Distributed leadership as fashion or fad

Abstract

Despite frequently expressed reservations concerning its fundamental theoretical weakness, distributed leadership (DL) has grown to become the preferred leadership concept and has acquired taken-for-granted status. This article suggests that the dominance of DL can best be understood as a fashion or fad rather than as a rational choice. It explores the techniques used to privilege DL, where not only logical but also emotional and moral arguments have been brought to bear. It is suggested that ongoing hybridization of distributed leadership theory serves to deflect criticism, rather as a virus continues to evade attack by changing its form. The article also argues that focusing on DL is a displacement activity, drawing people’s attention away from the core purpose of leadership, which is to address the persistent inequality of chances that children experience in school.

Keywords

diffusion of ideas distributed leadership hybridization of theory inequality

This article briefly presents evidence of the exponential rise of distributed leadership (DL) as a focus of research and leadership development in education in the twenty-first century (Hairon and Goh, 2015; Hall, 2013). It touches on the growing criticism of the theory’s dominance. The primary aim is to explore why repeated and serious concerns have had so little impact, using the perspective of exploring how ideas are adopted and persist, even in the face of serious challenge.

The spread of distributed leadership

Although numerous commentators have noted the prevalence of DL, the scale is perhaps insufficiently understood. Tian et al. (2016) found that over 720,000 articles on DL were published from 2002 to 2013, of which over 800 were in journals on educational leadership or the sociology of education.

Though there are different positions evident in the literature, ‘descriptive and normative’ pieces considerably outnumber the ‘critical and socially critical’ (Gunter et al., 2013: 155). Those involved in producing the mass of writing in support of DL frequently reflect a teleological orientation to research, based on a belief that, as research increases in quantity, quality and synthesis, its support for and impact on practice become increasingly secure. This conviction continues in parallel to widespread agreement that DL in action is nebulous and difficult to define (Hairon and Goh, 2015), and that it has become a common descriptor for very different approaches to leadership in widely differing contexts globally. As a result of meta-analysis of hundreds of articles, Tian et al. (2016: 150) are unequivocal: ‘These studies remained unable to define DL in a universally accepted way or to offer enough knowledge about its effects and ideal forms’. Many researchers acknowledge that DL is an unsatisfactory concept and then go on to set this aside and research it anyway (Bolden et al., 2009; Harris, 2012).

Despite the caveats and disclaimers (Youngs, 2009), DL is not just researched but also widely encouraged as a preferred way of leading. More than this, highly positive outcomes are suggested. For example, Parker’s (2015) summary of the advantages of DL, such as reciprocity between colleagues, informality, trust, interdependence and collegial development, makes DL sound like the theoretical equivalent of snake oil.

The premise that underpins this article is that there is no adequate definition of DL to identify it as a distinctive way of leading, and therefore no credible way of promoting it as action or of assessing its impact. Consequently, pertinent questions for practitioners are not about the coherence and utility of the theory to improve learning, but about why researchers and practitioners continue to use such an unsatisfactory concept so enthusiastically.

The production and consumption of research

If assumptions about the rational use of research and teleological beliefs about its cumulative value are set aside, there are alternative ways of understanding how the knowledge and ideas created by research are taken up, used and discarded. Sturdy (2004) suggests that there is a lengthy tradition of this in a range of disciplines and a further body of work that examines why organizations adopt ideas that are ineffective, sometimes causing rejection of more useful theory.

Overall, two alternative paradigms emerge. One sees rational choice as the process by which decisions about the use of knowledge are made. The other sees all choices as driven by psychological, cognitive or emotional needs. From the latter perspective, knowledge is used not so much to solve technical problems, in education as elsewhere, but rather to perform an identity that meets the individual’s or organization’s needs. For example, Fiol and O’Connor (2003: 56) believe that choices are driven by social pressures, such as not wishing to appear left behind or odd when others adopt an idea: ‘In fact, organizations may adopt the innovation so as not to appear abnormal or illegitimate to their stakeholders’. The status of the adopter may influence the take-up by others (Leibenstein, 1950). As a result of social pressures, there may be ‘convergence around particular issues as important and worthy of attention’ (Fiol and O’Connor, 2003: 56). Such moments mark the birth of a fashion or fad (Abrahamson, 1991).

