Brigid Carroll

Re-viewing 'role' in processes of identity construction

Although role theory appears to have been largely dismissed from the contemporary critical literature, role is nevertheless a persistent theme in the discourses of organizational actors. This paper argues that it is timely, therefore, to re-view role, particularly as it articulates with the processes of constructing identity. Drawing on three interview segments that evoke a variety of roles, we develop the notion of role as a boundary object (a concept that we have appropriated from the sociology of science and technology literature). We show that this provides a much richer and more complex understanding that recognizes role as an inherently incomplete and emergent intermediary in identity construction processes. Further, we suggest that this view of role resonates with, and informs, wider theoretical conversations about identity construction.

Leadership Development as Identity Construction

The authors seek to broaden the focus and orientation of social constructionism in leadership development. Previous research has predominantly concerned identity-orientated approaches focused on regulation as opposed to construction of identity. Social constructionism challenges us to view leadership participants as subjects and objects. Using the concept of a “space of action,” the authors focus on places in leadership development where identity work is visible, inducing different kinds of agency. Three different responses are analyzed, exploring their implications for leadership development. The authors propose the importance of three communicative responses in allowing alternative identity storylines to remain open and active. The authors support leadership development as a site, discourse, and series of practices that equips us to work with identity in fluid, dynamic, and plural ways.

Defaulting to Management: Leadership Defined By What It Is Not

The dynamics between identity (who I am) and anti-identity (who am I not) are drawn on to explore the identity work of senior and middle managers who have elected to embark on formal, sustained and intensive leadership development work. We construct the concept of a default identity, not primarily as an oppositional or negative identity, but as a baseline identity that, because it is securely held, has a major role to play in the understanding, acquisition and performance of more emergent identity constructions. In exploring the dynamics between management (default identity) and leadership (emergent and desirable identity) for instance, it becomes clear that each is shaped by the other in subtle and overt ways. We conclude that the recognition of the dynamics and relationships between them holds some promise for new thinking and innovation in terms of individual organizational identity work, leadership development and organizational change.

Identity undoing and power relations in leadership development

Leadership development theory and practice is increasingly turning its gaze on identity as a primary focus for development efforts. Most of this literature focuses on how the identities of participants are strengthened, repaired and evolved. This article focuses on identity work practices that are underdeveloped in the literature: the deconstruction, unravelling and letting go that can be experienced when working upon one’s self. We group these experiences, among others, under the conceptual term ‘identity undoing’ and, based on findings from an 18-month ethnographic study of a leadership development program, we offer five manifestations of how it can be experienced. Through foregrounding the undoing of identity, we are able to look more closely at how power relations shape the leadership development experience. In order to raise questions and propositions for leadership and its development we use a micro-sociological and interactionist approach to explore the interplay between identity and power.

To Text or Context? Endotextual, Exotextual, and Multi-textual Approaches to Narrative and Discursive Organizational Studies

Organizational researchers doing narrative and discursive research have three choices in how they approach a text: an ‘endotextual’ approach where the researcher works within a text, an ‘exotextual’ approach where the researcher works outward from a text to its context(s), or a combined exo/endotextual approach which embeds a textual analysis within contextual inquiry. Although all three methods are now widely used in mainstream organizational research, the merits of combining, sequencing, or separating them have never been systematically considered. After reviewing the advantages and limitations of each perspective, we discuss an experiment in which endo and exo methods were applied to a skit co-written by management and a communications company specializing in organizational theater. The finding that using one approach creates multiple, subtle blind spots towards the other, and even more significantly affects a researchers capacity to effectively adopt a combined method, is used to construct an alternative ‘diatextual’ framework. This is used to frame a discussion of how multi-method textual studies of organizations might be conducted in the future.

Capturing sociality in the movement between frames: An illustration from leadership development:

In this article we offer a dynamic relational perspective in which frames and framing work together in the practice of leadership development. Mead’s (1932) notion of sociality is introduced as a way of engaging with movements within and between frames, where it is these framing movements that we argue hold the potentiality of emergent practice. The article responds to a growing interest in the delineation, conceptualization and practice of leadership as opposed to leader development, where we understand leadership development in terms of the creation of social capital, relational capacity and collaboration. However, there is little, if any, research into how these dimensions may be developed intentionally in practice. Using online forum data from an 18-month-long leadership development programme, we demonstrate three different sociality movements, which we have labelled kindling, stretching and spanning. Our analysis positions sociality at the core of leadership development interventions, and practice more generally.

