Abstract
While there is a substantive body of research that recognizes the importance of authentic leadership theory, critiques have challenged its dominant and positive-focused conceptualization. We synthesize these extant critiques, providing researchers with an integrative understanding of the theoretical, conceptual, and empirical deficiencies facing authenticity in a leadership context.
These deficiencies have thwarted authentic leadership’s development limiting our understanding of what authentic leadership is and who authentic leaders are. Synthesizing what has been said about authentic leadership demonstrates why authenticity needs to be conceived of and studied differently. We offer being-in-becoming as a multi-paradigmatic umbrella which accommodates different ontological foundations of what it means to be authentic. A being-in-becoming approach recognizes that authenticity emanates from a developmental process, suggesting the study of authenticity must also be thought of processually. Studying authenticity as a developmental process holds important theoretical and practical implications as it embraces the processual nature of our dynamic, evolutionary beings.
Keywords
Introduction
During the early 2000s, authentic leadership ascended in popularity as positive forms of leadership gained favor in both academic and applied business settings in the wake of high-profile scandals in the United States (Avolio and Mhatre, 2012; George, 2003). Authentic leadership’s ascension originated from the practical writings of Bill George (2003). As a successful businessman and former CEO of Medtronic, George’s voice was credible, and his intuitively appealing ideas of authentic leadership generated interest from academics. While George’s concept of authentic leadership was born from praxis, academics sought to cultivate a theory of authentic leadership. Within academic publications, the word ‘positive’ became prevalent in authentic leadership articles, which formed authenticity’s link with positive psychology (Tourish, 2019a).
Authentic leadership’s positive ideologies propelled the construct to prominence, especially after research claimed to extend authentic leadership’s individual-level benefits, such as creativity and mental well-being (Ribeiro et al., 2020; Weiss et al., 2018), to meso-level outcomes including productivity, effectiveness, and commitment (Kiersch and Byrne, 2015; Lemoine et al., 2019). Such a positive conceptualization of authentic leadership envisaged authentic leaders as problem-solving individuals who consistently do the right thing (Avolio et al., 2004; Gardner et al., 2011). Positive conceptualizations, while helpful in making authenticity fashionable, also drew immediate critique from leading scholars. They questioned why authentic leaders were being conceived as morally superior individuals who possess an unproblematic true self. These critiques of authentic leadership theory produced a diverse body of literature that highlights authentic leadership’s theoretical, conceptual, and empirical deficiencies.
Despite the bevy of critiques, researchers have yet to offer a viable alternative to positive authentic leadership theory. When we consider what gap exists in the extant literature the answer is beguilingly simple – an alternative that allows researchers to study authenticity in a leadership context. To address this gap, we offer such an alternative – being-in-becoming. We define being-in-becoming as a multi-paradigmatic theoretical umbrella that describes authenticity as a developmental process. Accordingly, a key aspect of our study is that we present leadership as a context where authenticity should be understood and researched in a fitting way; that is, via development and process.
Our purpose is to describe the relationship of authenticity in leadership using being-in-becoming. Doing so allows for multiple research traditions to co-exist and advance the body of knowledge whereby scholars from different philosophical perspectives contribute to studying authenticity as a developmental process. The being-in-becoming umbrella facilitates such knowledge contribution by holding the philosophical tension between being and becoming as theoretical interplay. Until now, prior research has emphasized being and becoming’s contradictions with little consideration to their mutual co-existence. Our use of being-in-becoming follows recent scholarship that leverages the interplay of being and becoming (e.g. Svane, 2019), which is pivotal to understanding authenticity in a leadership context. Similar to how Voegtlin et al. (2012: 2) viewed responsible leadership as an ‘umbrella term’, we argue that being-in-becoming creates an umbrella for authentic leadership theorizing plus the opportunity to contribute to praxis. Recent research calls attention to the role of being and becoming by touching on the practical benefits of understanding ‘how leaders can be (come) more authentic’ (Dietl and Reb, 2021: 474). It is time for authentic leadership to be conceived of differently, to be researched differently. After all, what is the influence of critique with no action (Pullen and Alakavuklar, 2020)?
A problematization of positive psychology
Our review of authentic leadership theory aptly commences with an examination of positive psychology. We begin with an examination of positive psychology to lay the contextual foundation of the weaknesses approach to authentic leadership. The weaknesses of positive-focused theorizing are focal to the problematization of authentic leadership theory. Thus, discussing the origins of positive psychology allows us to draw attention to this perspective’s influence on authentic leadership.
Positive psychology is defined as a broad theoretical perspective, which encompasses ‘the study of the conditions and processes that contribute to the flourishing or optimal functioning of people, groups, and institutions’ (Gable and Haidt, 2005: 104). The lure of positive psychology rests in its promise to answer tantalizing questions such as ‘what is happiness?’ (Compton, 2005) and ‘what makes life worth living’ (Csikszentmihalyi and Seligman, 2000). These questions assisted positive psychology in generating strong market demand, which formed a highly commercialized, multibillion-dollar enterprise. The marketability of positive psychology co-opted authentic leadership’s phenomenology, creating a commoditized concept and leading scholars to question the motivation that underlies its ‘science’. Indeed, the evidence-based research and theoretical underpinnings that positive psychology uses for support have garnered staunch criticism (Alvesson, 2020; Yakushko and Blodgett, 2021). Such criticism proposes, in part, that positive psychology propagates a big-business mantra that concentrates on fixing, restoring, and optimizing people rather than actually understanding and tackling the higher institutional powers that promote social harms (Collinson, 2012; Singal, 2021). This allows individualizing traits, typical to US-centric cultures, to ascribe personal wins or losses to one’s mental fortitude, dismissing the systemic power edifices at play. Having outlined the general pitfalls of positive psychology, we now review its presence in the authentic leadership literature.
Positive psychology’s influence on authentic leadership
In authentic leadership research, positive psychology is a theoretical perspective that is often associated with scholarship from Walumbwa, Avolio, Gardner, Luthans, and colleagues (e.g. Avolio and Gardner, 2005; Gardner et al., 2005a, 2005b)
1
. Walumbwa et al. (2008: 94) define authentic leadership as a pattern of leader behavior that draws upon and promotes both positive psychological capacities and a positive ethical climate, to foster greater self-awareness, an internalized moral perspective, balanced processing of information, and relational transparency on the part of leaders working with followers, fostering positive self-development.
Walumbwa et al.’s (2008) widely accepted definition supports a four-part framework – self-awareness, balanced processing, relational transparency, and internalized moral perspective – which is the basis of the Authentic Leadership Questionnaire (ALQ). For the remainder of this paper, we will use Walumbwa et al.’s (2008) definition of authentic leadership when referencing positive psychology.