Fashions and fads

Abrahamson (1991) defined a fashion as a choice decision where external bodies enforce the imitation of an idea. For example, we may imagine that we choose clothes as we wish, but the clothing industry works extremely hard to impose what should and should not be worn. A fad is defined as an internal and independent decision by an organization to imitate. These definitions may be useful to stimulate reflection on how theories and ideas diffuse. For example, in education one might question the degree to which the widespread adoption of performance-related pay (PRP) is a fashion demanded by regional or state administrations in imitation of corporate methods, or a fad freely chosen by the organization to imitate practice elsewhere. Many would claim that adoption of this practice is not imitation and therefore neither fashion nor fad, but a decision based on weighing the evidence. The considerable evidence of the negative effects of PRP suggests otherwise (Rost and Osterloh, 2009; Stazyk, 2009; Wragg et al., 2003). A key question is whether DL is a fashion, a fad or a rational choice.

Leadership theory

All research on educational leadership depends on an a priori belief that such a thing exists. Lakomski (1999: 37) suggests that the concept of leadership is ‘folk-psychological’, serving a function of meeting psychological need rather than being a phenomenon with empirically verifiable impact on schools. Protestations that the concept of leadership itself is insecure have been largely ignored by researchers in the field, who persist in investigating a phenomenon defined only in vague terms. Although there may be consensus that leadership involves a process of influencing others in the direction of valued goals to achieve change, this might be applied to all educators. This point was made by Gronn (2000) and Spillane et al. (2004) in their early consideration of DL as a frame to understand the potential for leadership to be an organizational, rather than an individual, property.

Despite such reservations about leadership itself and setting aside the initial insistence that DL is not a way of leading but a framework to support leadership research, leadership generally, and DL specifically, continue to be researched as identifiable actions undertaken by those in leadership roles. Although Lakomski (1999) may protest that the emperor has no clothes, researchers and practitioners insist not only that they can see the full royal regalia, but that scrutinizing the nature of the garments is important and urgent. Distributed leadership, then, is an unsatisfactorily defined concept nested within the larger unsatisfactorily defined concept of leadership – a double layer of uncertainty.

Researching distributed leadership

Furlong and Oancea (2005: 11) identify four elements in assessing the quality of research, one of which is ‘Methodological and theoretical robustness – the epistemic dimension’. Given widespread consensus that DL is conceptually murky, the challenges in achieving epistemic quality in researching DL are evident. Numerous authors have suggested that we need more research to address, for example, the silence of DL on the inclusion or exclusion in leadership of those who are habitually the subject of discrimination (Harris, 2013a), or to identify more accurately the impact of DL on learning and school outcomes. Additional research is unlikely to be the answer, as it will not overturn the basic problem that DL is theoretically weak, and that research and practice using the concept import an epistemic weakness.

It seems reasonable to conclude that, far from being a rationally based choice, the diffusion and adherence to DL in its multiple guises is a fashion or fad, depending on how much external pressure is experienced from national or international organizations. If we set aside any initial notion of understanding what DL is, in any definitive sense, and instead consider it as a semantic or rhetorical lever for change, a different set of research questions emerges. Sturdy (2004: 156) suggests that we might consider the ‘transience (or longevity) of ideas’, ‘diffusion channels’ and ‘processes such as the hybridization of ideas’ (italics in original). Abrahamson (1991) suggests that we look at differences between early and late adopters. In short, we need to study the diffusion of DL as a purported innovation leading to greater effectiveness. This is unlikely to appeal to hard-pressed leaders looking for the means to improve things in their schools, or to researchers locked into the DL industry. Nevertheless, it is important to do so because leadership is littered with ‘fads or fashions (that) fulfil symbolic functions such as signalling innovativeness, but do little to boost organizations’ (Abrahamson, 1991: 588).

