Alvesson & Spicer 2012 - Critical Leadership Studies - The Case For Critical Performativity

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Critical leadership studies: The case for critical performativity

Mats Alvesson and André Spicer
Human Relations 2012 65: 367
DOI: 10.1177/0018726711430555
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DOI: 10.1177/0018726711430555
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Mats Alvesson
Lund University, Sweden
André Spicer
City University London, UK
Abstract
Existing accounts of leadership are underpinned by two dominant approaches:
functionalist studies, which have tried to identify correlations between variables
associated with leadership; and interpretive studies, which have tried to trace out the
meaning-making process associated with leadership. Eschewing these approaches, we
turn to an emerging strand of literature that develops a critical approach to leadership.
This literature draws our attention to the dialectics of control and resistance and
the ideological aspect of leadership. However, it largely posits a negative critique of
leadership. We think this is legitimate and important, but extend this agenda. We
posit a performative critique of leadership that emphasizes tactics of circumspect care,
progressive pragmatism and searching for present potentialities. We use these tactics
to sketch out a practice of deliberated leadership that involves collective reflection on
when, what kind and if leadership is appropriate.
Keywords
critical management studies, deliberation, leadership, performativity
Introduction
Every day we find calls for more leadership in business, government, public administra-
tion and the non-profit sector. Leadership is seen as a catch-all solution for nearly any
Corresponding author:
Mats Alvesson, Department of Business Administration, School of Economics & Management,
Lund University, PO Box 7080, Sweden.
Email: [email protected]

368 Human Relations 65(3)
problem, irrespective of context. This astonishing spread suggests that leadership may
have overtaken management as one of the dominant social myths of our time (Gemmill
and Oakley, 1992), or – and perhaps more likely – it may only indicate an interest in
re-labelling managerial work to make it sound more fashionable and impressive. In this
article we argue that we need to move beyond naive celebration or earnest interpretations
of leadership. Responding to Zoller and Fairhurst’s (2007: 1354) call for ‘more dialogue
between leadership and critical researchers’, we develop a critique of leadership. This
involves recognizing many of the negative consequences implicit in leadership theory
and practice that are all too often masked or even wilfully ignored in today’s leadership
obsessed culture. While we are certainly sympathetic to calls for less blind faith in the
curative powers of leadership (e.g. Gemmill and Oakley, 1992; Meindl, 1995; Pfeffer,
1977), we are also suspicious of approaches rejecting the value of notions of leadership.
Even though ideals like participation, emancipation and resistance are important and
often need to be encouraged and strengthened, few people would like to work in organi-
zations dominated entirely by these ideals. Fewer would like to be clients and customers
of such organizations. Of course, management – controlling through structures, proce-
dures, and rules – remains an important part of organizational life (Mintzberg, 2004).
Nonetheless, leadership – influencing the thinking, values and emotions of followers,
rather than, and distinct from, management, working directly with instructions, struc-
tures or results as means of influence – is arguably a potentially valuable element in
making organizations function.1 Sometimes ‘substitutes for leadership’ (Kerr and
Jermier, 1978), such as management and professionalism, do not completely work. Some
degree of authority is necessary at times (Sennett, 1980). Leadership may have a role to
play in these contexts. After all, some elements of leadership can be pivotal in pursuing
the goals of autonomy and emancipation as a collective project (Zoller and Fairhurst,
2007). However, placing a messianic faith in leaders and leadership needs to be critically
addressed. We will argue that the alternative to the celebration and naturalization
of leadership is not necessarily an equally naive rejection of leadership. Rather, we
suggest it is important to develop a suspicious engagement with the concept leader-
ship. Such an engagement asks how valuable relations of authority can be produced,
revised and limited.
Building on existing critical studies of leadership (e.g. Collinson, 2005, 2011; Ford
et al., 2008; Zoller and Fairhurst, 2007), we outline an approach that simultaneously
recognizes the potentially negative consequence of leadership as well as the potentially
positive value of functional exercises of authority. We agree with Western (2008) that
‘critical theorists must go beyond identifying “bad leadership practice” and aim to
create and support successful ethical frameworks for leadership’ (p. 21; see also Fryer,
forthcoming). For us, this involves a performative engagement with the concept to draw
out the emancipatory potential of leadership. Broadly put, this entails recognizing the
limits of leadership at the same time as we consider the emancipatory potential lurking
with potential uses of leadership ideas. This is a difficult balance to strike, and certainly
does not allow universal solutions. Rather, it requires detailed and situationally specific
engagement with leadership in action. This calls for combining and switching between
performative positions (which largely accept present conditions and constraints) and
critical positions (which question existing conditions, emphasize independent thinking

Alvesson and Spicer 369
and aim for less constraining social relations). Our approach primarily aims at a novel
theoretical perspective on leadership, but we also hope to inspire new approaches to
education and intervention.
Our performative critique of leadership, makes three contributions. First, by propos-
ing a way of questioning leadership, we seek to move beyond both the naive celebrations
of leadership as well as more nuanced interpretive studies. We argue that a critical
approach provides a way of not taking current accounts of leadership for granted. We
certainly sympathize with Pfeffer’s (1977) claim that if one wants to understand what is
happening in organizations, leadership is often a bad place to start. However, at the same
time, we hope to not simply conceptually do away with leadership. Rather, we aim to
articulate a more limited form of leadership that is compatible with more emancipatory
goals. Second, by providing a more affirmative version of critique we hope to move
beyond existing critical studies of leadership that express a largely negative view of
leadership that associates it closely with domination (e.g. Alvesson, 2010; Collinson,
2011; Gemmill and Oakley, 1992; Tourish and Pinnington, 2002) or lack of real impact
or significance above the purely symbolic (e.g. Pfeffer, 1977). Instead, we suggest the
need to reconstruct ideas of leadership. Finally, we hope to foster investigation of
alternative modes of leadership that already exist within contemporary organizations.
To make this argument, we proceed as follows. We begin by tracing out the existing
functionalist and interpretive approaches to literature. Eschewing these approaches,
we turn to an emerging strand of literature that develops a critical approach. This work
attends to the dialectics of control and resistance (Collinson, 2005) and the ideological
aspect of leadership (Alvesson and Sveningsson, 2012). Such studies underscore the
case for questioning leadership as a normalizing template. However, they largely posit
a negative critique of leadership by pointing out more problematic features of leader-
ship discourse such as ideological commitment, supporting domination, legitimating
elites and boosting managerial identity. This means they largely avoid considering the
emancipatory potential of leadership. We supplement this agenda by positing a per-
formative critique of leadership. We then use this performative critique of leadership
to offer the notion of deliberated leadership. We conclude the article by drawing out
what this means for future studies of leadership.
Conceptualizing leadership
There is notoriously little agreement about how exactly we might define leadership.
Two-thirds of leadership texts do not define the subject (Rost, cited in Palmer and
Hardy, 2000), while the other third tend to provide quite different definitions. Our
impression is that this has not changed much in recent years and that the increasing
popularity of using the idea of leadership has reinforced conceptual confusion and
endemic vagueness. Some more recent commentaries point toward a more positive
outlook for leadership studies with the introduction of theories of ‘distributed leader-
ship’ (e.g. Gronn, 2002: 423–424). However, the quest to find leadership that is distrib-
uted throughout the organization has only made matters worse. It means nearly anything
and everything can be viewed as leadership. According to this approach, influencing
your boss (‘upwards leadership’), working with a co-worker (‘peer-leadership’) and

