Jackie Ford

Discourses of Leadership: Gender, Identity and Contradiction in a UK Public Sector Organization

This article explores leadership as a discursive phenomenon. It examines contemporary discourses of leadership and their complex inter-relations with gender and identity in the UK public sector. In particular, it focuses on various ways in which managers’ identities are constructed within discourse, produced in specific historical and institutional sites within specific discursive formations and practices, by specific enunciative strategies (Hall, 1996). Drawing from interviews with senior managers employed in a large UK local authority, this article researches the dominant discourses of modernization and the primacy afforded to discourses of leadership in the council. It explores first how these discourses become part of managerial workplace identities, and second, what other discourses help to shape managers’ identities. Contradiction, discursive production, plurality and ambiguity feature heavily in the analysis of these managers. Accordingly, the article questions dominant hegemonic and stereotypical notions of subjectivity that assume a simple, unitary identity and perpetuate androcentric depictions of organizational life.

The impossibility of the ‘true self’ of authentic leadership

‘Authentic leadership’ is increasingly influential, with its promise to eliminate, and thus surpass, the weaknesses of previous models of leadership. This article uses object relations theory to argue, firstly, that authentic leadership as an indication of a leader’s true self is impossible and, secondly, that attempts at its implementation could lead to destructive dynamics within organizations. The authentic leadership model refuses to acknowledge the imperfections of individuals and despite its attestations to seeking ‘one’s true, or core self’ (Gardner et al., 2005: 345), it privileges a collective (organizational) self over an individual self and thereby hampers subjectivity to both leaders and followers. The paper thus contributes to emerging critical leadership studies by introducing the psychoanalytic approach of object relations theory to the study of leadership.

Leadership and charisma: A desire that cannot speak its name?:

Leadership has proved impossible to define, despite decades of research and a huge number of publications. This article explores managers’ accounts of leadership, and shows that they find it difficult to talk about the topic, offering brief definitions but very little narrative. That which was said/sayable provides insights into what was unsaid/ unsayable. Queer theory facilitates exploration of that which is difficult to talk about, and applying it to the managers’ talk allows articulation of their lay theory of leadership. This is that leaders evoke a homoerotic desire in followers such that followers are seduced into achieving organizational goals. The leader’s body, however, is absent from the scene of seduction, so organizational heteronormativity remains unchallenged. The article concludes by arguing that queer and critical leadership theorists together could turn leadership into a reverse discourse and towards a politics of pleasure at work.

In search of the perfect manager? Work-life balance and managerial work

Work-life balance debates continue to proliferate but give relatively little critical attention to managerial workers. This article draws on research into the experiences of managers in a local government organization revealing an intricate, multifaceted and heterogeneous picture of fragmentation, conflicting demands, pressures and anxieties. The study highlights the importance of paid work for public sector managers; the concomitant difficulties in controlling working hours for those in managerial roles and the extent to which shifts in work orientation occur during managers’ careers. Research findings suggest that in practice work-life balance initiatives may only serve to increase managerial anxieties and pressures, the very opposite outcome to that intended. These themes do not feature in many work-life balance debates, which tend to assume the perfect manager who is able and willing to create a symmetrical balance between different spheres of life.

We Went Looking for an Organization but Could Find Only the Metaphysics of its Presence

This article explores the ‘lifeworld theories’ of organizations held by organizational actors, gathered from staff and managers of two ‘organizations’ as they went through a process of merger. Using Henri Lefebvre’s theories of place and space read through a postmodernist lens to interrogate the data, we discovered amongst staff theories of the organization as place, arising out of the material territory in which they worked. Amongst managers and those whom we call directors/chief executives there was a contrasting theory of organization as space, based upon a sense of an immaterial space occupied by a metaphysical organization. Rather than finding a dualistic distinction between organization and agents, we found the organization and organizational members collapsed in upon each other, with managerial identities fused with and inseparable from that of ‘the organization’; chief executives requiring the existence of an impossible organization that could exist only in their minds; and non-managerial employees refusing to identify anything called ‘an organization’.

