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Portrait of Mats Alvesson. Photo.

Mats Alvesson

Professor

Portrait of Mats Alvesson. Photo.

The bumpy road to exercising leadership : Fragmentations in meaning and practice

Author

  • Mats Alvesson
  • Anna Jonsson

Summary, in English

The present study focuses on a manager’s understanding of leadership and how this guides – or does not guide practice. The paper reports an empirical in-depth study of a middle manager in an international manufacturing company. We link our discussion to both – the mainstream leadership studies, which assume that managers have a solid type of leadership behavior, and authors with a meaning-oriented, linguistic approach to leadership, in which language, self-awareness, and behavior are linked. The present study suggests that leadership attempts can vary, be divisive, and that a manager’s advocacy efforts are driven by a multitude of different, partly opposing, forces, meaning a decoupling of ideas and behavior in leadership practice. The paper raises the question of whether managers’ meanings of leadership correspond with what they do in practice.

Department/s

  • Department of Business Administration

Publishing year

2018-02

Language

English

Pages

40-57

Publication/Series

Leadership

Volume

14

Issue

1

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Topic

  • Business Administration

Keywords

  • Identity
  • managing
  • qualitative research
  • practice
  • relational leadership

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1742-7169