Leadership

http://lea.sagepub.com Post-millennial Leadership Refrains: Artists, Performers and Anti-heroes

Sharon Turnbull Leadership 2006; 2; 257 DOI: 10.1177/1742715006062938 The online version of this article can be found at: http://lea.sagepub.com

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Leadership

Post-millennial Leadership Refrains: Artists, Performers and Anti-heroes

Sharon Turnbull, The Leadership Trust Foundation, UK and Lancaster University Management School, UK

Books discussed in this essay: Badaracco, J. 2002: Leading Quietly: An Unorthodox Guide to Doing the Right Thing (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press) 224 pp. ISBN 1578514878. Bennis, W. & Thomas, R. 2002: Geeks and Geezers: How Era, Values and Dening Moments Shape Leaders (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press) 224 pp. ISBN 1578515823. Sample, S. 2002: The Contrarians Guide to Leadership (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass) 192 pp. ISBN 0787967076.

Introduction
This extended book review seeks to analyse three post-millennial practitioner-oriented texts written for the popular market. It explores the meanings behind the titles, and indeed the regulative, restorative and reactionary leadership refrains contained within each of these three popular texts. Jackson (1996) has identied the power of gurus in producing messages that become received wisdom across organizations, and Abrahamsons (1991) study of management fads has also identied the power of popular management texts. This review argues that it is important for researchers to observe and understand the power of the messages that such books deliver to the practising manager. These messages, discourses or justicatory regimes (Chiapello & Fairclough, 2002) can represent a useful barometer to understand new management ideology and new capitalism (Jessop, 2000) or post- or late modernity. Chiapello and Fairclough (2002) have suggested that new management ideology can best be explored by bringing together the New Sociology of Capitalism (Boltanski & Chiapello, 1999) and Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 1989, 1992, 1995, 2003). Their starting point is the work of Boltanski and Chiapello (1999), whose research focused on the ways that commitment to the capitalist system has evolved, and the ideas and beliefs that have sustained this ideology and its supporting political order. They suggest that the third spirit of capitalism, evident since the 1980s is represented by networks, fuzzy organizations and permanent change.
Copyright 2006 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi) Vol 2(2): 257269 DOI: 10.1177/1742715006062938 www.sagepublications.com
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In their article they deconstruct a chapter of a recent book by Moss Kanter to illustrate the relationship between discourse and social practice, and the role of discourse in shaping managerial ideologies. Chiapello and Fairclough (2002) nd two dominant discourses in this text: the inspirational and the connectionist. Within the inspirational discourse, so-called great ones have visions, imagination, creativity, charisma and dreams. Within the connectionist discourse, great ones are adaptable, exible, non-authoritarian, generating feelings of trust, respecting differences, ensuring the exibility and adaptability of team. They form alliances, coalitions, build teams and networks of contacts. Life is conceived as a series of projects, and the capacity to adapt is what is valued. This book review explores whether connectionist and/or inspirational discourses can be found in these three contemporary leadership texts. Fairclough (2003) refers to the character type of the manager in new capitalism. The books reviewed for this article indicate that the leader also forms a distinct character type, and that the leader character in new capitalist society can be analysed by the forms of textual analysis outlined by Fairclough. The issue for discussion is how certain identities and characters come to be seen as universal. Certain leadership refrains, such as the charismatic, transformational, transactional, have, as discussed above, become universally approved, reecting the social trends of their particular era. These trends can be seen to have inuenced the constantly shifting theorizing about leadership as it has evolved from trait theories, behavioural theories, contingency and situational, and transactional theories to the current transformational vogue. For example, in their editorial introduction to the Critical Discourse Studies journal, Fairclough et al. (2004) associate the transition towards global capitalism with the parallel appearance of neo-liberal and neo-evangelistic discourses which not only present new ways of seeing, acting and being but subsequently also produce new ways of managing, new styles of leadership, and so forth. They point out, however, that these changes need to be understood in terms of tensions between discontinuity and continuity, between the transformative capacity of innovative forces and new discourses, and the obduracy of existing structures, practices and habitus (p. 2). It is these complex social processes (p. 3) that may be better understood through discourse. The purpose of this book review is, therefore, to illuminate alternative emergent leadership refrains, by a close examination of this selection of post-millennial texts, and to discuss these within the context of the changes taking place within the postmillennial world and new capitalist organizations. Following Fairclough, this review looks at the extent to which particular social trends can be identied within the language of new capitalism and is reected in these texts. It also asks how new ideas about leadership appear to reect contemporary social thought. In other words, the purpose is to understand how particular identities, interests, representations come under certain conditions to be claimed as universal (Fairclough, 2003). The popular transformational leadership refrain in the 1970s, 80s and 90s (e.g. Avolio & Bass, 1988; Bass, 1985; Burns, 1978; Conger & Kanungo, 1998; Downton, 1973) has been seen as a reection of the economic context in which delayering, down-sizing, re-engineering and so forth had became increasingly popular (Grint, 2000). These trends were seen by organizations as appropriate responses to an era dominated by turbulence and rapid environmental, technological, economic

