Seminar Presentation, October 22nd (2006).

9 Leadership in the British Army – A Gendered Construct? Mike Dunn

This chapter examines the question of whether female Army officers lead in different ways to male Army officers. In seeking to answer that question, the chapter examines the situation in which female Army officers operate and the level of congeniality they enjoy. This is because the leadership situation has been identified by writers such as Fiedler (1967) and Hersey et al. (2001) as a key variable in leadership outcomes. On congeniality, Eagly and Carli (1995) concluded that there is some evidence that leadership roles, defined in relatively masculine terms, favoured males, and that roles defined in female terms, favoured female leaders. The chapter will examine firstly the context for women Army officers, then move to review some current research strands on leadership and leadership and gender. The chapter then describes research the author has undertaken and, finally, summarises the results which include the development of a model of military leadership (MLF) and draws conclusions. On the theme of knowledge into action the MLF model may, subject to more research, have considerable utility in terms of leadership development processes in the British Army and the other Armed Services.

British Army leadership context The British Army, excluding the Territorial Army element, had a total strength of 106,200 personnel as at March 2007 (DASA, 2007a). Of these, 8,230 or 7.7 per cent, were female. Female officers numbered 1,640 out of a total officer cadre of 14,680 – or 11.2 per cent. In the most senior ranks: Brigadier and above, as at January 2007 there was only one female out of a total of 240 (DASA, 2007b). This is a lower representation than industry where one in seven directors (14.4 per cent) is female (EOC, 2006). Furthermore, women are currently excluded by Ministry of Defence policy 114

Leadership in the British Army – A Gendered Construct? 115

(MOD, 2002) from what are termed ‘close combat roles’ in the Infantry and Royal Armoured Corps (RAC). Similar policies apply in the US military where there is an independent body, the Defence Advisory Service on Women in the Services (DACOWITS), established in 1951 by then Secretary of State for Defense George C. Marshall, to provide advice and recommendations on matters and policies relating to the recruitment and retention, treatment, employment, integration and well-being of women in the Armed Forces (Mitchell, 1998). MOD’s stated rationale for this policy is that women are, typically, less physically strong than men and therefore unable to cope with the physical demands of close combat roles. However the Secretary of State also acknowledged as an issue (MOD, 2002) the potential adverse response of society to the concept of women killing enemy combatants at close quarters, or being killed. In career terms, both in the UK and US military, close combat roles are rated most highly in the Army’s value system and are crucial for career advancement to the highest levels. As Field and Nagl (2001) comment they are: ‘traditionally the most critical routes to high command. In addition they are culturally and functionally considered to be positions of greatest significance to the defence mission’. Female Army officers are therefore confronted by an ‘armoured glass ceiling’ (Dunn, 2005). Kennedy-Pipe and Welch comment that: Women’s partial exclusion from the military and in particular from combat roles is held to exclude them from an important sphere of value and thus to derogate them (2002, p. 51). In addition, the military combat paradigm has developed away from the linear battlefield where Infantry, supported by the RAC, would directly engage the enemy, with other force elements in the rear. Combat is now ‘war amongst the people’ (Smith, 2005, p. 3) where there is no linear battlefield, or front line compared to the Cold War scenarios. Instead we have what is termed 360 degree warfare. Kate Adie (2003) commenting on operations in Bosnia says: Fighting took place up to the very barbed wire of one British camp in Vitez … Peace keeping it may be, but front line work, bringing considerable numbers of women into battle areas and nearer to arguments about combat capability (p. 233). The current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are further examples. They are also examples of where the military, rather than being ‘stove-piped’ or


operating as three separate Armed Services: Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force, are now required to conduct tri-service operations, usually as part of a coalition or alliance with other national forces. Again, Iraq (with US Armed Services) and Afghanistan (NATO) are examples. The Defence White Paper Delivering Security in a Changing World makes reference to the challenges in this new operating environment (MOD, 2003). These military operations, complex and relationship-based with ambiguous objectives, have a close parallel with what Cascio (1995, p. 930) has termed: ‘today’s networked, interdependent and culturally diverse organisation’. There are other factors in the military context that present difficulties for women. A recent survey (MOD, 2006) found extensive evidence of women in the Armed Forces having faced some form of sexual harassment. The report said that some 99 per cent of servicewomen had been exposed to situations over the previous 12 months involving sexualised behaviour such as jokes, stories, language and material. Although there was a high tolerance for these behaviours, over half the respondents sometimes found them offensive. Qualitative data from men suggested there was a lack of awareness that women may be offended or upset by their language and behaviour. This survey was part of an Action Plan agreed between the Ministry of Defence (MOD) and the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) on 23 June 2005 on preventing and dealing effectively with sexual harassment in the Armed Forces.

Leadership and gender literature The literature on leadership is extensive. Dubrin (2001, p. 3) says that 35,000 research articles, magazine articles and books have been written about leadership. Kotter (1990) makes a strong argument to differentiate leadership from management and, in doing this, conflates the role of the leader with managing change. One leadership model has gained prominence in the leadership landscape. This is the concept of transformational and transactional leadership, which originated with the work of Burns (1978). His text concerned itself with political leadership and he noted that politicians exhibited two broad styles. The first, which he termed transactional, motivated followers by appealing to their self-interest. As examples a politician might hold out the prospect of jobs or other benefits to voters, or key opinion formers. In other words it was based on exchange theory. However, transformational leadership appealed to the moral values of followers in an attempt to raise their level of consciousness about ethical issues and get buy in to reform institutions.


His work has been taken up and developed in an organisational context, particularly by Bass (1985, 1998) and Bass and Avolio (1998). They have conceptualised the behaviours involved in transformational and transactional leadership. A key component of their transformational model is individualised consideration or giving special attention to neglected members, treating each of their subordinates individually, and expressing consideration for work well done (Bass, 1985). Although they view transformational and transactional leadership as distinct, Bass and Avolio (1998) consider they are not mutually exclusive processes. Transformational leadership increases follower motivation and performance more than transactional leadership, but effective leaders use a combination of both types. The importance of transformational leadership pivots on agreement that the world of work is changing. Cascio (1995, p. 930) concluded that ‘more often today’s networked, interdependent, culturally diverse organisation requires transformational leadership’ (my emphasis). It could be argued from this that contemporary military operations of the type conducted by the UK Armed Forces require a transformational leadership style to be successful. Turning now to gender and leadership, this draws from the gender difference debate, also termed the female advantage argument. Rosenor (1990) wrote her iconoclastic article Ways Women Lead at a time when, as she termed it, ‘a second wave of women is making its way into top management not by adopting the style and habits that have proved successful for men but by drawing on the skills and attitudes that developed from their shared experience as women’. This prompted the academic debate currently underway about whether gender has any significant relationship with leadership style. Alimo-Metcalfe and Alban-Metcalfe (2003) argue that leadership has traditionally been viewed as a gendered construct. They state: Leadership research, like most, if not all, of research in management, has been gendered. Studies from the days of ‘The Great Man’/Trait Theories to the emergence of the ‘new paradigm’ charismatic and transformational models have been the studies of men, by men, and the findings have been extrapolated to humanity in general (p. 1). Eagly and Carli (1995) conducted a meta-analysis on research into similarities and differences between female and male leaders. They concluded that while female leaders and male did not differ in effectiveness,


when summarised, there was evidence of what they termed gender congeniality i.e. that some leadership roles were defined in relatively masculine terms and thus favoured males, and roles defined in female terms favoured female leaders. Of relevance to this chapter is they identified that military organisations yielded findings that significantly favoured male leaders. Several types of organisation produced weak tendencies for women to be more effective than men: business, education, and government and social services. Earlier, Eagly and Johnson (1990) reported that, where there was male domination in a hierarchy, then the approach of men and women managers tended to homogenise around the male style. Eagly and Carli (2003), in an updated meta-analysis, argued that, although historically leadership has been positioned as a masculine enterprise, there is a probability in a contemporary context that stereotypically feminine qualities of co-operation, mentoring and collaboration are important to leadership. They suggest that reduction in hierarchy and increased collaboration between leader and follower are important contributory factors. They confirmed that male dominated environments can be difficult for women and identified further evidence for their incongruity hypothesis that women are relatively less effective in leadership roles defined in especially masculine terms e.g. military organisations. Eagly and Carli’s important conclusion is that: Transformational leadership may be especially advantageous for women because it encompasses some behaviours that are consistent with the female gender role’s demand for supportive considerate behaviours. This positive, encouraging, inspiring style appears to have generalised advantages for contemporary organisations (p. 825). Bass (1998, p. 77) confirmed that, in four separate investigations between 1986 and 1992, women displayed more transformational and less transactional behaviour than men. He also posits the idea that contemporary, less hierarchical, organisations require a more feminised management style. However, there is a noticeable lack of agreement amongst academics on the impact of gender on leadership behaviour. Vecchio (2003) states, in response to Eagly and Carli’s analysis, that such claims ‘ignore the overlap of the sexes in terms of their behavioural repertoire and individual adaptability’. He suggests that the concept of gender advantage should be replaced by gender in context advantage to remove the adversarial nature of the debate. He concludes (Vecchio,


