Leadership in organisational change: A post-structuralist research agenda

MacKillop, Eleanor ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3345-7499 2018. Leadership in organisational change: A post-structuralist research agenda. Organization 25 (2) , pp. 205-222. 10.1177/1350508417733137

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Abstract

The organisational change literature remains dominated by macro- and microexplanatory models which tend to exclude conflict, mess and power in favour of enumerating universalistic steps or, as is the subject of this article, leadership definitions and factors for successful change. In this article, I review and question some of the mainstream literature on leadership in organisational change, drawing on Laclau and Mouffe’s political discourse theory and its mobilisation by critical leadership studies of organisational change. This article problematises change leadership as a set of multiple and changing practices, pragmatically deployed by organisational players. In exploring those avenues, I deploy a five-step ‘logics of critical explanation’ approach – specifically designed by Laclauian discourse theorists – characterising organisational change practices according to social (rules and norms), political (inclusions and exclusions) and fantasmatic (fears and hopes) logics. Rather than a set of factors or top–down causes and effects, I offer a situated and critical explanation of leadership in organisational change. This research contributes to critical explanations of organisational change politics by considering leadership as a set of changing discursive practices and by developing four situated dimensions of leadership, which build on concepts of empty and floating signifiers, to add to discussions of the role of individuals in organisational politics.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Business (Including Economics)
Additional Information:	This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
Publisher:	SAGE
ISSN:	1350-5084
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	2 August 2018
Last Modified:	03 May 2023 15:14
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/113866

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