Most people have a sense or understanding of leadership, this regardless if it is personallyexperienced or taught. A lot of former leadership research is focused on the leader, its attributes and functionality. From this perspective the successful leader is considered to have abilities that makes he or she someone special and extraordinary – a hero. However, a branch of more recent research takes a critical approach to this view. This critical perspective assumes that leadership is influenced and affected by other phenomena than just a strong leader. These phenomena can possibly be described as ideological or institutional. This paper aimes to critically analyze and problematize general assumptions and ideas about leadership.The study is based on interviews with six leaders from different businesses consisting of open-mindedly formulated questions about leadership. Among them are questions of the role of the leader and if there is a difference between being a leader and to excersise leadership. Also how they obtained the knowledge they possess about leadership. The study shows that people who are in a situation of leadership tend to describe it in relation to different types of leaders. These types of leaders seem to be categorizied as belonging to different generations and to them supposed ideals. The study also shows that there is a mutual dependence between leaders and followers, increasingly founded on cooperation and thereby acceptance and equality. / Ledarskap är något de flesta har en uppfattning om, vare sig det är självupplevt eller inlärt. Stora delar av tidigare ledarskapsforskning är centrerad kring ledaren, dennes attribut och funktion. Den framgångsrike ledaren anses, sett ur detta perspektiv, ha egenskaper som gör denne till någon särskild och extraordinär - en hjälte. En förgrening inom senare forskning intar dock ett kritiskt förhållningssätt till denna syn. Detta kritiska perspektiv utgår från att ledarskap influeras och påverkas av andra fenomen än en stark ledargestalt. Dessa fenomen kan möjligen beskrivas som ideologiska eller institutionella. Denna uppsats syftar till att kri- tiskt analysera och problematisera allmänna antaganden och idéer om ledarskap. I genomfö- randet av studien har sex stycken ledare från olika verksamheter intervjuats och öppna frågor har ställts om ledarens roll, eventuella skillnader mellan att vara ledare och att utöva ledarskap samt hur de erhållit den kunskap de besitter om ledarskap. Studien påvisar att personer i le- darställning tenderar att beskriva ledarskap i relation till olika typer av ledare. Dessutom ver- kar dessa ledarskapstyper kategoriseras som tillhörande olika generationer och dåvarande, påstådda, ideal. Studien visar även på att det existerar ett ömsesidigt beroende mellan ledare och följare som alltmer bygger på samarbete och därigenom acceptans och likställdhet.

Dieser Beitrag in der Zeitschrift Gruppe. Interaktion. Organisation analysiert Leadership in Organisationen der spanischen Protestbewegung. Es werden Idealvorstellungen der AktivistInnen von Führung, deren Umsetzung in der Praxis, damit einhergehende Probleme und der Umgang mit diesen Problemen dargestellt. Theoretische Grundlage sind Critical Leadership Studies, die Führung nicht als das Handeln einzelner Personen, sondern als Prozess des gesamten beteiligten Systems interpretieren und damit klar zwischen Leadership und Führungspersonen unterscheiden. Ferner werden Konsequenzen für die Führungspraxis auch in konventionellen Organisationen diskutiert.

Yes / This article explores gender and entrepreneurial leadership, notably the meanings female entrepreneurs ascribe to notions of entrepreneurial leadership. Drawing from interviews with female business owners, the article questions the dominant hegemonic masculine entrepreneurial leadership model as well as that reportedly associated with women. Research findings illuminate the fluidity and variability of the entrepreneurial leadership construct. Our feminist poststructural lens and critical leadership stance adds new insight into the multiple subjectivities of entrepreneurs and surfaces contradiction and tension that shape the very sense of their entrepreneurial selves. By questioning accepted knowledge, this research offers new perspectives on the multiple realities of entrepreneurial leadership, which should be heeded by policy makers, academics and practitioners alike.

Yes / This paper develops a theory of the subjectivity of the leader through the philosophical lens of Hegel’s master/slave dialectic and its recent interpretation by the philosopher Judith Butler. This is used to analyse the working life history of a man who rose from poverty to a leadership position in a large company and eventually to running his own successful business. Hegel’s dialectic is foundational to much Western thought, but in this paper, I rashly update it by inserting a leader in between the master, whose approval the leader needs if s/he is to sustain self-hood, and the follower, who becomes a tool that the leader uses when trying to gain that elusive approval. The analysis follows the structure of Butler’s reading of the Dialectic and develops understanding of the norms that govern how leaders should act and the persons they should be. Hard work has become for leaders an ethical endeavour, but they grieve the sacrifice of leisure. They enjoy a frisson of erotic pleasure at their power over others but feel guilt as a result. They must prove their leadership skills by ensuring their followers are perfect employees but at the same time must prove their followers are poor workers who need their continued leadership. This leads to the conclusion that the leader is someone who is both powerful and powerless. This analysis is intended not to demonize leaders, but to show the harm that follows the emphasis on leadership as a desirable and necessary organizational function.