2003, p. 847), rather pessimistically, that ‘seemingly insurmountable methodological issues prohibit researchers from providing a conclusive answer to the question of sex/gender advantage’. By contrast Stelter (2002), in her review and discussion of recent literature on gender differences in leadership behaviour and effectiveness, concludes that gender differences do exist, and men and women do lead differently. She makes the additional and important point that men and women are also followed differently. Authentic leadership has also been identified as a distinct phenomenon. Goffee and Jones (2006, p. 15) talk about how followers ‘above all … look for leaders who are authentic’ and they define this, in part, as leaders who display a consistency between words and deeds and who communicate a consistent sense of self. Eagly (2005) examines the concept of authentic leadership in a gender context. She ascribes heightened interest in this to a post 9/11 change where people seek leaders who aim to achieve a more secure world. She critiques the theorists of authentic leadership because they appear to assume that followers ordinarily accept that the values revealed and promoted by their leaders advance the interests of the group/ organisation/nation that they lead. She points out that in many communities, values are contested ground and that female leaders, more than male leaders, face challenges in achieving legitimacy as spokespersons for values that advance a community’s interests. Of interest to this research is her conclusion that where the leadership role requires highly authoritative or competitive behaviour that is perceived as masculine, for example female leaders in military settings, the mere fact that a woman occupies the role can yield disapproval. There is also the complex issue of how women can be authentic in a masculine environment. This is a key aspect of the feminisation of the military phenomenon. Herbert (1998), in a military context, talks about the stress that women suffer in trying to arrive at a middle position between appearing too feminine or too masculine. If a woman is too feminine, this may lead to accusations of not being soldier like and using her sexuality to secure favours. On the other hand an overtly masculine approach e.g. swearing or drinking heavily may lack authenticity by trying to be one of the lads, and so cast doubts about her sexuality. Interestingly, she comments that the range of sanctions applied when women were perceived to be too feminine included being ostracised or disapproved of by other women (Herbert, 1998, p. 65). Sheppard (1989), in an earlier study of Canadian women managers,


had identified a similar issue. She describes how women had responded by developing a blending strategy: The blending depends on a very careful management of being ‘feminine’ enough (i.e. in terms of appearance, self-presentation etc) so that conventional rules and expectations of gender behaviour can be maintained by the men in the situation while simultaneously being ‘business like enough’ (i.e. rational, competent, instrumental’ impersonal – in other words stereo typically masculine) so that the issues of gender and sexuality are apparently minimised in the workplace (p. 146). From this review of current literature on gender there is emerging research that demonstrates how women, in contemporary management situations, have a propensity for a transformational leadership style. However in situations that lack congeniality, women feel obliged to adopt the embedded masculine approach, or consciously adopt a blending strategy that balances their sexuality with perceived operational effectiveness.

Research method The question examined in this chapter is whether female Army officers lead in different ways to male Army officers. The author’s research design takes the Defence Academy of the UK as the research population. Twenty four Army officers, split 50:50 between men and women, and covering the full range of Army roles from combat arms, combat support and combat service support were identified using convenience sampling techniques. Their ranks ranged between junior officers at Captain level, and middle ranking officers from Major to Lt Colonel. Interviewees were identified partly through personal knowledge e.g. they were current or past students and partly by referral from senior officers. The interviewees were asked to reflect on whether the Army was a congenial context for women. They were also asked to pre identify two excellent and two poor leaders of both sexes i.e. eight leaders in all, and also a ‘critical incident’ of excellent/poor leadership they had personally experienced. Using Repertory Grid, a series of leadership constructs from the interviewees against which they rated the elements, or leaders, on a scale of one to five were elicited. Data from the critical incident was then analysed and compared to the constructs as a form of triangulation. Interviewees were also asked whether they

Leadership in the British Army – A Gendered Construct? 121 Gap 2 Women as leaders How Women construct

Gap 5

Gap 1

Gap 3 Gap 6

Men as leaders

Figure 9.1

Women as leaders

Gap 4

How Men construct

Men as leaders

Dialectical Analysis Model

considered the situation of female British Army officers to be congenial. Using content analysis, a Military Leadership Factor model (MLF) was developed and, using the variation derived from the Repertory Grid constructs, relative importance to the factors identified was assigned. The research design enabled the construction of a dialectical analysis model as shown in Figure 9.1.

Findings In the context of this chapter, the research findings split into two areas: The first area concerns interviewees’ perception of the congeniality for women, of the British Army. The congeniality aspect is important because, as the literature reviewed earlier in this chapter identified, a perceived lack of congeniality for women can possibly mask or distort their intuitive leadership styles. The second area concerns the construction of a Military Leadership Factor Model (MLF) from the interview data, and an analysis on whether the composition of MLF models differed according to gender. The chapter focuses for this purpose on gap five in the dialectical model – how women construct leadership for women as leaders, compared to how men construct leadership for men as leaders. This was considered to be the key gap in terms of the research question: do female Army officers lead in different ways to male Army officers? On congeniality there was a clear difference between how women perceived congeniality compared to men as shown in Table 9.1. As an example of responses to the question, Interviewee 11 (Female – Major) said: No – I say no because in my experience, the first regiment I went to I was the only female officer, the other girls were clerks, and so I

122 Leadership Perspectives Table 9.1 Comparison of female and male views on congeniality of the army for women Women and Men’s views on congeniality of Army for women (n=12) Not congenial Congenial Dependent on circumstances

Women’s 8 2 2

Men’s 4 5 3

have never experienced a situation where there has been equal men and women. Interviewee 4 (Male – Lt Col) took a very positive view to the question and identified that attitudes were evolving in this area: I think the answer to that is yes. I have been in the army for 23 years and I have seen a complete scene change. I mean it was a completely male dominated environment when I entered it, there was the Women’s Royal Army Corps and Queen Alexander’s Royal Army Nursing Corps and so forth doing very specific adminy type or medical things and I have seen a sea change in the time I have been in and I think it’s particularly in the last, certainly ten years, just changed beyond all recognition. … My own view, … is that I think it’s extremely congenial, because as, its like all these things, you reach a critical mass as the novelty value wore off, shall we say, of increasing numbers of female officers and soldiers, filling appointments and proving as they invariably do that they can do them extremely well and for certain things, for me anyway and I think lots of my colleagues, growing recognition that there are certain things that they are actually naturally much better at. A conclusion from the data is that, for women, the Army does lack congeniality although there is some evidence of progressive change. However, the male perspective is that the context for women is either congenial or certainly not as hostile as the women see it. This is a dangerous perception gap that could lead to increasing frustrations and misunderstandings on the part of both women and men. On the basis of the literature, we should expect to find that, in these circumstances, women may feel obliged either to replicate the dominant masculine leadership style, or adopt the type of blending strategies that were identified by Sheppard (1989).


Turning now to the second area of research findings, this will summarise the Military Leadership Factor model (MLF) developed from the research data. A point worth making is that, in seeking to establish whether leadership was constructed differently by men and women, an MLF needed to be constructed and, although this was a consequence of the research design rather than a stated aim, it may have significant utility in its own right. As stated previously in the methodology section the interviewees were asked to identify a selection of eight leaders both good and bad, male and female and also from data generated by the Critical Incidents reported. In all, six factors were identified by content analysis from the totality of the Repertory Grid data; to restate, this data described both how men constructed male and female leadership and how women constructed male and female leadership. This then provided a basis for analysing whether there was a common perception of leadership by both the men and women interviewed. These factors were also supported by the data produced from the Critical Incident section of the interviews. The six factors, together with some typical key words elicited from the Rep Grid constructs, are given below together with a commentary. Professional competence; experienced, depth of knowledge, hardworking, confident, consistent, decisive, robust This factor appears at odds with the literature. In industry, and key public sector organisations like the NHS, competence would be assumed as a given. However its importance here is explained by the nature of the military task. Knowing what to do, how to apply military doctrine, in one off operational or training situations is vital to the success of the enterprise. In addition the lives and health of subordinates are at risk from incompetence. Relationship management; self-aware, involves and respects others, calm and considered This does have a resonance with theory. Indeed as Goffee and Jones (2006, p. 10) commented leadership must always be viewed as ‘a relationship between the leader and the led’. However, it surfaces here for different reasons. The military officer has of course discretionary power to consult with subordinates. However, in the military culture, this can be perceived as a sign of weakness; a balance must be struck because, if the leader does not consult, poor decisions that put the team at risk, or expose officers to ridicule from their subordinates, are almost inevitable.


