Leadership

A Critical Text

Simon Western

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781526459527
• eBook ISBN: 9781526478511
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Leadership

In this original text, Simon Western deconstructs and reconstructs leadership to challenge the popular notion of the individual or hero leader, instead using his own framework to present leadership as a distributed process.

New to the third edition:

• A new chapter on leadership symptoms that offers a novel approach to researching and conceptualizing leadership.
• An expanded chapter on "Leadership and Diversity" with Pooja Sachdev.
• Updated material on "The Eco-Leadership Discourse", with the chapter now differentiating between ethical eco-leadership and commercial eco-leaders (e.g Facebook, Google, Amazon).
• Analysis of contemporary leadership trends, including leadership in the gig economy, algorithmic management, and the risein messiah and authoritarian leadership in populist parties.
• Updated case studies with references to current politicians and organizations.

Part One Deconstructing Leadership

• 1 Why a Critical Approach to Leadership? 3
• 2 What Is Leadership? 25
• 3 The Plurality of Leadership: A Case Study 54
• 4 Against Leadership: Autonomist Leadership 66
• 5 Leadership and Diversity 87
• 6 Leadership and Organizational Culture 106
• 7 Corporate Fundamentalism 121

1 Why a Critical Approach to Leadership?

Chapter Structure

• Introduction
• Critical Thinking and Critical Theory (CT)
• Good Leadership and Ethical Leadership
• Why Critical Theory Is Marginalized
• A Critical Framework: Four Frames of Critical Inquiry
• Conclusion: Critical Theory and Leadership

Introduction

This book takes a critical theory (CT) approach to leadership for four core reasons:

1. To establish a critical theoretical framework, supporting an individual’s process of inquiry into the theory and practice of leadership.
2. To contribute an accessible critical account of leadership, challenging ‘taken-for-granted’ (normative) assumptions and offering new insights into the underlying discourses and dynamics that shape leadership.
3. To contribute to the task of improving and rethinking leadership practice. Taking into account contemporary social change, and adapting leadership to benefit organizations and society.
4. To situate leadership within an ethical and emancipatory framework, with the greater aim of creating the ‘Good Society’.

Critical theoretical approaches work in two ways, the first being to scrutinize leadership, to offer an analysis of the deeper, less obvious ways in which leadership is theorized, practised and utilized to attain organizational and political aims. Secondly, CT has progressive intentions: it aims to create a better society by rethinking, rediscovering and reinventing leadership; bringing new theoretical resources to the challenges we face that are revealed through its critique. Critical theory can sometimes veer towards the first aspect, the scrutiny and deconstruction, with too little attention given to the reconstruction and rethinking of leadership. To be critical in popular terms has inferences of being negative, and in academia, where critical takes a different meaning, critiquing and applying critical theory can easily become focused on finding the flaws and revealing the oppressive forces within mainstream leadership. Adler et al. (2007: 14) write, ‘As with most counter-movements, CMS¹ proponents have been more articulate about what they are against than what they are for’. Critical theory then becomes a pathologizing activity rather than an emancipatory theory. This book is firmly placed in the emancipatory camp of critical theory, believing that critique is important when used to promote a progressive agenda, or, as Cunliffe (2008: 937) writes, ‘I believe the central thread is our interest in the critique of contemporary forms of knowledge, social and institutional processes and in generating radical alternatives’. To repeat Marx’s famous quote in his ‘Theses on Feuerbach’: ‘The philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point is to change it’ (Marx, 1978[1845]: 45).

¹ CMS – Critical Management Studies – a grouping of academics using critical theory to study management, leadership and all aspects of organizations and work.

CT is a diverse body, as I will explore later. Some believe that only a radical critique is worthwhile, and that attempting to improve the workplace through a reformist agenda is ‘selling out’ to a capitalist system that is inherently unfair. This polarization of views strikes me as dualistic thinking that critical scholars themselves condemn. The CT task is both a progressive and a radical agenda. A reformist engagement with contemporary managers and leaders achieves two things. Firstly, it can improve the situation on the ground, achieving micro-emancipation. Secondly, it can work towards structural and radical change, i.e. macro-emancipation, by (a) educating and engaging practitioners in new possibilities beyond their current vision, thereby building a greater consensus for more radical possibilities of change, and (b) reformist engagement can also be used by critical theorists as action-research, to better understand the system in order to work out what a radical agenda might look like.

This chapter will initially discuss what it means to take a critical approach, and then offer a critical framework that informs this book and can be used by practitioners to support their own critical inquiry. Finally, it addresses applying critical theory to leadership itself, acknowledging some of the challenges that are encountered.

Critical Thinking and Critical Theory (CT)

Critical thinking and critical theory are overlapping terms that require differentiating and clarifying for the purpose of this book. Critical thinking or a critical approach are generic terms which are often used loosely and at times indiscriminately and interchangeably with critical theory, but as Johnson and Duberley identify, there is more to critical theory than being reflective and critical:

Whilst many researchers of management may consider themselves to be critical, in that they attempt to stand back from their work and interrogate their findings with a critical eye, this does not mean they are operating within a critical theory perspective. (2000: 124)

To be critical is to take a more radical, reflective and questioning stance that doesn’t accept at face value, what is ‘taken for granted’ in mainstream, positivistic or rationalistic perspectives. Fulop and Linstead write in the opening of their book Management: A Critical Text:

This introduction outlines a critical approach to management that enables us to reflect on how we learn about management. It is designed to help us develop the intellectual rigour and knowledge to deal with the complex and multifaceted issues that arise in everyday work situations. (1999: 4)

Their approach focuses on being reflective and developing a rigour of inquiry, which is one element of a CT stance but there are more. Calhoun (1995: 35) offers his perspective on CT:

1. CT critiques the contemporary social world looking for new possibilities, and positive implications for social action.
2. CT gives a critical account of historical and cultural conditions.
3. CT gives a continuous critical re-examination of the conceptual frameworks used (including the historical construction of these frameworks).
4. CT confronts other works of social explanation, analysing their strengths and weaknesses, as well as their blind spots, but then demonstrates the capacity to incorporate their insights for stronger foundations.

