Valerie Stead

Women’s leadership learning: A reflexive review of representations and leadership teaching

This article contributes to understandings of the experiential nature of leadership learning by drawing attention to the role of disruption as an organizing influence on women’s leadership learning, and by generating insights for leadership teaching. Examining leadership learning as an experiential process, we present the development of a typology intended to act as a summary of literature focusing on women’s experiences of leadership learning. Informed by our experiences of developing and using the typology as a teaching aid in two leadership development interventions we progress through a cycle of critical reflections to present a reflexive analysis of the typology’s performative effect and how it brings into being representations of women’s leadership. Moving from initial observations to deeper reflections the analysis draws attention to how disrupting pervades women’s learning of leadership, thus extending our understanding of gender’s influence on organizing learning experiences. The article considers how we, as educators, might forefront disrupting as a process in leadership learning interventions by re-positioning instruments, such as the typology, to problematize and deconstruct leadership learning. We conclude by proposing a reflexive process in the classroom that takes the form of a critical dialogue to enable educators and participants to de-construct their experience.

Learning to deploy (in)visibility : an examination of women leaders’ lived experiences

This article focuses on women’s learning from their lived experiences of leadership. In an examination of how six women leaders at a UK University learn to deploy (in)visibility, I draw on conceptualisations of (in)visibility more commonly found in feminist research. These include surface ideas of (in)visibility as states of exclusion or difference due to a lack of women in leadership roles, and deeper ideas of how states of visibility and invisibility are maintained through power relations. I also refer to ideas on how (in)visibility operates and is produced and reproduced through organisational processes and practices. This analysis extends critical perspectives of leadership learning and development. Specifically, it adds to understandings of the tacit nature of social and situated learning through an articulation of the ways in which gender and power operate in women’s learning of leadership from experiences of (in)visibility. This article concludes by indicating further areas for research, including more developed understandings of women’s learning to think strategically from experience, examining the role of management educators in revealing women’s leadership learning and identifying methodologies to examine women leaders’ learning experiences.

Feminist Challenges and Futures: Women, Diversity and Management Learning

Drawing on the category of the ‘social’ in social learning theory as a ‘mini case study’, we argue in this article that gender, race and class are still neglected in the field and practices of management learning. We suggest that feminist work is a growing part of the journal and field of management learning but on limited terms. Thus we argue that feminism has not been mobilized to interrogate core categories and concepts in management learning, such as the ‘social’ in social learning. In addition, we outline how issues of race and class are even more marginalized and raise a number of questions to indicate how management learning might be researched and theorized if race, gender and class were taken seriously as mainstream issues.

Belonging and women entrepreneurs: Women’s navigation of gendered assumptions in entrepreneurial practice

This article is novel in proposing belonging as a mediatory and explanatory concept to better understand the relationship between women entrepreneurs and socially embedded gendered assumptions in entrepreneurial practice. Drawing on social theories of belonging and extant entrepreneurial literature, the article explores what belonging involves for women in the entrepreneurial context to offer a conceptualisation of entrepreneurial belonging as relational, dynamic, gendered and in continual accomplishment. Five forms of women’s performing of belonging are identified: by proxy, concealment, modelling the norm, tempered disruption and identity-switching. Illustrating how women both reinforce and challenge gendered norms through strategic and tempered use of legitimacy practices and identity work, these findings also highlight the significance of socio-cultural and political knowledge in efforts to belong.

The gendered power relations of action learning: a critical analysis of women’s reflections on a leadership development programme

Revealing power relations in HRD research and practice is an important concern for critical HRD scholars, however little attention has been paid to gendered power relations in the HRD practice of action learning. This paper responds to this gap through a critical analysis of a phenomenological study of six women’s reflections of action learning as part of a leadership development programme. Adopting feminist post-structuralist ideas, the paper draws on the study to interrogate gendered power relations in action learning. Key findings include women’s perceptions of gendered power relations in action learning affirm dominant understandings of leaders as male, not attending to gender impedes women’s leadership development in action learning and action learning principles of trust and comradeship can serve simultaneously to avoid difference and to reinforce a dominant set culture that constructs difference. The paper concludes with proposals of how action learning might take gender into account in the leadership development of women.