The origins of distributed leadership

The appearance of DL in relation to education initially used activity theory. It was suggested as a lens or framework through which to view the totality of leadership activity, rather than proposing it as an identifiable way of leading (Gronn, 2000; Spillane et al., 2004). Nevertheless, it rapidly grew into a way of doing leadership. Figures 1 and 2 demonstrate the growth of related articles in the two leading UK based educational leadership journals.

Figure 1.

Number of references to leadership theory in all fields, School Leadership & Management.

Figure 2.

Number of references to leadership theory in all fields, Educational Management Administration & Leadership.

Clark (2004: 3) accounts for such explosions of an idea by suggesting that they tap into ‘consumers’ previously dimly felt preferences’, serving psychological needs in the way suggested by Sturdy (2004).

Distributed leadership has been linked to general characteristics which may be ‘dimly felt preferences’, such as empowerment, collaboration and the inclusion of multiple leaders. Given the usually positive connotations of being a leader, the notion that it is open to many is attractive. Despite the promotion of DL as an antidote to heroic leadership, its proposed advantages of ‘collective interactions among school members taking leadership responsibilities’ (Lee et al., 2012: 670) appear to offer the prospect of the status advantages of heroic leadership to a far wider group. Previously, the standing of heroic leadership was premised on its value as a scarce commodity. Distributed leadership sidesteps this problem by enabling almost anybody to enjoy the status of leader, and therefore embodies a neat paradox. While promoting the demise of the single authoritative leader, in fact it offers the social cachet of heroic leadership previously associated with one person at the helm to many more. Rather than contributing to the demise of heroic leadership, it spreads its advantages to individuals more widely, at least rhetorically.

This kind of attraction fits within Green’s (2004: 660) ‘rhetorical sequence for highly diffused managerial practices, starting with pathos, followed by logos, and ending with ethos justifications’. Pathos hooks in potential users of an idea by means of emotion. Early justification of the usefulness of DL emphasized inclusive ‘practices that enable everyone to be a leader and play their part in distributed leadership’ (Bowen and Bateson, 2008: 1) or ‘empowering people to do what they do best and empowering them to cooperate with one another for a common goal’ (Murphy et al., 2009: 195). The use of the word ‘empowering’ twice in one sentence here is a strong signifier of the primarily emotional pitch being made.

Teachers’ hunger for shared responsibility goes back a long time, as Hatcher (2005) points out, with its roots in the comprehensive school ideals of the 1960s and 1970s. Another paradox emerges. In times of rapidly growing managerialism, when those in formal leadership roles have ever-greater authority, DL thrives by promoting leadership that is as inclusive as in an imagined golden era prior to the UK Educational Reform Act of 1989 and the international global trend for new public management (Simkins, 2000).

It is not a new notion that in times of hardship or oppression an idea can be used as a counterpoint, to offer hope that things are or will be better than they seem. Marx and Engels’ characterization of religion as the ‘opium of the masses’ (2008: 42) is the best-known example. They argued that ‘the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness’ (Marx and Engels, 2008: 42). In many parts of the world, staff have little real power to decide what should be done or to change things (Ball, 2013). Distributed leadership offers the illusion of greater empowerment in ways that bear a strong resemblance to a religion. Adherence is dependent on faith, rather than evidence, and can support a positive orientation in varied and often unpromising circumstances.

Logos is the second stage in the diffusion of practice, promoting the logic of a new idea by consideration of ‘means and ends to achieve efficiency or effectiveness’ (Green, 2004: 659). In a contribution to Bowen and Bateson’s (2008: 3) publication for the then National College for School Leadership (NCSL), Harris asserts that ‘distributed leadership is a common denominator of highly effective organizations across different sectors’. Words such as success, effectiveness and improvement are embedded across reports of empirical research into DL. For example, ‘The evidence therefore suggests that change in distributed leadership can be empirically linked to change in school improvement capacity and subsequent growth in student learning’ (Heck and Hallinger, 2010: 881). Another example is ‘a connection between the increased distribution of leadership roles and responsibilities and the improvement of pupil outcomes’ (Day et al., 2010: 16). Such justifications are richly evident in the explosion of articles indicated in Figures 1 and 2, and persist, despite the epistemic weakness of the theory. Green (2004: 656) argues that ‘we can expect an increase in supportive justifications to occur at the beginning of a managerial practice’s diffusion and prior to that practice’s achieving taken-for-granted status’. Such a taken-for-granted status is apparent in that, though research is usually assumed to be non-partisan, studies that set out to explore DL in a particular setting generally find it to be present. Reports have not generally emerged that conclude that DL is absent, or has little or no effect in a school or group of schools.