Fear and Loathing in Harrogate, or a Study of a Conference

There have been no studies in organization research of conferences as part of the world of work. This paper describes a reflexive ethnographic study of one management conference. It finds that upon arrival at the places and spaces of the conference processes of self-making as conference attendee are set in train. Self-making subsequently takes place within processes of domination and subordination, achieved through fear, infantilization, disparagement and seduction. Reading this through the lens of Freudian-informed interpretations of the Hegelian master/slave dialectic, the paper argues that conferences are one of the means of control over academic, managerial and professional employees. Control is achieved through dialectical interactions between conference and employee.

Studying Leadership Critically: A Psychosocial Lens on Leadership Identities

This article explores a new approach to researching leadership in organizations through drawing on psychosocial accounts of the lives of managers as leaders. This study of managers’ lives through a critical, psychosocial analysis presents a different account of leadership identities and how these are constructed and how they function in oppressive ways. The analysis concludes that managers are not transcendental and are not homogeneous. Managers construct multiple, competing and ambiguous narratives of the selves. Key to this more critical approach is the contextual location and partiality of accounts of leadership, and the recognition that our sense of selves are not only entwined within the context and the situations in which they are performed, but also within the hegemonic discourses and culturally shaped narrative conventions.

Is the ‘F’-word still dirty? A past, present and future of/for feminist and gender studies in Organization

This article looks back at 20 years of feminist/gender theory in Organization. In these years a very rich variety of articles has drawn on feminist and gender perspectives. This suggests that Organization is a welcome site for exploring feminist and gender theories and their contribution to critical analysis of organizations. However, the more theoretically sophisticated work that is to be found in feminist and gender studies has not yet been explored in much depth. There is unfilled potential here. The article looks forward to the next decade by discussing a small selection from the treasure house of feminist theorists and concerns that could offer rich insights for management and organization theory. There are many others; this discussion introduces theorists who will be new to some readers, and might provoke more general interest in feminist thought.

Who is ‘the middle manager’?

Middle managers occupy a central position in organizational hierarchies, where they are responsible for implementing senior management plans by ensuring junior staff fulfil their roles. However, explorations of the identity of the middle manager offer contradictory insights. This article develops a theory of the identity of the middle manager using a theoretical framework offered by the philosopher Judith Butler and empirical material from focus groups of middle managers discussing their work. We use personal pronoun analysis to analyse the identity work they undertake while talking between themselves. We suggest that middle managers move between contradictory subject positions that both conform with and resist normative managerial identities, and we also illuminate how those moves are invoked. The theory we offer is that middle managers are both controlled and controllers, and resisted and resisters. We conclude that rather than being slotted into organizational hierarchies, middle managers constitute those hierarchies.

Retention of nurses in the primary and community care workforce after the age of 50 years:database analysis and literature review

AIM This paper is a report of a study conducted to explore strategies for retaining nurses and their implications for the primary and community care nursing workforce. BACKGROUND An ageing nursing workforce has forced the need for recruitment and retention of nurses to be an important feature of workforce planning in many countries. However, whilst there is a growing awareness of the factors that influence the retention of nurses within secondary care services, little is known about those that influence retention of nurses in primary and community care. Little is known about the age profile of such nurses or the impact of the ageing nursing workforce on individual nursing specialities in the England. METHODS Nursing databases were analysed to explore the impact of age on nursing specialities in primary and community care. The nurse retention literature was reviewed from 1995 to 2006. FINDINGS Workforce statistics reveal that primary and community care nurses have a higher age profile than the National Health Service nursing workforce as a whole. However, there are important gaps in the literature in relation to the factors influencing retention of older primary and community care nurses. Specific factors exist for older nurses within primary care that are unique. Implications for their retention are suggested. CONCLUSION Particular attention needs to be paid to factors influencing retention of older nurses in primary and community care. These factors need to be incorporated into local and national policy planning and development.