Management Communication Quarterly

http://mcq.sagepub.com Challenging the Transformational Agenda: Leadership Theory in Transition?

Dennis Tourish Management Communication Quarterly 2008; 21; 522 originally published online Mar 19, 2008; DOI: 10.1177/0893318907313713 The online version of this article can be found at: http://mcq.sagepub.com

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Challenging the Transformational Agenda

Leadership Theory in Transition?
Dennis Tourish
Robert Gordon University

Management Communication Quarterly Volume 21 Number 4 May 2008 522-528 2008 Sage Publications 10.1177/0893318907313713 http://mcq.sagepub.com hosted at http://online.sagepub.com

eadership is one of the most studied issues of our time. There are now 22,617 books on the topic listed on Amazon.com, as well as a variety of important academic journals, including the recently launched Leadership and the more well-established Leadership Quarterly. But, as Fairhursts work (2007) liberally attests, the area remains fraught with tension, ambiguity, uncertainty, and paradox: so much scholarly fire and fury, so little illumination. On one hand, our general fascination with leadership and a concomitant belief that powerful leaders are the key to solving our problemsremains intense. I recall, for example, that during the Live 8 concerts in 2006, dedicated to making poverty history, a London newspaper carried a cartoon of a miserable-looking Superman entering a fancy dress shop, where he dejectedly inquired if he could hire a Bob Geldof outfit. On the other hand, this fascination is combined with a diminishing confidence that leadersin politics and in businesscan deliver anything worthwhile at all. Typically, a recent survey of 2,000 U.K. employees reported few as agreeing that their senior managers had a clear vision of where their organization was going (Truss, Soane, & Edwards, 2006). The result was significantly worse than that of an earlier survey in 2004. Furthermore, the tenure for CEOs is in freefall: Much is expected from them, but they are given less and less time in which to accomplish anything beyond changing the nameplate on their office doors. Fairhurst (2007) has stepped boldly into this maelstrom, swinging a critical axe in several directions while frequently pausing to point in a new direction. Her efforts are to be warmly welcomed, for several reasons. In the first instance, by viewing leadership as a phenomenon that is iterative,

Authors Note: Address correspondence to Professor Dennis Tourish, Aberdeen Business School, Robert Gordon University, Kaim House, Garthdee Road, Aberdeen, Scotland, United Kingdom; e-mail: D.J.Tourish@rgu.ac.uk. 522
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co-constructed (i.e., between leaders and followers), and discursive, she challenges the tendency to view leaders as heroes, charismatic visionaries, and action figures par excellenceabove all, as people different from you and me, and possessed of a special essence that social scientists must strive to understand. This position contrasts with the dominant theoretical approach to the subject in recent decades: that of transformational leadership (Bass & Riggio, 2006). Transformational leaders are assumed to be intensely charismaticand it is here that the mythologizing of leadership begins (Tourish & Pinnington, 2002). For example, House and Baetz (1979) write that charismatic leaders by the force of their personal abilities are capable of having profound and extraordinary effects on followers (p. 399). There is little co-construction in thisthe picture is one in which extraordinary leaders exercise a unidirectional influence on more-or-less willing followers, who are presumably little more than empty vessels awaiting a transfusion of insight from their betters. Such views inflate our image of those who hold leadership positions to superhuman proportions and encourage a tendency to attribute both all of an organizations achievements and any of its problems exclusively to those who hold the top job. To take one example, Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric, is routinely introduced as a man who
transformed the company into a dynamic and innovative powerhouse and grew the market value from $13 billion to over $500 billion. He became one of the most influential and respected executives in the world . . . one of the few rock stars in the business world.1

One can infer that Welch accomplished such gargantuan feats singlehandedlythere is, at any rate, no mention of whatever help he may have received from his employees. It is also clear that such approaches tend to view the practice of leadership as a naturally occurring and hence unquestionable phenomenon (akin to the movements of the tectonic plates) rather than one that is socially constructed by the discourse of organizational actors and conditioned by power, status, force, and intrigue. In my view, the resultant mind-set is more likely to encourage hubris and narcissism than socially desirable patterns of leadership behavior. Much leadership scholarship also infantilizes the notion of followership on which, incidentally, there are far fewer books than there are on leadership (a grand total of six, according to my most recent search on Amazon.com). Yet, how would leadership exist without followers? Nevertheless, the conventionaland functionalistliterature regularly portrays leaders as change

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masters (e.g., Kanter, 1985), heroes and saviors (for a critical discussion, see Hatch, Kostera, & Kozminski, 2005), and miracle workers (for an extraordinarily uncritical account of Jack Welchs leadership of GE, couched in these hagiographic terms, see Slater, 1999). Leadership rhetoric regularly invokes metaphors that project the leader as an architect, commander, pedagogue, physician, and saint (Amernic, Craig, & Tourish, 2007). In such accounts, leadership is conceptualized as a unidirectional process in which powerful agents (leaders) exercise control and influence over relatively passive subjects (followers). The predominant approach is unitarist and uncritical, assuming that (a) members of organizations have an overwhelming common interest, whatever power differentials suggest to the contrary, and (b) senior managers are best equipped to articulate a compelling vision that captures this interest. Morrisons comments (2003) typify this approach:
In the competitive world in which we live and work, leadership is required in every organization. . . . We are witnessing the preparation of a new breed of change agentsindividuals who know how to reorganize existing resources through innovative strategies, make rapid but well-thought-out decisions, and create collaborative work teams to enhance employee productivity. (p. 4)