even motivating yourself (‘self leadership’) are all kinds of leadership. As the concept
has been applied to increasingly varied processes it has become ever more blunted
(Alvesson and Spicer, 2011: 18–19).
To avoid this conceptual blunting, a useful place to start is Yukl’s (1989) suggestion
that leadership ‘include(s) influencing task objectives and strategies, influencing
commitment and compliance in task behavior to achieve these objectives, influencing
group maintenance and identification, and influencing the culture of an organization’
(p. 253). Although this suggestion might begin to capture a widespread sense of what
leadership means, ambiguities remain. Does leadership mean influencing all aspects
mentioned or is it sufficient to have an influence of one of all these ‘variables’? How
is leadership different from other aspects like organizational structures and cultures,
which also influence the mentioned outcomes? Do we only talk about a positive influ-
ence, or is resistance also part of the picture? Leadership is not easy to specify and
definitions do not necessarily say that much. There are wild differences in people’s
assumptions about what leadership is and whether ‘it’ actually happens in organiza-
tions (Alvesson and Sveningsson, 2003a; Lakomski, 1999). This ambiguity has
created – but is also reinforced by – a glut of perspectives, theories, models and typolo-
gies. There are many ways of carving up this morass of approaches (e.g. House and
Aditya, 1997; Parry and Bryman, 2006). One way of considering this large literature is
to identify some of the deeper underlying paradigmatic assumptions the literature is
based on. These are the shared and often implicit ontological, epistemological and
political assumptions that underpin research (Alvesson and Sandberg, 2011). The
broader field of organization and management studies has long recognized the underly-
ing paradigmatic assumptions underpinning research in the field (e.g. Burrell and
Morgan, 1979). In contrast, leadership studies has been conspicuously quiet about its
own underlying paradigmatic assumptions (Gronn and Ribbins, 1996). However, some
have highlighted the dominance of a ‘positivist’ paradigm and the recent emergence of
an alternative interpretive or social constructivist paradigm (e.g. Alvesson, 1996;
Fairhurst and Grant, 2010). We would like to take this argument further. Following
Habermas’s (1971) idea of cognitive interests, which has been applied in studies of
management (e.g. Alvesson and Willmott, 2012), we would like to suggest that there
are three broad sets of paradigmatic assumptions underpinning the study of leadership:
functionalist, interpretive and critical. In what follows, we argue that these assump-
tions profoundly colour how leadership has been thought about.
Functionalist assumptions
Functionalism assumes that leadership is an objective phenomenon amenable to scien-
tific inquiry and is primarily grounded in shared interests of system functioning and
survival (Burrell and Morgan, 1979). Functionalist studies approach leadership as a
fairly stable object that exists out there in the world and can be tracked down with the
help of the correct analytical tools. These studies have sought to identify which traits are
correlated with leadership, such as physical and psychological characteristics (for a
review see: House and Aditya, 1997: 410–419). They have also investigated leadership

behavior such as task centric and people centric styles (1997: 419–421). A third broad
focus has been the situation in which leadership takes place (e.g. Fiedler, 1967). Fourth,
they have considered a leader’s ability to formulate visions and transform their follow-
ers (Bass, 1985; Bennis and Nanus, 1985; Hartnell and Walumbwa, 2011; Sashkin,
2004). Finally, researchers have begun to move their focus away from the role of the
leader to that of the followers (Bligh, 2011; Hollander, 1992); some of the follower
research coming closer to interpretive approaches (e.g. Meindl, 1995). While each of
these approaches tend to focus on different explanatory variables, they all share similar
underlying assumptions. Ontologically, they assume that leadership is something with
an independent existence out there in the world and is located in a web of causal
relationships. Epistemologically, they assume leadership can be known in a value-free
way through what is claimed to be the rigorous application of the scientific method.
Politically, they aim to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of current modes of
leadership.
The dominance of functionalist assumptions about leadership was rarely ques-
tioned for some time. However, some working within this tradition began to harbor
uncertainties and doubts in the late 1970s and onwards (e.g. Andriessen and Drenth,
1984; Barker, 1997). For instance, Sashkin and Garland (1979) claim that ‘by any
objective measure, the study of leadership has failed to produce generally accepted,
practically useful, and widely applied scientific knowledge’ (p. 65). According to Yukl
(1989), ‘[m]ost of the theories are beset with conceptual weaknesses and lack strong
empirical support. Several thousand empirical studies have been conducted on leader-
ship effectiveness, but most of the results are contradictory and inconclusive’ (p. 253).
This uncertainty has been complemented by even more trenchant criticisms (e.g.
Alvesson, 1996; Lakomski, 1999). Functionalist studies assume it is possible to iden-
tify a distinct, coherent essence of leadership. Critics argued this is difficult because
‘leadership’ actually refers to an unwieldy bundle of apparently unrelated activities
(Alvesson and Sveningsson, 2003a, 2003b; Bresnen, 1995; Carroll and Levy, 2008).
The ambiguity associated with leadership has led some to argue that leadership ‘exists
only as a perception . . . [and is] not a viable scientific construction’ (Calder, 1977:
202, emphasis in original). A further limitation of functionalist assumptions is that
they reify leadership by treating it as a thing that can be pinned down and measured.
Approaching leadership as a reified object means researchers are blinded by the
dynamic processes of actually doing leadership (Wood, 2005). Third, functionalist
studies do not take into account the local meaning attributed to leadership by different
actors (Kelly, 2008; Meindl et al., 1985). This means that functionalist studies are
blind to how the construct of leadership may mean radically different things in differ-
ent situations and what is seen as leadership and what is not is often an open question.
These criticisms led some leadership researchers to conclude that if we wanted to
more persuasively and insightfully capture ‘leadership’, it is necessary to drop func-
tionalist assumptions and explore the meaning-laden aspects of leadership and how
the presumed leaders and the led actually understand acts and relations (Alvesson,
1996). Put another way, these studies advocated a turn toward a set of assumptions we
might associate with interpretivism.