While positive psychology is the dominant theoretical perspective, prior research that illustrates authentic leadership’s initial development encompassed a broad range of theories shows this dominance need not have been the case. At the beginning, authentic leadership’s development was informed by diverse lenses – a supposition that Gardner et al.'s (2011) literature review reinforces. The authors’ review revealed that preceding authentic leadership studies drew from assorted theoretical perspectives, including attribution theory/social perception, affective processes, and neo-charismatic leadership with multiple theories in between. Rather than drawing on authenticity’s diverse and rich underpinnings, ‘positive’ nomenclature became rooted in authentic leadership theory, and Walumbwa et al.’s (2008) definition along with their survey instrument (i.e. ALQ) firmly established it as part of the positive psychology perspective (e.g. Avolio and Gardner, 2005; Luthans and Avolio, 2003).
Critiques of positive psychology’s conceptualization of authentic leadership
Although positive psychology’s presence in authentic leadership remains prevalent, its warm reception started to fade, and another broad theoretical perspective emerged – we refer to this as the critical perspective. 2 This secondary perspective 3 has been used to describe peripheral views that problematized the dominant conceptualization of authentic leadership being offered by positive psychology. While criticalists have used diverse lenses to voice their skepticisms – such as indigenous (Spiller, 2021), phenomenological (Bradley-Cole, 2021), Arendtian (Gardiner, 2016), Bourdieusian (Fox-Kirk, 2017), and psychoanalytics (Ford and Harding, 2011) – they are united in their belief that much of the research from positive psychology attenuated authentic leadership’s theoretical development (Ladkin and Spiller, 2013). Indeed, criticalists posit that positive psychology’s a priori framing is plagued with definitional, theoretical, and empirical shortcomings (Einola and Alvesson, 2021). This position was bolstered after the retraction scandal that implicated Walumbwa and his colleagues (see Spoelstra et al., 2016: 394). As such, the existing body of research has put forth a number of informative critiques of authentic leadership (e.g. Alvesson and Einola, 2019; Crawford et al., 2020; Einola and Alvesson, 2021; Iszatt-White and Kempster, 2019) and the doctrine of leadership more broadly (Tourish 2019b, 2019c).
Critiques of positive psychology’s conceptualization of authentic leadership.
Note. We provide in-text citations in the Table; full references available in the reference section of the manuscript.
Terminology
The initial critique emanates from authentic leadership’s lack of definitional agreement and construct clarity. Conflict surrounding the term authentic leadership largely stems from ambiguity regarding what authentic leadership actually is (Cooper et al., 2005). We use the term authentic leadership or authentic leaders in our paper, not because we feel the literature has reached a commonly agreed upon definition, but because we lack a more precise term for how discourse frames this compelling construct. Prior works have raised concerns about the problematic nature of commonly used terms in authentic leadership research including the definition of authenticity, leadership, leaders, and the true self (e.g. Fox-Kirk, 2017: 440). Such concerns reflect process philosophy’s long held stance that true processual thinking constantly struggles with the constraints of language when trying to expand how phenomena are understood (Nayak and Chia, 2011). We see this struggle in the authentic leadership literature as scholars rely on linguistic descriptions to advance our understanding, but such understandings rest on the flawed definitional and semantic structures that already exist from positive psychology.
Although positive psychology suggests consensus exists in the conceptualization of authentic leadership, questions surrounding authentic leadership’s construct clarity have emerged, especially regarding the ambiguity of authentic leadership’s definition (Crawford et al., 2020). An integrative review found the meaning of authenticity depends on which theoretical foundation and research themes are cited (Lehman et al., 2019). In fact, a range of definitions of authentic leadership and authenticity have been advanced since the construct’s inception (Gardner et al., 2011; Novicevic et al., 2006). Yet, the literature has privileged Walumbwa et al.’s (2008) four-part framework from positive psychology as the dominant definition. This overreliance on positive psychology’s definition is problematic as researchers have raised questions about empirical redundancies between authentic and other forms of moral leadership (Hoch et al., 2018). Specifically, meta-analytic findings have raised structural and discriminant validity concerns about Walumbwa et al.’s (2008) framework, including how existing definitions account for the differences between the four subscales (Banks et al., 2016). Consequently, questions remain as to whether Walumbwa et al.’s (2008) operationalization even captures the domain of authenticity or leadership (Alvesson and Einola, 2019).
Given the numerous critiques of authentic leadership, positive psychology’s four-part definition is curiously silent on alternative conceptualizations derived from diverse theoretical paradigms or qualitative methods (Ladkin and Spiller, 2013). In turn, the definition developed from positive psychology lacks the capacity to include empirical work derived from other, more critical, views of authentic leadership (see Iszatt-White and Kempster, 2019: 361). Thus, the positive psychology definitional field has created conflict within the literature regarding what authentic leadership means.
Morality
The second critique examines authentic leadership’s moral emphasis. Positive psychology accentuates the importance of morality through authentic leadership’s internalized moral perspective subscale, which reinforces the belief that authentic leaders must have a high moral character. Internalized moral perspective is meaningful to authentic leadership theory because it affirms authentic leaders’ dedication to core ethical values (Gardner et al., 2011). While positivists argue that authentic leadership theory has an explicit moral component (Gardner et al., 2005b), this stance was challenged by influential leadership scholars whose work was peripheral to positive psychology (e.g. Ciulla, 2013). These scholars questioned authenticity’s moral emphasis, resurrecting Cooper et al.’s (2005) assertion that authentic leadership’s moral component is much more nuanced than positivist research acknowledged. For example, results from an inductive study of 15 senior executives showed that authentic leaders may be dedicated to attaining (collective) moral standards because they provide a vehicle to realize their own personal desires, not because they are seeking a higher good per se (Eilam-Shamir and Shamir, 2013).
Criticalists continued to question authentic leadership theory’s explicit moral component by using existential arguments to show that authenticity is not inherently morally grounded (Lawler and Ashman, 2012) nor intrinsically ethical (Algera and Lips-Wiersma, 2012). Extant research supports this stance by claiming when leaders act in accordance with their true self they may, in practice, behave immorally – especially when that true self is a ‘jerk’ (Zander, 2013: 279). Further challenging the implicit assumption of a ‘universal moral order’ (Sidani and Rowe, 2018: 627), prior research demonstrates the absence of a direct relationship between moral reasoning and authentic leadership as well as the absence of a direct relationship between authentic leadership and moral actions (Sendjaya et al., 2016). This research highlights the importance of Machiavellianism and helps explain why leaders who engage in moral reasoning may still partake in immoral behavior despite how authentic they are considered by themselves or others to be. The difficulty in claiming that authenticity has a moral emphasis is that this stance disregards the fluid nature of the moral postures associated with leaders’ true selves (Sparrowe, 2005). Thus, critiques of the morality argument emphasize the situationally dependent, variable nature of the self, suggesting that individuals embody multiple selves and one of those selves may submit, at times, to role-specific pressures where they appear to deviate from their ethical responsibilities. In sum, scholars have long believed that it was authentic leadership theory’s high moral ground that kept the construct discursively speaking, ‘above reproach,’ (Shaw, 2010: 103); however, a growing body of evidence has raised questions about authentic leadership’s moral emphasis.