These examples illustrate a use of CT which brings into play critical thinking from a social, historical and cultural perspective, taking a social constructionist and a discursive approach, i.e. questioning how reality is constructed and made sense of through processes of socialization, the use of language and historical influences. Finally, there is another tradition in CT that aims to use its insights to take an explicitly ethical position.

Good Leadership and Ethical Leadership

Perhaps the greatest differentiating point is that mainstream approaches (rational/positivist) attempt to improve leadership ‘instrumentally’, with the aim of making organizations more effective and productive, without reference to broader social and ethical concerns. Good leadership in mainstream thinking means effective leadership, usually with a ‘values perspective’, as an additional extra. For example, Bass (1998) says transformational leadership is also about ‘doing good’, yet without scrutinizing structural power issues, and the systemic violence (Žižek, 2008) that occurs through corporate activity. When ‘doing good’ takes an individualist morality, it is nothing more than a hollow claim. For example, transformational leadership claims to empower followers, yet under the scrutiny of CT, it becomes clear that the claim of transformational leaders to create strong ‘cultures’ can end up with ‘cult-like cultures’. By imposing new forms of organizational culture control on employees with the clear aim of maximizing productivity, we see empowerment turning into soft forms of coercion (see Chapters 7 and 12).

Some mainstream scholars take a more sceptical stance to leadership than others, but critical scholars Alvesson and Willmott (1996) claim that this sceptical approach has serious limitations because whilst it examines aspects such as power, it does so from an intra-organizational context, ignoring a broader social and political context.

Individualistic leadership theories focusing on special personal traits such as charisma inherently support the idea of ‘special leaders’ who can motivate ‘followers’, thereby increasing productivity, and these leaders are rewarded with ‘special’ remuneration packages. This idea of leadership has led to chief executives’ pay rising in astronomical terms in the past twenty years. As Mintzberg (2012) points out, ‘Any CEO who allows himself to be paid 400 or 500 times more than the workers is not a leader but an exploiter’. These ‘super’ leaders receive huge bonuses rewarding them for short-term success and growth, following the neo-liberal agenda of ever-increasing productivity within liberal markets, decreasing regulation, increasing financial and trade liberalization, and reducing protection for the labour force. Short-term profiteering ignores developing more sustainable business growth, or ethical concerns such as humanizing the workplace and taking responsibility for a sustainable natural environment. Is this good leadership?

There are many covert vested interests at stake in organizational life, such as power, identity and economic benefit, which is one reason why critical theory is marginalized. Bhaskar (2010: 107) explains:

The oppressed have an interest in explanatory knowledge of the structures that oppress them. But their oppressors do not need to have that explanatory knowledge and it might be better for them if they do not. The sort of knowledge they need to have is best not called knowledge, but rather information or even data, and that is about how to manipulate events and circumstances and discourses.

Good leadership in the workplace must mean more than increasing short-term share prices, and growth. Good leadership should also mean ethical leadership, and this is not just for altruistic reasons, it is also to promote sustainable success. One of the key points I wish to make is that critical theory is not an abstract construction useful only in academic circles, it is fundamental to successful organizational and social functioning, creating more humane institutions and a sustainable world.

Why Critical Theory Is Marginalized

To critique means to look at deeper, underlying questions, not just at the challenges raised by a particular problem.

Business Schools, Management Science and the Corporate Agenda

The basic assumptions behind much of leadership and organizational thinking emanate from business schools (Grey, 2004), which operate with two combined, underpinning biases:

1. The purpose of business is to maximize productivity and profit: Business schools take the position that is most likely to align with their key stakeholder, the corporate client, whose agenda is ‘more productivity and growth, with ever-greater efficiency, to maximize profit’. The business schools therefore favour an instrumental approach to leadership, claiming their knowledge and expertise produces increases in productivity and...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Endorsements
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Sidebar List
• Illustration List
• Table List
• About the Author
• Introduction
• Part One Deconstructing Leadership
• 1 Why a Critical Approach to Leadership?
• 2 What Is Leadership?
• 3 The Plurality of Leadership: A Case Study
• 4 Against Leadership: Autonomist Leadership
• 5 Leadership and Diversity
• 6 Leadership and Organizational Culture
• 7 Corporate Fundamentalism
• Part Two Reconstructing Leadership
• 8 The Four Discourses of Leadership
• 9 The Controller Leadership Discourse Controlling Resources to Maximize Efficiency
• 10 The Therapist Leadership Discourse Happy Workers Are More Productive Workers
• 11 The Messiah Leadership Discourse Visionary Leaders and Strong Cultures
• 12 The Eco-Leadership Discourse Connectivity, Networks and (Ethics)
• 13 An Overview of the Leadership Discourses
• 14 Leadership Formation Creating Spaces for Leadership to Flourish
• 15 Seeking Leadership Symptoms
• 16 Epilogue
• References
• Index