Interpretive assumptions
The shift toward interpretive assumptions involves considering leadership as socially
constructed through actors beginning to ‘see’ a set of activities as leadership (Fairhurst
and Grant, 2010). This calls for qualitative methodological approaches such as ethnogra-
phy, in-depth case studies and various forms of linguistic analysis that sensitize us to
multiple understandings of leadership (for reviews see: Bryman, 2004; Fairhurst,
2007). Interpretive approaches to leadership have come in a range of formats. Some have
looked at symbolic leadership and how leaders try to influence frames, cognitions and
meanings. This occurs when ‘leadership is realized in the process whereby one or more
individuals succeed in attempting to frame and define the reality of others’ (Smircich and
Morgan, 1982: 258; see also Fairhurst, 2005; Ladkin, 2010; Sandberg and Targama
2007). Another strand of literature has investigated the processes of the social construc-
tions (e.g. Fairhurst, 2008; Fairhurst and Grant, 2010; Uhl-Bien, 2006). For some this
has involved considering how leadership ‘continuously emerges’ from the ongoing
interactions between superiors and subordinates (Wood, 2005). Others have looked at
leadership as a language game by considering how and when the term is used (Kelly,
2008; Pondy, 1978). Still others have investigated the clashing construction and language
that is used to interpret and understand acts of leadership (Alvesson and Sveningsson,
2003b). While these studies exhibit some important differences, they all share a common
set of assumptions. Ontologically, leadership is thought to be constructed through an
ongoing processes of inter-subjective understanding. Epistemologically, leadership is a
process that can only be accessed through examining these value-laden understandings
and interpretations that actors use to understand leadership. Many interpretive studies
seek to surface different understandings of leadership in the hope of supporting the
creation of increased shared meaning.
Interpretive assumptions have opened up new vistas by highlighting how leadership
is constructed, as well as the ambiguities and uncertainties associated with it. However,
interpretive approaches miss some important issues. First, they often accept the dis-
course of leadership as presented by the respondents. This makes it difficult to question
presuppositions underpinning leadership claims. It does not allow us to clarify what are
the conditions of possibility for very different people – from CEOs to vicars to super-
market supervisors – to want to suddenly identify themselves as ‘leaders’, eager to do
‘leadership’ (see O’Reilly and Reed, 2010). Arguably, there are strong social and ideo-
logical forces behind this urge to see oneself as a ‘leader’. Second, interpretive studies
miss concerns with power and domination. Many emphasize positive aspects of leader-
ship, suggesting ‘that leadership happens when a community develops and uses, over
time, shared agreements to create results that have collective value’ (Ospina and
Sorensen, 2006: 188); or they talk about ‘relational leading’, which is about creating
opportunities for dialogue but also about the ‘need for being respectful, for having “a
heart” and for people to be able to “express themselves”’ as well as being ‘morally
responsible’ (Cunliffe and Eriksen, 2010: 16). Here, leadership, at least of the right
type, is assumed to be, by definition, good and free from any constraints. Such formula-
tions belie an underlying assumption that if only it is possible to create the right
conditions for inter-subjective understanding (respecting the views of the other, having

a heart . . .), then it is possible to overcome antagonisms and inequalities. However,

critics argue that leadership dynamics by their very nature are ‘unequal’ in one way or
another (Harter et al., 2006), and the possibility of coming to some kind of agreement
around different understandings of leadership is illusory. This is because power differ-
entials often mean that one person is in a stronger position to impose his/her definition
of what good leadership is, particularly if there is strong institutional and ideological
support for this definition, normalizing leader-follower distinctions and relations.
Finally interpretive studies find it difficult to account for some of the non-discursive
aspects such as economic, human, cultural and social capital (Spillane et al., 2003),
which place one person in a more conducive position to engage in leadership while
another is unable to do so. To put this another way, interpretive studies of leadership do
not allow us to get at the underpinning social structures that mean one person can be
assigned a leadership role while another becomes a follower (Ford et al., 2008). Rather,
they only try to get as close as possible to the meanings, experiences and/or language
use of people involved and tend to accept rather than critically explore these.
Critical assumptions
To address these shortcomings, a limited range of researchers has developed critical
approaches to leadership (e.g. Alvesson and Sveningsson, 2012; Calás and Smircich,
1991; Collinson, 2005, 2011; Ford et al., 2008; Gemmill and Oakley, 1992; Grint, 2005a;
Harding et al., 2011; Knights and Willmott, 1992; Western, 2008). Often these research-
ers draw on insights and methodological protocols associated with interpretive approaches
such as in-depth qualitative methods and a focus on processes of social construction
(Fairhurst and Grant, 2010). Critical scholars do not just seek to understand how leader-
ship is given meaning in different situations (as interpretivists do). They seek to go fur-
ther by examining the patterns of power and domination associated with leadership, and
relate it to broader ideological and institutional conditions (e.g. Alvesson et al., 2009;
Fournier and Grey, 2000). They also build on feminism by emphasizing gendered notions
of leadership supporting and legitimizing male domination (Alvesson and Billing, 2009;
Calás and Smircich, 1991). Critical studies try to denaturalize leadership (by showing it
is the outcome of an ongoing process of social construction and negotiation), study it
reflexively (by reflecting on how the researcher and her methods are implicated in
producing the phenomena of leadership), and treat it non-performatively (by breaking
away from attempts to optimize leadership).
These three broad commitments are only loosely abided by in critical studies of lead-
ership (but for a fairly strict application see: Ford and Harding, 2007). However, all
question whether leadership is an overwhelmingly positive and necessary thing. Instead,
they seek to uncover the ‘darker side’ of leadership. Some see it exclusively in terms of
inequality, power, discipline and control. For instance, Collinson (2011) emphasizes how
‘critical perspectives view control and resistance as mutually reinforcing, ambiguous and
potentially contradictory processes. Although control can stimulate resistance, it may
also discipline, shape and restrict the very opposition it sometimes provokes’ (p. 190).
He adds that a key aspect is ‘the potential for conflict and consent’ (p. 190). Some
have focused their critiques at particular modes of leadership. For instance, Tourish

and Pennington (2002) sought to uncover the less seemly side of ‘transformational
leadership’ by drawing parallels with behaviour in cults. Others have gone further and
argued that leadership per se is highly problematic. These ‘anti-leadership’ researchers
approach ‘the very idea of leadership as anathema’ (Gronn, 2002: 427). Many of the
‘anti-leadership’ scholars that Gronn gestures towards question the usefulness of lead-
ership as a scientific construct (e.g. Pfeffer, 1977; Kerr and Jermier, 1978); but there are
others of a more explicitly critical bent who have pointed out the negative effects our
attachment to leadership can have, including de-personalization and domination (e.g.
Marcuse, 2008), the propagation of conformity and blind commitment (Kets de Vries,
1980), and individuals relinquishing their autonomy (Gemmill and Oakley, 1992).
These darker themes are picked up by Calás and Smircich (1991), who note that the
idea of leadership often presents a very heroic and masculine image that is usually very
seductive to both the leader as well as the led.
A key aspect of the power of leadership is that it constructs a particular authorized
language and an idealized subject position of being a ‘leader’. This allows managers to
experience their often very mundane everyday activities as something particularly gran-
diose and exciting (Alvesson and Sveningsson, 2003b; Ford et al., 2008). Parts of the
leadership literature echo Hollywood mythology about heroism and morally superior
persons (Alvesson, 2010). Much of this literature might lead us to the conclusion that
leadership is a particularly seductive and even dominant discourse that has spread
throughout organizations (Ford and Harding, 2007). Leadership then becomes con-
nected with power and domination (Collinson, 2011; Knights and Willmott, 1992).
However, as we have already noted, there is considerable uncertainty and perhaps fragil-
ity around the concept of leadership. Grint (2005a) points out that leadership is an essen-
tially contested concept, which different groups seek to define in other conflicting and
contradictory ways. This means there are ongoing struggles around who is regarded as
being a leader, where leadership is seen to be done or needed, how leadership is thought
to be done, and what exactly leadership is thought to be. The essentially contested nature
of leadership can loosen the grip of leaders and make relations less one-sided and more
symmetrical. This is addressed by Collinson (2005) who points out the ‘simultaneous
interdependencies and asymmetries between leaders and followers as well as their
ambiguous and potentially contradictory conditions, processes and consequences’ (p.
1422). Here Collinson recognized that power exercised by leaders can often give rise to
forms of resistance by followers that they hope to quell.
The emerging body of critical studies of leadership has significantly advanced our
knowledge of the dark side of leadership. However, critical approaches also have their
own problems. The most obvious problem is that they can overestimate the power of
leadership. According to Collinson (2005) critical authors ‘retain a rather deterministic
feel that underestimates followers’ agency and resistance’ (p. 1426). In many situations,
leadership discourse may be quite pervasive but it remains comparatively weak. Close-up
studies of leadership-saturated situations often point out the fragilities, ambiguities and
insecurities around leadership discourses (Alvesson and Spicer, 2011; Lundholm, 2011).
For instance, Sveningsson and Alvesson (2003) have highlighted that managers often
struggle to adopt the identity of ‘leader’ in their day-to-day activities, which are usually
full of administrative tasks. Often subordinates raise objections to the manager’s ideas,