However, plentiful research has ascertained that leaders and followers frequently entertain rival narrative constructs of what is happening in their organizations, how important it is, andperhaps most crucialwhat they should do about it. Organizational sensemaking is a contested, fraught, ambiguous, and highly uncertain process in which there are no guarantees that a shared understanding will ever emerge. In this world, followers construct leaders just as much as leaders construct followers (Grint, 2005). Fairhurst (2007) discloses the complex communicative processes at the heart of leaderfollower interactions and the uncertainties intrinsic to such communication. In contrast, social science research often seeks to close down uncertainty and ambiguitythat is, researchers typically look for hard-and-fast causal connections, precise relationships between independent and dependent variables, and the essence of whatever phenomenon is being studied. Leadership pedagogy in business schools mostly focuses on skills and tools that students will presumably find useful in transforming the behaviors of others (Burns, 2000). The question repeatedly provoked by Fairhursts work is, what if such approaches are misplaced or at least only one part of the story? What if leadership has no essence but is realized anew in each social situation and must be understood as a struggle for meaning in which each time that one discursive ambiguity is put to rest, a fresh one steps forward to take its place?

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The danger here is one of extreme relativism in which the struggle for shared meaning is treated as an impossible aspiration. In my view, such relativism reinforces rather than undermines existing power relationships. As Rorty (1997) illustrates, with an eye on the political arena, when power is depicted as being ubiquitous but ill-defined (i.e., if everything is power, then none of its forms matter more than any other), then the opportunity to challenge its concrete manifestations is vastly reduced. All struggles and debates merely become new manifestations of powerand are therefore pointless. Fairhurst (2007) does a fine job of avoiding this pitfall while making it quite clear that attention must be paid to the communicative processes that characterize leaderfollower relations. Such thinking would ameliorate some of the effects of unidirectional leadership theories and perhaps help the development of more participative and inclusive models of the leadership process. In turn, this position implies that we place less reliance on powerful, charismatic leaders who are often adept at presenting their self-interest as a universal interest, before which dissent must bow in submission. It is a profound challenge to the overly simplistic leadership models that are routinely taught in our business schools. For me, this leads to another implication of this work. We urgently need to reconsider how we teach leadership to our students. I recently studied the Web sites of the worlds top-20 business schools, looking for evidence of how they approached this question. Time and again, I encountered examples of hyperbole, outlandish appeals to the egos of potential students, and exaggerated claims about the power of leaders to change individuals, organizations, and the world. About the only thing that leaders cannot do, it seems, is travel through timeyet. It seems to me that those who are encouraged to see themselves in these terms are rendered susceptible to destructive narcissism in which they fantasize about their brilliance, believe that they are special, underestimate the importance of others (followers), and exhibit arrogance and lack of empathy. No useful ends can be served by such notions. But future Enrons may certainly be in preparation. Business schools have been under challenge in recent years, including from some of their foremost academics (e.g., Mintzberg, 2004). The indictments have been wide-ranging and have included suggestions that the teaching of leadership in business schools is largely ineffectivenot least because many of its recipients lack the necessary practical experience to benefit from it. To this catalogue, I add the suggestion that inappropriate models of leadership (specifically, that of transformational leadership) are presented too uncritically; that students are encouraged to believe that they have leadership potential far beyond what mortal beings are genuinely

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capable of; that leadership is depicted as the primary or perhaps only determinant of organizational success; that resistance, rather than constituting useful feedback, is viewed as something to be overcome; and that leadership consists of a few easily learned skills, which obviate the need for paying close attention to the discursive mechanisms whereby leaders and followers interact and take action with each other. I contend that few of these somewhat casual assumptions can withstand scrutiny from the standpoint of the approach outlined in Fairhursts book (2007). A more dialogic and communication-oriented approach would, among much else, stress the value of dissent, the need for limits on leader power and action, the value of upward communication, and the role of followers in shaping organizational systems (Tourish & Robson, 2006). Viewed from this perspective, I also regard Fairhursts commentary (2007) on what is increasingly described as authentic leadership as being among the most thought-provoking pages in her text. A key difficulty with transformational leadership theory has always been what has been described as the Hitler problemcould even someone such as Hitler be described as a transformational leader? Transformational leadership theorists have, in my view, shadowboxed around this problem but have failed to deliver a glancing blow. The key defense has been as Bass (1998) expressed it:
Leaders are authentically transformational when they increase awareness of what is right, good, important, and beautiful, when they help to elevate followers needs for achievement and self-actualization, when they foster in followers higher moral maturity, and when they move followers to go beyond their self-interests for the good of their group, organization, or society. (p. 171)

