Leadership Discourses on Bureaucracy: Continuity over a Century

Politicians in all types of regimes require bureaucracy to extend their rule over society. To prevent administrators from becoming too powerful and publicly signal independence, they seemingly arbitrarily criticize public officials. But when and how do political leaders blame bureaucracy – and when do they praise it ? This study uses Russia as a case to illustrate the complex and ambiguous politics-administration relationship in non-Western regimes. We argue that public statements about bureaucracy accommodate two different legitimation strategies. We provide a content analysis of 311 public statements, from 1917 – 2017, on the role of administration in the country’s development. We find that attention to administrative affairs coincides with major political changes and periods of political instability in the history of Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. Over a century, the rhetoric of Russian leaders oscillated between blaming and praising bureaucracy to secure stability and overcome obstacles in implementing governing strategies. The strategic interplay between assertive rhetoric and praising bureaucracy is part of an effective political leadership survival strategy.

Leadership Discourses of Keyae in Islamic Boarding School

This study is aimed to discuss the discourse of Keyae in Pesantren (Islamic Boarding School) and its relevance toward Islamic values in Madura, especially. Afterward, this study is conducted by involving the participators in Annuqayah Islamic Boarding School, Guluk-Guluk, Sumenep which is assumed to be representative, and have relevance in protecting Islamic values in Madura. The data which is obtained based on Michel Foucault’s discourse analysis. The reason to choose the theory aims to understand the conditions that supporting the emergence of leadership discourse of Keyae, form and its operational, discontinue and relational, archeology of leadership discourse, and reveal or analyze critics on leadership discourses of Keyae in Madura, specifically in social mechanism. Therefore, based on the analysis, this study shows that leadership of Keyae in Islamic Boarding School in Madura is not merely as an agent of religious movement. However, it is as social, politic, culture, economic, and education transformations.

Black Educational Leadership: The State of the Art in Ontario Elementary Schools

The current educational system upholds principles and practices that covertly support institutionalized oppression while affirming and legitimizing privilege and entitlement for students, teachers, and administrators who emulate the cultural capital of the dominant Western culture. This systematic literature review, explored ways in which Black leaders have enacted social justice education in Ontario elementary schools from 1970 to 2017. I have searched six academic databases, peer reviewed journals, the media, academic and professional articles and used close reading and textual analysis to critique Social Justice Leadership discourses. Barriers still exist to Black students’ progress. More research is needed for meaningful social change

Being more with less: Exploring the flexible political leadership identities of government ministers

The paper focuses on the identity work of government ministers, exploring how they experience themselves in relation to contemporary demands and discourses of leadership and democracy. We note a substantial number of studies seeking to develop theories of political and public leadership, particularly in more collaborative directions, but no studies that seek to explore how such demands are experienced by the political leaders who occupy leadership roles. We adopt a poststructuralist approach to identity as a means of empirically exploring how government ministers construct their identities. Drawing on 51 interviews with senior politicians, we propose a model of flexible political leadership identity, which argues that just as public agencies in these austere times are asked to do more with less, so political leaders seem to need to be more but with less perceived discretionary power. We propose four identities that answer quite different leadership demands: ‘the consultor’, ‘the traveller,’ ‘the adjudicator’ and ‘the master.’ These are semi-occupied identities, partial fulfilments of contemporary but contradictory leadership discourses. We conclude the paper with a reflection on how our findings might inform future research and leadership development interventions.

Becoming green, becoming leaders: Identity narratives in sustainability leadership development

Sustainability leadership, exercised towards ecologically sustainable practices in business and society, has emerged as an important aim of leadership development programmes. Through the multimodal discursive analysis of a sustainability leadership centre in Australia, we demonstrate how its identity narratives reproduce individualist ideals of leadership and take for granted the hyperagency of heroic individuals to single-handedly solve environmental crises. Specifically, we illustrate how the development of sustainability leaders is co-constructed through the Buddhist narrative of Prince Siddhartha via three stages: leaders first find their calling that activates their inherent capability to effect change, reach awakening through self-discovery and self-empowerment with the help of the development programme, and finally transform the world through building both successful and meaningful careers. In the light of these findings, we question whether sustainability leadership discourses glorify the self and ironically sustain our disconnection from nature in the pursuit of business success.

It’s a family business!: Leadership texts as technologies of heteronormativity

This article contributes to the recent scholarship in Critical Leadership Studies by tracing several heteronormative logics entangled within contemporary leadership discourse. As a popular and profitable industry, mainstream leadership studies utilize the fields of psychology and business management to support their claims of successful practices. This situates leadership discourse as a natural, objective, and value-neutral science, rendering its inherently biased and exclusionary assumptions and applications largely unexamined from a critical lens. In response, this analysis illustrates how leadership serves as a technology of heteronormativity by describing prominent and interconnected themes in several of the bestselling leadership books in the United States. Using queer and poststructural theoretical frames in conjunction with critical discourse analysis, three themes are analyzed which illuminate how leadership discourses: rely on heteronormative familial logics, use generational paradigms that position leadership within heteronormative time and space, and promote and privilege (hetero)reproduction through ideas of legacy and role modeling. These themes within leadership coalesce to form decidedly heterosexist/heteronormative discursive practices, disrupting the notion of leadership as an ideologically neutral discourse.

Communicative leadership and context

Purpose – This purpose of this paper is to explore the discursive constructions of context and its significance in employees’ accounts of leadership practices, more specifically, discourses of communicative leadership. In doing so, it also seeks to clarify the relationship between perceptions and constructions of contexts and leadership discourses. Design/methodology/approach – This study relies on focus group interviews conducted with nine groups and a total of 31 employees (16 males and 15 females) in a Swedish industrial organization employing 490 employees. Findings – The findings reveal that micro-contexts were more evident influencing leadership discourses in the accounts of employees. However, macro-contexts identified as an authoritative leadership style were triggering constructions of “idealized” communicative leaders in contrast to the leadership experienced in the work environment by employees as “real.” Research limitations/implications – The investigation presents one organizational context, but can be expanded using additional contexts that may show various leadership forms and communication needs. Findings suggest that understanding the context considered to be relevant to perceptions and constructions of leadership can be essential for identifying and confronting challenges, leading to a more communicative organization. Originality/value – The study approaches leadership and context as dynamic and multifaceted constructs shaped locally in interaction with macro-discourses. Further, it also suggests that individuals are agents of change controlling context through being aware of their discourses.