The foregoing chapter constitutes the theoretical bedrock of this thesis. In this last section, I conclude my theory chapter by briefly summarising the chapter, and by offering two interrelated research questions. In the first section, 2.1, I engaged in a thorough discussion of the ‘practice turn’ (Schatzki et al., 2001) in social theory and organisation studies, arguing that the practice concept redefines the ways in which we conceive of social life through focusing on hitherto neglected aspects (e.g. abstract structures, dualisms), all in favour of everyday, mundane, activity as a focus for research. To adopt a practice approach, I firstly adopted Nicolini’s (2009a, 2013) toolkit approach for studying practice, embracing differences and commonalities, using them in combination based on the idea of a ‘family resemblance’ (Wittgenstein, 1967). Secondly, I outlined how the practice concept might be used, and established my understanding of it as a philosophy; i.e. both as an ontology and epistemology. A critical aspect I stressed in Section 2.1 was the contingent character of practices. That is, practices naturally provide for multiple interpretations about what is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, ‘appropriate’ or ‘inappropriate’. Practices, in other words, are inherently and continuously debated, negotiated, and disputed – rendering power dynamics an integral aspect of everyday practicing.
I then moved on to discussing the ‘thematic core’ of this thesis, Leadership-as- Practice, LAP for short. Here, too, I explored the origins of LAP, particularly focusing on its critique of ‘conventional’, heroic, studies of leadership. At the same time, I re- emphasised the benefits of and thus rationale for using the practice concept to study leadership in organisations. Through providing for highly contextualised and mundane accounts, the practice concept has the potential to afford novel and deep insights into the ways leadership gets accomplished; and, through emphasising the contingency of social life, allows for appreciating how leadership is negotiated. A critical notion for this thesis discussed in Section 2.2 constitutes the work of leadership, which avoids a focus on individuals practicing leadership, concentrating instead on the totality of actions and interactions that lead leadership to materialise. Specifically, I argued leadership to be about so-called ‘turning points’. That is, leadership materialises when the flow of action of practices, i.e. their direction, has either changed or actively been
reinforced, or when a difference to the ways practices are being performed has been made (Crevani, 2015; Ramsey, 2015; Simpson, 2015).
This means, of course, that leadership activity is still important – serving as an empirical ‘entry point’. Indeed, as I argued in Section 2.1, activities are the backbone of any practice. In fact, considering the practice concept’s emphasis on the mundane, I argued the work of leadership to suggest that it may occur at any moment and involving any kind of actor – rendering leadership to emerge regardless but not dismissive of formal authority. This also entails resolving fundamental dualisms, such as subject/object, i.e. leaders/followers. I argued that the practice concept not only advocates a dialectical approach to resolving dualisms, but in relation to leadership refrains from a priori labelling of actors as ‘leaders’ or ‘followers’ altogether. Instead, a practice approach stipulates actors to be defined within, not prior, to the accomplishment of practices.
Importantly, by ‘direction’, I did not necessarily mean ‘one direction’. On the contrary, I concluded Section 2.2 by examining the ways in which power has been discussed in relation to leadership – for instance by utilising insights from Critical Leadership Studies. Doing so led me to propose power dynamics to be particularly useful in order to critically interrogate how leadership is produced as part of everyday organisational life. I stressed, however, that power dynamics play a marginal role in leadership studies generally, and in LAP specifically, although both practice and LAP scholars frequently claim that power dynamics are a vital aspect to leadership. In order to contribute to conversations that do highlight said importance, I ask the following two questions:
1) How is the work of leadership implicated with power dynamics?
The insights developed from examining this question empirically, meanwhile, are brought to bear on the second question I ask in this thesis:
2) How is the work of leadership accomplished?
It is worthwhile to point out that although the second question may appear to be a ‘more fundamental’ one, I deliberately consider how power dynamics are implicated in the work of leadership first, since these implications are then brought to bear on the
way leadership is accomplished. Regarding the specific terminology, I use the term ‘implicated’, because it is open and neutral, thus not making any assumptions vis-à-vis
how leadership and power might be related (e.g. that leadership is produced by power dynamics, or vice versa), other that the two concepts are related in some way (e.g. Collinson, 2011; Alvesson and Spicer, 2012). Following the extant literature, the question merely assumes that power has something to do with leadership. Moreover, given that the two concepts appear to be closely related, as will be discussed in Chapter 5, ‘implicated’ leaves room for discussing power as an inherent rather than a separate component of leadership. ‘The work of leadership’, as a key concept, meanwhile, suggests the inherently social aspect of leadership and its collective production. As for the second question, I have chosen the term ‘accomplished’, as it connotes both the collective and performative sense of leadership work – leadership is indeed a product of
collective action.
As a basis to answer these questions, I discussed the second part of my theoretical framework, power dynamics, in Section 2.3. I briefly elaborated upon what I called ‘conventional views’, which conceive of power as individually-oriented, concentrated, and in static and possessive terms – fundamentally at odds with the ideas stipulated in Section 2.1. I therefore developed a practice-based understanding of power, inspired largely by Foucault’s ideas. This conception of power sees it as an activity which is not the property of any one individual, but of the ‘social system’ of practices. Power, as Foucault argues, is thus not in anybody’s hands at any given time, but is instead everywhere and involved in everything we do – thus chiming well the concept of the ‘work of leadership’. However, as I also pointed out, although power dynamics are highlighted as pivotal frequently, they do not constitute the major focus of most LAP or practice studies (e.g. Endrissat and Arx, 2013; Nicolini, 2013; Crevani, 2015; Simpson, 2015).
In other words, as some suggest (e.g. Heizmann, 2011; Alvesson and Sandberg, 2011; Ford, 2015), examining power dynamics in relation to practices in general and vis-à-vis leadership specifically constitutes a research gap. This thesis thus builds on existing conversations that point towards power dynamics underlying the social accomplishment of practice, and hence the work of leadership (e.g. Gherardi, 2006;
Raelin, 2015; Simpson, 2015). At the same time, however, the questions set out below are not merely developed out of classical ‘gap spotting’. Instead, as established in this Theoretical Chapter, in this thesis I use power dynamics as a tool to problematize (see Alvesson and Sandberg, 2011) the ways in which leadership is socially accomplished – by highlighting notions of negotiation, disputation, and contestation (see Crevani et al., 2010; Crevani, 2015; Simpson, 2015).
In the following chapter, I delineate the methodological approach I adopt in order to research the above questions empirically, taking forward the ideas of ‘work of leadership’ as the production of direction, as well as my practice-based theoretical framework of power. Thereafter, I present my findings in Chapter 4, followed by an in- depths discussion of these in Chapter 5.