Context
The third critique concerns authentic leadership’s dismissal of contextual factors that influence leader authenticity (e.g. Liu et al., 2017). To create organizational environments where all leaders and followers freely embrace their true self, we must understand the cultural hurdles, social-historical circumstances, structural barriers, and inherent power dynamics that are present and the normative expectations they create (Gardiner, 2011, 2017). The harsh reality is that behaving as if power disparities do not exist only worsens unconscious biases and discrimination within the authentic leadership literature (e.g. Procknow et al., 2017). Critical scholars have argued that authentic leadership’s preference for person-centered ideologies rejects the importance of context, illustrating the prominence of power and privilege inherent in positive psychology’s conceptualization (Ladkin and Spiller, 2013). Ignoring contextual factors results in the propagation of what critical scholars call an ‘ideal leader’ which preserves society’s predilection for advancing white males to senior leadership positions because they fit some preordained ideal (Fox-Kirk, 2017: 439). One result of authentic leadership theory’s idealized view of leadership is that authenticity is evaluated from a gendered, rather than gender-aware lens (see Sinclair, 2013: 249). Research suggests leaders are seen as authentic when they act according to the gender norms that are considered proper for the socially constructed situation where they are required to lead (Liu et al., 2015).
Authentic leadership’s gendered lens overlooks environmental factors, including organizational, cultural and structural barriers that play a role in how leadership is enacted (Baron and Parent, 2015; Eagly, 2005; Gardiner, 2016) and perceived (Woolley et al., 2011). Cultural and structural barriers affect the power dynamic within the leader-follower dyad, altering the capacity of employees to express their true selves in an organizational context (Wilson, 2013). Research on authenticity and selfhood emphasizes the importance of fostering true authentic expressions of the self, suggesting when employees construct identities from an unwanted corporate self, they realize that ‘who they are’ is an inauthentic version of their being, which was forged from a false corporate identity, instead of their true self (Costas and Fleming, 2009).
True self
The fourth, and final, critique contests positive psychology’s assumption that authentic leaders possess a true self, which guides their behavior. A core phrase that has propelled authentic leadership’s development is ‘to thine own self be true’ (e.g. Gardner et al., 2005a: 344). For the positive psychology approach, being true to yourself suggests an alignment between the leaders’ inner values and behavior. In other words, leaders behave in an authentic fashion when they recognize their inner values system and act according to this value-system in the workplace (Avolio et al., 2004). Due to this phraseology, positive psychology privileges the notion that leaders possess a true self – a single, bounded entity that is finite, static, and essentialized (Ford and Harding, 2011). However, the notion of possessing a singular, true self has been widely contested in the literature as criticalists object to the existence of an essentialized true self that is bounded from the outside world (Lawler and Ashman, 2012). Rather than viewing a leader’s inner self as consistent, critical scholars believe the self to be a dynamic concept, which evolves based on temporal, relational, and contextual factors (Nyberg and Sveningsson, 2014). For example, Sparrowe (2005) proposed that leaders’ self-concepts constantly change because of their exposure to diverse settings, circumstances, and experiences, which illustrates the importance of how contextual factors influence leader authenticity.
Critical leadership scholars argue that positive psychology’s belief that leaders possess one true self is myopic because it disregards how organizational actors evolve through lived experiences (Ibarra, 2015), changing their self-concept as if they are meeting a stranger within (Whyte, 2007). It is idealistic, and perhaps even naïve, that positive psychology suggests who we are at work (work self) and who we are outside of work (non-work self) are one and the same (Alvesson and Einola, 2019). Instead of possessing a singular, true self, critical scholars theorized that authentic leaders are comprised of multiple selves, which represent the leaders’ conflicting identities (Boje et al., 2013). For example, O'Brien and Linehan (2019) problematize the notion of a singular authentic self, suggesting that employees have the capacity for multiple selves, which allows them to tackle situational demands. Using conceptualizations from the emotional dissonance and emotional labor literatures, the authors contend the challenge is to create a contextually responsive self that is aligned to a specific situation rather than a core truth. Authentic leaders are, therefore, responsible for embodying a different self, or combination of selves, based on their specific situation and predisposing contextual factors (Ladkin and Taylor, 2010). Critical scholarship rejects the existence of a singular, true self as this view homogenizes the tensions and inherent complexities of the leaders’ being. Overall, we summarized these four established critiques of positive authentic leadership to show its weaknesses and highlight the importance of studying authenticity using an alternative approach – being-in-becoming.
Being and becoming
A review of the substance and process philosophy spectrum.
Notes. The above ‘aspects’ of the substance and process philosophy literatures are summarized from: Bruner (1990, 1991); Cloutier and Langley (2020); Mohr (1982); Langley (1999, 2021b); and Langley and Tsoukas (2010, 2016). We provide the full reference for the citations above in the reference section.
Process philosophy and substance philosophy
Process philosophy, which is also referred to as process metaphysics, has a rich history from Ancient Greek philosophers such as Heraclitus and, most recently, spurred contemporary works from Langley, Tsoukas, and Chia as well as Whitehead, Bergson, James and others (Helin et al., 2014; Rescher, 1996). Langley and colleagues employed Mohr’s (1982) concept of process theorizing and Bruner’s (1990, 1991) notion of narrative thinking in their conceptualization of process philosophy. Process theorizing and narrative thinking emphasize the importance of context-specificity, multiple temporalities, and socially constructed meanings that unfold through experiences, events, and interactions over time (Langley and Tsoukas, 2010). In contrast, substance philosophy, which is commonly referred to as substance metaphysics, originated from Democritus’ thinking and is distinguishable from process philosophy because it prioritizes things or entities instead of temporality and change (Rescher, 1996; Whitehead, 1929). When differentiating substance from process philosophy, Langley and colleagues used Mohr’s (1982) concept of variance theorizing and Bruner’s (1990, 1991) notion of logico-scientific thinking to discern substance philosophy’s defining features. Variance theorizing and logico-scientific thinking seek to transform abstract organizational phenomena into observable variables with measurable qualities (Langley, 1999). Due to process and substance philosophy’s distinctive theoretical backgrounds, they have fundamentally different views of process and development (Van de Ven and Poole, 2005). These different views are noteworthy because they inform our conceptualization of being and becoming and researchers can use them to study authenticity.
