Working with Language: A Refocused Research Agenda for Cultural Leadership Studies

Abstract

This paper critically reviews existing contributions from the field of cultural leadership studies with a view to highlighting the conceptual and methodological limitations of the dominant etic, cross-cultural approach in leadership studies and illuminating implications of the relative dominance and unreflective use of the English language as the academic and business lingua franca within this field. It subsequently outlines the negative implications of overlooking cultural and linguistic multiplicity for an understanding of culturally sensitive leadership practices. In drawing on lessons from this critical review and the emergent fields of emic, non-positivist cultural leadership studies, this analysis argues that the field of cultural leadership studies requires an alternative research agenda focused on language multiplicity, which enables the field to move towards emic, qualitative research that helps to empower individual cultural voices and explore cultural intra-and interrelationships, tensions and paradoxes embedded in leadership processes. The paper concludes by offering suggestions on methodological approaches for emic cultural leadership studies that are centred on the exploration of language as a cultural voice.

The words leader/líder and their resonances in an Italo-Latin American multinational corporation

“…There is a claim that indeed the field of leadership studies requires an alternative research agenda focussed on language multiplicity (Schedlitzki et al, 2016) in order to include non-Anglicized notions of leadership (Guthey and Jackson, 2011). In their research for specific literature on leadership and language Schedlitzki et al (2016) found a strong focus on exploring language as a tool for motivation and persuasion, whereas only one article was found in the Business Premier database (Zander et al, 2011) exploring language in relation to leadership and culture. In the same database, we found that only Jepson (2010) specifically addresses the relation between language, leadership and lexicality.…”

“…Schedlitzki et al (2016) found reasons for this to be due to the dominance and unreflective use of the English language as the academic and business lingua franca within the field of leadership research, and its implications of overlooking lexical multiplicity for our understanding of sensitive leadership practices. Others have suggested this is due to the difficulty of native English speakers, including academics, to learn foreign languages (Lamy, 2003;McPake et al, 1999;Coleman, 2009Coleman, , 2011 At some point in our research we began to question whether perhaps other analysis on the lexical dimension of leadership were produced not in English but in Italian and Spanish.…”

“…All the searches returned 4 articles, with only three articles (Gonzales Miranda, 2014;Mayorga et al, 2013;Vangehuchten, 2013) exploring the relation between leadership with power, the discourse of handbooks used in Spain to teach leadership and leadership as part of organization studies. Schedlitzki et al (2016) found that in academic practice, English became a sort of imposed lingua franca, meaning to speak and write in English is needed in order to succeed in the global academic life. This suggested to us that the lexical perspective could be more evident in post-colonial studies 2 .…”

Leadership, Management and the Welsh Language

“…Yet, these research studies have not fully addressed the need for considering multiplicity in conceptualizations of leadership within and across languages and its implications for our understanding of the varied meanings of leadership in multilingual work contexts. Schedlitzki et al () raise concerns with the unproblematized dominance of English‐language based conceptualizations of leadership and management. They argue that the Anglocentricity of academic publication systems, in particular, has disadvantaged scholars working within other languages and as such limited our insights into the relevance and transferability of the lexical items leadership and management into other languages.…”

“…The field of leadership studies has started to recognize and challenge the previously unquestioned dominance of this mainstream discourse of the transformational, charismatic individual leader (Collinson, ), highlighting the linguistic heterogeneity of leadership and management within the English language. Yet, one important linguistic issue remains largely ignored in the field of leadership studies (Schedlitzki et al, ) and therefore requires our attention: the discussion of linguistic imperialism of English (Phillipson, ) as an academic and business lingua franca (Tietze et al, ; Tietze, ), its influence on organizational discourses and its impact on publication and leadership and management development processes. Schedlitzki et al () have argued that the dominant meaning of the lexical items of leadership and management, rooted in Anglo‐cultures and deeply embedded in dominant leadership discourse, has colonized organizational practice and academic research to the extent that it has limited our insights into and search for other lexical items, referents for and meanings of leadership.…”