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When everyone and no one is a leader : constructing individual leadership identities while sustaining an organizational narrative of collective leadership
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Empson, L., Langley, A. and Sergi, V. (2022) When everyone and no one is a leader : constructing individual leadership identities while sustaining an organizational narrative of collective leadership. Organization Studies . ISSN 0170-8406. (In Press)
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Abstract
Our paper investigates the dynamic interplay of narratives of individual and collective leadership within a professional service firm, where an organizational narrative of collective leadership prevails. We explain how it is possible for ‘everyone’ to claim a leadership identity for themselves while simultaneously granting a leadership identity to the collective as a whole. We identify multiple leadership archetypes embedded in individuals’ identity narratives, representing their differing senses of themselves as leaders and their alignment with the organizational narrative of collective leadership. These archetypes are mutually constitutive, representing centripetal and centrifugal tendencies in relation to the organizational narrative of collective leadership. We show how individuals committed to collective leadership nevertheless construct a single individual leader (the Avatar identity archetype) to embody the collective on their behalf, and this enables them to grant leadership to the collective in the abstract. We emphasise the persistent sacralization of leadership in individual and organizational narratives, even in avowedly collectivist contexts, and the value of narrative-based perspectives in highlighting practitioners’ ability to navigate and accommodate the messy coexistence of collective and individual leadership. Our study shows the importance of integrating dialectically the individual and collective dimensions of leadership, emphasizing the mutually constitutive nature of individual and collective leadership narratives.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||
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| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > HD28 Management. Industrial Management | ||||||
| Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Warwick Business School | ||||||
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Leadership, Professions -- Management, Professional corporations | ||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Organization Studies | ||||||
| Publisher: | Sage Publications Ltd. | ||||||
| ISSN: | 0170-8406 | ||||||
| Official Date: | 2022 | ||||||
| Dates: |
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| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||
| Publication Status: | In Press | ||||||
| Reuse Statement (publisher, data, author rights): | Posted ahead of print. Empson, L., Langley, A., & Sergi, V. 2022. When everyone and no one is a leader: Constructing individual leadership identities while sustaining an organizational narrative of collective leadership. in Organization Studies. Copyright © [year] (Copyright Holder). Reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications. DOI: [DOI] Users who receive access to an article through a repository are reminded that the article is protected by copyright and reuse is restricted to non-commercial and no derivative uses. | ||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||
| Date of first compliant deposit: | 3 October 2022 | ||||||
| Date of first compliant Open Access: | 6 October 2022 | ||||||
| RIOXX Funder/Project Grant: |
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