Mindset Not Skill Set: Evaluating in New Paradigms of Leadership Development

The Problem New ways of thinking about leadership as emergent, relational, and collective are becoming evident in leadership theory and practice. This is causing orientations to leadership development to shift from approaches that are predominantly concerned with building skills to those that are concerned with questions of mindset. That is, leadership development is less directly concerned with developing a set of discrete skills and is increasingly concerned with participants’ underlying assumptions and how these shape possibilities for the future. Historically, evaluation of leadership development has tended to focus on technologies and methodologies that assess the former. This article seeks to explore evaluative practices that would be attuned to mindset in leadership development. The Solution To do so we first outline the difference between skillset and mindset as orientations to leadership development. Relational and complexity theories are drawn on to construct our understanding of an approach to leadership development that is oriented to questions of mindset. We then turn to evaluation theory to address three primary perspectives on evaluation: evaluation for accountability, for development, and for knowledge. We argue that skillset acquisition has been predominantly associated with an evaluation for accountability perspective. In this article we foreground evaluation for development and evaluation for knowledge arguing that these perspectives offer important alternatives for leadership development that is oriented to issues of mindset. We propose that working dynamically with the three perspectives offers new directions in evaluation that are suitable for mindset orientated interventions. The Stakeholders This article will inform those researching and writing in the leadership development domain, those sponsoring or seeking more mindset orientated leadership development interventions, leadership development managers, champions, designers, facilitators, and associated professionals. Finally it will be of interest to practitioners looking for evaluative practices that address the multidimensional nature of change and development work in organizations.

Resistance and struggle in leadership development

That leadership development is a contested terrain, like any organizational terrain, can scarcely be considered a new idea, yet research into the intricacies of resistance in this context is very much in its infancy. This article takes recent critical scholarship on resistance as its starting point to explore the interdependencies of power, resistance and struggle in a leadership development environment. Drawing on extensive online interactions collected from an 18-month, cross-sector programme with emergent leaders, this article asks whether the different stakeholders in leadership development could benefit from a more open exploration of power and resistance. Such dynamics offer new insights into the relationship between participants and facilitators and raise a series of alternative questions, challenges and strategies for leadership development.

Evasion of boredom: An unexpected spur to leadership?

Boredom has been largely omitted from the leadership literature, or dismissed as a problem, incongruent with effective leadership. Our research showed that the boredom discourse of senior managers engaged in a leadership development programme contrasted with their construction of challenge in leadership. In a second study, managers considered boredom to be a characteristic of followers not leaders, antithetical to leadership, and a problem to be solved through leader-initiated change. These managers therefore accepted a prevalent negative discourse on boredom and sought to respond to it not by reflecting on it but by initiating change. The experience and consideration of boredom may provide the impetus for creativity, risk-taking, curiosity and challenge-seeking, and may foster sustained and embedded individual and organizational learning. Attending to a more holistic range of phenomena and living with leadership ‘troughs’ as well as ‘peaks’ may ultimately create a more reflexive, resilient and agile leadership.

Leadership development: Insights from a careers perspective

This article reports on an exploratory empirical investigation into the resonance between two developmental processes to see if any insights into leadership development could be gained from using a careers lens. Career and leadership development both share contemporary shifts in emphasis: leadership from hero to distributed models ,and career from objective to subjective explorations of progress and success. Twenty-two participants on a leadership development program used a career card sort which was then processed with a peer partner to support personal meaning making . A constructivist-orientated content analysis of the resultant peer dialogues revealed four themes: challenge, ownership, sponsorship and work—life balance, which showed different aspects of the nexus between leadership and career. This nexus is characterized by a resonance in thesense of echoing that suggests that a careers lens used by peer partners provides additional insight into leadership and leadership development.