Authenticity; moral courage, trustworthy, earns respect, no personal agenda, displays real self What is of particular interest is the subtle issue of altruism where respondents resented individuals who were perceived to have a private agenda and did not put organisational interests first. Again the importance of this lies in the nature of the military enterprise. Success follows from a joined up approach; weak leaders or underperforming leaders can compromise operations and place individuals in positions of danger or stress. A specific phrase moral courage was often used by respondents. It has a particular connotation in the Army being described as: ‘taking decisions which, though known to be right will probably prove unpopular … every time we turn a blind eye to action, or behaviour we know to be wrong, … we are in fact showing a lack of moral courage’ (RMAS, undated). Career profile; ambitious and successful, avoids ‘change for change sake’ on new appointment Respondents valued individuals with a successful career path. The explanation for this lies in the nature of the organisation. The military concept of tours of duty, a new posting every few years, would not be appropriate in industry. However in the military, an incoming commander can have a number of effects. If he or she is ‘career flatlining’ then there may be no impetus to change if the unit has problems. This will lead to a lessening of the reputation of that unit. Reputation is important in the military. Alternatively an officer on a successful career path can invigorate and improve the standing of a unit to everyone’s advantage. However because a new commander has only limited time to make an impact, there is a danger that he or she will implement local change in a coercive fashion, and motivated by self-aggrandisement. Unfortunately, this forced change can have devastating effects on a unit’s morale. Another, gendered issue, identified was the willingness, or not, of women to go on operational tours. This was seen as an acid test of commitment and some women officers were criticised in this area because they avoided postings in favour of looking to work where they lived. Gender management; uses appropriate personal gender strategy to avoid adverse consequences both for self and operations This factor supports closely Sheppard (1989) and Herbert’s work (1998) that identified how women managers, and females in the military had to develop a strategy for managing their gender in the workplace. Some of the sample constructs elicited were comparisons of being ‘laddish’


compared to ‘ladylike’ and ‘new woman’ with ‘girly girl’. The overall finding is that women have to negotiate a tightrope. On the one hand, being too feminine risks losing respect whilst being too masculine undermines their credibility. Physical fitness; personal pride in own level of physical fitness This would be an unusual factor to figure in leadership studies but again its inclusion here is rooted in the nature of the military task. Physical prowess is important in the military operation. Each year, officers and other ranks have to complete a basic fitness test. A high capacity for physical endurance is important to succeed in certain military operations. The classic example is the British Army ‘yomping’ across the hostile Falklands terrain in 1982 to defeat the Argentineans. The significance of these factors lies as much in what they exclude. The level of correlation with the Bass transformational leadership model is low. A further difference with contemporary theory is the exclusion of reference to change management, a factor closely associated with Kotter’s (1990) leadership model. The conundrum here is that MOD considers that it is experiencing transformational change (MOD, 2003). The explanation may lie in the structural nature of the Armed Forces and their high degree of interdependency. In effect it is a ‘system of systems’. Thus change programmes are pan Army or pan Armed Forces, and driven by the centre either directly or facilitated by a change agent such as McKinseys. By their nature then they will be conceived at top level and be relatively long term. Officers at the ranks interviewed will have limited amounts of autonomy in major change processes. However there is an important issue of change deriving from local change initiated by newly appointed commanders. This is captured in the MLF model under the career profile factor. The data in Table 9.2 summarises the gap (Gap five) between how women construct female leadership and how men construct male leadership. The percentage of variation is obtained by the relative importance placed by interviewees on the constructs elicited by Repertory Grid. The table shows that there is a broad level of consistency apart from the issue of gender management, which was a significant issue for women but is non-existent for men. This supports the work of Herbert (1998) and Sheppard (1989). There is also a slightly higher emphasis for women on relationship management than for men that may be indicative of a more transformational style. This is important, given the earlier argument that contemporary military operations require a

126 Leadership Perspectives Table 9.2 Comparison of relative importance of MLF factors by women reporting on female leaders compared to men reporting on male leaders Women: Women (n=27)*

% of variation

% of Men: Men (n=44)* variation

Professional Competence Relationship Management Career Orientation Authenticity Gender Management Physical Fitness

22 35 2 25 12 4

30 33 3 32 0 2

Professional Competence Relationship Management Career Orientation Authenticity Gender Management Physical Fitness

Note: n=the number of leaders analysed in the Repertory Grid. Because of the relatively low number of women officers, some interviewees had difficulty in identifying the quota called for.

transformational leadership style to be successful. In this sense it is claimed that men and women, in the sample interviewed, do lead in different ways. The findings also support the work of Eagly and Johnson (1990) and their view that, in a masculine environment, women will favour the prevailing leadership style. This raises an important issue: whether the androcentric nature of the Army context and its lack of congeniality is a constraint that suppresses an intuitive transformational leadership style in female Army officers. Several of the female interviewees did reveal an aspect of individualised consideration in their leadership style, as the example below demonstrates: I’m interested in this idea about taking an interest in people as individuals, you say that this is unusual for officers to do that? Interviewer Yes, absolutely, I mean I had a couple of soldiers who had some quite major family problems and one of them who had two autistic children had said that in his whole career, nobody had shown any compassion about his family situation and actually, all it meant was that he was marked down in his reports that he had a welfare problem, and he said that coming to the unit and actually having somebody who appreciated him for who he was and what work he did as opposed to his family commitments made all the difference to him and … a whole burden had been lifted, and he had been treated for depression everything else, he said that all that had gone because somebody had taken the time to find out about various things…. Interviewee (Lt Col – Female)


This is an important piece of primary data because it reveals something of the masculine culture of the Army but also the beneficial effects for the organisation that can flow from such interventions.

Summary In summary, the findings presented in this chapter have demonstrated a perception that men and women Army officers lead in different ways. It has also revealed an underlying tension amongst those women interviewed on the lack of congeniality that they experience in the workplace. This lack of congeniality may, in turn, be masking or suppressing a more transformational leadership style, particularly in the area of individualised consideration. This unrealised transformational leadership potential could make a positive contribution to the Army’s military capability. This is because the contemporary military paradigm has some correlation with the complex nature of contemporary business models, which are deemed to require transformational leadership. It is ironic therefore that previous research (Dunn, 2005) also identified that women officers experience an ‘armoured glass’ ceiling in terms of career progression, because key appointments in the combat arms are denied to them by current MOD policy. The research has also developed a conceptual model of military leadership, the MLF, that differs from the transformational leadership model articulated by Bass and Avolio (1998) and also suggests that military leadership differs from the contemporary leadership theory that conflates leadership and change management. The MLF model may, subject to more research, have considerable utility in terms of leadership development processes in the British Army and the other Armed Services.

References K. Adie, Corsets to Camouflage – Women and War (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2003). B. Alimo-Metcalfe and J. Alban-Metcalfe, ‘Leadership: A masculine past but a feminine future?’, BPS Occupational Psychology Conference (UK: Bournemouth, Jan 8–10, 2003). B.M. Bass, Leadership and Performance Beyond Expectations (New York: Free Press, 1985). B.M. Bass, Transformational Leadership Industrial, Military and Educational Impact (New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers, 1998). B.M. Bass and B.J. Avolio, Full Range Leadership Development Manual for the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (Redwood CA: Mind Garden Inc, 1998). J. Burns, Leadership (New York: Harper & Row, 1978). W.F. Cascio, ‘Whither industrial and organisational psychology in a changing world of work’, American Psychologist, 50 (1995) 928–34.

128 Leadership Perspectives DASA (Defence Agency for Statistical Analysis), ‘Table TSP 01 Strength Intake and outflow of UK Regular Forces’ (2007a). DASA (Defence Agency for Statistical Analysis), ‘Table TSP 09 Rank structure of UK Regular Forces’ (2007b). A.J. Dubrin, Leadership Research Findings, Practice and Skills, 3rd edn (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2001). M.D. Dunn, ‘The armoured glass ceiling’, 4th International Annual Conference on Leadership Research (UK: University of Lancaster, December 12–13, 2005). A.H. Eagly, ‘Achieving relational authenticity in leadership: Does gender matter?’, The Leadership Quarterly, 16 (2005) 459–74. A.H. Eagly and L.L. Carli, ‘Gender and the effectiveness of leaders: A meta analysis’, Psychological Bulletin, 117(1) (1995) 125–45. A.H. Eagly and L.L. Carli, ‘The female leadership advantage: An evaluation of the evidence’, Leadership Quarterly, 14 (2003) 807–34. A.H. Eagly and B.T. Johnson, ‘Gender and leadership style a meta analysis’, Psychological Bulletin, 108 (1990) 233–56. EOC (Equal Opportunities Commission), ‘Sex and power. Who runs Britain?, Equal Opportunities Commission Report’ (2006). F.E. Fiedler, A Theory of Leadership Effectiveness (New York: McGraw Hill, 1967). K. Field and J. Nagl, ‘Combat roles for women; a modest proposal’, Parameters, US Army War College, Quarterly, Summer (2001) 74–88. R. Goffee and G. Jones, Why Should Anyone be Led by You? What It Takes to be an Authentic Leader (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2006). M.S. Herbert, Camouflage Isn’t Only for Combat (New York: New York University Press, 1998). P. Hersey, K.H. Blanchard and D.E. Johnson, Management of Organisational Behaviour, 8th edn (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2001). C. Kennedy-Pipe and S. Welch, ‘Women in the military: Future prospects and ways ahead’, in A. Alexandrou, R. Bartle and R. Holmes (eds) New People Strategies for the British Armed Forces (London: Cass, 2002). J. Kotter, ‘What leaders really do’, Harvard Business Review, May/June, 68(1833) (1990) 103–11. B. Mitchell, Women in the Military – Flirting with Disaster (Washington DC: Regnery Publishing Inc, 1998). MOD (Ministry of Defence), ‘Women in the armed forces – A report by the Employment of Women in the Armed Forces Steering Group’, (May 2002). MOD (Ministry of Defence), ‘Delivering security in a changing world, Defence White Paper, Cm 60421-I’, (MOD, 2003). MOD (Ministry of Defence), ‘Ministry of Defence/Equal Opportunities Commission: Agreement on preventing & dealing effectively with sexual harassment’. Dr S. Rutherford, R. Schneider and A. Walmsley (Schneider-Ross Ltd, 22 March, 2006). RMAS (Royal Military Academy Sandhurst), The Queen’s Commission A Junior Officer’s Guide (RMAS, undated). J.B. Rosenor, ‘Ways women lead’, Harvard Business Review, Nov–Dec (1990) 119–25. D.L. Sheppard, ‘The image and self image of women managers’, in J. Hearn, D.L. Sheppard, P. Tancred and G. Burrell (eds) The Sexuality of Organisation (London: Sage, 1989).