For process philosophy, process and development are deeply rooted in the idea of transformation, change, and temporality, focusing on how and why organizational phenomena develop, emerge, grow, and unfold over time (Langley et al., 2013). Process philosophy submits that organizational phenomena are in a continual state of becoming because they are undergoing perpetual transformation. Such a view suggests that organizational phenomena are in a constant mode of flux where each experience, event or interaction, changes their fundamental essence (Whitehead, 1929). On the other hand, process and development for substance philosophy occur within the confines of consistency and stability. While this appears to be an oxymoron, Langley and Tsoukas (2010: 3) explain that substance philosophy recognizes the existence of processes but views them as ‘incidental’ and explains them ‘in terms of substances’ – saying that ‘processes contingently happen to substances’ but that such development does not change the thing or entity’s underlying core essence. The result is processes do not change the thing or entity’s fundamental character as their core essence persists over time and is maintained through sustained changes to their qualities or characteristics. Thus, in broad terms, processes signify the change in the qualities or characteristics of things or entities yet their core essence remains unchanged (Langley et al., 2013). Herein lies a subtle, but important, distinction: substance philosophy purports that things and entities will remain the same while undergoing development because their essential nature does not change, but their qualities and characteristics can.
In our study, we conceptualize being and becoming as processes. Such a decision enables us to conceive of authenticity as a developmental process within a leadership context. Defining authenticity as a developmental process is important because it underscores authenticity’s processual nature and allows scholars to examine leader development as both a process of being and a process of becoming.
The processes of being and becoming
To illustrate how our definition of being and becoming leverages authenticity’s processual nature, including the concept of change, we provide the following example about a specific leader, we generically named ‘Tom’. In this example, Tom is the leader under investigation and authenticity is the focal quality or characteristic of interest.
The process of being is associated with substance philosophy, which views Tom as an entity or thing and authenticity as a measurable quality or characteristic that he ‘has’ or ‘possesses’. Substance philosophy describes Tom as a static being where his core essence does not change because it is central and persistent. Change, in this context, does not affect Tom’s core essence because it is immutable. The stability associated with Tom’s core essence is why substance philosophy conceives of leaders as fixed entities or things (core true self; stable identity) where a change in authenticity occurs from what happens to Tom’s qualities (Fachin and Langley, 2017). In this view, change occurs to the qualities that are attributed to Tom where the quality of authenticity that Tom possesses may change, but Tom, as a leader, remains stable. Therefore, while Tom can be perceived as being more or less authentic, what changes is not Tom but the ‘authenticity’ quality that characterizes Tom (i.e. Tom may stop being authentic, but he will not stop being Tom). The underlying premise is that Tom remains a consistent, recognizable person despite developing as a leader. Such a conceptualization (of being) enables us to study authenticity as a developmental process by considering how the quality of authenticity (in leaders) changes over time.
Conversely, the process of becoming is deeply linked to process philosophy, which views leaders as dynamic beings with core essences that are context-dependent and form relationally through socially constructed exchanges. Consequently, change affects Tom’s core essence, which is undergoing continuous evolution and transformation. The fluidity associated with Tom’s core essence aligns with process philosophy’s belief that the world is comprised only of processes (Van de Ven and Poole, 2005) and change is endemic to the process of becoming (Chia, 1999). From this viewpoint, processes involve temporarily evolving phenomena (Langley, 2009) where becoming is not something that happens per se but the way in which change unfolds through the evolution of time. Leaders – like Tom – are not static substances impervious to their experiences but, conversely, are constituted by their action events because every experience is qualitatively distinct and augments a previously determined reality, thus changing it (Langley and Tsoukas, 2010). Change is therefore experienced by Tom and is understood through his lived experiences (see Tsoukas and Chia, 2002: 572). Tom cannot be separated from his organizational context where authenticity is being constantly created and reconstructed through patterns of interwoven experiences, events and interactions. Because of that Tom and the environment are both in continuous motion and reciprocal flux, suggesting that change is an enacted milieu of interlinking action events that are in motion and unfold temporally. This explains why process philosophers are not interested in Tom’s varying levels of authenticity, like substance philosophers are, but in how authenticity comes into being (in situ) as Tom experiences action events. Such a conceptualization (of becoming) enables us to study authenticity as a developmental process by considering how authenticity evolves temporally through change (e.g. emergence, growth, decline).
Taken together, the concept of change is central to defining the processes of being and becoming within the substance and process philosophy literatures. Our illustration shows that process and substance philosophy enable researchers to study development (change) in different ways, depending on their ontological assumptions and view of process. A key difference is that change in process philosophy is applied to the leaders' essence (core essence can change) whereas change in substance philosophy is applied to the leaders' qualities or characteristics (core essence is immutable). These inherent differences in process and substance philosophy’s assumptions do not warrant unification around the study of authenticity in a leadership context, so perhaps, then, it becomes a matter of co-existence.
A call for co-existence
Rather than adopting a singular, overarching approach, we introduce an alternative: the idea of co-existence, which allows both positivists and criticalists to study authenticity from their own perspectives whilst engaging in ongoing dialogue instead of sheltering in their own ideologies. We acknowledge some scholars may assert that gaining assent around co-existence would be nigh impossible unless the theoretical incommensurability between the positive and critical perspectives is addressed. We wholly agree that the assumptions held by positivists and criticalists are largely antithetical, which is why our goal is not to propose a unification of these two perspectives. Instead, our proposed path allows for the positive psychology and critical perspectives to co-exist without converging or forming a dialectical synthesis. Consequently, co-existence allows for positivists and criticalists to engage in ongoing dialogue and create space for productive exchanges of knowledge. Such ongoing dialogue is beneficial because it allows scholars from different research and philosophical perspectives to engage in conversations and debates that contribute to the current literature. After all, we, as scholars, all share a common goal; that is: to move the canon of knowledge forward. In this spirit, we dissuade researchers from using co-existence as a reason to only study authenticity from their ‘own’ perspective – where positivists and criticalists do not engage with each other as they hold different world views. This is because we seek to move the literature towards a conversation about co-existence – a conversation that, in the spirit of intellectual curiosity and in service of leaders who wish to be authentic, allows positivists and criticalists to communicate about the concept of authenticity using different worldviews. The basic principle being that co-existence accommodates diverse research perspectives without necessitating unwarranted theoretical alignment or fit. 4
The authentic leadership literature, admittedly, may not have been ready for such a call for co-existence in the past, but two recent developments offer renewed hope. First, the productive dialogues we advocate for above have started to occur. Recently, William Gardner, Elizabeth Karama, Mats Alvesson and Katja Einola engaged in a debate about the authentic leadership literature, which allowed for a constructive dialogue between scholars from the positive psychology and critical perspectives. The Gardner et al. (2021) dialogue ended with a powerful call where the authors rejected authentic leadership as a formal theory, in its present state, indicating that the time has come for scholars to return to, metaphorically speaking, their drawing tables. Such a call ironically echoes a mounting discourse, which has questioned authentic leadership’s value, asking whether authentic leadership theory should be abandoned altogether due to its problematic underpinnings.