Ethos justification, which draws on ‘moral or ethical sensibilities’ (Green, 2004: 659), is the final stage. We find DL promoted as a means of moral leadership. An example is: ‘The ways in which we identify distributed leadership within and across organizations may be based on common ethical or values-based views derived through an understanding and a sense of community’ (Edwards, 2011: 305–6), or see Harris (2013b: 6), who links DL to the ‘moral purpose of education’.

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, therefore, we have seen a process following Green’s suggested sequence of a flurry of emotional, instrumental and ethical arguments put forward to justify DL. The thrust became a fashion, inasmuch as it was impelled by organizations of national or international status such as the then NCSL in England and internationally the Organisation for Economic and Cultural Development (OECD). Although NCSL could not enforce the adoption of the theory and related practice, it was lent the power to shape thinking by its central role in funding research into educational leadership and its gate-keeping function in accrediting individuals up to 2012 through the mandatory National Professional Qualification for Headship (NPQH). It also created and controlled much of the literature easily available to schools. Training to be a head teacher by acquiring the NPQH involved exposure to the NCSL’s promotion of DL. Although successful accreditation may not have required its acceptance as the most appropriate leadership practice, it would take considerable knowledge and strength of mind to resist what, by 2009, had become, according to Hall (2013: 474), the ‘dominant discourse in officially sanctioned school leadership texts in England’.

DL was a fashion led by NCSL in England. Globally, a key document on school leadership published by the OECD (Pont et al., 2008: 31) asserted that, ‘Today’s principals need to learn to adopt new forms of more distributed leadership’. Just in case anybody should miss the point, ‘distributed leadership’ was printed more than 30 times across the front of the publication.

Hybridization

Although emotional and ethical exhortations to follow a particular path do not require a logical and convincing argument based on evidence, logos-type persuasion does. Lakomski (2008: 161) reflected the view of numerous commentators: ‘Even the most cursory scanning of recent literature on distributed leadership makes it pretty clear that there is a problem. ‘An uncritical promotion of the theory, as leading to improvements for learners and schools that are more effective, is difficult to sustain in the light of confusion over just what distributed leadership is’.

Hybridization of the idea came to its rescue. Some argued that, as DL is primarily a frame through which to view the totality of leadership in any organization, it can encompass many different approaches to leadership – that, in effect, DL is indeed always present, and that how leadership is distributed is the key issue. Hybridization of the theory provided a get-out clause for those needing to justify their adherence to DL in the light of growing criticism. DL was not a single, collaborative way of leading, but a whole gamut of different approaches to leadership, both hierarchical and collegial.

Distributed leadership consequently encompasses the kind of hierarchical, authority-based leadership that, in its earlier justifications, it was proposed to replace. Such leadership is evident alongside spontaneous leadership (a.k.a. people using their initiative) and also delegation. It is a kind of moveable feast, apparently discernible in schools with distinctly different ways of leading. No longer is evidence needed to show that DL is a distinctive and identifiable form of practice. Rather, DL has reached a ‘taken-for-granted status’ (Green, 2004: 656), so that research does not aim to identify if DL is present, but takes it for granted. Instead, it explores how it is distributed: ‘What matters for instructional improvement and student achievement is not that leadership is distributed, but how it is distributed (Spillane, 2005: 149, italics in original). In attempting to answer such a question, Spillane makes explicit that we do not need to worry too much about research rigour: ‘The lack of empirical evidence on the effectiveness of distributed leadership in promoting instructional improvement and increasing student achievement is considered a weakness. While this concern is understandable, it is not crucial’ (Spillane, 2005: 149).