suggestions and instructions, partly based on their detailed knowledge about work and
practical circumstances (Lundholm, 2011). In addition, Ford and Harding (2007) point
out that the uncertainties around leadership discourse provide potential space for
reflexive consideration and engagement around the topic.
As well as sometimes assuming leadership is more powerful than it often is, critical
studies of leadership tend to ignore how the rejection or critique of leadership is some-
times implicated in strengthening leadership discourse. Sennett (1980) points out that
rejection of authority is sometimes paradoxically driven by a desire to have authority
figures reaffirm their recognition of us. Of course, leadership and authority is not the
same thing. There are other authorities than leaders, and leadership involves more than
exercise of authority. Nonetheless leadership is an (increasingly) important embodiment
of authority – particularly in organizational settings where powerful actors seek to justify
their claims to authority over others with reference to discourses of ‘leadership’. Attempts
to resist the authority of leadership do not always escape from such relations. They may
paradoxically actually strengthen our dependence upon them. For instance, Sennett
(1980: 36–39) discusses a group of accountants who lambast their supervisor in the
workplace. He argues that the accountants may not be seeking to escape from the sym-
bolic authority of the leader because they rely on this leader as a symbolic anchor for
their own identity work. Despite what appear to be surface attempts to distance them-
selves from their boss (complaining he/she is weak, etc.), the boss still remains a crucial
source of recognition (albeit in a negative mode). Far from being a relief, removing this
(hated) boss from the accountant’s life would actually be experienced as a psychic prob-
lem. Suddenly the employee would no longer have a figure to ‘act out’ against and to
recognize them (albeit in a negative way). The result might be the collapse of a follower
identity when faced with the anxiety of how to make sense of themselves once the (hated)
leader has withdrawn.
The final limitation of critical studies of leadership is that they can ignore how
attempts to resist (a particular kind of) leadership often also require or demand leader-
ship in themselves. By this we mean that leadership can actually be a vital aspect in
facilitating resistance (Levay, 2010), and perhaps even transforming relations of domi-
nation (Zoller and Fairhurst, 2007). ‘Resistance Leadership’ can be an important way for
nascent forms of individual and covert resistance to become more overt and pronounced
forms of collective resistance. If we bring these critiques together, the limitations of
existing ‘anti-leadership’ critiques of leadership become clear. Certainly, critical studies
of leadership remain diverse and many do not wholly reject the idea of leadership (e.g.
Ford and Harding, 2007; Fryer, forthcoming; Western, 2008). Furthermore, not all criti-
cal studies are equally culpable of the criticisms mentioned above. However, we would
like to argue that the emerging body of critical studies of leadership needs to avoid these
potential traps. Critical studies of leadership are certainly needed to explore the ‘dark
side’ of leadership; but, we would like to argue that it is also necessary to recognize
some of the potential within the concept of leadership. Critical work assumes that lead-
ership is associated with mainly ‘bad’ things such as elitism, legitimation, domination,
asymmetrical relations, and constructions that privilege white, male, middle-class peo-
ple. Fairhurst and Grant (2010) note a divide between ‘emancipatory’ studies of leader-
ship, which radically question the idea, and ‘pragmatic interventionists’, who seek to

reconstruct the power relations associated with leadership. Instead of simply choosing
between ‘emancipation’ or ‘pragmatic interventionism’, we argue it is possible to navigate
a tricky course between them. In what follows, we would like to argue that the concept
of ‘critical performativity’ may provide a map for navigating this course. Such critique
involves an attempt to chart a way forward by taking the (emancipatory) criticism of
leadership seriously without falling into the traps of ‘anti-leadership’ and ultimately
reducing or neglecting the possibility of pragmatic intervention.
A critical performative approach to leadership

To supplement existing critiques of leadership, we would like to turn to the notion of
‘critical performativity’ (Spicer et al., 2009). This is a response to the non- or anti-
performativity of critical management studies (CMS) (Fournier and Grey, 2000) that
have informed emerging critical studies of leadership (e.g. Ford and Harding, 2007:
477). Broadly put, critical performativity seeks to introduce ‘a more affirmative move-
ment along-side the negative movement that seems to predominate in CMS today’
(Spicer et al., 2009: 538). It is critical because it radically questions widely accepted
assumptions and aims to minimize domination. It is performative as it opens up new
ways of understanding and engaging with the discourse with the ambition to have some
effects on practice. This stands in contrast to many existing accounts of performativity
in critical theory that tend to see it as ‘inscribing knowledge within a means-end calcu-
lation’ (Fournier and Grey, 2000: 17). The concept of critical performativity therefore
aims to combine intellectual stimulation through radical questioning with an ambition
to use discourse in such a way that has an impact, both in terms of emancipatory effect
and practical organizational work.
We think critical performativity provides a way of reworking discourses and prac-
tices of leadership (see also Crevani et al., 2010; Ford et al., 2008). A common point in
existing work in the area is that the ‘recitive’ nature of leadership opens up scope for
critical investigation and reformulation. However, existing work refrains from drawing
out the practices this might involve. We would like to address shortcomings by putting
the concept of critical performativity (Spicer et al., 2009) to work.
We suggest a range of possible tactics including: Affirmation, through working in
close proximity to one’s object of critique; an ethic of care, which involves taking the
concerns of those studied seriously; a pragmatism orientation, which entails working
with already established discourses through limited questioning; a focus on potentialities
through uncovering alternatives; and a normative stance, through clarifying one’s ideals
(Spicer et al., 2009: 545–554). In various situations ‘some of the elements may be more
or less relevant’ (p. 545). Building on this framework, we articulate three tactics we think
are particularly useful for developing a critical performative account of leadership:
Circumspect Care, Progressive Pragmatism and uncovering Present Potentialities.
The first tactic for developing a critical performative conception of leadership is cir-
cumspect care. This involves an attempt to care for the views of how people actually
doing leadership understand and engage in the process rather than imposing the researcher
views (Fairhurst, 2009). For studies of leadership, this involves taking seriously the

