Social Construction Of Leadership Research Articles

The vertical and horizontal dimensions in the social construction of leadership: A case study on the social media followers of the Croatian politicians Zoran Milanović and Miro Bulj

This research examines the social construction of political leadership by social media followers of two Croatian politicians, president Zoran Milanović, and the mayor of Sinj, Miro Bulj, within the context of celebrity politics and populism. Through the interaction between theory and analysis, we integrate elements that construct leadership into what we distinguish as vertical (extraordinary) and horizontal (ordinary) dimensions, adding populism as an element of both dimensions. This analysis is grounded in the qualitative content analysis of 20 interviews with the two politicians’ Facebook followers, empirically showing that neither one of the elements is dominating the construction of leadership, putting the focus on the importance of the balance between the dimensions of verticality and horizontality, with modesty allowing for the mediation between the extraordinary and the ordinary. Equally important is the followers position that a perfect balance between verticality and horizontality (and a perfect leader) cannot be achieved. In short, leadership is shown to be paradoxical but not contradictory, as it is an always imperfect reconciliation of the horizontal and vertical dimensions.

A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF MAINSTREAM COLLEGE STUDENT LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT MODELS

Developing leaders for a diverse democracy is an increasingly important aim of higher education and social justice is ever more a goal of leadership education efforts. Accordingly, it is important to explore how dominant leadership models, as blueprints for student leadership development, account for and may unwittingly reinforce systems of domination, like racism. This critical discourse analysis, rooted in racialization and color-evasiveness, examines three prominent college student leadership development models to examine how leaders and leadership are racialized. We find that all three leadership texts frame leaders and leadership in color-evasive ways. Specifically, the texts’ discourses reveal three mechanisms for evading race in leadership: focusing on individual identities, emphasizing universality, and centering collaboration. Implications for race in leadership development, the social construction of leadership more broadly, and future scholarship are discussed.

Critical Essay: Wicked problems in the Age of Uncertainty

We are, apparently, living in unprecedented times, an Age of Uncertainty, when wicked problems whirl all around as we struggle to cope with Covid-19, environmental catastrophe and the right-wing populism that threatens to unravel all kinds of international agreements. In this personal reflection, 15 years after I wrote an article on wicked problems and the social construction of leadership, I take a look back, and forward, to see whether there ever was an Age of Certainty when only tame problems temporarily troubled us, or whether our understanding of the world is itself a social construction, open to dispute and thus we have always lived in uncertain times. In the process of this evaluation, I consider whether collaborative leadership, often associated with wicked problems, is as ubiquitous and effective as some proponents make out, and if it isn’t, what this says about our ability to address such problems.

The Social Construction of Leadership Through Parenting

The Social Construction of Leadership Through Parenting

Reimagining Leadership in Sport Management: Lessons From the Social Construction of Leadership

Conventional approaches to leadership in sport management regard leadership as a leader-centric phenomenon. Recent advances in the generic leadership literature have highlighted the way that people construct their own understanding of leadership and shown that these influence their assessment and responses to people they regard as leaders. This observer-centric perspective is collectively known as the social construction of leadership. In this conceptual paper, we demonstrate how this emerging theoretical approach can reframe and invigorate our understanding of leadership in sport management. We explore the research implications of this new approach, reflect on what this might mean for teaching, and discuss the practical ramifications for leadership in sport management that might flow from the adoption of this approach.

Emerging Leadership at Operational Level: The Convergence of Self-and Social Construction of Leadership

Operational level workers constitute an active and energetic workforce from which leaders emerge in organizations. Existing theories support the view that leadership is constructed by self and others. However, the process through which leaders emerge at operational level exists as an unattended agenda in leadership research. Thus, the purpose of this study is to examine and theorize how leaders emerge in a convergent process of self and social construction of leadership among operational level workers. This study is based on a comprehensive literature review followed by a case study. With the support of theories on impression construction, leadership outcomes, self-fulfilling prophecy, implicit leadership, and leader prototypes, the study identifies the emerged leadership at operational level as a convergent process of self- and social-construction at the workplace. Deploying a case from a labor-intensive industry for empirical support, the study develops eight propositions for this theorization. It finds that leadership in a large group of operational level workers emerges in a process consisting of: impressive engagement and symbolized positive performance of emerging leaders, and follower narrations and collective embracing of emerged leadership by peer followers. This theorization offers a cluster of implications for human resource managers, leader trainers, organizational line managers, and theorists while providing insights into the processes of emerging leadership at operational level. It recognizes the social processes enacted among young workers who belong to new generations, and emphasizes the significance of theorizing leadership construction processes of emerging leaders, while identifying their implications for organizations in managing new generations.