The second development of importance was Leadership’s recent special issue, which offered an interrogation of authentic leadership (Iszatt-White et al., 2021). While the special issue articles collectively emphasized authentic leadership’s shortcomings, some authors still advanced the notion that authenticity within a leadership context holds value, albeit unrealized at present (e.g. Bradley-Cole, 2021). For all authentic leadership’s many shortcomings, the themes of authenticity, inauthenticity, and leadership are pervasive in critical works – and in Leadership’s special issue – signifying that despite ontological differences between positivists and criticalists both perspectives are mulling over a way ahead. At last, it appears that the literature, as a whole, is willing to engage in a productive exchange to better understand how researchers – not to be confused with the reductionist labels of positivists and criticalists – can advance the body of knowledge. The question is how?
Being-in-becoming: An application of the substance-process philosophy spectrum
Figure 1 presents a substance-process philosophy spectrum, which creates transparency for how researchers from different philosophical traditions could conceive of and study authenticity. We emphasize this spectrum because it makes the space between process and substance more dynamic and flexible, which allows scholars, at their discretion, to employ different philosophies. While most process- and substance-oriented studies retain the characteristics presented by Langley and colleagues, they might be conveyed in diverse ways (e.g. Brunet et al., 2021; Langley 2021b). We honor this diversity by placing a dual sided arrow to depict a continuum that demonstrates how our being-in-becoming umbrella provides an opportunity for scholars from different perspectives to co-exist where, for example, positivists use the process of being and criticalists use the process of becoming as their respective vehicles for study. Thus, we put forth being-in-becoming as a theoretical umbrella to explain how scholars can use process and substance philosophy, including their associated assumptions, to study authenticity. Being-in-becoming: A theoretical umbrella for authenticity research in a leadership context.
Until now, we have been referring to the body of process and substance philosophy as monothetic literatures; however, these philosophical traditions are much more nuanced in practice (Sandberg et al., 2015; Weik, 2011). In fact, prior scholarship readily acknowledges that ‘pure’ theorizing where researchers exclusively apply the assumptions from process philosophy is ‘relatively rare in practice’ (Cloutier and Langley, 2020: 3). Instead, it is common for researchers to integrate process and substance philosophy in the same investigation. For example, process scholars have successfully investigated organizational phenomena through the shifts between different states, which preserves the ontological assumptions of substance philosophy, because change is thought of as happening to entities that hold their identity over time (e.g. organizational change, see Langley and Tsoukas, 2010: 8). It is unsurprising that studies using pure theorizing are rather rare because organizational research, in practice, is intricate and complex. Utilizing a spectrum in Figure 1 was an intentional choice because it embraces the greyness by not attempting to over simplify or pigeonhole how scholars study authenticity into black and white boxes.
Because process and substance philosophy are not monothetic literature streams, there are different perspectives and ontologies that often create difficulties for scholars in choosing the most appropriate mode of study. Scholars examining process philosophy have documented the importance of understanding these ontological differences, suggesting that even when initially it appears they are referring to analogous phenomena, they can, in reality, be supported by substantially different ontological assumptions (e.g. Langley et al., 2013; Tsoukas and Chia, 2002; Van de Ven and Poole, 2005).
In the subsequent sections, we utilize three process perspectives and their associated ontologies from Langley and colleagues’ typology – process as evolution (substantive ontology), process as narrative (experiential ontology), and process as activity (becoming ontology) – as they hold important methodological and theoretical implications for our being-in-becoming umbrella. 5 These subsequent sections offer three complementary research applications that highlight (a) how positive psychology has the opportunity to leverage process as evolution as well as how some critical works have the opportunity to use (b) process as narrative and (c) process as activity. We begin with a review of the research opportunities available to positive psychology next.
The application of positive psychology in substance philosophy
Although rarely acknowledged explicitly, Walumbwa et al.’s (2008) definition and measurement of authentic leadership helped situate positive psychology within the realm of substance philosophy. As reviewed previously, substance philosophy prioritizes entities or things, and, in the context of positive psychology, leaders represent those entities or things that possess qualities, in our case authenticity, that may change over time. Extant positive psychology research supports this association to substance philosophy because Walumbwa et al.’s (2008) definition and psychometric measurement prioritized the study of authentic leadership’s interrelationships with other observable variables (e.g. dependent, independent, mediating and moderating) and the creation of formal propositions or hypotheses (e.g. Leroy et al., 2015; Liu et al., 2017). Positive psychology’s box-and-arrow construction of authentic leadership’s interrelationships conceives of authenticity as ‘existing’ in leaders, which ostensibly aligns with substance philosophy. In doing so, positive psychology conceives authentic leaders as stable beings, possessing a true core self that can be modelled.
Positive psychology purports that leaders are being more authentic when they ‘remain true to their core values, identities, preferences and emotions’ (Avolio et al., 2004: 802). Consequently, the very essence of authentic leadership rests on the idea that leaders’ level of authenticity grows as their ‘espoused values/beliefs and actions become aligned over time and across varying situational challenges’ (Avolio and Gardner, 2005: 330; Walumbwa et al., 2008: 105). This logico-scientific thinking from substance philosophy uses the presumption that leaders’ espoused values/beliefs are observable and quantifiable where researchers can measure authenticity because it evolves based on whether leaders remained true to their core ideals. In other words, positivists study leaders as if authenticity ‘exists’ within them as an observed, quantifiable quality. Such a view transitions authenticity from a phenomenon to a variable, which aligns with variance theorizing.