voice of managers (leaders) and their subordinates (co-workers, followers) and possibly
other stakeholders (top managers, clients/patients/students or whoever is supposed to
benefit from the organization); but it is also circumspect insofar as there is a kind of criti-
cal hesitance in accepting the views initially espoused by a respondent. This circumspect
care involves taking respondents seriously while at the same time challenging their
views. To do this, the researcher might look for the ambiguities and break-downs in
leadership. Doing this helps to get at the ‘voice’ of leaders in less prescribed ways (e.g.
Carroll and Levy, 2008; Jackall, 1988; Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2003; Watson, 1994).
This requires us to temporarily suspend our theoretical assumptions about leadership and
its pathologies. For instance, by suspending assumptions about the importance of leader-
ship, some researchers have noticed that in ‘knowledge intensive firms’ many ‘followers’
essentially self-managed themselves or engaged in processes of peer monitoring (e.g.
Alvesson and Blom, 2011; Rennstam, 2007).
To allow the kind of ‘active and subversive intervention’ required by critical
performativity, we suggest a second tactic of progressive pragmatism. This entails
pragmatically, but critically, working with already accepted discourses. This pragma-
tism should be progressive insofar as it seeks to reconceptualize and bend existing
concepts and practices of leadership in the service of broadly emancipatory goals.
Rather than just presenting a strong and one-sided case against the ‘dark side of lead-
ership’, a pragmatic approach may acknowledge that a careful use of organizational
forms and practices that reduce discretion, participation, and dialogue may occasionally
be beneficial. This requires us to acknowledge the potential benefits that might actually
accrue through traditional kinds of leadership found in hierarchies and bureaucracies
(Du Gay, 1999). In addition, it would also require us to see the pathologies of more
‘liberated’ modes of leadership (Ashcraft, 2001; Barker, 1993; Ekman, 2010). A per-
formative critique of management would negotiate between the tyranny of structure-
lessness (Freeman, 1972) brought about by autonomy and ‘soft’ (laissez-faire)
leadership and the tyranny of more hierarchical leadership.
To begin to put these alternatives into practice, we would like to suggest a third tactic
of engaging with present potentialities. This entails moving beyond a critique of contem-
porary practices of leadership that actually exist to create a sense of what could be. To do
this, critics should draw out the potential or latent power and possibilities that exist (even
in germinal form) in present ‘leadership configurations’ (Gronn, 2009). For instance
post-heroic views of leadership ask us to look at a multitude of actors doing leadership
on a temporal basis. These activities are directed not only downwards but also sideways
and upwards in the organizational hierarchy (Gronn, 2002; Uhl-Bien and Pillai, 2007). In
addition, we might explore new practices of (anti-)leadership and management such as
professionalism, committees, peer reviews, and bureaucratic control (Kerr and Jermier,
1978; Rennstam, 2007). One could also develop a conception of leadership as delega-
tion, whereby members of a collective give a person a mandate to exercise authority
under certain preconditions during a specified time period (Fryer, forthcoming; Klein
et al., 2006). This is already the case in some professional service firms (Greenwood and
Empson, 2003), orchestras (Sennett, 1980), hospitals (Klein et al., 2006), emergency
response teams (Grint, 2005b) and craft organizations (Sennett, 2008).

Applying critical performativity: An empirical illustration

To get a better sense of how critical performativity might actually change how we study
and engage with leadership, let us now turn to an illustrative case drawn from an ongoing
research project on leadership in knowledge intensive firms. Kelvin Goodman is a mid-
dle manager at a High Tech firm. During the interview he repeats that he wants his co-
workers to be self-managed and not need explicit direction. He views leadership as
selling new ideas, rather than telling people what to do. For Kelvin the leader can be seen
as a marketer:
I don’t think self-management means less demand on the time of the manager. You then have
to market issues. I did not say to my people that this is not how we should do it but I rather sold
the idea. And that takes time. And . . . you don’t buy coke only because you’ve seen an ad, but
it needs to be hammered in. It is not certain that from a managerial point you become much
more efficient. But it is like planned economy versus market economy, as a manager you can’t
predict so it becomes much more efficient if decisions are made down there (i.e. by workers).
You become so much more flexible and adaptable. That is my picture.
Goodman is in charge of a newly formed group of sales engineers who design new
modes of working. This has created certain difficulties:
My biggest leadership challenge, at the moment, is the sales engineers. It is a new role in the
firm. And they are four very strong individuals. And, the leadership that I have conducted there
has not really worked, I am not certain why, they each have their own picture that needs to be
synchronized. And it works badly. Strong individuals that are supposed to work together and no
leader, it works badly. They have so much respect for each other, in a positive sense, that they
never arrive at a decision. I saw that. I had another group that now is distributed, product
specialists, who worked with the account managers. I worked with them for a year, but it did
not work. ‘You run your job very well, but you don’t move further’. And then I try to ask
questions like ‘how should your processes look like, what will you do to get further?’ I did have
the time and energy for this . . . I have not found anything, how to steer this group . . . They are
capable individuals and they do what they should, but the group does not really move ahead
because there is no obvious leader that pulls them further. This is really my role, but it does not
correspond to the kind of leadership I have. But I’ve asked them, ‘how do we do it?’ The thing
is that three of them are studying an MBA, so I told them that now you have a chance to work
with a real group. But I think this is the real challenge. How the hell can the group make
progress and make decisions when there is no clear leader? And they accepted this challenge.
But so far I have not seen the result. This is fairly new, we’ll see, it is thrilling.
Normally we should be extremely cautious in accepting interview statements of man-

agers (and of other people as well for that matter) as valid empirical material. There
are all sorts of problems: the manager’s understanding of the situation may be bad; he/
she may engage in impression management and other forms of selective and self-
promoting recall during the interview (Alvesson, 2011; Silverman, 2006). Others
involved may perceive the situation differently. In this case, however, ethnographic
work gave some support for Kelvin’s account given during the interview. Others in the
firm indicate that hierarchies are not pronounced and managers do not interfere in the