Relational leadership, decision-making and the messiness of context in healthcare

Decision-making is a neglected area in the leadership literature and in healthcare in particular. This paper draws on the Cynefin framework, which is a practice-based approach to decision-making, to theorize about leadership in healthcare. The framework uses a multi-ontology cognitive-based sense-making perspective to identify five domains of decision-making that are linked to individual leadership styles and given contexts. It is markedly different from other complexity approaches by the inclusion of the central domain of Disorder. While this inclusion is vitally important, the leadership implications of the approach are under-theorized. Focusing on the idea of Disorder, we argue alternatively that a relational leadership approach is needed to understand decision-making as a multi-ontology sensemaking approach and this also necessitates accounting for professional sensemaking in healthcare settings. The relational approach adopted here is based on Dian Hosking's work and views decision-making as a task that is undertaken through organizing processes that are cognitive but also social/cultural, political and emotional, and in which the social construction of leadership and context are inseparable individual and collective undertakings. When skilful relating is a part of leadership practice then multi-ontology sensemaking is a possibility in decision-making tasks. We support our arguments with illustrative examples to put forward a relational approach to leadership in healthcare.

Approaching Leadership With a Follower Focus

This introduction provides an overview of the special issue of Zeitschrift fur Psychologie on ‘‘Followercentric Approaches to Leadership.’’ The purposes of the special issue were to highlight new research on followers’ needs, motivations, and attributions as critical aspects of the leadership relationship. In addition, we hope to have brought together a set of papers that represent new potential directions in research that stem from the examination of followers and followership. Many of the empirical findings and theoretical contributions in this special issue suggest that, just as not all leaders are the same, followers vary (sometimes dramatically) in their needs for certain types of leaders and leadership. In addition, followers differ in their susceptibility and responsiveness to certain types of leadership (e.g., adverse, charismatic, transformational, directive vs. supportive). Over the past several decades, scholars have focused increased attention on followers and followership as a critical component of the leadership relationship. Anyone interested in leadership has likely considered the role of followers, whether active or passive, as fundamental to our understanding of the development, impact, and maintenance of leadership processes. A followercentric approach to leadership highlights new questions and new approaches. For example, how do individual characteristics and qualities of followers influence the development of leaders? What roles do followers’ needs, values, wants, and preferences play in their tolerance or affinity for certain leadership styles? What types of leadership help in developing effective followership, and what types of followership help in developing effective leadership? These questions, among others, are the focus of this special issue. This special issue therefore has a dual purpose. First, we wanted to highlight what types of research questions emerge from a followercentric approach. To this end, we sought empirical studies that considered: (1) followers’ characteristics and potential biases that influence attributions of leadership, including attributions for organizational success and failure and the ‘‘romance of leadership’’ (Meindl, 1995); (2) the role of follower characteristics, perceptions, and motivations in interpreting leadership ratings, as well as the potential impact of situational factors such as the role of crisis and follower uncertainty or fear on these processes; and (3) the social construction of leadership, including social contagion processes and other interfollower processes that enhance or suppress leadership. Second, we also hoped to include new theories and perspectives on the study of leadership and followership. The vast majority of studies of leadership are cross-sectional comparisons of leadership styles and followers’ perceptions of leaders’ styles; only within the last two decades have scholars begun to study the other side of the proverbial coin, focusing on followers’ styles and the processes of followership. The studies in this special issue examine what it means to ‘‘reverse the lens’’ (Shamir, 2007) in leadership research by studying how followers perceive and enact their own roles in the co-production of leadership.

Sensing the Vision: Sense Making and the Social Construction of Leadership in the Branch Office of an Insurance Company

This study uses focus groups to analyze the sense making of leadership behavior at the branch office of an insurance company on the East Coast. Using an executive-level organizational initiative as an example, organizational members are asked to explore issues of leadership in their organization. The data from the study suggest that employee sense making is complex and specifically linked to positionality in the organization. As one example of how employee sense making reveals the multifaceted nature of how leadership is socially constructed in the organization, the data suggest that the role of the middle manager may be more complex than has previously been outlined in the communication literature on leadership.

The Social Construction of Leadership: A Sailing Guide

A growing body of literature now exists concerning the social construction of leadership. This literature draws on a variety of definitions of social constructionism, multiple constructs, and an array of perspectives, approaches, and methods. To identify and understand the differences among them, this article provides a sailing guide, comprising four key dimensions, to the social construction of leadership. It applies the guide to the social constructionist leadership literature, including the articles in this special issue. It then discusses how the guide can act as a reflexive tool when various choice points are revealed and a means by which to chart future paths for social constructionist leadership research.

Hereditary stratification in middle‐range societies

Hereditary stratification is usually explained in relation to economic complexity. However, the ethnographic evidence does not readily support such explanations. Examples from Southeast Asia, Melanesia, Polynesia, and the West Coast of Canada suggest that hereditary stratification derives from the social construction of leadership.