The problem is that not everyone agrees on a definition of what is good. Downsizing, delayering, multiskilling, reengineering, appraisal, and job enhancement are examples of management practices championed by some and resisted by others; they are discursive constructs that reflect particular, rather than universal, interests. Thus, who should determine what is good? With what authority? In the final analysis, the transformational leader, declaring authenticity, need not defer to anything other than his or her own conscience: One discourse has the power to trump all others. More recently, the notion has been advanced that leaders should discover their authentic inner selves and that when they base their leadership practice on this, they will be more effective (e.g., Avolio & Gardner, 2005). An integrated self, independent and apart from social context, is simply assumedand, moreover, invested with positive qualities. Yet, what is

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regarded as authentic often depends on ones position in social hierarchies, which are saturated with issues of gender, hierarchy, emotion, and power. Ironically, then, authenticity is posed in universal, humanistic, and timeless terms, only to emerge in discursive shackles. In my view, all of usleaders includedhave a variety of enacted selves, which we project according to our estimates of the prevailing social context. When leadership is viewed as being socially constructed through discourse, the impossibility of identifying a context-free, authentic essence amenable to transformational purposes stands out in sharp relief. There are many terrific leaders at large. But society and business have suffered from poor leadership, bad leadership, narcissistic leadership, and above all, toopowerful leadership. Viewing followers as recalcitrant infants in need of tough parental attention really will not do. Too much leadership discourse has evaded this kind of problem: Fairhurst (2007) offers a challenging alternative to a route that frequently leads to a dead end. The myths of powerful, transformational, and charismatic leadership offer short-term comfort. It would be consoling to believe that Superman has stepped from the cinema screen and into the boardrooms of our organizations, whatever his attire. But such comfort exacts too high a price. Powerless followers create evermore powerful leaders, liberated from all constraints. If Fairhursts text (2007) strips away some of our illusions, it also offers an analytic replacement lens of enormous emancipatory powerone that can help us understand that leaders are fallible human beings whose discursive accomplishments in projecting their visions and values must at all times be balanced by an equal respect for the creative and dissenting input of their followers. Leadership may therefore end up not being contingent on followership but as one of its many manifestations. From the perspective of the global challenges that loom in the decades ahead and the need to bring out the best in us all, this might somehow be a favorable conclusion.

Note
1. This quotation is by the dean of the Sloan School of Management at MIT. It was made during an introduction to a presentation by Welch to students on April 12, 2005.

References
Amernic, J., Craig, R., & Tourish, D. (2007). The charismatic leader as pedagogue, physician, architect, commander, and saint: Five master metaphors in Jack Welchs letters to stockholders of General Electric. Human Relations, 60, 1839-1872.

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Avolio, B. J., & Gardner, W. L. (2005). Authentic leadership development: Getting to the root of positive forms of leadership. Leadership Quarterly, 16, 315-338. Bass, B. (1998). The ethics of transformational leadership. In J. Ciulla (Ed.), Ethics: The heart of leadership (pp. 169-192). Westport, CT: Praeger. Bass, B., & Riggio, R. (2006). Transformational leadership. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Burns, J. (2000). A river runs through it: A metaphor for teaching leadership theory. Journal of Leadership Studies, 7, 41-55. Fairhurst, G. (2007). Discursive leadership: In conversation with leadership psychology. London: Sage. Grint, K. (2005). Leadership: Limits and possibilities. London: Palgrave MacMillan. Hatch, M. J., Kostera, M., & Kozminski, A. (2005). The three faces of leadership: Manager, artist, priest. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. House, R., & Baetz, M. (1979). Leadership: Some empirical generalizations and new research directions. In B. Staw (Ed.), Research in organizational behavior (Vol. 1, pp. 341-423). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Kanter, R. M. (1985). The change masters: Innovation for productivity in the American corporation. New York: Free Press. Mintzberg, H. (2004). Managers not MBAs: A hard look at the soft practice of managing people and management development. London: Prentice Hall. Morrison, J. (2003). Leadership is our business. Journal of Education for Business, 78, 4-5. Rorty, R. (1997). Achieving our country. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Slater, R. (1999). Jack Welch and the GE way. New York: McGraw-Hill. Tourish, D., & Pinnington, A. (2002). Transformational leadership, corporate cultism and the spirituality paradigm: An unholy trinity in the workplace? Human Relations, 55, 147-172. Tourish, D., & Robson, P. (2006). Sensemaking and the distortion of critical upward communication in organizations, Journal of Management Studies, 43, 711-730. Truss, C., Soane, E., & Edwards, C. (2006). Working life: Employee attitudes and engagement. London: Chartered Institute of Personnel Development.

Dennis Tourish (PhD, University of Ulster, 1996) is a professor of leadership and management at Robert Gordon University, Scotland. His research interests include the darker sides of leadership practice, particularly in the context of cultic organizations; the nature of critical upward communication in organizations; and the role of communication audits in assessing organizational communication practices.

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