Leadership-as-Practice: Theory and Application

This book develops a new paradigm in the field of leadership studies, referred to as the “leadership-as-practice” (L-A-P) movement. Its essence is its conception of leadership as occurring as a practice rather than residing in the traits or behaviours of particular individuals. A practice is a coordinative effort among participants who choose through their own rules to achieve a distinctive outcome. It also tends to encompass routines as well as problem-solving or coping skills, often tacit, that are shared by a community. Accordingly, leadership-as-practice is less about what one person thinks or does and more about what people may accomplish together. It is thus concerned with how leadership emerges and unfolds through day-to-day experience. The social and material contingencies impacting the leadership constellation – the people who are effecting leadership at any given time – do not reside outside of leadership but are very much embedded within it. To find leadership, then, we must look to the practice within which it is occurring.

The leadership-as-practice approach resonates with a number of closely related traditions, such as collective, shared, distributed, and relational leadership, that converge on leadership processes. These approaches share a line of inquiry that acknowledges leadership as a social phenomenon. The new focus opens up a plethora of research opportunities encouraging the study of social processes beyond influence, such as intersubjective agency, shared sense-making, dialogue, and co-construction of responsibilities.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Introduction To Leadership-As-Practice: Theory And Application

Part I: Background
Chapter 2. Mapping The Leadership-As-Practice Terrain: Comparative Elements
Chapter 3. The Philosophical Basis Of Leadership-As-Practice From A Hermeneutical Perspective
Chapter 4. Democratic Roots: Feeding The Multiple Dimensions Of Leadership-As-Practice

Part II: Embodied nature
Chapter 5. Leadership As Identity: A Practice-Based Exploration
Chapter 6. Who’S Leading The Way? Investigating The Contributions Of Materiality To Leadership-As-Practice
Chapter 7. Turning Leadership Inside-Out And Back-To-Front: A Dialogical-Hermeneutical Account

Part III: Social interactions
Chapter 8. Where’S The Agency In Leadership-As-Practice?
Chapter 9. Developing Leadership As Dialogic Practice
Chapter 10. Conversational Travel And The Identification Of Leadership Phenomena

Part IV: Application
Chapter 11. Gendered Relationships And The Problem Of Diversity In Leadership-As-Practice
Chapter 12. Methodologies To Discover And Challenge Leadership-As-Practice
Chapter 13. Doing Leadership-As-Practice Development