University of Sussex
Browse

File(s) not publicly available

Leadership, more or less? A processual, communication perspective on the role of agency in leadership theory

journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-09, 06:30 authored by Dennis TourishDennis Tourish
‘More’ or ‘better’ leadership remains a popular panacea for business failure, climate change, educational underachievement and myriad other world problems. Yet there has been a growing concern that traditional approaches to the subject have naturalised oppressive power relationships, particularly in the workplace. Scholars have therefore put more stress on the creative contribution of ‘followers’ as co-creators of organisational reality. It is now normal to find calls for shared leadership, less leadership or no leadership. This article argues that even when couched in emancipatory terms, many of these perspectives still tend to diminish the contribution of organisational actors who do not occupy formal leadership roles. Communication and process theories of organisation are employed to suggest that leadership could be more usefully envisaged as those practices which see leaders occupying transitory roles within fluid social structures, in which there is no essence of leadership apart from the discursive constructions of organisational actors and in which the facilitation of disagreement and dissent holds the same importance as a traditional stress on the achievement of cohesion and agreement.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Journal

Leadership

ISSN

1742-7150

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Issue

1

Volume

10

Page range

79-98

Department affiliated with

  • Business and Management Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2017-06-05

Usage metrics

    University of Sussex (Publications)

    Categories

    No categories selected

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC