So what is new about leadership-as-practice?

Introduction

Structure is both medium and outcome of the reproduction of practices. Structure enters simultaneously into the constitution of the agent and social practices, and ‘exists’ in the generating moments of this constitution. (Giddens, 1979: 5)

Although the Leadership as Practice (LAP) books and papers I discussed in my previous ‘Leading Questions’ article (Collinson, 2017) were all single-authored by Joe Raelin, when he requested to include other authors in the response, I was happy to agree with his proposal. In what follows, I will briefly return to the three Raelin claims I discussed and questioned, namely that LAP: (a) constitutes a distinct ‘movement’, (b) is particularly new and supersedes other post-heroic perspectives and (c) is more critical than critical leadership studies.

Is LAP a movement?

In the first paragraph of Raelin's Background response (Raelin et al, 2018), he again refers to LAP as a movement, but without attempting to justify this assertion. Yet, when we examine the comments of the other authors about the idea of LAP as a movement, we find very divergent views. These hardly comprise an endorsement for Raelin’s oft-repeated assertion of the existence of a collective ‘movement’. For example, Kempster acknowledges that LAP has not yet progressed beyond Reichers and Schneider’s first stage of construct evolution (i.e. concept introduction). He argues that only if and when LAP reaches the third stage could it possibly be referred to as a movement. Young argues that ‘in a way’ there is a movement ‘but this cannot progress without initial critique, contestation and argumentation’. Caroll refers to LAP as a ‘fledgling theory’, a definition which would seem some way short of a movement. Asserting that LAP ‘does not qualify as a “movement” per se but has provided “a sense of movement”’, Jackson acknowledges that LAP writers ‘may well have gotten ahead of ourselves’ (p. 9).

These responses reveal much more fragmentation than is suggested by Raelin’s claims to a solidified ‘movement’ and ‘collective identity’ (Raelin, 2016: 1, 2017: 216). In contrast with Raelin, these writers express more circumspect and nuanced views about whether LAP constitutes a movement. Their generally more cautious and measured comments contrast with Raelin’s (2016) nine categorical assertions of a movement in the first two pages of his book’s editorial introduction (see also Raelin, 2017: 215–216). The heterogeneous nature of these views also lends support to my earlier point questioning whether the authors of Raelin’s edited book would see themselves as part of this LAP ‘movement’.

What’s new about LAP?

Despite this opportunity to clarify the concept of LAP, I could not find any clear statement about its meaning, or about whether, and if so how, LAP differs from (other) post-heroic approaches. In terms of defining LAP, Raelin (Raelin et al, 2018: 2) simply re-asserts that:

we see leadership not as residing in the traits and behaviors of individuals (such as leaders and followers) but as an agency emanating from an emerging collection of practices.

From a critical perspective, I would suggest that both practices and traits/behaviours are important – it is not a question of one or the other. But this analysis needs to be taken further: practices also have to be understood in relation to structure(s) and power relations. Raelin states that his own approach to LAP is particularly informed by phenomenology ‘in which the intersubjective production and re-production of meaning arises through social interaction’ (Raelin et al, 2018 10). Yet, as Giddens (1976 [1993]: 92) has argued, interpretative perspectives such as phenomenology ‘fail to cope with problems of institutional organization, power and struggle as integral features of social life’. Arguing that phenomenologists like Schutz and Husserl tend to neglect structure and ‘the centrality of power in social life’, Giddens (1976 [1993]: 53) elaborates the weaknesses of interpretive approaches:

Even a transient conversation between two persons is a relation of power, to which the participants may bring unequal resources. The production of an ‘orderly’ or ‘accountable’ social world cannot merely be understood as collaborative work carried out by peers: meanings that are made to count express asymmetries of power.

Raelin’s introductory preamble about Howard Young’s piece provides another example of his repeated tendency to over-interpret the significance of LAP. This states that Young ‘ shows (sic) that LAP can be positioned across the individual, post-heroic, and critical fields of leadership’, a claim which significantly overstates Young’s point. At the end of his piece, Young merely expresses a desire that LAP can incorporate individual, post-heroic and critical positions – he hopes that LAP can be positioned in this way. Young does not show or demonstrate that this is actually the case, as Raelin claims he does. Indeed, given the foregoing definition of LAP by Raelin, it is very difficult to see how LAP could ever be positioned within either an individual perspective (Raelin’s aformentioned definition of LAP explicitly rejects any focus on individual leaders) or as a critical approach (LAP neglects power asymmetries, conflict and inequalities). Despite protestations to the contrary, it would seem therefore that, in its one-sided anti-heroic emphasis on collective elements of leadership, LAP falls neatly within the post-heroic paradigm.