Leadership in the British Army – A Gendered Construct? 129 General Sir R. Smith, The Utility of Force – The Art of War in the Modern World (London: Penguin Allen, 2005). N.Z. Stelter, ‘Gender differences in leadership: Current social issues and future organisational implications’, Journal of Leadership and Organisational Studies, 8(4) (2002) 88–100. R.P. Vecchio, ‘In search of gender advantage’, Leadership Quarterly, 14 (2003) 835–50.

10 Leadership in Higher Education Alan Bryman

Since first getting interested in leadership in the early 1980s, I have researched leadership in several different settings: the construction industry; bus companies; community transport organisations; and the police – to name the main ones. I always had a hunch I would end up looking at leadership in higher education, especially since doing research on the introduction of appraisal in universities 15 or so years ago in an investigation funded by the old Department of Education and Science in the UK. Leadership issues sometimes surfaced during the course of that research and it always struck me as something I would return to. I think I was rather cautious about conducting research on leadership in higher education, because I had always had a hunch that it would be difficult to do because of the inevitable background assumptions you bring with you when you’ve been involved in university life for many years. These background assumptions can act as both an advantage – eliminating the need for familiarisation – but also a problem – possibly, if not probably, being too immersed and familiar with the area. Also, it is a topic on which everyone in higher education is likely to have a view, so you risk ending up with the familiar scenario of being condemned either for finding the obvious or for a lack of realism by those who see you as going against the grain of their experiences. However, the opportunity arose to do precisely this when I applied successfully to the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education (www.lfhe.ac.uk) for a research grant. Purely by chance, this coincided with a move out of a social science department into a management school, so there was a kind of fit between my new location and the topic of my research. It is this project that I will use as the springboard for this chapter. 130

Leadership in Higher Education 131

Researching leadership in higher education My guiding research question was ‘what are the factors associated with effective leadership in higher education?’ In focusing on this research question, I was concerned with the leadership styles or leader behaviour associated with effectiveness. The main element of the research was a literature review in which I sought to extract the main leadership styles that were found across the studies I reviewed to be associated with effectiveness. This was by far the main component of the project, but in addition I conducted interviews with leadership researchers in the UK in order to explore their distinctive perspectives on leadership in their own organisational context. I will touch on some of the main messages gleaned from these interviews.

Literature review Searching the literature In conducting the literature review, I was concerned to employ explicit procedures for searching the literature and explicit quality criteria for deciding which studies should be included within the purview of the review. In so doing, I aimed for a reasonable degree of transparency in the literature search and in deciding which research should be included. The guiding research question was: ‘What styles of or approaches to leadership are associated with effective leadership in higher education?’. The literature search focused primarily on refereed journal articles for the years 1985 to 2005. The reason for emphasising refereed journal articles was simply that these act as an initial quality criterion or indicator and as such filter out much research of dubious quality. The reason for this 21 year span was that it was felt that research published prior to this period was likely to be relevant to a very different higher education world than exists at present and would therefore be of limited use to the funders of the research. The research examined was concerned exclusively with findings relating to the UK, USA and Australia. This restriction was largely to do with the constraints of language. The primary search approach was the searching of online databases. The main ones searched were: Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI); Educational Resources Information Centre (ERIC); British Education Index; Educational Research Abstracts. Keyword searches were supplemented by hand searching of journals and bibliographies of articles.


The quality criteria employed were guided by the following principles: – the aims of the research were clearly stated; – it was clear how the data were collected (sampling, research instruments, how data were analysed); – the data were collected systematically; – there was an indication of how the research methods relate to the aims of the investigation; – there were enough data provided to support the author’s or authors’ interpretations; and – the method of analysis was appropriate to the kinds of data collected. These are fairly minimal criteria in that they are fundamentally concerned with the degree to which this provides explicit information about how the research was conducted and how the methods employed relate to the goals of the investigation. Together, these criteria emphasise a degree of transparency in the reporting of the conduct of the research and being systematic in the way the research was implemented. It might be asked whether these criteria discriminate slightly against qualitative research. The criteria were devised by the National Health Service (NHS) National Electronic Library for Health (now the National Library for Health) for the evaluation of qualitative research but are equally relevant to quantitative studies too. Therefore, there is no reason for qualitative studies to be unduly disadvantaged by the imposition of these criteria. In fact, most qualitative research could be included unless it was largely anecdotal or based on very sloppy methods. The application of these criteria meant that articles were excluded if they were merely reflections on experiences of being a university leader, if they were largely theoretical or if they lacked transparency and a systematic approach to data collection. Possibly one of the most surprising initial findings was that relatively little research directly investigating research question was uncovered. Only around 40 articles, just under half of which were to do with middle leaders like heads of department/department chairs, were found; the rest were on top leaders, such as vice-chancellors, principals, and presidents (sometimes this latter stream of research included the leader’s top management team in its purview). Quite a lot of research was uncovered on what leaders do but there was far less on what is effective about what


leaders do. This is not to say that research that examines the roles and activities of university leaders is not useful but that it does not relate to the research question. I am by no means alone in having uncovered a limited amount of research on this issue. Fifteen years ago, Barge and Musambira (1992) wrote: Do chair-faculty relationships within academic institutions really make a difference for the department and the university? While much of the leadership literature answers in the affirmative for nonacademic organisations, this question has not been empirically tested in colleges and universities (p. 75). Writers since then have confirmed this relatively early assessment of the field. Dyer and Miller suggest that the investigation of department chairs in the US has tended to focus upon their ‘roles and responsibilities, needed skills, and challenges and coping strategies’ (1999, p. 20). Harris et al. write that: ‘While a few research studies have focused on leadership practices in higher education, little research has focused on effectiveness or on the means for increasing effectiveness, particularly at the departmental level’ (2004, p. 4). Thus, several writers have suggested that remarkably little research directly investigates leadership effectiveness in universities.

Main research designs The main research designs encountered were: – Variations in leadership style related to variations in effectiveness. This kind of design is one that is familiar to leadership researchers. It entails taking a sample of leaders, establishing how their leadership styles vary, and then relating variations in those styles to variations in their effectiveness (e.g. Brown and Moshavi, 2002). – Behaviour of effective leaders. This research design was mainly conducted in relation to heads of department. It entails taking especially successful or effective leaders, usually on the basis of nominations, and then exploring the nature of their behaviour as leaders (e.g. Creswell and Brown, 1992). – Desirable or effective leader behaviour as viewed by leaders and/or others. This research design involves finding out what leaders or others view as leader behaviour that is effective (Ambrose et al., 2005). – Case studies of organisational change. These typically relate to case studies of successful change (Gomes and Knowles, 1999).


Summarising the findings In order to decide whether an aspect of leader behaviour could be regarded as contributing to effectiveness as defined by the researcher(s) concerned, I looked for aspects of leadership effectiveness in higher education that were found in at least two peer-reviewed articles. Most appeared in more than two articles. Also, I looked at non-peer-reviewed items but only used these when an aspect of effective leader behaviour had been discerned in at least two peer-reviewed articles. The findings relating to departmental leadership are reported in Bryman (2007). This discussion is concerned just with aspects of effective leader behaviour that were found to be common to both institutional and departmental levels. At a later date, I hope to write about the research on top leaders alone. Interestingly, similar kinds of leader behaviour are associated with effectiveness at both levels. However, there were some differences. For example there was a greater emphasis on being flexible in leadership approach at institutional level than at departmental level. There was a greater emphasis on consideration and fostering collegiality at departmental level. However, the common features were more striking than differences.