Business-focused evaluation: a case study of a collaborative model

A case study of a business-focused evaluation model is presented. This was developed as part of an organizational development intervention for Zetex plc, a global semi-conductor company. The value of the model is assessed against three principles (concerning collaboration, joint ownership and integration) drawn from client and provider needs and from current thinking in evaluation research. Findings from the study highlight benefits to the company and participants, and provide significant learning for future use and development of the model.

Constructing Women’s Leadership Representation in the UK Press During a Time of Financial Crisis: Gender capitals and dialectical tensions

A continuing challenge for organizations is the persistent underrepresentation of women in senior roles, which gained a particular prominence during the global financial crisis (GFC). The GFC has raised questions regarding the forms of leadership that allowed the crisis to happen and alternative proposals regarding how future crises might be avoided. Within this context women’s leadership has been positioned as an ethical alternative to styles of masculinist leadership that led to the crisis in the first place. Through a multimodal discursive analysis this article examines the socio-cultural assumptions sustaining the gendering of leadership in the popular press to critically analyse how women’s leadership is represented during the GFC of 2008–2012. Highlighting the media’s portrayal of women’s leadership as a gendered field of activity where different forms of gender capital come into play, we identify three sets of dialectics: women as leaders and women as feminine, women as credible leaders and women as lacking in credibility, and women as victims and women as their own worst enemies. Together, the dialectics work together to form a discursive pattern framed by a male leadership model that narrates the promise of women leaders, yet the disappointment that they are not men. Our study extends understandings regarding how female and feminine forms of gender capital operate dialectically, where the media employs feminine capital to promote women’s positioning as leaders yet also leverages female capital as a constraint. We propose that this understanding can be of value to organizations to understand the impact and influence of discourse on efforts to promote women into leadership roles.

Theory Generation and Practice Improvement: A Mental Health Service Perspective.

Abstract This article presents findings from four problem-based research sites that comprise a larger action research project within primary care mental health services. The projects explored in this article are ongoing and involve working with small networks within specific areas: a GP practice counseling service, a Community Mental Health Team, a GP attached social worker scheme and a rural health cross-disciplinary team. By taking a constructivist approach, and through use of grounded theory techniques, the findings share some common features with Action Research and demonstrate two key aims of problem-based methodology, mainly practice improvement and theory generation (Robinson, 1993). First, they illustrate that a particular understanding of mental health service users can be reached from exploring the way in which they are excluded. Four excluded identities are presented (absent, mediated, difficult and elusive). Secondly, within the understanding that the success of problem-based research can be determined by the effectiveness of actions taken in the local setting (Edwards & Talbot, 1994), the article explores how reflection of user perspectives can move the research forward. Actions taken to improve the service include incremental changes and new initiatives, as well as the development of new avenues of research, thus adding to other action research within healthcare services (Hart & Bond, 1997).

The "finger puppets":examining the use of artifacts to create liminal moments in management education

The resource review we examine here is provided by the Unemployed Philosophers Guild http://www.philosophersguild.com/Finger-Puppets/). On the company’s website they comment: “. . . we have discovered that people seem to really like the giants of our culture reduced to little finger puppets . . .” In particular, we consider the use of the “finger puppets” to generate a liminal moment (Hawkins & Edwards, 2013) in management education. Liminal moments have been described as “moments in and out of time” (Delanty, 2010, p. 31). A sense of “neither here nor there; they are betwixt and between the positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention, and ceremony” . . . that allow for the “realm of pure possibility” (Turner, 1967, p. 95). We explore the use of this resource as a liminal tool and its value to management education.

Cultural politics and the role of the action learning facilitator: Analysing the negotiation of critical action learning in the Pakistani MBA through a Bourdieusian lens:

This empirical study contributes to critical action learning research by theorizing the role of an action learning facilitator from a cultural perspective. Our article adds to critical action learning by conceptualizing the dynamics of facilitation in managing interpersonal politics within action learning sets. Employing Bourdieu’s notion of habitus as a theoretical lens, we explore both participant and facilitator accounts of action learning at three Pakistani business schools, shedding light on the culturally influenced social practices that shape their learning interactions. Through a critical interpretation of our data, we illuminate the challenges of facilitation by revealing how deeply ingrained power relations, within the context of gender and asymmetric relationships, influence participants’ ability to organize reflection. We contribute to critical action learning by theorizing the critical role of facilitator mediation in managing interpersonal and intra-group relations within the Pakistani MBA context, outlining the implications for the dynamics and facilitation of action learning.