Is LAP more critical than critical leadership studies?

Brigid Caroll’s piece most explicitly addresses the issues I raised about criticality. She disagrees with Raelin’s view in acknowledging that ‘I don’t think LAP is more critical than avowedly critical approaches’ (Raelin et al, 2018: 8). Carroll also concedes that LAP needs to address the question of power much more than it has, but she then proceeds to reproduce an either/or binary. Although she agrees with me that there is no analytical space for practice outside of power relations, Carroll makes precisely this separation when she contends that ‘there is nothing asymmetrical or structural’ (Raelin et al, 2018: 8) in the ‘emergent’ forms of communication, dialogue and ‘situated moments’ she describes.

Carroll’s statement seems to suggest that the emergent communication processes she mentions occur outside of power asymmetries, and that somehow structural power and agentic power are disconnected, and can therefore be separated. This view fails to appreciate that these examples of conversation and dialogue are shaped and situated in various ways by organizational and social structures (and cultures). Critical perspectives view practice and power, and structure and agency, as inextricably linked. As the Giddens’ quotation at the start of this piece states, practices do not exist in a vacuum – they are fundamentally shaped by structures. Equally, structures can only be enacted – indeed can only be brought into existence – by and through practices. Structure is always embroiled in action as its medium and outcome, as its condition and consequence. Hence, I recognise the importance of practice, but not in isolation from structures and cultures.

Relatedly, I would argue that power is both structural and practice-based. It is not one or the other, both are analytically significant. Following Foucault, power can also be positive and productive, as well as being characterized by domination and oppression. When Carroll (Raelin et al, 2018: 8) questions ‘why criticality is more structural than agentic, domination more than emancipation-oriented, pre-fixed as opposed to emergent, and linked to committed social identities (ethnicity, gender, sexuality) as opposed to identity work’, she most clearly reproduces an either/or argument. Carroll’s view of power leads us straight back into dualistic ‘either/or’ thinking: it’s either structure or its agency/practice. ² Rather than analytically privilege one over the other, we need to examine both, and also their interrelations, and how they may reproduce one another. Of course, the very name ‘LAP’ automatically privileges practice over structure and thus seems incapable of exploring the interrelations and interactions between structures and practices: hence the need for critical perspectives on leadership studies.

It therefore appears to me that LAP writers, to differing degrees, are unwilling to address matters of structure. Yet, in making this statement, I am not somehow privileging structure in the analysis of power. To suggest, as Carroll does, that I am privileging structural asymmetry and hierarchical control as the only expression of power is at best to misunderstand my argument. ³ What I am highlighting is the contradiction in Raelin’s argument: on the one hand, he contends that LAP offers a ‘critical’ and ‘radical’ perspective, and indeed one that is ‘even more critical than the crits’ (Raelin, 2017: 215), yet on the other hand, LAP does not address power relations. One important aspect of power is structure and institutionalized asymmetry. Power is also embroiled in and reproduced through practices. Since these issues are neglected in LAP, any claims to criticality are at best unsubstantiated. Equally, the LAP neglect of power and structure seems to reveal a misunderstanding about the meaning of what it means to be critical.

Critical perspectives interested in understanding power relations acknowledge the importance of both practice and structure. As the final sentence of the Abstract in my previous 'Leading Questions' article (Collinson, 2017) states: ‘The primary weakness of Leadership-as-Practice is its continued lack of critical engagement, particularly in relation to its neglect of asymmetrical power relations and control practices in all their multiple forms ’. Contra Carroll’s claims, central to critical leadership studies is an explicit recognition that power in organizations typically takes both positive (e.g. empowering and transformative) and negative (e.g. abusive and corrupt) forms. To suggest otherwise, as Caroll does, would seem to indicate a lack of familiarity with the critical literature. I can therefore assure Carroll that I am fully aware that ‘there are more layers and categories of power relations’ but, since LAP tends to ignore all forms of power, (and yet Raelin seeks to define LAP as a highly critical perspective), I have to start somewhere in my response.