Main findings Ten factors emerged as clear indicators of an effective leader at both departmental and institutional levels: 1. Providing direction. Effective leaders provide a clear sense of where the department or institution is and should be going; 2. Creating a structure. Effective leaders provide a structure to support the direction they set. This means that they set in motion a team and procedures that will sustain the direction; 3. Fostering a supportive and collaborative environment. University staff appear to thrive on co-operative relationships and the more leaders can promote an environment based on such relationships, the more effective they are likely to be; 4. Establishing trustworthiness as a leader and having personal integrity. Effective leaders are trusted. They are perceived as consistent and even-handed; 5. Having credibility to act as a role model. This issue occurs particularly in relation to research-oriented departments and universities and indicates that leaders are more likely to stimulate a research orientation in others when they have been highly regarded scholars


6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

themselves. Goodall’s (2007) research which falls outside the period covered by my review strongly confirms this for top leaders. There is a paradox or irony with this aspect of effective leader behaviour because the pressures of university leadership typically detract from research-active academics being able to continue their work once they assume management roles; Facilitating participation in decision-making; consultation. Effective leaders in higher education tend to involve their constituents in making decisions, especially ones relating to strategic direction. They adopt a consultative approach in their dealings with their staff; Providing communication about developments. In tune with the last point, effective leaders communicate to others about important changes that are taking place and about initiatives that are likely to have an impact on them; Representing the department/institution to advance its cause(s) and networking on its behalf. Effective leaders promote their department or institution whenever possible. In the case of departmental leaders, this may entail promoting the department to constituencies both within and beyond the department; Respecting existing culture. Leaders in higher education may want to inaugurate change but they are more likely to be effective if they do not ride roughshod over the existing culture of an institution or department; Protecting staff autonomy. Effective leaders allow academic staff to retain an element of independence in their work.

There are some noteworthy aspects of this list of aspects of leader behaviour that have been identified as conducive to effectiveness. First, it is primarily concerned with the impact of leaders on staff, especially academic staff. Students rarely figure in terms of how leadership effectiveness is gauged or in terms of what its impacts should be. To the extent they do figure, it is largely in terms of their impact on such things as curriculum development (e.g. Stark et al., 2002). The relative neglect of the impact of leaders on students contrasts sharply with the school leadership literature where considerations of leaders, in particular head teachers, in relation to effectiveness are deeply concerned with their impact on students (e.g. Day, 2005). It is difficult to know why this might be the case. One reason may be that as organisations, universities tend to be larger than schools so that the impacts of leaders on students is mediated if not attenuated. Another reason may be to


do with what leadership researchers concerned with higher education typically view as important outcomes of leadership because they are, after all, conducting research on their own rather than others’ worlds. Second, there is little sense of the significance of context for leadership effectiveness. In other words, although leadership researchers have long been aware that what works well in one environment may not work well in another or that context has profound implications for what a leader can or cannot do (e.g. Fiedler, 1967; Vroom and Jago, 2007), the implications of context for leadership effectiveness do not figure strongly in the studies covered in the course of the literature review. Third, the research covered in the review focuses more or less exclusively on leaders in formal leadership positions. There is little if any sense of the impacts and effectiveness of informal leaders or of leaders who are located within a distributed leadership milieu. A sense of distributed leadership sometimes surfaced in studies that were concerned with leadership in higher education but not with leadership effectiveness. In Smith’s (2005) UK study of departmental leadership in engineering departments in both a statutory and a chartered university, he reports that in the latter research was central to the department’s operation and according to one of the professors ‘[m]ost of the day-to-day leadership is dispersed to … leaders of the research groups’ (2005, p. 454). However, how pervasive such a structure or approach to leadership is in research-oriented departments and whether it is an effective way of organising research cannot be inferred from the investigation. A form of dispersed leadership was evident in the study of UK vice-chancellors by Bargh et al. (2000). What comes across from this study is that at this level ‘leadership, if it is to be successfully accomplished, can rarely be a solitary activity and involves the constant interaction with colleagues in the pursuit of a “shared” vision of reality consistent with broader institutional goals’ (Bargh et al., 2000, p. 92). The suggestion from this investigation is that setting strategic direction is not a simple case of free-wheeling transformational leaders acting alone but of working with senior managers and others in the pursuit of a course for their universities. The impression that comes across from the research is that it was these senior managers that vicechancellors needed to influence in order to change thought and action because they acted as the vice-chancellors’ emissaries and foot soldiers in persuading the wider constituency of the institutions of the significance and importance of new directions. At this level, then, there was a sense of collective, if not dispersed leadership, with vice-chancellors


providing the impetus for direction. However, as with Smith’s (2005) departmental leadership study, it is not possible to glean what the impacts of different leadership arrangements are for effectiveness. Fourth, so far as departmental leadership is concerned, it has to be borne in mind that many if not most leaders are temporary leaders. Two issues seem significant here. First, it is not entirely clear what the implications of the temporary nature of the headship position are for leadership effectiveness. For example, does the length of tenure have implications for the setting of strategic direction and its impact? Second, finding that there is a relationship between a head of department’s leadership style and measures of effectiveness may be misleading if the length of tenure is quite short, e.g. three years. It may be that we cannot be sure whether it is the incumbent’s leadership that is crucial to effectiveness or that of his/her predecessor.

Interviewing leadership researchers As previously noted, in addition to the literature review I conducted semi-structured interviews with 24 UK leadership researchers. They came from three kinds of background, although in a few cases there was some overlap between them. The three backgrounds were: 1. School leadership researchers; 2. Management/business school researchers; and 3. Leadership researchers concerned with higher education leadership. I saw these as three of the main groups of leadership researchers in the UK. I felt that their views on leadership in the kind of sector in which they worked would be very illuminating. I asked two main kinds of question: general questions about leadership theory and research and questions about leadership in higher education. In order to tap the kinds of leader behaviour that my interviewees felt were associated with effectiveness in higher education, I asked general questions about effective and ineffective leadership in the sector and specific questions about particularly effective and ineffective leaders in universities. Overall, a very considerable number of characteristics of effective higher education leadership were identified and no single aspect was pre-eminent. No aspect of leader behaviour was mentioned by more than half and only one was mentioned by more than one-third. The one component of leadership that was mentioned by more than onethird of interviewees was the notion of the leader as someone who is


trusted and perceived to have personal integrity. Other aspects of effective leader behaviour that were mentioned by several interviewees included: the importance of consulting others; having a clear sense of direction; having firm principles supporting the direction set by the leader; and the protection of staff. Interviewees were also asked about the components of ineffective leadership. The main ones mentioned were: lack of trust and integrity; failure to consult; and a tendency towards ignoring problems. Lack of trust and integrity was most commonly mentioned. In general terms, the characteristics of effective leadership mentioned by the interviewees were very similar to the findings that emerged from the literature review. In both the latter and the interviews, issues of trust and integrity, having a clear sense of direction and ensuring consultation figured especially strongly. The issue of ignoring problems that emerged in the interviews did not figure in the literature review, however, suggesting that this may be an area that is worth giving greater attention to in the future. What is perhaps also striking about the findings from the literature review and the interviews is that the characteristics of effective leaders appear rather unsurprising, perhaps even obvious. Indeed, there is a noticeable similarity between this list and other formulations of leadership effectiveness. For example, in Kouzes and Posner’s (2003) leadership challenge model, several leadership characteristics, which derive from research, based on thousands of best practice leadership case studies over more than 20 years of the effective leader, are highlighted as effective. They highlight the importance of ‘modeling the way’ and ‘inspiring a shared vision’ which have strong affinities with the emphasis in my literature review on providing direction, creating a structure to support that direction, and having credibility to act as a role model. Also, the leadership challenge model draws attention to the importance of ‘enabling others to act’ which includes promoting collaborative working and building trust. There is again an affinity with fostering a supportive and collaborative environment and establishing trustworthiness as a leader and having personal integrity.