One of the central elements of authentic leadership theory is the developmental emphasis attributed to leaders (Avolio and Gardner, 2005; Walumbwa et al., 2008). Early positive psychology research emphasized leader development by acknowledging that authenticity was not meant to be understood as an either-or condition but more akin to existing as a continuum where leaders can be more (or less) authentic over time (Avolio et al., 2004). The idea of leader development can be traced to George’s (2003: 12) seminal piece where he proposes ‘authentic leaders are dedicated to developing themselves’ saying that fostering such authenticity ‘takes a lifetime of personal growth’. George’s definition highlights the significance of development – a concept that he and his colleagues sought to understand by investigating how ‘being authentic’ made leaders ‘more effective’ and ‘developed their leadership abilities’. 6 George’s praxis-based investigation shows that being authentic, where authenticity is conceived as a developmental process, was ingrained in his formative works. Recently, Gardner et al. (2021: 2) reasserted authenticity’s developmental emphasis by stating, ‘from our developmental perspective, we focus attention on the processes whereby leaders and followers experience growth’. The authors, by stating this, acknowledge authenticity as a developmental process where leaders have the ability to grow their authenticity over time.
Process as evolution
While positive psychology views authenticity as a developmental process, we see an opportunity for their research to better study how the leaders’ being develops. What follows is an account of how the process of being can benefit the positive psychology perspective in their study of authenticity in a leadership context. Substance philosophy suggests researchers can study authenticity by measuring the change in the quality of leaders; however, to utilize a process of being approach, researchers must go beyond measuring the qualities in leaders during a single, static timepoint, using multiple timepoints instead. Multiple timepoints are needed because a process of being approach emphasizes the evolution, or development, of the qualities in leaders over time. Langley and colleagues describe such an approach as ‘process as evolution’ which focuses on the development and change of individuals over time (Fachin and Langley, 2017). Process as evolution uses a substance ontology, which provides a suitable context for positive psychology to study authenticity in a leadership context. This is because substance ontology views processes as something which happens to individuals (or entities) that maintain their essence even with the evolution of time (Brunet et al., 2021). As such, substance ontology aligns with positive psychology’s understanding of authentic leaders where they possess a true self that is maintained even as they evolve, or develop, temporally through the process of being.
Positivists have an opportunity to update their methods and design to truly capture the process of being by studying authenticity as a developmental process through the addition of time and temporality. Time and temporality are typically main elements in process as evolution studies where time is conceived of as objective and lapsing as the entity, or leader in our case, develops (Brunet et al., 2021). Even though time and temporality are central to our understanding of authenticity in a leadership context, it is frequently missing from positive psychology’s empirical studies. Time and temporality are central to our understanding of leader development as researchers can only observe short-term, mid-range, and long-term effects if their studies include a temporal element. Afterall, leader development occurs over time, suggesting researchers cannot draw conclusions about how leaders develop by limiting their investigations to cross-sectional designs, which focus on one specific timepoint. Research conducted over multiple timepoints could provide positivists an opportunity to answer theoretical questions about ‘how’ things are done. Embracing questions of ‘how’ calls for positivists to move away from their almost complete reliance on the ALQ and investigate the activities required for leaders to achieve change, thereby furthering their self-development.
While process as evolution is typically studied with qualitative methods, in terms of application, we recommend that positivists insert time as a central element in their research. For example, event history as well as longitudinal designs and multiple source data could allow researchers to study the variance in authenticity by examining how leaders evolve over time using introspection methods. Accordingly, process as evolution enables positive psychology to use the process of being, grounded in substance ontology, as a vehicle to study authenticity as a measurable quality that exists in leaders, and how that quality evolves, or develops, over time. We turn our attention to the critical perspective’s theorizing next.
The application of the critical perspective in process philosophy
Although criticalists likewise acknowledge authenticity’s developmental nature, we see an opportunity for their research to better capture leader development using the process of becoming. The following sections describe how the process of becoming could assist the critical perspective in their study of authenticity in a leadership context. Process philosophy prioritizes temporality and change, so, for criticalists, the process of becoming is how authenticity, as a developmental process, is in motion and unfolds over time. In this sense, the process of becoming allows criticalists to study how authenticity evolves through change (e.g. emergence, growth, and decline). To understand authenticity through becoming is to understand the process by which leaders make sense of the complexity and open-endedness of their personal and professional development. This developmental emphasis prompts researchers to acknowledge that leaders are ‘not things made but things in the making’ (James, 1925: 263). Importantly, from a process philosophy perspective, there is not a ‘thing’ that is inherently special about leaders as an ‘entity’, but what matters is the process through which authenticity unfolds over time via interlinked events. Here, authenticity, as an ongoing process is created, emerges, and fluxes – not through some quality that exists within an individual leader – but through the shared constructions in which multiple voices create reality through lived experience. We provide two demonstrations of process as narrative and process as activity due to their relevance to authenticity scholarship.
Process as narrative
According to Langley and colleagues, process as narrative focuses on how individuals make sense using narrative accounts to reconstruct their experiences (Fachin and Langley, 2017). Process as narrative is strongly linked with sensemaking (Langley, 1999), providing a venue for rich theoretical development about authenticity in a leadership context. Narrative accounts are associated with an experiential ontology owing to the importance of communication in which processes are described through subjective sensemaking and person-centered experiences rather than through objective events (Brunet et al., 2021). Narrative accounts view authenticity as a process of becoming as they convey the developmental nature of the self, showing how the values and purposes of a leader often shift across time and events (Eilam-Shamir and Shamir, 2013; Shamir and Eilam, 2005). Authentic leadership theory has long recognized the importance of narratives and story with early models suggesting that the personal histories and trigger events of leaders and their followers were key predictors of authentic leadership and followership (Gardner et al., 2005a). In fact, interviews from 125 leaders led investigators to conclude that the journey of authentic leadership starts with knowing one’s life story as life-stories allow leaders to understand their true selves (see George et al., 2007). By promoting the self as dynamic, narrative accounts show how leaders can change their being – change who they become – over time.
Process as narrative stresses the uses of dialogue, conversation, storytelling and written texts as a powerful means of data collection because sensemaking occurs in action as individuals interpret retrospective (past), perspective (present), and prospective (future) accounts (Langley, 2021a). Narrative accounts allow leaders to reconstruct their lived experiences, making them meaningful (Fachin and Langley, 2017). Due to this, analyzing narrative accounts over time and among different sources provides a backdrop for sensemaking theories. In the context of authenticity leadership research, narrative accounts enable scholars to study authenticity as a developmental process including how and why it changes over time.
