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Portrait of Mats Alvesson. Photo.

Mats Alvesson

Professor

Portrait of Mats Alvesson. Photo.

Upbeat leadership : A recipe for – or against – “successful” leadership theory

Author

  • Mats Alvesson

Summary, in English

In the last 40 years, leadership studies (LS) have moved from a condition of near despair, where complaints of slow progress were commonplace, to a situation of self-confidence and self-praise. However, during recent years we have seen an upsurge in criticism alongside a contradiction between positive leadership ideas and a working life bearing little imprint of the upbeat messages said to characterize successful leaders. LS primarily produces results where “positive” leadership is correlated with various “positive” outcomes. This is made possible through unusual conventions characterizing LS, which produce a recipe for flawed, but publishable, research and career progress. This paper points at 20 elements of this recipe and argues for a radical rethinking of LS norms and practices to develop more complex and sophisticated knowledge that is intellectually and methodologically sounder, facilitating less ideological and more relevant and insightful studies and research results.

Department/s

  • Organizational Studies

Publishing year

2020-12

Language

English

Publication/Series

Leadership Quarterly

Volume

31

Issue

6

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Elsevier

Topic

  • Business Administration

Keywords

  • Ideology
  • Leadership
  • Methodology
  • Recipes

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1048-9843