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.

This dissertation is about curriculum and leadership in Arizona-Mexico border community schools. Specifically, I examine intended and received language arts curricula (i.e., what content is taught, to whom, and with what pedagogy) (Porter, 2004), the misalignments between these curriculum types, and the misalignments in leadership approaches in border community schools. My dissertation draws on both classic and critical curriculum leadership studies (e.g., Hallinger, 2008; Johnson, 2006) with an emphasis on Funds of Knowledge (e.g., Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 1992), cultural capital (e.g., Yosso, 2005), and habitus (e.g., Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990). I utilize ethnographic and phenomenological approaches to my study of four elementary and three middle schools located in two Arizona-Mexico border communities 120 miles apart from each other. Findings suggest that children living in border communities exhibit cultural capital (Yosso, 2005) and Funds of Knowledge (Moll et al., 1992), but these strengths are not considered in the intended curricula. Participants see the culture of the border and the culture of the school as two very separate constructs, particularly in relation to curriculum. The children in the study consider this reality commonsensical. Culturally responsive curriculum leaders, though positioned to change the status quo, are compliant and helpless against the dominant standardized regime. External forces silence everything these leaders know about research and practice. My dissertation concludes with implications for research, practice, and policy to blend culturally responsive structures, pedagogy, and behaviors to the standardization movement.

No description available.

The number of Chicanx and Latinx students in U.S. public school settings increased significantly at the close of the last century and continues to increase well into the 21st century. The numbers of Chicanx and Latinx, and more specifically Chicana and Latina, high school principals, however, have remained disproportionately low. Studies that focus on leadership identities of Chicana/Latina school leaders are few. Testimonios in this study shine a light on voices of six Chicana/Latina high school principals; these leaders described their background and schooling, their career journeys, and their leadership paths. This study is informed by two theoretical frameworks: Chicana feminist epistemology (Delgado Bernal, 1998) and applied critical leadership (Cordova, 2018), which insist Chicana/Latina voices are centered and valued. In-depth, semistructured interviews encouraging reflection became the basis for six testimonios that focused on telling participants’ leadership story as authentically as possible using long, unedited quotes to preserve their unique voices. Cordova’s (2018) Mestiza Consciousness Framework provided structure to analyze and uncover themes of duality participants experienced: family as strength/challenge, leading as an insider/outsider, and trauma/resilience. Applied critical leadership principles were used to uncover common transformational leadership traits: leading with a social justice lens, high levels of reflection and self-awareness, and a focus on team-oriented servant leadership.

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.