Narrative accounts reveal that authenticity is a movement of becoming with breaks, turns, and variations, which more likely resembles a journey than a destination. For instance, Faircloth (2017: 408) discusses how Shamir and Eilam’s (2005) life-stories approach allowed her to ‘become’ an authentic leader, bringing ‘clarity’ to her ‘muddled thoughts’ so that she could lead more authentically. In doing so, Faircloth (2017: 408) used narrative accounts to convey how she made sense and created meaning of her lived experiences with authenticity in a leadership context. This illustrates the power of narrative accounts and how the re-storying process may help leaders to re-frame complex, challenging, or even difficult events by embracing the whole system of lived experiences. Process as narrative illustrates the living nature of story, showing how leaders can change their being over time through becoming (Boje et al., 2013).
The importance of becoming is an emerging trend in the leadership and narrative literatures with recent work from Zheng et al. (2021: 1) suggesting the stories leaders tell about their origins facilitates a sensemaking process of who they ‘have “become” over time’. Similarly, Ibarra (2015: 59) urges leaders to go on a developmental journey by asking them to ‘try out new stories’ suggesting that their life stories should evolve with the passage of time. The author concludes growth occurs when leaders ‘stretch the limits’ of their being, allowing ‘direct experiences’ to ultimately illustrate ‘who we want to become’ (Ibarra, 2015: 59). In this sense, narrative accounts of leader development emphasize the importance of becoming and suggest that authenticity loses its ontological link when it dismisses the dynamics of lived events.
Process as activity
Process as activity, as defined by Langley and colleagues, is how individuals use context-specific interactions to negotiate their understanding and constructions of organizational phenomenon (Fachin and Langley, 2017). Langley (2021a) suggests process as activity shapes and forms organizational phenomena through activity. Process as activity is associated with a becoming ontology, which proposes that processes completely constitute our world and reality (Brunet et al., 2021). In the context of authenticity, a becoming ontology suggests that authentic leaders are brought into existence by the activities that they undertake where the emphasis is on the leaders’ micro-level choices. The leaders’ choices and activities are seen as constituting the nature of the leaders’ self where over time each decision moves them towards or away from authenticity (in a never-ending ebb and flow). From a theoretical perspective, process as activity and its associated (becoming) ontology aligns with practice theories, which suggest the interactions and observations of leaders’ choices could provide an opportunity for authenticity’s theoretical development. When extrapolating this to the authenticity literature more specifically, we find existentialism and Jungian are two theoretical perspectives that align with process as activity due to their emphasis on interaction and choice.
Existentially speaking, activity and choice are central elements that determine how individuals embody authenticity. An element of authenticity that is commonly associated with existentialism is the opportunity for individuals to rise above societal norms and expectations thereby ‘becoming who one is’ through activity and choice (Nyberg and Sveningsson, 2014: 439). This reflects the idea of being through becoming, or Whitehead’s process of ‘actualization through self-realization’, which refers to how individuals engage in becoming through the choices they make among possibilities (Schrag, 1959: 50). Heideggerian ontology (1962) reflects Whitehead’s process of actualization through self-realization because both agree that individuals, or in our case leaders, become more or less authentic as they struggle internally between the authentic forces of their true self (authentic self) and the inauthentic other (e.g. societal, organizational, personal conventions). Therefore, existential and processual examinations of authenticity both emphasize the importance of becoming by embracing the struggle that leaders endure, understanding authenticity as something leaders aspire to achieve through activity and choice rather than something that leaders are (Algera and Lips-Wiersma, 2012). Process as activity allows leaders to reflexively inquire into the struggle of being authentic amidst competing forces that compel them towards inauthenticity. Active practices such as mindfulness, sensing and inquiry can yield important insights about these tensions and dueling forces and the dynamic mode of existence, which ebbs and flows. This authentic versus inauthentic struggle from existentialism aligns with process as activity because both stress the inherent temporality of choice and how authenticity is shaped and constructed through the culmination of interlinked events (i.e. leader activity).
Liu et al. (2015: 238) furthers the idea of authenticity as a process and affirms becoming’s place in the authentic leadership literature by noting, from an existential viewpoint, ‘authenticity is a process of becoming’ describing that ‘authenticity is something leaders “do”’. The authors’ emphasis on what leaders ‘do’ embodies process as activity because leaders’ authenticity changes based on the choices that inform their activities. Viewing authenticity using process as activity shows how doing (leaderly activity and choices) constitutes one’s journey of becoming (more or less authentic). This view demonstrates that leaders engage in a continuous journey where they cannot claim complete authenticity, but rather a degree of authenticity owing to their choices and activities (Erickson, 1995). Next, we apply process as activity to Carl Jung’s philosophy.
The importance of activity and choice to Jung’s philosophy and authenticity are observed through his concept of individuation. A central element of Jung’s philosophy is individuation, which is akin to a developmental journey of self-realization where individuals continue to grow throughout their lives (Jung, 1993). Rather than existing as a static being-in-the-world, the process of individuation views the self as fluctuating as it is continuously shaped and transformed by the activities of those selves which are enacted and integrated (Schmidt, 2005). Jung (1993: 181) directly ties individuation to the process of becoming stating, ‘individuation means becoming a single, homogenous being’ and ‘also implies becoming one’s own self’. Jung’s notion of individuation resembles the journey leaders endure to discover their authentic self (Jones and Grint, 2013), illustrating that the most challenging part of individuation are the shadowy or the less desired elements of the self (Ladkin et al., 2018). Indeed, Jung observes there are numerous influences and dynamics, including those shadowy elements, that govern one’s activities and choices. For leaders to authentically emerge, however, they must be aware of their shadowy elements and be willing to go on a journey of becoming that synthesizes opposites and creates wholeness through integration. Individuation, then, is an iterative process that cannot be fully achieved because each time an individuation event occurs the self re-emerges through continual becoming. Process as activity allows leaders to embrace the journey of individuation to wholeness. Such a journey reflexively brings awareness to conscious and unconscious shadowy aspects of the self through activity. Using a process as activity approach brings context into the relational field and deepens appreciation that self-actualization occurs in relationship.
Thus far, we have offered positive psychology and some critical works (e.g. existentialism and Jungian) as research applications because they provide a starting place for future research to use the being-in-becoming umbrella. Due to this, we ask the reader to view positive psychology as a demonstration for a substance ontology; likewise, existentialism and Jungian should be viewed as a demonstration for a becoming ontology. We emphasize the importance of viewing these demonstrations as research applications (examples) because not every study utilizing positive psychology, or the critical perspective will be a proper fit. In other words, our umbrella does not imply that positive psychology is linked exclusively to substance philosophy nor that the critical perspective is linked solely to process philosophy. Highlighting the absence of this linkage is important because there are multiple examples and research applications that exist across the substance-process philosophy spectrum, and we encourage future research to engage in additional investigations into this area.
