This paper contributes to the understanding of relational aspects of leadership and followership. Our in-depth empirical study of the leader/follower relation uncovers how and why assigning team ...members into ‘leader’ and ‘follower’ positions may sometimes be a double-edged sword and lead to unintended consequences undermining both the team’s potential and member satisfaction. We report on a multi-voiced story of one team that at first looked like a well-performing one with effective, ‘good’ leadership and satisfied team members. However, a closer investigation revealed frictional understandings, unresponsiveness and dynamics of immaturization as the followers overly relied on the elected leader. Leadership seen as ‘good’ may indeed backfire and encourage satisfied, trustful followers to relax and focus on limited roles. Our study further shows the need to conduct rich empirical studies that capture views of all parties in a relation.
Philosophical Minds or Brotgelehrte? Alvesson, Mats; Einola, Katja; Schaefer, Stephan
Organization studies,
11/2022, Volume:
43, Issue:
11
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
In this essay, we discuss basic orientations and ways of being among us, the academics, especially in the context of research. Using German poet, scholar and author Friedrich Schiller’s distinction ...between ‘der philosophische Kopf’ (‘philosophical mind’) and ‘Brotgelehrte’ (‘bread-fed scholar’), we contrast ideal-typical figures in academia. We find these forgotten 18th-century characters inspirational to help us understand some troublesome contemporary developments of academics and academia and to remind us of the perhaps perennial nature of the ongoing controversies and debates. We further develop and nuance these figures and bring them to the 21st century. Like Schiller in his time, we want to highlight the importance of each of us in shaping what academia is and what it becomes. The contrast may help us think through who we are, what is driving us in our work, and how we can (re)construct ourselves in the light of dominant normalizations and templates for being in contemporary academia.
The making and unmaking of teams Einola, Katja; Alvesson, Mats
Human relations (New York),
12/2019, Volume:
72, Issue:
12
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Contemporary expert organizations rely heavily on cross-border, often temporary teams typically working through virtual means of communication. While static aspects of teams are well researched, ...there have been considerably fewer studies on team dynamics and team processes. Existing process studies tend to take a cautious, entity-based approach, emphasizing team structure as much as (or even more than) processual aspects. This article represents a shift from studying teams as entities and structures changing over time to studying teams as an on-going process. Participants engage in teaming and thus in the continued making and sometimes unmaking of teams. We report on a study of three anatomically similar, self-managed teams performing the same set of complex tasks with radically different teaming processes. With more or less successful shared sensemaking, the team members collectively create (or fail to create) not only team task outputs but also the team itself.
Is complex, ambiguous, and fluctuating social reality measurable? Sometimes yes, perhaps, but often not. At least not in the fairly straightforward way assumed by many researchers. This study is an ...ethnographic inquiry into data collection during a survey research project. Based on our observations of participants’ spontaneous thoughts and confusions as they filled in questionnaires on “leadership” and “teamwork”, we draw attention to hidden problems in much organizational research. Many respondents found measures ambiguous, irrelevant, or misleading. We (a) underline the inherently interpretative nature of research into complex organizational phenomena, (b) warn against lack of reflexivity and overreliance on existing survey instruments when we study complex social aspects of organizations, (c) identify five categories of possible problems, and (d) suggest paths towards better informed research that take context seriously.
