Leadership in organisational change: A post-structuralist research agenda

Abstract

The organisational change literature remains dominated by macro-and microexplanatory models which tend to exclude conflict, mess and power in favour of enumerating universalistic steps or, as is the subject of this article, leadership definitions and factors for successful change. In this article, I review and question some of the mainstream literature on leadership in organisational change, drawing on Laclau and Mouffe's political discourse theory and its mobilisation by critical leadership studies of organisational change. This article problematises change leadership as a set of multiple and changing practices, pragmatically deployed by organisational players. In exploring those avenues, I deploy a five-step 'logics of critical explanation' approach -specifically designed by Laclauian discourse theorists -characterising organisational change practices according to social (rules and norms), political (inclusions and exclusions) and fantasmatic (fears and hopes) logics. Rather than a set of factors or top-down causes and effects, I offer a situated and critical explanation of leadership in organisational change. This research contributes to critical explanations of organisational change politics by considering leadership as a set of changing discursive practices and by developing four situated dimensions of leadership, which build on concepts of empty and floating signifiers, to add to discussions of the role of individuals in organisational politics.

A ontologia pós-estruturalista sobre liderança: identidade e materialidade em evidência

“…Liderança é tratada como algo neutro, uma atividade meramente técnica, não abordando poder, resistência e relações de gênero que constroem assimetrias e hierarquias sociais que afetam a construção social sobre quem é apropriado ou não para exercer liderança (Ford, 2005). Portanto, poder e resistência são silenciados pelo mainstream (Kuipers et al, 2014;MacKillop, 2018). Neste artigo, essa ontologia de liderança é problematizada pelo pós-estruturalismo ao se evidenciar a não neutralidade e as limitações dos discursos mainstream sobre liderança.…”

“…Apesar das tentativas de o mainstream delinear o que é liderança, não existe ainda uma definição clara e universal de liderança, ao ponto de Ford (2005, p. 237) afirmar que "there are as many (if not more) definitions of leadership as there are people who have attempted to define it". Portanto, o conceito de liderança ainda permanece ilusório e carece de definição na maioria das pesquisas desenvolvidas (Alvesson & Spicer, 2012;Ford, 2005;Ford & Harding, 2007;MacKillop, 2018;Sutherland et al, 2014), caracterizando-se como um conceito vago (Alvesson & Spicer, 2012;Spicer & Alvesson, 2011;Sutherland et al, 2014) ou um significante vazio (Kelly, 2014).…”

“…Tais desafios demonstram que a relevância do saber acadêmico não está na reprodução de um conhecimento legitimado, mas na sua capacidade de olhar e analisar de forma crítica o conhecimento legitimado em que liderança é socialmente construída (Carroll, Firth, Ford & Taylor, 2018). Diante do exposto, este artigo busca realizar uma análise crítica do mainstream sobre liderança, tendo-se como lente de análise a ontologia pós-estruturalista (Ford, 2005(Ford, , 2010Ford, Harding & Learmonth, 2008;Ford, Harding, Gilmore & Richardson, 2017;MacKillop, 2018;Sutherland et al, 2014), buscando principalmente compreender as diferenças ontológicas entre essas duas abordagens na definição de liderança e suas consequências na concepção de líder. Uma análise é considerada crítica quando "radically questions widely accepted assumptions and aims to minimize domination" (Alvesson & Spicer, 2012, p. 376), utilizando teorias das ciências sociais (Ford & Harding, 2007), e desafiando o conhecimento legitimado e seu modo de pensar (Alvesson & Willmott, 2003).…”

Challenges for Management in Implementing Reforms at the Ministry Level and in Health and Social Service Organizations in Finland

“…For managers, distributed organizations also entail team building skills. Leading a multi-professional organization requires managers to be the new masterminds of managerial thinking and also of crossing professional silos (Niiranen 2016;MacKillop 2017).…”

Changing the Rotterdam-Rijnmond regional fire service

“…In attempts to deal with the complexities of change processes, various models or pathways for organizing and managing change and reform processes can be discerned. Inspired by Rusaw (2007) among others, we distinguish the following pathways: top-down interventions based on blueprints (Fattore et al , 2018; Di Giulio and Vecchi, 2018; Hill and Hupe, 2009), decentralized models in which change managers leave a lot of room to implementing bodies on lower organizational levels, a pluralistic approach in which various parties collaboratively pursue organizational changes (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2004; Klijn and Koppenjan, 2016; MacKillop, 2018) and a learning approach in which a group of change agents initiates bottom-up experiments, selects promising practices, updates visions and prepares next rounds of experiments (Sminia and Van Nistelrooij, 2006; Loorbach and Rotmans, 2010). Some approaches see change as intended and discontinuous, whereas others view change as emergent and continuous (Weick and Quinn, 1999).…”