dc.contributor.advisor | Bissett, Ngaire | |
dc.contributor.author | Saunders, Sharon Rose | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2018-01-23T02:51:20Z | |
dc.date.available | 2018-01-23T02:51:20Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2008 | |
dc.identifier.doi | 10.25904/1912/2625 | |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10072/367198 | |
dc.description.abstract | The purpose of this research study is to explore dominant conceptualisations
of leadership in both the business and research domains. Of particular interest
is firstly the degree to which these conceptualisations are underpinned by
unquestioning, taken for granted essentialist assumptions. Secondly, how
both practitioners and researchers involved in leadership work and leadership
development activities, may reinforce these assumptions in their attempts to
define and drive leadership effectiveness criteria alongside organisational
change agendas. In locating the current leadership discourse within an
essentialist hegemonic frame of reference, the research study also explores
the power and structural dynamics which seek to uphold particular kinds of
leadership conceptualisations, thus preventing other anti-essentialist
alternatives from being publicly acknowledged.
Drawing upon critical accounts of leadership practice and leadership research,
this thesis represents an autoethnographic account of conducting research
into leadership development programs and strategies set up by a large-scale
public sector organisation. This involves a re-reading of existing
conceptualisations of leadership in organisations through a predominantly
poststructualist and feminist lens along with an illustration/development of this
anti-essentialist re-reading via an ethnographic study of LIRO (organisation
pseudonym).
The major research finding of the study is that leadership may be more
effectively conceptualised and practiced as a continuous, co-created, contextualised and relational sense-making process, emerging within
interdependent constructions of reality (ways of knowing). Consequently, the
continued imposition of essentialist, reductionist leadership premises on
organisational participants with the objective of replicating, controlling and
measuring their behaviour and actions is likely to have unplanned and
detrimental consequences for all concerned. Indeed, these participants were
more likely to develop their own leadership understandings and realities in
relationally responsive and embodied ways.
The major implication of this research finding is to accept that essentialist
conceptualisations of leadership cannot be readily imposed on people as a
static set of performance criteria in order to produce predetermined forms of
behaviour. Along these lines, the recommendation is for those involved in
leadership work and research to appreciate the ‘ways of seeing’ leadership
that emerge from continuous, co-created, contextualised and relational sense
making processes. This awareness will enable them to engage and then
utilise the perspectives of a wide range of organisational participants in order
to build shared understandings around their own and others’ leadership
performance realities. Consequently, this may create the space for meaningful
‘ways of being’ leaders to be recognised and named. | |
dc.language | English | |
dc.publisher | Griffith University | |
dc.publisher.place | Brisbane | |
dc.rights.copyright | The author owns the copyright in this thesis, unless stated otherwise. | |
dc.subject.keywords | Leadership | |
dc.subject.keywords | Managerial leadership | |
dc.subject.keywords | Research leadership | |
dc.title | Knowing, Seeing, Being: Embodying the Leadership Trilogy | |
dc.type | Griffith thesis | |
gro.faculty | Griffith Business School | |
gro.description.notepublic | The request for restricted paper and digital access for a period of 24 months has been approved, with effect from 2 June 2008. | |
gro.rights.copyright | The author owns the copyright in this thesis, unless stated otherwise. | |
gro.hasfulltext | Full Text | |
dc.contributor.otheradvisor | Bamber, Greg | |
dc.contributor.otheradvisor | Barrett, Mary | |
dc.rights.accessRights | Public | |
gro.identifier.gurtID | gu1323158244411 | |
gro.source.ADTshelfno | ADT0 | |
gro.source.GURTshelfno | GURT1006 | |
gro.thesis.degreelevel | Thesis (PhD Doctorate) | |
gro.thesis.degreeprogram | Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) | |
gro.department | Griffith Business School | |
gro.griffith.author | Saunders, Sharon R. | |