work of their subordinates very frequently. More significantly, we don’t use the case
as robust evidence, but for illustrative purposes. We show how a critical leadership
view can be used to produce interpretations and ask questions for further inquiry. We
do not focus specifically on the manager and his values, traits and skills, but proceed
from his presentation of the situation and try to add to his reasoning on how organizing
issues can be handled.
Approaching this interview with a degree of circumspect care involves willingness to
express ideas and interpretations, which the researcher may judge to be helpful and rel-
evant for those concerned. In this case we can start by accepting Goodman’s view as
honest and well-intentioned and realize that he is faced with a complex situation that has
no easy solutions. ‘Selling issues’ may be viewed as not just aggressive salesmanship
but a metaphor for arguing and appealing. His claim that with ‘strong individuals that
are supposed to work together and with no leader, it works badly’ may not just express
an unreasonable belief in the power of ‘leadership’ (although it is worth considering this
possibility). Instead, it may express a genuine frustration at the lack of progress owing
to people not being able to produce effective work relationships. Nevertheless, as well
as caring for this view, it is also vital that we are circumspect about it. For instance, it
might be possible to compare Goodman’s views to others: is he viewed as selling ideas
by followers/co-workers? Do they view themselves as customers/recipients of the ideas
‘sold to them’? Is this selling responded to in the same way that we might respond to a
professional sales person (i.e. with a dose of skepticism and resistance)? Are there other
possible managerial/leadership positions and actions that co-workers would see as
more important? Perhaps Goodman’s appeal for more leadership is actually under-
pinned by manager(ialist) thinking (‘whatever the situation, a lot of leadership is called
for’). By being circumspect we might ask whether the opposite could be argued: strong
individuals need something more than just leadership – perhaps humility or skills in
democratic decision-making. So rather than seeing the case as expressing managerialist
assumptions (and a suitable topic for ‘conventional’ CMS critique), adopting an
approach of circumspect care would entail exploring the constraints faced by Goodman
in thinking through the situation.
Following a progressive pragmatic approach involves developing insights that are
adapted to context and can inspire action under current conditions and constraints. In the
interview extract, Goodman claims that messages need to be ‘hammered in’ to his sub-
ordinates and he draws a parallel with a Coke advertisement. From a CMS perspective,
this sounds authoritarian and echoes the power asymmetry between large advertisers
and their audiences. Following a progressive pragmatic approach, we would need to
start by asking whether critical questioning is relevant in this particular case? If so, one
might also suggest alternative metaphors and analogies. What would co-workers say
about being ‘hammered at’? One may carefully, in a critical spirit, consider hammering
as domination here (one authority figure having the insight and the task is getting others
to accept it), and lack of responsiveness as ‘progressive’ resistance. But this could be
balanced against the possibility that change or focused attention sometimes call for per-
sistence and repeated efforts. This needs to be checked with others, especially subordi-
nates but perhaps also colleagues and others stakeholders. If the hammering is targeted
against (thoughtful) resistance, rather than just habits, forgetfulness, confusion and/or

short-term focus, then we must critically scrutinize the manager’s understanding.

Alternatively, a discussion in the workplace around ‘hammering in the message’ between
the manager and the subordinate could take place. For instance, they might consider what
their views on this metaphor and activity are? From a pragmatic point of view, hammer-
ing may be seen as efficient managerial action. To manage may often mean to keep ham-
mering away. People may be forgetful, conservatively stick to their habits, or generally
be caught in their work tasks and marginalize things that are not directly salient for them
in their everyday work. The manager may have a better overview, more time, informa-
tion and skills to think about long-term issues or in some respects better insights than the
others. The critical element in our approach here would call for at least occasional dia-
logues on the relevance and value of the way leadership is framed in this organization
(‘hammering in’). Is this an expression of domination or grounded in shared concerns
about legitimate managerial interventions? Perhaps the metaphor could be radically
challenged. More is called for than some indications of monological communication and
the perpetuation of the idea of the manager being superior in terms of knowledge and the
subordinates being ignorant, slow or reluctant and therefore in need of being ‘hammered
at’. The views of subordinates need to be expressed and carefully considered (in line with
the idea of communicative action, Fryer, forthcoming; Habermas, 1984).
Articulating present potentialities in this case involves identifying space for alterna-
tive actions and ideals that already exist as germinal possibilities. In the case we already
find some efforts in this direction. Goodman tries to appeal to group members to actively
cultivate their own knowledge and ambition to solve issues. His reference to the MBA –
and the identity of an educated person capable of dealing with group problems – can be
seen as an appeal to alternatives to leadership such as analytical distancing from the
situation and, at best, reflexivity. Goodman’s vocabulary indicates some other possible
relevant ideals. For instance he appeals to post-heroic ideas of the flexible turn-taking in
leadership and follower positions, quite independent of formal hierarchy (Gronn, 2002).
The research might also seek to expand Goodman’s vocabulary by pointing out other
possibilities that are already present. For instance, instead of leadership, it might be
possible to flexibly draw upon a variety of resources for guidance, support and advice-
giving within the organization (and also outside it). Goodman, together with others
involved, might also be encouraged to think about organizing rather than leadership here
(Pye, 2005). The aim of widening the vocabulary here would be to broaden the set of
reference points for organizing work. This would entail us seeing leadership as only one
mode of organizing that is potentially available in this situation.
We hope this brief case illustrates the kind of research questions and lines of rea-
soning that a critical leadership approach could take. This could be useful for both
conventional research, action research or even ‘normal’ organizational practice.
Accomplishing flexible, productive and communicatively grounded forms of leader-
ship, if and when needed, would be a possibility. It might involve invoking a senior
person doing ‘leadership on demand’, i.e. subordinates asking for leadership (Alvesson
and Blom, 2011). We hope this would encourage a search for a balance between auton-
omy, collective responsibility and the accomplishment of organizationally productive,
outcome-oriented relations and actions. The use of hierarchy and leadership could
then be a supplementary mechanism, possibly an exception from normal practice,

grounded in an assessment that it is sometimes needed, as an organizing principle

secondary to autonomy and peer collaboration.
Discussion
Having illustrated a critical performative view of leadership, we now move on and
address our perspective more broadly. Most critical accounts, including ours, see leader-
ship as involving the exercise of intended and fairly systematic influence and an asym-
metrical relationship of power between the leader and the led. By focusing on this
relationship, critical studies of leadership can come up against a number of important
shortcomings. First, such a focus often takes leadership too seriously by attributing
incredible powers to the discourse. This denies the fuzziness, ambiguities and multiplicity
of meanings and relations in the social world. Leadership often involves managers and
others wrestling with issues that are difficult to solve, not resulting in much distinct
leadership (Lundholm, 2011). We hope that a critical performative approach will lead us
to recognize how leadership, in many work contexts, is better seen as an infrequent, tem-
poral, situation-specific dynamic than a permanent state in the relationship (Sveningsson
and Alvesson, 2003; Sveningsson and Larsson, 2006). Such a perspective might pose
questions about when leadership is needed or useful and when it is not. Questions like
when, why, how strong and what type of leadership intervention become crucial. These
questions should be posed to managers as well as subordinates. A critical performative
approach encourages researchers to avoid finding an ‘essence’ through a priori pointing
out the domination of subordinates (e.g. Gemmill and Oakley, 1992), establishing
the dysfunctionality of particular types of leadership (e.g. Tourish and Pinnington, 2002),
or pointing out how leadership ‘mystifies’ practices in professional or bureaucratic organ-
izations (e.g. Alvesson and Sveningsson, 2003b). Rather, we simply hope to encourage
researchers to bear in mind both the potential powerfulness and the possible impotency of
leadership. Furthermore, we hope to emphasize greater local appreciations closer to the
experienced reality of those being studied.
The second limitation of critical accounts of leadership is that the dismissal may
simply reinforce other relations of domination. Rejections of leadership may lead not
just to ‘progressive’ organizational forms based on autonomy and democracy, but also
to a deficit of person-based organizational control that can trigger other managerial
responses such as bureaucracy, strict output measurement or dictatorial control. It can
also trigger complicated group processes. Here we have argued that a critical approach
to leadership can help us recognize the difficult challenges that managers expected to
act as leaders often face. What may work, given the equally legitimate concerns of
organizational results and participants’ interest in discretion and democracy, can only
be decided in specific cases. By affirming the voice of both leaders and followers, it
may be possible to see how these struggles are actually played out and possibly move
from a power/resistance dynamic to one in which participation and communicative
action are significant elements. Constructive dialogue, including selected elements of
critique, is sometimes to be preferred to resistance.
The final limitation we noted was that many existing critical studies do not acknowl-
edge that leadership can play an important role in facilitating progressive social change.