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and social change. In response to these popular beliefs, corporate leaders started to focus on raising the performance of their people through trends such as decentralization, and the notion of winning hearts and minds. Organizational visions, values, missions and cultural change towards more participative and empowered working environments became an essential part of the agenda of many leaders, and a lucrative opportunity for the growing number of management gurus and consultants. There has of course been much critique of this dominant discourse, in particular surrounding the cultish nature of the control of hearts and minds (e.g. Kunda, 1992). Concerns have been raised that empowerment initiatives seek to hide rather than address the unequal power relations inevitable in a capitalist system. Furthermore, the premise that organizational employees can be made to share a single unitary set of goals and aspirations has been argued to be problematic (Turnbull, 1999). Moreover, many leaders who have adopted these transformational prescriptions have reported that promised results have been elusive, and not been delivered within desired timeframes. Switching from recipe to recipe, and guru to guru, not only have many confused and disillusioned their workforces in the process (Anthony, 1994), they have also often found themselves scapegoated, left to take the blame and often out of ofce as a result of the failure of these initiatives. Notwithstanding, or perhaps as a result of these disappointments, the hunt for an all-embracing solution to the question of what makes an effective leader continues today unabated, with many scholars continuing the quest for new post-charismatic or post-transformational leadership theories, such as distributed or dispersed leadership (Ray et al., 2004), ethical leadership (Mangham, 2004) and so on. Financial and human investment in leadership research and development has now spread beyond the obvious concerns of military and commercial organizations to become a major preoccupation in the UK public sector, with governmentfunded leadership colleges and centres being established in the higher and further education sectors, the National Health Service, the Police Service and numerous other public services. Government messages to the public sector imply the belief in an inevitable correlation between effective leadership and improved performance, but the models of leadership upon which these assumptions are based are often either unclear or deeply entrenched in this dominant transformational discourse. Following Chiapello and Fairclough, this review is informed by ideas from Faircloughs approach to Critical Discourse Analysis (1995),1 blending analysis of the social structuring of language and the relatively durable structuring and networking of social practices (p. 3). I focus on the dominant metaphors and other linguistic devices embedded in three texts to examine how alternative leadership refrains may be emerging and re-emerging in response to todays socio-political and economic contexts, and indeed how these take on regulative, restorative and reactionary functions. The review identies a considerable degree of intertextuality2 in the refrains contained within these texts, and a number of common discourses. Explanations for the appearance of these discourses are sought within the postmillennial socio-economic context, and the review goes on to speculate on the extent to which these texts are a reection of new capitalist discourse, and illustrative of post-transformational leadership theory.

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The Contrarians Guide to Leadership

Steven Sample, author of the rst text considers himself to be an unconventional leader, and includes in his book a case study of his own leadership as President of the University of Southern California. His text is endorsed by Warren Bennis who himself has achieved guru status for his own leadership research. Of the book, Bennis applauds its uniqueness, unconventional perspective and bracing authenticity. The implied reactionary message of this text is that following conventional wisdom, particularly conventional wisdom about leadership, is awed, and that great leaders are those who suspend judgment. Sample uses vocabulary such as thinking gray, thinking free, artful listening and artful procrastination to argue his case in favour of contrarian leadership.