Discussion and conclusion
This study has raised important questions about the nature of authenticity in a leadership context, which resulted in four research implications. First, we recommend researchers explicitly identify the philosophy and assumptions that motivate their inquiry. Whether scholars realize it or not, they are continually bringing particular philosophies and assumptions into their studies. Initially the challenge is gaining awareness of these philosophies and assumptions, then determining whether they will be integrated into the focal study. Practically speaking, these philosophies and assumptions steer scholars’ selection of theories that inform their research (Creswell, 2018). Accordingly, a tight connection exists between the philosophy, assumptions, and theories that scholars include in their research inquiry. This is why we encourage all scholars to be specific about the philosophy and assumptions that underlie their studies and, most importantly, acknowledge them explicitly. Even though such formal acknowledgement is rare, it enables scholars to study authenticity more extensively because the research question itself does not exist independently of these assumptions as they impact the type of conclusions scholars can realistically draw. Given this, we encourage scholars to review their paper’s central thrust, including, for example, their research question as well as methods of collection and analysis when deciding on their underlying philosophy and assumptions. Overall, our goal is not to advocate for a specific mode of study, but rather to highlight the importance of scholars, themselves, selecting the most appropriate philosophy and assumptions to guide their inquiry.
Second, while we mentioned previously that pure theorizing is rare, our review of the literature suggests that pure process theorizing is even more scarce than pure substance theorizing. The relative scarcity of pure process theorizing is understandable, though, as these types of inquiries are associated with several unique obstacles compared to substance theorizing (for a review see Cloutier and Langley, 2020). For example, in contrast to substance theorizing, process theorizing focuses on potentialities and interaction, instead of outcomes and correlation, where dynamic, open-ended concepts such as events, activities, and trajectories are notoriously challenging to pinpoint. In fact, Langley (2021a) acknowledges that as scholars transition from using substance to process ontology, additional difficulties will likely ensue as processes become more challenging to identify and examine using conventional modes of investigation. Despite these difficulties, researchers have a unique opportunity to contribute to the authenticity literature given the distinctive theoretical questions associated with pure process theorizing and a becoming ontology. We encourage future researchers to consider employing such theorizing especially due to the relative scarcity of such inquiries. (See Langley, 2021b for current examples of generative theorizing using her process perspectives.)
Third, we acknowledge the literature on authenticity is vast; however, time, temporality and change are essential irrespective of which views of process and philosophy are applied. Time, temporality and change are foundational concepts in our theoretical umbrella as extant research has long thought of authenticity a
Fourth, our recommendations should not be isolated to the study of authenticity in a leadership context only. Confining the processes of being and becoming to just authentic leadership is restrictive because it would curtail the theoretical potential of being-in-becoming as it is applicable to many theorizations of leadership and beyond. We propose that future researchers borrow the notion of being-in-becoming to start investigating other important, yet unanswered, questions about the context of leadership. These unanswered questions allow future researchers to contribute to the development of leadership studies more broadly. By highlighting leadership development’s broader context and emphasizing philosophy’s contribution, we join the recent call to reconnect leadership development with its philosophical underpinnings to promote more ethical, wiser leadership (see Wilson et al., 2022). The inverse is also true, though. Scholars interested in authenticity may find it helpful to consider both the processes of being and becoming outside of leadership specifically as researchers are studying authenticity in diverse organizational contexts. Indeed, Lehman et al. (2019: 1) point out that the topic of authenticity is in ‘high demand,’ spanning various literature streams from emotional labor to the evaluation of artwork. Thus, the multi-paradigmatic umbrella we have specified may be helpful beyond the contextualization of authenticity within leadership.
In addition to the research implications reviewed above, the theoretical tenets of this study have two important implications for future practice. The first practical implication is we are shifting the rhetoric from studying who authentic leaders are to studying authenticity through a developmental process. While this shift may seem slight, the implications for practice are valuable. Our developmental emphasis is important because it promotes a more realistic view of the leaders’ self by furthering a concept that includes both the authentic and inauthentic aspects of the self. While published research studies tend to concentrate on how leaders become more authentic, far less research attention has focused on the dark side of authenticity where leaders become less authentic. Despite academia’s reticence to discuss the dark side of authenticity, no leader is perfect where their choices and activities only allow them to become more authentic over time, but never less authentic. Yet, authentic leadership’s proclivity for positivity prevents practicing managers from residing along an authentic-inauthentic spectrum where each activity (i.e. choice or interaction) moves them towards becoming more or less authentic. The authentic-inauthentic spectrum is valuable because it aligns with authenticity’s developmental emphasis and allows leaders to change and evolve over time as they go through different lived experiences. This shifts the rhetoric around authenticity in a leadership context by allowing for the internal development and emergence of leaders rather than a prescriptive approach that must be copied or enacted (Spiller, 2021).
Second, centering authenticity on the processes of being and becoming furthers the construct’s contextual grounding. Context drives our knowledge and understanding of leaderly activities and the business events that unfold around us (Johns, 2006). As scholars, we must resist the trap of making erroneous recommendations because we do not appreciate the broader context of our observations or downplay the importance of being explicit about the philosophy and perspective driving our inquiry. By being explicit, we can avert such a trap and gain an understanding of how organizational context can impact leader development. Doing so adopts the arcaneness of flux, messiness, and change, which is where the processes of being and becoming live. Viewing being and becoming as processes cultivate a stronger, more profound appreciation of the nuances and difficulties of enacting authenticity in practice. This is because processual thinking considers the lived complexities of authenticity, allowing leaders to bring their whole self – a self that evolves over space, time, and context. The interplay of being, becoming and authenticity provides a practical existence where leaders embrace an iterative process of finding, creating, and enacting their selves in situ.
In conclusion, our purpose was to articulate the relationship of authenticity in leadership with being-in-becoming. To use a Foucauldian phrase, we sought to make windows where there were once walls by instilling two central elements of authenticity – development and process. Studying authenticity as a developmental process integrates development as both a process of becoming and being. Doing so provides a solid foundation for researchers from the positive psychology and critical perspectives to co-exist where they can contribute to the body of knowledge using the being-in-becoming umbrella. Rather than remaining in their respective silos, the being-in-becoming umbrella creates space for positivists and criticalists to engage in an ongoing dialogue and, hopefully, start a necessary conversation about leadership development more broadly. To our knowledge, there has not been a push for co-existence in the literature even though it offers a novel opportunity to advance our understanding of authenticity in a leadership context. By placing windows where there were once walls, we hope future researchers can look beyond constraints of current theorizing and use being-in-becoming to guide their scholarly endeavors.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
We express our gratitude to the editor, Professor Dennis Tourish, and to the anonymous reviewers for their dedication in providing valuable feedback which strengthened this article immensely.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