No description available.

No / There is widespread debate within critical management studies (CMS) as to the possibility of introducing CMS principles and ideas into organizational life. There is similarly a critique of its potential to replace the hegemony of `mainstream' business school thinking with an alternative hegemonic practice. In this article we use a reflexive analysis of our involvement as critical thinkers within the delivery of leadership-development programmes to consider these debates and explore CMS perspectives with participants. Our initial attempts were naive, but a more nuanced understanding given by theorizing our own practices offers some ways of avoiding the substitution of one hegemony with another. Although working as critical thinkers within mainstream programmes will always be problematic, we suggest that using a dialogical approach in leadership training programmes is one way of struggling with the inherent difficulties, while introducing participants to different ways of theorizing their worlds.

No / Leadership has proved impossible to define, despite decades of research and a huge number of publications. This article explores managers’ accounts of leadership, and shows that they find it difficult to talk about the topic, offering brief definitions but very little narrative. That which was said/sayable provides insights into what was unsaid/ unsayable. Queer theory facilitates exploration of that which is difficult to talk about, and applying it to the managers’ talk allows articulation of their lay theory of leadership. This is that leaders evoke a homoerotic desire in followers such that followers are seduced into achieving organizational goals. The leader’s body, however, is absent from the scene of seduction, so organizational heteronormativity remains unchallenged. The article concludes by arguing that queer and critical leadership theorists together could turn leadership into a reverse discourse and towards a politics of pleasure at work.

No / Drawing on recent critical debates concerning the ontology of leadership, this article outlines a radical rethinking of the concept – not as the study of heroic individuals, skilled practitioners, collaborators or discursive actors – but as the marker of a fundamental and productive lack; a space of absent presence through which individual and collective desires for leadership are given expression. Where current critical debates tend to oscillate between variants of the physical and the social in their analyses, this article considers the potential for a negative ontology of leadership; one in which absence, ideological practices and the operation of empty signifiers form the basis for empirical investigation and critical reflection.

yes / This article introduces a critical approach to follower/ship studies through exploring the unarticulated but highly influential implicit academic theory of follower/ship that informs dominant paradigms of leadership. Research into follower/ship is developing apace but the field lacks a critical account. Such an absence of critical voice renders researchers unaware of the performative effect of their studies, that is, how their studies actively constitute that of which they speak. So, do studies of followers (and leaders, it follows) constitute that very actuality they are studying? Analysis of seminal papers in three major categories of leadership, leader-centric, multiple leadership and leader-centred, shows that leadership theory is underpinned by the desire for power and control over the potentially dangerous masses, now labelled ‘followers’. The etiolated perspective of the people called ‘followers’ undermines leadership theory, and we recommend the wisdom of leaving follower/ship unexplored.

Leadership in general is still perceived as individualistic, masculine and hierarchical. Despite fighting against discrimination and for social justice, third sector organizations are themselves often places of entrenched privilege and limited diversity. Leaders with lived experiences draw on their first-hand experience of social issues and/or injustices and attempt to tackle those problems through their work. They represent a diversity of backgrounds, experiences and capabilities that challenge the homogeneity of third sector leadership. Following critical leadership studies this thesis draws from the standpoints of lived experience leaders to offer new, intersectional perspectives on leadership and to expand and diversify understandings of what it is to lead in third sector organizations. The focus of this thesis’s exploration is the experiences and perceptions of 10 individuals who hold or have held leadership positions within third sector organizations in the UK and Germany. Through the analysis of semi-structured interviews, a phenomenology of lived experience leadership is explored. Drawing from feminist standpoint theory, attention is paid to what lived experience leaders think about leadership generally and lived experience leadership in particular, as well as their perspectives on the systemic leadership structures they exist within and challenge. It is found that lived experience leaders acknowledge ‘traditional,’ ‘mainstream’ concepts of leadership and see their own leadership styles and approaches as distinct from these leadership norms. Their approaches and understandings challenge typical leadership constructions and, strongly influenced by their own lived experiences, promote political self-organization, activism and a socio-economic empowerment of people with lived experiences in order to unravel current social power structures and promote social change. With these key findings, the paper suggests further research to test and expand on the conclusions drawn. Ensuring that leadership positions are accessible to all should be a priority for future development of third sector organizations and beyond. Further research should therefore explore how lived experience leadership can help to gain insights about how to remove barriers to leadership positions efficiently.