Anti-leaders(hip) in Social Movement Organizations: The case of autonomous grassroots groups

Abstract

Through the Arab Spring and the Occupy movement, the idea of horizontal, leaderless organization has come to the attention of the mass media. In this article we explore radical, participative-democratic alternatives to leadership through an empirical study of four Social Movement Organizations (SMOs). Whilst there has been some writing on leadership within SMOs, it has mirrored the ‘mainstream’ assumption that leadership is the product of individual leaders possessing certain traits, styles and/or behaviours. In contrast, critical leadership studies (CLS) recognize that leadership is a relational, socially constructed phenomenon rather than the result of a stable set of leadership attributes that inhere in ‘the leaders’. We utilize this framing to analyse how leadership is understood and performed in anarchist SMOs by examining how actors manage meaning and define reality without compromising the ideological commitments of their organizations. Furthermore, we also pay attention to the organizational practices and processes developed to: (a) prohibit individuals from permanently assuming a leadership role; (b) distribute leadership skills and roles; and (c) encourage other actors to participate and take-up these roles in the future. We conclude by suggesting that just because an organization is leaderless, it does not necessarily mean that it is also leadershipless.

Teaching Leadership Critically: New Directions for Leadership Pedagogy

“…However, the absence of formal leaders does not mean the absence of leadership (Sutherland et al, 2013). Studies have also revealed profound patterns of leadership dysfunctionality in some radical social change organisations, where the systems of domination often evident in more conventional organizations have been faithfully reproduced, sometimes in an even more extreme form (Tourish, 2013).…”

Power in Management and Organization Science

“…In this sense, they over-identified with their own subjectification as self-regulating actors, and thus told top-management that if they were to authentically embody the prescribed identity of 'responsible subjects' they would have to be fundamentally involved in the day-today operation of the bank (also see Fleming and Spicer, 2003). While this did not result in a complete employee takeover, it did partially 'resubjectify' the organization to create a new discursive institutional climate (also see Sutherland, Land and Bohm, 2013). Meyer and Scully's (1995) fascinating analysis of 'tempered radicals' extends our understanding of these counter-subjectifying tactics in organizations.…”

Organizing resistance movements: contribution of the political discourse theory

“…And if so, why did the authors emphasize again and again the 'magical' role of leaders without showing the struggles involved in making complex organizational decisions? Recent publications by Haug (2013) and Sutherland, Land & Böhm (2013) give us some glimpses of how collective decision making processes develop and affect other organizational aspects, such as leadership.…”

“…The study by Sutherland, Land, & Böhm (2013) shows how social movement leadership should be understood as a relational, socially constructed phenomenon.…”