Such a claim that epistemic clarity is not crucial allows the idea of DL to meet psychological needs and to sidestep logic. For example, Hairon and Goh (2015: 710) are but two of many who promote the dream that has been at the centre of DL almost from its inception. This is the dream of the demise of hierarchy and its replacement with equality: ‘This notion of symmetrical power, where every member in the organization has equal opportunity to assert influence over another regardless of hierarchy’. Such an assertion illogically contradicts the huge body of work evidencing persistent discrimination and the resulting relative powerlessness of particular groups of staff related to gender, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, and so on (Bush et al., 2006; Shah with Shaikh, 2010; Sobehart, 2009). Distributed leadership is psychologically appealing because it makes invisible the unrelenting persistence of inequality amongst staff.

Distributed leadership also contradicts much that is known about cultural preferences in leading. Hairon and Goh (2015: 710) claim that, in Asian settings, by means of DL ‘staff members are given equal opportunity to assert influence’. However, ‘they may choose not to eventually assert influence if they wish to apply the value for respect to hierarchy’. In other words, staff continue to operate a hierarchical system, but this is depicted nevertheless as DL within the school. The taken-for-granted status means that researchers investigating DL do not attempt to identify whether or not DL is discernible, but label whatever activity is present as one of its forms. Research tends to find what researchers are convinced is present, whatever the context.

In the twentieth century, leadership was the genus and approaches to leadership were the species within that genus. Distributed leadership has transformed this, so that the genus, in effect, has become DL, within which there are various species of DL. The difficulty is that previous theory encompassing a range of approaches to leadership, such as transformational, collegial, transactional, and so on, has largely been discarded, even though such theories might provide a better handle on what kind of leadership is being pursued. The hybridization of DL reflects the kind of growth seen in biology, where a virus mutates to overcome the white blood cells sent out to fight it. Distributed leadership is a theoretical virus whose continuous hybridization of theory appears to make it immune to the attacks of rational argument about its lack of clarity. The result is that pre-existing theories of leadership are swamped in the literature, as is evident in Figures 1 and 2.

Final word

This article has critiqued the notion of DL. It has done so by considering possible answers to questions raised by those who have studied the appearance and spread of ideas, particularly in relation to leadership and management of organizations. Although it has drawn on a small number of articles to illustrate particular points, each of those selected is but one of many that might have been provided as examples. Further questions merit consideration, such as accounting for the geographic spread of DL as a fashion or fad. However, such research risks embedding the field even further in narcissistic irrelevance.

Distributed leadership research tends to focus on improvement, or otherwise, in a single school or small group of schools. Looking at education overall, since the explosion of interest in DL in the 1990s, schools have remained transmitters of inequalities. The most recent education and training report from the European Union (2015: 10) at time of writing concludes that ‘Inequality is at its highest level in 30 years in most European and OECD countries’. In a European league table concerning children’s well-being, England, an early adopter of DL, ranks 12th out of 14 countries for general satisfaction with the school experience and bottom for satisfaction with relationships with teachers (Children’s Society, 2015: 53). A high percentage of teachers leave the profession shortly after joining it (Schaefer, 2013), and there is little evidence that the position of historically marginalized staff has improved significantly (Lumby and Coleman, forthcoming 2016). A significant minority of learners either fails to achieve or simply absents itself from the education system (Kearney and Graczyk, 2014).

The social reproduction mechanisms of schooling long predate the neoliberal national policies that are often blamed as the primary cause of such ills. Public policy plays a part, no doubt, but schools and school leaders bear partial responsibility for the outcomes of schooling (Bourdieu, 1974; Collins, 2009). A focus on the theory of DL misses the big picture of how schools are or are not fitting all children to be confident individuals and citizens of the twenty-first century. It is a displacement activity that facilitates turning aside from the core issue of inequality in learners and staff. Considering DL in this light might help the leadership community learn about itself, and make less likely any continuation of the pursuit of nebulous and ineffective theory.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

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