In addition to the importance of hierarchical power, of structure and of the relationship between structure and practice, critical approaches address other key inter-related issues that are largely neglected in LAP. First, critical perspectives examine multiple structures and enactments of power. For example, as recent revelations highlight, gender continues to be a key dynamic through which leadership power is frequently enacted in terms of structures (e.g. patriarchy), practices (e.g. gendered assumptions and identities) and their inter-relations. This in turn raises leadership-related issues of sex discrimination, powerful and unaccountable men, rampant masculine sexuality and sexual harassment. Similar arguments can be made for other intersecting sources of power, inequality and identity such as race, ethnicity, class, religion, disability, sexual orientation, nationality and age. These key issues of power – embedded and reproduced in both structures and practices – are central themes for more critical work on leadership but remain at best highly marginal in LAP. Second, by examining the inter-relationships between these multiple structures and practices, critical perspectives also reveal their mutually reinforcing overlaps, as well as the tensions, paradoxes, ambiguities and contradictions that typically characterise leadership power relations, but which are again, neglected by LAP.

Third, as women’s recent response to sexual harassment indicates, as well as current UK industrial unrest for example on the railways and in the airline industry, conflict, resistance and compliance are important questions for leadership both in theory and practice. Critical researchers have addressed these key leadership dynamics of dissent and conformity, particularly by exploring relations between structures and practices. Indeed a central contribution of critical leadership perspectives has been to emphasise that followers are skilled, knowledgeable and proactive agents who often find creative ways to express dissent and resistance, even within asymmetrical and insecure conditions. Raelin’s (2017: 216) contention that critical perspectives view followers as powerless reveals another misunderstanding of critical leadership studies. Reproducing the false binary of either being powerful or powerless, Raelin's argument fails to appreciate that structures simultaneously both constrain and enable practices. To acknowledge power asymmetries does not mean that those in subordinate positions are inevitably powerless. Here I would again refer back to a key assumption of Giddens’ (1979: 6) structuration theory, namely that:

Power relations are always two-way: that is to say, however subordinate an actor may be in a social relationship, the very fact of involvement in that relationship gives him or her a certain amount of power over the other. Those in subordinate positions in social systems are frequently adept at converting whatever resources they possess into some degree of control over the conditions of reproduction of those social systems.

Although conflict, dissent and compliance raise important questions about practice and agency, these themes are largely ignored by LAP writers. In my view, this apparent aversion to conflict also lies at the analytical heart of LAP, where key issues of power, resistance and conformity seem to be largely ignored or underplayed. Moreover, without an analysis of structure(s), it is difficult to (fully) examine and understand dissent, resistance and opposition in all their forms.

Conclusion

This paper returned to the original focus of my earlier 'Leading Questions' article (Collinson, 2017) which questioned Joe Raelin’s claims that LAP is a distinct ‘movement’, particularly new and supercedes post-heroic perspectives, and is more critical than critical leadership studies. Drawing on Giddens’ structuration theory to illustrate my arguments about structure, practice and resistance, this rejoinder has revisited Raelin’s claims in relation to the responses from LAP contributors (Raelin et al, 2018) .

While several of these authors thanked me for my comments, I would like to clarify that my intention in writing these two ‘leading questions’ papers was not to enter into discussions about how to improve LAP but to highlight its conceptual limitations, in particular, by questioning the disproportionate significance LAP writers attribute to the concept of practice to the neglect of structure and power. ⁴ My primary concern has been to critique the three excessive claims repeatedly made by Raelin, and which are not evident in the work of other LAP writers. Indeed what struck me when reading Raelin’s books and papers on LAP was the unequivocal and categorical language used. What leapt out at me from the pages was the apparent certainty and unreflexivity of the three claims and what might be called the control of the ‘message’ that I felt needed a response.

In contemporary global, national and local contexts, where organizational and societal power relations in all their forms are frequently and sometimes recklessly abused in the pursuit of private/self-interest, critical analyses of leadership dynamics have never been more urgently needed. Idealised and uncritical theories that depict organizations as apparently operating in a kind of post-hierarchical fantasy where dialogue and communication occur between equals are, to my mind, little more than a fairy story.