Leadership in interaction. An introduction to the Special Issue

Abstract

One of the most widespread ways of defining leadership as a phenomenon seems to be that of considering it to be a process of personal influence through which organisational goals are achieved (Northouse, 2010; Rost, 1991; Yukl, 2013). Further, rather than considering leadership to be a capacity or a state, most researchers also consider it to be something that happens or which is enacted, performed, accomplished or something similar. However, despite this seemingly shared understanding, until fairly recently, very few studies existed that focused on the observation of action, interaction, or performance of leadership as it occurred in a naturally-occurring environment. While behaviourally oriented studies have ostensibly focussed on overt actions, these behaviours are very rarely observed and reported in any detail. Similarly, interview based studies have typically relied on individual accounts of action, and the respondents' interpretation and understanding of them, but they are less attentive to the actions themselves. However, drawing inspiration from a few early and influential studies (Boden, 1994; Gronn, 1983; Knights and Willmott, 1992), over the last 20 years we have begun to see an increasing number of studies which offer close and detailed analyses of leadership in interaction, across a range of scholarly journals (see for example: Choi and Schnurr, 2014; Clifton, 2006; Larsson and Lundholm, 2013). This increasing interest in the enactment of leadership as an observable and reportable workplace phenomenon was amplified by the publication of Fairhurst's (2007) influential book 'Discursive Leadership: In Conversation with Leadership Psychology'. Fairhurst's basic argument was that leadership research would benefit from complementing the use of surveys and questionnaires with various forms of discursively oriented studies, including the analysis of situated interaction.

How Artefacts Do Leadership: A Ventriloquial Analysis

“…In conclusion, we suggest that by using the concept of ventriloquism as articulated by the Montreal School and by demonstrating how artefacts “do” leadership we add to leadership research in three ways. First, we argue that by adopting a ventriloquial approach to the role of artefacts in the doing of leadership we can make visible, and thus analyzable, how such hybrid presences do leadership as part of in situ practice—something that Clifton et al (2020) argue is currently relatively lacking in research on the sociomateriality of leadership. We argue that, at least in this case, leadership occurs because the actor network that is operationalized through the hybrid presence of Brad and CoolDesign provides authority for the claim that CoolDesign should be the software used by the group.…”

“…However, they (Arvedsen & Hassert, 2020) noted that such studies are often lacking a fine-grained analysis of naturally-occurring interaction that makes visible, and thus analyzable, the role that artefacts and other material phenomena play in the doing of leadership as part of in situ social practice. Thus, this investigation responds to calls by researchers, such as Clifton et al (2020), who ask for more work that uses the fine-grained analysis of video-recorded naturally-occurring workplace interaction that enables researchers to capture and systematically consider the use of artefacts as part of the multimodal interactional accomplishment of leadership.…”

“…Indeed, little, if any, research into the sociomateriality of leadership provides analyses of this phenomenon as sociomaterial practice-in-action. Consequently, as Clifton et al (2020, p. 518) argue, fine-grained interactional analyses of how “material resources come to function as constraints on, or resources for, the process of negotiating the possibilities for various parties to engage in leadership” is an under-exploited avenue of research that could be profitably explored. Through the notion of ventriloquism, as discussed below, it is this research niche that we seek to address.…”

The fallacy of discrete authentic leader behaviours: Locating authentic leadership in interaction

“…In our exploration of AL, we take an interactional approach to leadership which aims to show how leadership is achieved in and through naturally occurring workplace practices (Clifton et al, 2020; Larsson, 2017; Schnurr and Schroeder, 2019). The advantage of taking such an interactional approach to leadership is that, by analysing naturally occurring interaction, any claims about what (authentic) leadership is, or is not, how it is enacted and by whom are necessarily rooted in actual practice rather than in second-order interview- and survey-based accounts of what leadership is considered to be.…”

“…We do this by taking an interactional approach to leadership, which involves the close scrutiny of recorded workplace interactions. Thus, rather than analysing post hoc sensemaking or reported perceptions of authentic leadership (as in most previous research), our innovative empirical approach builds on the direct access to naturally occurring workplace interactions in which AL may be realized (Clifton et al, 2020). Through this approach, we can observe and empirically capture interactions reasonably seen as the performance of authentic leadership.…”