Challenging the Discourse of Leadership as Knowledge: Knowing and Not Knowing

Abstract

Leadership and knowledge are often paired together. Yet, certain forces that operate on businesses and individuals are often unknowable. In this study, we consider leaders’ perceptions of the consequences of not knowing and how leaders discursively cope with a sense of not knowing. Based on interviews with 33 participants working in multinational companies in India, we find that leaders perceive negative consequences of not knowing and engage in discursive tactics such as posing, delaying, clarifying, admitting, being silent, and stating “I don’t know,” that sustain and are sustained by the Discourse of leadership as knowledge. The findings contribute to the discursive leadership literature by demonstrating tactics leaders use as they attempt to balance the discursive construction of leadership as knowledge and lived experiences of not knowing. We discuss how the Discourse of leadership as knowledge will hamper knowledge extension as it undermines not knowing and privileges knowing over not knowing.

International Advances in Business Discourse Research (2013-2022): A CiteSpace-based Investigation and Analysis of WOS

“…As an emerging independent research field, business discourse research extends its influence across many other interdisciplinary applications in extensive research. It is apparent that #4 higher education and #7 knowledge are related to pedagogical research, including but not limited to intercultural/cross-cultural communication education (Simpson et al, 2022;Zhang et al, 2022), workplace communication (Chan, 2019), technology-enhanced communication (Zhao et al, 2022), and leadership communication (Doshi et al, 2021). These studies reveal the application of business discourse in higher education and the construction of knowledge systems that have practical significance for cultivating students in the digital era.…”