Leadership style in transition? Decision-making processes in cabin crew's pre-flight briefings

Abstract

In this article we study how top-down propagated processes of hierarchical flattening affect the leadership style of participants in an atypical Community of Practice (CofP), namely the cabin crew of an airline. We focus on pre-flight briefing meetings and tease out how cabin crew members (CCMs) negotiate the division of in-flight positions. This decision tends to be based on a general principle, namely the seniority of the CCMs. By means of a micro-oriented discourse analytical approach, we tease out how decisions that follow as well as divert from this principle are discursively negotiated. We conclude the article by discussing what the implications of this discursive work are for the leadership style that is enacted in these meetings and we call for more research on atypical CofPs, such as these highly ephemeral working groups that do not have many chances to develop their own CofP-norms.