We study authentic leadership as a prominent but problematic example of positive leadership that we use as a more general “warning” against the current fashion of excessive positivity in leadership ...studies. Without trying to cover “everything”, we critically examine the principal tenets of mainstream authentic leadership theory and reveal a number of fundamental flaws: shaky philosophical and theoretical foundations, tautological reasoning, weak empirical studies, nonsensical measurement tools, unsupported knowledge claims, and a generally simplistic and out of date view of corporate life. Even though our study focuses on authentic leadership, much of our criticism is also applicable to other popular positive leadership theories, such as transformational, servant, ethical, and spiritual leadership.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has become an important topic in business literature and strategy talk. Yet, much of this literature is normative and conceptual in nature. How organizational members ...perceive AI and the job role changes that come with it is, so far, largely unknown territory for both HR scholars and practitioners. We sought to investigate the relationship between humans and AI and conducted an in‐depth exploratory study into the co‐existence of humans and two early‐stage AI‐solutions, one for “low‐status” automation and another for “high‐status”; augmentation. We suggest that different organizational groups may engage in distinctly different sensemaking processes regarding AI, an important insight for successful HRM strategies when AI is being introduced into the workplace. Moreover, contrary to recent conceptual work, our findings indicate that AI‐enabled automation and augmentation solutions may not be detached from nor exist in tension with each other. They are deeply embedded in organizational processes and workflows for which people who co‐exist with the technologies must take ownership. Our findings, in part, go against discussions on AI “taking over” jobs or deskilling humans. We describe a more nuanced version of reality fluctuating around the various ways different organizational groups encounter different AI‐solutions in their daily work. Finally, our study warns against unconditional technological enthusiasm, managerial ignorance of the nature of work that employees undertake in different organizational groups, and a neglect of the time and effort required to successfully implement AI‐solutions that affect not only the home organization but also members of the broader ecosystem.
In this commentary, we discuss perils of authentic leadership theory (ALT) in a modest effort to help weed out one theory that has gone amiss to pave the way for new ideas. We make an argument for ...why ALT is not only wrong in a harmless manner, but it may be outright perilous to leadership scholars, scholarship and those who believe in it. It may undermine academic work, delegitimize university institutions, make false promises to organizations, and cause identity trouble through encouraging managers and others overeager to live up to the proposed formula. We argue that leadership and authenticity should be kept separate as interests and themes of study.
This article is a response to Bill Gardner and Kelly McCauley’s ‘gaslighting’ critique of our text on the perils of authentic leadership. Against gaslighting 1.0 (evilly trying to convince people to ...doubt their perceptions), we propose gaslighting 2.0 (enlightenment). We argue that organizations face severe problems and challenges that cannot be solved by motivating managers to engage in introspection and being overly preoccupied by their own authenticity. A search for one’s true self is a personal journey of inner growth and heightened self-awareness that individuals, leaders and non-leaders may engage in and find highly beneficial, but outside any notion of exercising influence or power on others to reach career objectives or corporate goals. The broad use of simple recipes with claims of overwhelming positive effects is problematic. Leadership research is often based on highly problematic measures, making most efforts to capture the core phenomenon unreliable. That many people are attracted by simplistic, positive-sounding and ego-enhancing formulas is not the same as evidence for theoretical value and relevance of a truth claim. Taking aspiration as a critical element would call for the development and study of Aspirational Authentic Leadership Theory, which would be something quite different from the static study of how managers score in terms of being true to their values, a core self, and so on. In-depth process studies of managers trying to be authentic navigating dilemmas at work could be an alternative to focus further research on.
We offer a critical inquiry into the faltering entry of an anthropomorphised AI (ro)bot, an algorithm without physical or visual form, into the workplace in a media consultancy company. While living ...a digital life in the virtual world, the ro(bot) was given a human name. We highlight the unexpected consequences the humanisation of an early form of artificial intelligence (AI) has on the affects circulating between people and the new technology and between members of different organisational groups. We argue that anthropomorphising technologies such as AI influences the affective life of organisations and amplifies existing discontent between organisational members, complicating the introduction of the technology. Focusing on human–AI interaction, our analysis reveals a rift between managers who are excited and hopeful about the future capabilities of AI and employees who are frustrated and angry about its present shortcomings. We conclude that collective affects play a central role in contemporary technology-driven organisations in which the role people play in relation to the avalanche of AI technologies is often neglected.
Scholarly and practitioner interest in the topic of authentic leadership has grown dramatically over the past two decades. Running parallel to this interest, however, have been a number of concerns ...regarding the conceptual and methodological underpinnings for research on the construct. In this exchange of letters, the cases for and against the current authentic leadership theory are made. Through a dialogue, several areas of common ground are identified, as well as focal areas where the cases for and against the utility of authentic leadership theory for scholars and practitioners sharply diverge. Suggestions for future theorizing and research that reflect areas of common ground are advanced, along with divergent perspectives on how research on authenticity and leadership should proceed. Despite their differences, both author teams found the dialogue in itself to be a healthy process for theory development and encourage constructive future dialogue on other areas where theoretical perspectives diverge.
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