Reflections on the findings Although the components of leadership effectiveness may appear obvious, there is considerable evidence of dissatisfaction with leaders in higher education and elsewhere in the public sector. For example, the report Leading Change: Making the Difference found that only 33 per cent of public sector workers rate the leadership of their top manage-


ment team highly and only 44 per cent rated the leadership of their line manager highly. Similar findings have been uncovered for universities. An international study in the early 1990s asked respondents how far they agreed with the statement ‘top-level administrators are providing competent leadership’ (Boyer et al., 1994). In the UK, only 26 per cent agreed, which was below the comparable percentages for the USA and Australia (39 per cent and 29 per cent respectively). Kinman and Jones (2004) report the findings of a study of university staff in the UK and found that 49 per cent were satisfied with the level of support obtained from line managers and 21 per cent were satisfied with the level of support received from managers above immediate line managers. In January 2007, the Times Higher published an article prompted by a report produced by a human relations consultant for the Department of Health Sciences at the University of Birmingham. Apparently, the university refused to acknowledge the report’s existence when asked to see it under the Freedom of Information Act (Baty, 2007). The author of the article writes that ‘leadership and management style is at the heart of much of the unhappiness that was expressed in this report’. It was found that ‘leadership’ and ‘management’ were two areas where 75–90 per cent of comments were negative and which were ‘highly significant to address’. The article indicates that staff reported an ‘unrewarding social climate’ and that they suffered ‘low autonomy, insufficient participation and a sense of lack of control’. Similarly, several of the interviewees remarked that they found it easier to think of ineffective leaders than effective ones! One interviewee was particularly explicit on this point in response to a question on ineffective leaders. He said: ‘I guess we’ve all encountered a whole raft of those [ineffective leaders]. I mean, effective leaders we could probably count on one hand, I think the ineffective leaders, we see examples of continually’. But this creates the question, if the leadership behaviours I identified in the literature review and the interviews are so obvious, why is there so much dissatisfaction with leaders in higher education and elsewhere in the public sector? There are several possible explanations that might be proffered. First, although these characteristics of effective leadership seem obvious, it may be that they are not in fact well-known and that in spite of leaders in universities frequently going on training and development programmes, many of them are not introduced to course participants. To a certain extent, this may be because a major component of these programmes is providing insights into managerial (and therefore not specifically leadership) roles and responsibilities, such as budgeting and time


management. Second, it may be difficult for many leaders, perhaps because of their personal skills or inclinations, to enact all of them. In other words, for many leaders, there may be personal limits on the ability or capacity to be proficient at all or perhaps even a majority of them. Neither the literature review nor the interviews should be taken to imply that leaders have been identified who exhibit all of the characteristics of the effective leader. Instead, the characteristics operate like an ‘identikit’ or ideal type exemplification of what the highly effective leader looks like, based on a combination of behaviours known to be associated with leadership effectiveness, but who does not (and perhaps who is very unlikely to) exist in reality. Third, there is the possibility that there is a variation of the knowing-doing gap in putting leadership principles into practice (Pfeffer and Sutton, 2000). It may be that even when the practitioner is aware of the leadership principles, translating them into action may be difficult. In part, this may be due to the fact that they do not provide sufficient guidance regarding behaviour. For example, how should a head of department go about preparing departmental arrangements to facilitate the direction he or she has set? What kinds of structures and cultural arrangements might this entail? Fourth, as several of the interviewees argued, context matters. Context matters in a variety of ways. Several of the interviewees commented that academics were difficult to lead because of their proclivity towards independent thinking and strong preference for autonomy. The phrase ‘like herding cats’ was sometimes used and was in fact included in the title of one of the articles included in the literature review (Brown and Moshavi, 2002). However, context in a different sense has a bearing on the leader’s capacity to be a leader. This is the notion that leaders in universities are tightly constrained and hemmed in by organisational arrangements and procedures to a degree that inhibits their ability to be leaders. This is an issue that is likely to be common among leaders in public sector organisations. Denis et al. have observed that while some writers on leadership in public sector organisations have proposed an entrepreneurial view of leaders, emphasising innovation, creativity and transformational leadership, others have identified a ‘stewardship model’ that emphasises leaders acting as ‘guardians of public goods and values’ (2005, p. 451). The stewardship model depicts leaders as limited in the degree to which they can set new directions and therefore as to a significant extent constrained by the organisational ethos and arrangements of the public sector. As Denis et al. note: ‘a realistic picture of leadership in public organisations probably falls somewhere between these two poles’ (2005, p. 451). However, the fundamental point, that leaders in public sector organisations are


to a significant extent hemmed in and limited in what they can be expected to achieve, remains. Further light can be shed on this issue by Paul Hare in a rather personal account comparing his time as a head of department at HeriotWatt University in the late 1980s and then again in the late 1990s (Hare and Hare, 2002). Hare depicts a change from being an academic leader in the first period to being more of a manager in the second. As such he portrays a shift from exercising ‘influence over the academic priorities, productivity and profile of a department or school’ towards being a line manager ‘within the established institutional structures and hierarchies’ (2002, p. 36). Hare also notes that he had a much bigger role in the formulation of his department’s strategy. Relatedly, Middlehurst (1993) has suggested that in many cases, the role of head of department is so circumscribed that the degree to which leadership, as against being a manager running a department, is at all possible should be questioned. Similarly, Bryson’s (2004) research on UK academics strongly indicates that heads of department are so constrained by developments external and internal to their departments, they are limited in the degree to which they can exhibit leadership. One of his informants, the head of a social science department is quoted as saying: Administrative workloads for Heads of Department, driven by bureaucratic procedures like the Research Assessment Exercise and Teaching Quality Assessment, have become totally unrealistic, out of all proportion to the financial reward. They severely damage the possibility of doing some strategic thinking and providing some academic leadership, and so have become self-defeating (quoted in Bryson, 2004, p. 46). In a similar way, Henkel (2000) identified the conflicting demands of responding to a tide of external demands and crises competing with the need to engage in a strategic approach as one of the three main tensions in the head of department’s role (the other two were academic versus administrative work and nurturing individuals versus changing departments).

Conclusion While it is possible to establish from a literature review the kinds of leader behaviour that are conducive to leadership effectiveness, the translation of such findings into advice or programmes for practitioners is by


no means straightforward. In this discussion I have drawn attention to some factors that constrain the implementation of some of the implications of these findings. I have mentioned the likelihood that there is often a knowing-doing gap and the probability that contextual factors will inhibit the leader’s ability and possibly inclination to attend to the kinds of issues that he or she would prefer to focus upon and to do so in a manner that the leader would prefer. Context matters and as such places limits on the practical utility of isolating universal statements about the effectiveness of different kinds of leadership style. Of course, the contingency theories of leadership sensitised leadership researchers many years ago to the role and significance of situational factors but the kinds of contextual factors that I have been addressing in this chapter are less to do with mediating variables, like position power (Fielder, 1967), and much more to do with the role of macro influences. The latter affect the degree to which it is possible for the leader to implement a particular kind of leadership rather than affecting whether a certain aspect of leader behaviour is effective or not. As such leaders are as much prisoners as enablers of context.

Acknowledgments The essence of this chapter was presented as a keynote lecture at the Fifth Studying Leadership Conference, Cranfield University, December 2006. I am grateful to the organisers for the invitation and for the participants in the subsequent discussion who prompted some of the themes in this chapter. I also wish to thank the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education for awarding me a grant which allowed me to conduct the research on which this chapter is based.

References S. Ambrose, T. Huston and M. Norman, ‘A qualitative method for assessing faculty satisfaction’, Research in Higher Education, 46 (2005) 803–30. J.K. Barge and G.W. Musambira, ‘Turning points in chair-faculty relationships’, Journal of Applied Communication, 20 (1992) 54–77. C. Bargh, J. Bocock, P. Scott and D. Smith, University Leadership: The Role of the Chief Executive (Buckingham: SRHE and Open University Press, 2000). P. Baty, ‘“Punishing” style puts staff on the critical list’, The Times Higher, January 19 (2007) 4–5. E.L. Boyer, P.G. Altbach and M.J. Whitelaw, The Academic Profession: An International Perspective (1994). F.W. Brown and D. Moshavi, ‘Herding academic cats: Faculty reactions to transformational and contingent reward leadership by department chairs’, The Journal of Leadership Studies, 8(3) (2002) 79–92.

Leadership in Higher Education 143 A. Bryman, ‘Effective leadership in higher education: a literature review’, Studies in Higher Education (In press, 2007). C. Bryson, ‘What about the workers? The expansion of higher education and the transformation of academic work’, Industrial Relations Journal, 35 (2004) 38–57. J.W. Creswell and M.L. Brown, ‘How chairpersons enhance faculty research: A grounded theory study’, The Review of Higher Education, 16(1) (1992) 41–62. C. Day, ‘Principals who sustain success: Making a difference in schools in challenging circumstances’, International Journal of Leadership in Education, 8 (2005) 273–90. J.-L. Denis, A. Langley and L. Rouleau, ‘Rethinking leadership in public organisations’, in E. Ferlie, L.E. Lynn and C. Pollitt (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Public Management (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 446–67. B.G. Dyer and M. Miller, ‘A critical review of literature related to the department chair position’ (1999) http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/ content_storage_01/0000019b/80/17/a4/ef.pdf F.E. Fiedler, A Theory of Leadership Effectiveness (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967). A.H. Goodall, Does it Take an Expert to Lead Experts? Professionals Versus Managers in Universities, Doctor of Philosophy thesis (UK: University of Warwick, 2007). R. Gomes and P.A. Knowles, ‘Marketing department leadership: An analysis of a team transformation’, Journal of Marketing Education, 21 (1999) 164–74. P. Hare and L. Hare, ‘The evolving role of head of department in UK universities’, Perspectives, 6 (2002) 33–7. J. Harris, B.N. Martin and W. Agnew, ‘The characteristics, behaviors, and training of effective educational/leadership chairs’, in D.C. Thompson and F.E. Crampton (eds) The Changing Face(s) of Educational Leadership: UCEA at the Crossroads (Proceedings from the 2004 UCEA Convention, 2004) http://coe.ksu.edu/ ucea/2004/04ucea11.pdf M. Henkel, Academic Identities and Policy Change in Higher Education (London: Jessica Kingsley, 2000). G. Kinman and F. Jones, ‘Working to the limit: Stress and work-life balance in academic and academic-related employees in the UK’ (London: Association of University Teachers, 2004) http://www.aut.org.uk/media/pdf/4/7/workingtothelimit.pdf J.M. Kouzes and B.Z. Posner, The Leadership Challenge (New York: Jossey Bass Wiley, 2003). R. Middlehurst, Leading Academics (Buckingham: SRHE and Open University Press, 1993). J. Pfeffer and R. Sutton, The Knowing Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2000). R. Smith, ‘Departmental leadership and management in chartered and statutory universities’, Educational Management, Administration and Leadership, 33 (2005) 449–64. J.S. Stark, C.L. Briggs and J. Rowland-Poplawski, ‘Curriculum leadership roles of chairpersons in continuously planning departments’, Research in Higher Education, 43 (2002) 329–56. V.H. Vroom and A.J. Jago, ‘The role of the situation in leadership’, American Psychologist, 62 (2007) 17–24.