Leadership does not have to be about further reinforcing problematic authority relations,
but can also call authority relations into question (Zoller and Fairhurst, 2007).
By making managers accountable to espoused leadership ideals, progressive changes
can sometimes be supported.
Towards deliberated authority

There are strong reasons for an anti-leadership case as part of healthy questioning of
dominant ideology. The contemporary leadership craze calls for biting critique, and it
remains an urgent task for CMS (Alvesson, 2010). Nevertheless, an exaggerated and
immature view of authority should not be replaced by an exaggerated and one-sided
rejection (Fryer, forthcoming; Western, 2008). Recognition and respect for at least
some mode of authority are crucial for good social relations (Sennett, 1980). This asym-
metry can at times be functional because the manager (who is often expected to be the
leader in organizations) may have information, experience and ability that others might
lack. Managers also have formal responsibilities of ensuring accountability. However,
there are also times when our dependence on ‘leadership’ can become crippling and
self-destructive for the both leader and led (Gemmill and Oakley, 1992). The task for
critical leadership studies is to account for the difficult balancing act between leader-
ship as a productive source of power and a destructive one. In addition it is important
to bear in mind that leadership in reality may be quite lame. After all, complex organi-
zations often involve many forms of control – from job designs and organizational
cultures to output control systems. There are also usually ubiquitous pressures for man-
agers to do administration and deliver short-term results. This leaves little space for
managers to do leadership. It also means that transformational, servant or authentic
leadership, frequently found in pop-management texts, may be rare in organizational
practice (Alvesson, 2010). Critical performativity tries to address this balance and work
out ways to deal with these tensions.
We see the critical study of leadership as a struggle. It involves ongoing discussions
about the virtues and vices of the use of authority and hierarchy in workplace relations.
By heeding these discussions, critical accounts of leadership will be able to make claims
around what might be considered to be accepted forms of leadership. By engaging with
potential models of ‘good’ leadership, and perhaps more explicitly outlining alterna-
tives or substitutes to leadership, critical studies of leadership can offer ways through
some of these dilemmas. Finally, by being able to offer guidelines for critical thinking
of what ‘good’ leadership might look like, a critical performative approach is also able
to register some of the difficult and often painful struggles that are involved in negotiat-
ing our way between the different modes of good that a leader may seek to serve. We
might go as far as to suggest that one of the central tasks of a leader involves attempts
to negotiate between what are often incommensurable kinds of good. Rather than a set
of fixed virtues and ideals, critical leadership studies offer support for the use of critical
judgement in workplaces when assessing the when, what and how of leadership, as well
as finding other modes of organizing work relations.
Some regulatory principles and mechanisms for discussing and clarifying the need for
accepting grounded authority are necessary. One way to do this is through deliberation

about what ‘good’ forms of leadership might be and what their limits are. During such
deliberation, it would be necessary to try to minimize communicative distortions such as
‘false’ hierarchies, repression of viewpoints, power games, ideological domination and
narrow agenda setting (Alvesson and Willmott, 2012; Deetz, 1992; Forester, 2003;
Habermas, 1984). The ideal would be to produce social consensus among organizational
participants – or clarified dissensus where motives for disagreement have been put
forward and no consensus can be reached – around leadership. Leadership could thus be
seen as a productive and communicatively grounded asymmetry in work relations,
invoked in situations where coordination, mutual adjustments, bureaucracy (rules),
professionalism and other means of control do not work well. Such deliberation would
clarify when leadership could be evoked and when it might not be. Rather than the leader
leading people most of the time, one could imagine that autonomy and supportive
horizontal relations in combination with organizational structures and cultural meanings
and norms take care of most things at work, but that occasionally leadership may be
necessary or positive.
An important thing here is that a critical performative approach to leadership would
encourage the consideration and reinforcement of alternatives to leadership such as
various modes of ‘co-operation’ (Stohl and Cheeney, 2001), ‘collaborative communi-
ties’ (Adler and Heckscher, 2006) and ‘peer reviewing’ (Rennstam, 2007). This would
encourage balancing and switching between leadership and other measures of coordina-
tion. Talking about influence processes and co-workership (Tengblad, 2003) or organ-
izing processes (Pye, 2005) rather than leadership might reinforce the ideal of variation
and emergence of initiative without reproducing the idea of someone (the leader) stand-
ing clearly above others (followers). This might call for a more relaxed role whereby
managers ‘lead by invitation’ (Alvesson and Blom, 2011), rather than seeking to impose
their leadership all the time, everywhere. But in other situations, there may be legiti-
mate space for leadership interventions. The task of critical leadership studies can then
be seen as the intellectual support of critical judgement in the deliberative process of
asking about the ‘if’, ‘when’, ‘why’ and ‘how’ of leadership (or resistance or alterna-
tives to it). Our empirical example to some extent illustrates this.
Engaging in collective deliberation about leadership certainly resonates with many
themes that have emerged in recent years in debates about distributed leadership (e.g.
Gronn, 2002). Both encourage some democratization of the idea of leadership. Both
call for reflection on the multiple modes of coordination and authority that may be
available alongside, or instead of, individual leadership. Both draw our attention to the
fact that organizations often involve ‘hybrid’ forms of leadership that splice together
different modes of coordinating in creative and unusual ways (Gronn, 2009). However,
there are also some important differences. Distributed theories of leadership point out
that it can be found almost anywhere with the result of nearly any coordinating process
becoming considered as ‘leadership’. In contrast, deliberated leadership does not seek
to find leadership in all coordinating activities. The colonizing effects of leadership
vocabulary are strong and problematic. We think they are best dealt with through reduc-
ing the scope and (over-)use of the term rather than extending it to cover everything and
nothing. Deliberated leadership recognizes that there are multiple modes of authority
and leadership is only one of them. This means a senior person exercising a fairly

systematic or at least more than infrequent influence over followers/co-workers is the