11 Departmental Affiliation, Leadership and Leadership Development Gareth Edwards and Doris Jepson

In line with some of the general themes of this book, that is, theorising and researching leadership in context and the development of more sophisticated constructs of leadership, this chapter will discuss how the department to which a leader is affiliated impacts upon their leadership behaviour and effectiveness. Initially, the chapter explores leader prototypicality as a central concept for considering departmental affiliation and leadership. The chapter then discusses the relevance of implicit leadership theories to leader prototypicality and departmental affiliation and also introduces the concept of transformational, transactional and laissez-faire leadership as providing a useful behavioural perspective when considering leadership in a departmental context. The findings from two separate studies are discussed. These studies have been chosen, firstly owing to the relevance of the data to the topic in discussion but also because they are both distinct in their epistemological origins that provide a useful comparative basis. Study One is an inductive investigation of leadership from a crosscountry perspective in the German and UK Chemical Industry (Jepson, 2007). Study Two, however, is a deductive investigation of perceptions of transformational leadership behaviour and effectiveness of managers across various sectors of the UK manufacturing industry (Edwards, 2005). Study One, with a qualitative focus will highlight key themes that can then be investigated more generally from the discussion of Study Two which has a quantitative approach. The chapter will, therefore, discuss the findings of these studies in relation to leader prototypicality and social identity and highlight relevant findings regarding leadership and departmental affiliation and thirdly, in line with the book theme – ‘Knowledge into Action’, the chapter will conclude by giving guidance to practitioner managers on 144

Departmental Affiliation, Leadership and Leadership Development 145

what implications these findings have on their day-to-day roles and provide recommendations for leadership development initiatives.

Introduction: leader prototypicality Recently, the importance of the interactional nature of leadership and its position within a group has increasingly been pointed out and theoretically elaborated on by researchers such as Ellemers et al. (2004), Haslam (2004) and Hogg (2005). These researchers have developed their arguments by looking at the connection between social identity theory and the construction of leadership identities and behaviour (Ellemers et al., 2004), assuming that leadership emerges through processes associated with psychologically belonging to a group. Other areas of leadership theory and research, such as the arguments around distributed leadership (Gronn, 2002) further support this call for a focus on leadership interaction at group-level. For example, Hogg (2005, p. 73) suggests: Scholars have become concerned that current leadership theories are inadequately grounded in an analysis of the role of group membership. Hogg goes on to suggest that most research now acknowledges that leadership is a relational property within groups (i.e. leaders exist because of followers, and followers exist because of leaders). He also points out, however, that the idea that leadership may emerge through processes associated with psychologically belonging to a group, has not been elaborated. Goethals (2005), based on his review of the work of Freud (1921), has suggested that individuals who represent the group’s members in an ideal and strong way gain prestige, and prestige commands obedience. Goethals goes on to elaborate on Freud’s idea (borrowed heavily from LeBon, 1969 [originally published in 1895]) that leaders match the needs and expectations of the group through their ideas as well as their personal qualities. Being ‘prototypical’ (Ellemers et al., 2004, p. 488), that is, endorsing the shared identity, representing it clearly and promoting the distinguishing of the group towards other groups is further proposed to have a positive impact on the existence and acceptance of leadership. Haslam (2004) points out that prototypicality may be seen as a constant process of influencing the social identity – acting as entrepreneurs of identity – and


being influenced by it. Reicher et al., (2005) have also suggested that people who are influential are those who are in a position to supply information about a common social category. This idea of effective leadership being dependent on matching the prototypical behaviour within a social group can also be explored through the lens of implicit leadership theories. Implicit leadership theories argue that to be successful, a leader’s expectations on and perceptions of ideal leader behaviour have to match his/her followers expectations and perceptions (Kenney et al., 1994). Prototypicality is here seen as a role schema that the leader has to fit to meet the normative expectations of the group (Brodbeck et al., 2000). What those normative expectations are and consequently what defines ideal leadership then depends on the characteristics and attributes of the specific social group. The findings from Study One represent an implicit leadership perspective in understanding leader prototypicality from the context of departmental affiliation. The findings from Study Two, on the other hand, provide a behavioural perspective of leader prototypicality in the context of departmental affiliation. If effective leadership is dependent on matching prototypical behaviours then a theory of leadership behaviour was deemed a useful perspective to investigate. The theory of transformational, transactional and laissez-faire leadership (Bass, 1985, 1998) provides a number of dimensions that represent leadership behaviour (see Table 11.1 for definitions of the behavioural dimensions). Furthermore, research concerning the transformational, transactional and laissez-faire leadership paradigm appears to lack consideration at the group-level analysis. Indeed, there has been criticism of the transformational leadership literature overemphasising dyadic processes: most theory and research concentrate on leader influence on individuals and not leader influence on group or organisational processes (Yukl, 1999). In the most recent review of transformational leadership theory (Bass and Riggio, 2006) there appears no evidence that this criticism has been resolved. The most relevant research appears to discuss more generic areas that may enable theoretical consideration of group level effects on leadership behaviour and effectiveness. For example, Howell (1992) offers a list of organisational and task conditions likely to affect the emergence of transformational and transactional leadership. One area that she highlights is task characteristics; if a task is standardised, routine and well defined the likelihood is that transactional leadership will emerge. On the other hand, if a task is complex, changing and poorly defined then the likelihood is that transformational leadership will emerge.

Departmental Affiliation, Leadership and Leadership Development 147 Table 11.1

Definitions of the dimensions of the full range leadership model

Transformational leadership (TFL) • Attributed Charisma (AC) / Idealised Influence (II) – Leaders behave or are attributed with characteristics that result in their being role models for their followers. Leaders are admired, respected and trusted. Followers identify with the leaders and want to emulate them. Leaders are perceived by their followers as having extraordinary capabilities, persistence and determination. Leaders are willing to take risks and are consistent rather than arbitrary. They can be counted on to do the right thing, demonstrating high standards of ethical and moral conduct. • Inspirational Motivation (IM) – Leaders behave in ways that motivate and inspire those around them by providing meaning and challenge to their followers’ work. Team spirit is aroused. Enthusiasm and optimism are displayed. Leaders involve followers in envisioning attractive future states. Leaders clearly communicate expectations that followers want to meet. And they demonstrate commitment to goals and the shared vision. • Intellectual Stimulation (IS) – Leaders stimulate their followers’ efforts to be innovative and creative by questioning assumptions, reframing problems, and approaching old situations in new ways. They encourage creativity. There is no public criticism of individual members’ mistakes. New ideas and creative problem solutions are solicited from followers, who are included in the process of addressing problems and finding solutions. Followers are encouraged to try new approaches, and their ideas are not criticised even if they differ from the leaders’ ideas. • Individualised Consideration (IC) – Leaders pay special attention to each follower’s needs for achievement and growth by acting as coach or mentor. Followers and colleagues are developed to successively higher levels of potential. Individualised consideration is practised when new learning opportunities are created, along with a supportive climate. Individual differences in needs and desires are recognised and accepted by the leader. A two-way exchange in communication is encouraged, and ‘management by walking around’ is practised. Interactions with followers are personalised. The leader listens effectively and delegates tasks as a means of developing followers. Delegated tasks are monitored to discover whether followers need additional direction or support and to assess progress, but followers do not feel they are being checked on. Transactional leadership (TAL) • Contingent Reward (CR) – The leader assigns or gets agreement on what needs to be done and promises rewards or actually rewards others in exchange for satisfactorily carrying out the assignment. • Management-by-Exception (Active and Passive) (MBEA and MBEP) – The leader actively monitors deviations from performance standards, mistakes and errors in followers’ assignments and takes corrective action as necessary or waits passively for deviations, mistakes and errors to occur and then takes corrective action. Laissez-faire leadership (LF) – The leader avoids taking a stand, ignores problems, does not follow up, and refrains from intervening. Source: B.M. Bass (1998), Transformational Leadership: Industry, Military, and Educational Impact. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 5–7.