distinctive feature of leadership. In contrast, mutual adjustment, peer initiatives,
informal influencing are not best conceptualized as leadership. For us, they are better
described in ‘non-leadership’ terms. Furthermore, deliberated leadership highlights the
need to engage in collective processes of deliberation about whether leadership might
be needed, when, by whom, and why. Thus, instead of claiming that processes of
leadership should be completely democratized, what deliberative leadership points to is
the need for a collective deliberation about authority. This means that through collective
deliberation, it could be decided in some particular limited situations (such as emergen-
cies or organizational fragmentation) that more autocratic leadership could be deemed
appropriate (Grint, 2005b). However, equally this highlights the need for serious
consideration of other modes of authority and organizing instead of leadership in many
other situations.
We recognize that processes of deliberation around leadership are certainly not
without their own problems. Studies have pointed out that even in situations where
leadership is a matter of collective consideration, people may continue to look for
strong leaders who will galvanize cooperation (Stohl and Cheney, 2001: 387–389).
Thus, even when there are apparently open forums for deliberation, people sometimes
remain attached to assumptions that strong leaders are important. In the context of
political theory, some have pointed out that processes of deliberation can effectively
defang more radical questions by defusing or diverting many deeper political antago-
nisms around the distribution of power (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985). In order to account
for these issues, it is vital that a radical questioning of leadership continues to exist
alongside more liberal processes of deliberation about authority. This means being able
to both take a critical view of leadership while also being willing to consider local
views and understandings of leadership (Fairhurst, 2009).
Conclusion
Leadership is an extremely popular idea. It has colonized many fields of social endeav-
our, ranging from middle management work in large corporations to self-direction in
everyday life. Today, some speak about the rising ideology of ‘leaderism’ (O’Reilly and
Reed, 2010). Because it is so widespread, leadership may mean almost anything to any-
one. It easily and often becomes an essentially contested concept (Grint, 2005a). Often,
evoking leadership simply entails re-labelling management to make it more up-dated
and sexy. However, one fairly common key component is that leaders are ‘more than’
managers because they have far-reaching influence on other people – on values, ideals,
aspirations, emotions and identities. This idea is ideologically appealing and motivates
some scepticism. Talking about leadership may feed into a broad and powerful dis-
course, dividing people into important and superior ‘leaders’ and less significant and
capable ‘followers’.
In recent years, critical theorists have sought to question seductive conceptions of
leadership by pointing out how leadership works as an ideology that celebrates manag-
ers and reinforces passive followership and dependency on leaders (e.g. Alvesson and
Spicer, 2011; Gemmill and Oakley, 1992; Western, 2008). While this look at the darker

aspects of leadership is certainly vital, there are reasons to appreciate a more positive
and necessary role of leadership, at least in some situations. We need to develop strong
critiques of leadership ideology as a general source of domination, but supplement this
with a more nuanced appreciation of how to make organizations work in local situa-
tions. We need to counteract problematic authority relations but also cultivate responsi-
bility and acknowledge asymmetries between people in terms of experiences, skills and
other relevant characteristics. As Sennett (1980) suggests, we need authorities, but not
all the time, in all respects, and not only in the form of managers exercising leadership.
The challenge is rather to supplement autonomy, mutual adjustment, peer reviews,
occupational community, professionals, feedback on results, bureaucracy and other
forms of control with leadership if and when it may be needed.
The position we have outlined certainly involves an inherent tension between being
‘relevant’ to people expected to do leadership in organizations and encouraging scepti-
cism about leadership itself. This struggle reminds us that purity is not a possibility.
Rather, the critic must engage in a kind of constant dialectical movement between
pragmatic engagement and emancipatory critique (see Fairhurst and Grant, 2010). This
dialectical movement requires us to face many issues associated with autonomy and
compliance, (a)symmetrical power relations, the productive use of authority and the
resistance to problematic forms of domination. In order to begin to face these prob-
lems, we build on Spicer et al.’s (2009) notion of critical performativity and advocate
three tactics for studying leadership (circumspect care, progressive pragmatism and
present potentialities). By no means do we see these as a closed set. Rather, they are
more like an invitation to consider alternative processes for developing constructive
critiques of leadership. We hope these tactics will open up a more reflexive framing
and monitoring of leadership. This reflexivity would involve collectively asking some
profound questions about the scope and scale of leadership in organizations. Doing so
requires the difficult task of establishing local, horizontal governance mechanisms that
allow managers and others to talk about leadership. Questions at stake might be what
is reasonable, what is possible, what the role of a manager is, for what purposes, when
and how is leadership needed? The idea is not necessarily that subordinates should
approve of everything leaders do. The point is to stimulate on-going reflection and
communication about how to establish, maintain, change and sometimes reduce or
even do without forms of leadership. This is the task of managers, subordinates, con-
sultants, educators and others involved in the co-construction of leadership. Crucial
here are efforts to accomplish a broadly shared, critically informed responsibility for
putting leadership in its place in an overall repertoire of ways of organizing. The meta-
discussions around the idea and possible role of leadership is a key aspect in getting
critical leadership to work.
Acknowledgements
Earlier versions of this paper were presented at a workshop at Lund University, a seminar at the
University of Exeter and the EGOS colloquium in Lisbon. We would like to thank all participants
for their valuable comments. In particular we would also like to thank David Beech and Richard
Bolden for their input. We are also grateful to Johan Alvehus for help with our empirical
illustration.

Funding
The article has benefitted greatly from the research project ‘Close Up Studies of Leadership’
funded by Handelsbanken’s Research Foundations.
Note
1 We broadly follow Zaleznik (1977) and Nicholls (1987) here in their distinctions between
management and leadership, acknowledging the varieties of views and definitions of the two
themes as well as difficulties in making sharp distinctions. It is important to avoid both the
inclination to define leadership as more sophisticated and superior to management and to con-
flate the two terms and use leadership to cover ‘everything’.
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Mats Alvesson is Professor of Business Administration at the University of Lund, Sweden and at
the University of Queensland Business School, Australia. Research interests include critical the-
ory, gender, power, management of professional service (knowledge intensive) organizations,
leadership, identity, organizational image, organizational culture and symbolism, qualitative meth-
ods and philosophy of science. Recent books include: Interpreting Interviews (SAGE, 2011);
Metaphors We Lead By: Understanding Leadership in the Real World (Routledge, 2011, edited
with André Spicer); Oxford Handbook of Critical Management Studies (Oxford University Press,
2011, edited with Todd Bridgman and Hugh Willmott); Understanding Gender and Organizations
(SAGE, 2009, 2nd edn with Yvonne Billing) and Reflexive Methodology (SAGE, 2009, 2nd edn,
with Kaj Skoldberg). [Email: [email protected]]
André Spicer is Professor of Organizational Behaviour at Cass Business School, City University
London. He has studied political dynamics in a range of settings including sea ports, public broad-
casting, libraries, universities, and social movements. He has published four books including:
Metaphors We Lead By: Understanding Leadership in the Real World (Routledge, 2011, edited
with Mats Alvesson); Unmasking the Entrepreneur (Edward Elgar, 2009, with Campbell Jones);
and Contesting the Corporation (Cambridge University Press, 2007, with Peter Fleming). He is
also a senior editor at the Journal of Management Studies. Currently he is working on a book about
biomorality. [Email: [email protected]]

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Critical leadership studies: The case for critical performativity

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a heart . . .), then it is possible to overcome antagonisms and inequalities. However,

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A critical performative approach to leadership

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Applying critical performativity: An empirical illustration

Normally we should be extremely cautious in accepting interview statements of man-

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short-term focus, then we must critically scrutinize the manager’s understanding.

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grounded in an assessment that it is sometimes needed, as an organizing principle

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Towards deliberated authority

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systematic or at least more than infrequent influence over followers/co-workers is the

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O’Reilly D and Reed M (2010) Leaderism: An evolution of managerialism in UK public service

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Yukl G (1989) Leadership in Organization. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

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