There is, however, little consideration here for the effectiveness of each form of leadership behaviour. This paper, therefore, investigates the extent to which departmental affiliation has an impact on leadership behaviour and effectiveness and discusses repercussions for leadership development.

Leadership and departmental affiliation Within today’s organisations, the department is still most often the most immediate, formal group-level context of an individual and may therefore have a high impact on a person assuming a leadership position. Organisational departments further tend to differ fundamentally with a view to knowledge, jargon, tasks, role distribution, use of technology and daily routines within a given organisation but tend to be similar to equivalent departments within other organisations and possibly other countries. This chapter, through the lens of two studies, seeks to add to the already growing body of research on leader prototypicality (see van Knippenberg and van Knippenberg, 2005 for a review) with a particular focus on departmental affiliation and investigate particular antecedents with regards to the emergence of leader prototypicality in departmental groupings. Assuming that identity shapes behaviour and that the social context shapes our identity, it could further be assumed that social interaction and therefore behaviour shapes identity. If this was true, we could use displayed behaviour in organisations – and more specifically in immediate social groups such as departments – to try to understand underlying personal and social identities. This process would then enable us to understand what behaviour is deemed prototypical and consequently essential for successful leadership at group level. In this chapter, we will apply this line of thought to the data of Study One and Two, to illustrate that certain leadership behaviours (using transformational, transactional and laissez-faire leadership as a framework) may be indicative of a social identity that has been influenced and shaped through daily interaction and a shared educational background within a department. We propose that within a specific department, such as an research and development lab, the lab manager most often faces subordinate technicians with an equal education or training background and the nature of the job requires the technicians to use their knowledge for product innovation and development. Within this specific environ-


ment, we may then expect a shared identity that is shaped by creativity, respect for knowledge and similar thinking/analytical patterns stemming from similar education backgrounds. According to social identity theory, a leader in a lab environment will be expected to be very prototypical (Hogg, 2001) and therefore to embrace the principles of creativity and respect for knowledge. Occupation could therefore be the key driver of prototypicality within this social group and reinforced by the daily context of social interaction with superiors, colleagues and subordinates; it is the common social category (Reicher et al., 2005). This line of thought can be easily applied to more commerciallyoriented departments such as sales and marketing departments or accounting departments, where training or education within the occupational area is most likely equally important and a prerequisite for most jobs. The elements defining prototypicality of this social group are the differentiating factors based upon the occupational affiliation and represents social identity in context (see Reicher et al., 2005 for a review). Production settings may be a slightly more complicated environment, as training may sometimes be less formal and occur rather onthe-job. However, production plants are often divided into shifts and within these shifts you can again find social identities that are then shaped by the individual members and their experience together and/or common expertise. Acceptance of a leader within this environment would then be based on his/her similarities with the members of the group and may ultimately be driven by emotional, experience or relationship-oriented issues rather than educational issues. In essence if leadership is seen as the process of being perceived as a leader through implicit leadership theories (Lord and Maher, 1991) then department affiliation and occupational identity could play a substantial role in attaining leadership status. The studies outlined earlier are now discussed in detail to investigate this proposition.

Study one Leadership in the German and UK chemical industries This interpretivist, cross-country study of leadership (Jepson, 2007) has generated a total data set of 105 semi-structured interviews that have asked the participants – 63 managers and 42 employees without managerial status – to elaborate on their own opinion on what constitutes leadership in the organisation, what impacts on the behaviour of a leader and what kind of leadership is displayed by their superiors and


generally within their company. Seventy eight of the 105 interviews were conducted in a total of nine chemical companies located in Germany and the other 27 interviews took place in three chemical companies located in the UK. The companies in each country varied in firm size, industry segment, firm age and are located in different regions within each country. Looking at the wording and content of definitions of ideal leadership behaviour and descriptions of existing leadership behaviour within the national and micro-level sub-samples revealed that it is departmental affiliation that seems to matter most to the individuals in this data set. This importance of affiliation of a leader with their department further transcended other organisational and national (German and UK) boundaries. Comparing the descriptions of leadership behaviour within the same departments revealed that there is a strong consistency in leadership behaviour amongst, for example, lab managers, plant managers and sales/marketing managers both across organisations and nations. Managers of labs generally described their own behaviour as quite ‘laissez-faire’ and ‘hands-off’ so as to utilise the selfmotivation and creativity of their subordinates. One of the lab technicians at a UK firm explained that lab managers do not need to be hands-on or directive as most of the lab technicians find their motivation in the very work they are doing: If you do, and this sounds terribly sad, but if you go to university and you do chemistry and you want to do it for living that is your motivation. So most of your motivation or lets say my motivation comes from actually wanting to do it. And I wouldn’t want to do anything else. So, but that is half of it, so most of your motivation comes from that really. Wanting to do a good job, being a professional, using the knowledge you’ve got in another application… Interaction with subordinates therefore tends to be described as relaxed and a few of the lab managers identified their main responsibility to be the co-ordination of tasks/projects and the provision of theoretical advice if at all needed. On the other hand production or plant managers were perceived to be more hands-on and controlling due to the sensitivity of chemical processes that are dealt with on the shop floor. The sensitivity of chemical processes and the need for a clear structure of responsibility and control has been mentioned by several production workers and managers in this sample. Furthermore, interviewees working in a plant


environment have identified supportiveness as one of the crucial roles of a leader, which ties in with the need to be more hands-on. Finally, sales and marketing managers were perceived to exhibit both approaches. They are generally dealing with professionals as subordinates who tend to need little control or supervision, yet cannot be too hands-off due to the close exposure to financial matters and clients. We have a type of teamwork here and I don’t see myself as the superior, as the big guy in this department. I see myself as the team leader in the American sense. I say, ok I am leading you, but please … all of you have to cover your own area of responsibility and have to make the decisions in that area. … some (need to) ensure being backed up by their superior. After all I always carry the responsibility with them when I give them the leeway to decide on their own. I don’t always have to stand next to you but I stand in front of you. … Of course, if somebody misbehaves completely, what has hardly happened until now, then you have to approach it differently. Sales Manager, Germany Both within the German and the UK sample, almost all managers fitted into these departmental categories. This study further showed that some participants were quite aware of departmental differences in leadership behaviour. When participants were asked whether they or their boss’s leadership behaviour is similar to everyone else in the company, some participants started to reflect upon these departmental differences themselves. One sales/marketing project manager in one of the German firms described it this way: Well I would say that in production, for example, there is a very harsh tone. You can say they are all trained workers but maybe not with a university degree. They are coming lets say from lower social classes, without putting value on it, where maybe already the father shouted at the son … ‘you do it this way…’. … I think specific people need specific leadership styles. It should be pointed out however, that the chemical industry is quite unique in the sense that technology, organisational structures and practices are very similar across countries and the importance of highly trained staff is a characteristic of both the UK and German chemical industry. The comparatively less significant similarities in leadership behaviour within national sub-sets compared to departmental sub-sets


may therefore be partly attributable to the dominant industry-specific organisational structures and demands.

Study two Departmental affiliation and transformational, transactional and laissez-faire leadership This study gained self-rating perceptions on leadership behaviour and effectiveness from 343 managers and subordinate-rating perceptions of leadership behaviour and effectiveness of 300 managers from manufacturing organisations in the UK (Edwards, 2005).1 The study used the Multifactor Leadership questionnaire to collect data on transformational, transactional and laissez-faire leadership (definitions of transformational, transactional and laissez-faire leadership behaviours are taken from Bass, 1998). In this study managers were classified into eight departmental groupings, which were: • • • • • • • •

Head (CEO/MD); Operations; Work, Site, Facilities and Systems; HR, Health and Safety and Quality; Production; Sales, Marketing and Business Development; Finance and Administration; Engineering and Product Development.

The dimensions of transformational (attributed charisma, idealised influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individualised consideration), transactional (contingent reward, active management-byexception and passive management-by-exception) and laissez-faire leadership were analysed to identify any relationship with effectiveness criteria (extra effort, leader effectiveness and follower satisfaction). A summary of the results are given in Tables 11.2 and 11.3. There appears to be evidence in the findings of this study that support the assumption that groups or departments appear to have unique mixes of leadership behaviours based on basic assumptions around task characteristics. Overall evidence is lacking for the clear-cut distinction between departments based on a transactional and transformational leadership basis (c.f. Howell, 1992). There is, however, evidence to suggest that there is a distinction between commercially

0.32

0.33**

0.48**

0.33

HR, Health & Safety and Quality (Eff) (n=27)

Production (Eff) (n=88)

Sales, Marketing and Business Development (Eff) (n=47)

Finance and Administration (Eff) (n=20)

0.43**

0.63**

0.35*

0.31**

0.10

0.45**

0.58***

0.04

II

N.B. * = P

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