Chapter 1: thinking gray and free

Extract 1 Contrarian leaders think differently from the people around them. In particular, such leaders are able to maintain their intellectual independence by thinking gray, and enhance their intellectual creativity by thinking free. . . . Conventional wisdom considers it a valuable skill to be able to make judgments as quickly as possible, and conventional wisdom may well be right when it comes to managers. But contrarian wisdom argues that, for leaders, judgments as to the truth or falsity of information or the merits of new ideas should be arrived at as slowly and subtly as possible and in many cases not at all. . . . Thinking gray is an extraordinarily uncommon characteristic which requires a good deal of effort to develop. But it is one of the most important skills a leader can acquire. (pp. 78) The word contrarian implies opposite, but we are left wondering opposite to what? There appears to be an implicit comparison being made here with an imagined or assumed alternative, that is, a bounded, shackled model of leadership. The suggestion seems to be that conventional leaders can think in only two dimensions and are controlled. Semantic relationships are assumed between independence and gray, and between creativity and free. Note also the evaluative word wisdom, which adds authority to the idea of the contrarian leader. The great one in this text is independent and free thinking. His ideological assumptions appear to be that that gray and free are positive social traits. Extract 2 One must always keep in mind that leadership is an art not a science . . . In this sense, leadership is more akin to music, painting and poetry than it is to more routinised endeavors . . . All of the arts, when practiced at the highest levels of excellence, depend on a steady stream of fresh ideas and creative imagination. Make no mistake, Mozart

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was thinking free when he composed . . . And when I read Shakespeare I hear the cacophonous undertones of thinking free his constant testing of unusual juxtapositions of words . . . his making up of new meanings and stretching the old ones with impunity. Once again Sample implies semantic relationships between freedom, creativity and art. He reinforces this image by using the creative metaphors of leader as artist, musician or poet. The use of exclusively male role models begins to associate leadership with maleness. Extract 3 So it is with effective leadership. The leader whose thinking is constrained within well-worn ruts, who is completely governed by his established passions and prejudices, who is incapable of thinking gray or free, and who cant even appropriate the creative imagination and fresh ideas of those around him, is as anachronistic and ineffective as the dinosaur. (p. 19) In contrast to the creative metaphors used to illustrate contrarian leadership, Sample adopts a dinosaur metaphor to imply that opposing models are extinct, slow moving, cumbersome.

Chapter 8: work for those who work for you

Extract 4 Virtually all leadership experts, whether they subscribe to traditional or au courant theories, depict leadership as a glamorous or majestic calling. But the contrarian isnt fooled. He knows that effective day-to-day leadership isnt so much about himself, as it is about the men and women he chooses as his lieutenants. He knows that a lot of things on his own plate will be minutiae and silliness, while his lieutenants will get to do the fun and important things. Sample suggests that to follow these alternative perspectives would be foolish. Note also the militaristic language, through the selection of the word lieutenants instead of subordinates or followers. Once again Samples leaders are male. Extract 5 If a would-be leader wants glamour, he should try acting in the movies. However, if in fact he wants to make a consequential impact on a cause or an organisation, he needs to roll up his sleeves and be prepared to perform a series of grungy chores which are putatively beneath him, and for which hell never receive recognition or credit, but by virtue of which his lieutenants will be inspired and enabled to achieve great things. (p. 122) Sample contrasts leadership with glamour, suggesting those who would imagine the leadership role to be glamorous are somehow deluded. The leader character is unglamorous, and performing grungy chores. The imagery is designed to shock, providing a strong contrast with heroic leaders portrayed in lms or plays. A further metaphor roll up his sleeves suggests manual labour, reinforcing the masculinity,

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the grungy chores imagery, and implying low reward and recognition. In some senses this message implies a restorative quality to leadership in other words, we can be safe in the knowledge that even the most tedious tasks will be taken care of by these so-called contrarian leaders who are not too proud to roll up their sleeves.

Geeks and Geezers: How Era, Values and Dening Moments Shape Leaders
Warren Bennis, a professor and leadership guru at the University of Southern California and Robert Thomas, a former MIT professor, now Associate Partner and Senior Fellow with Accenture partnered on a research project focusing on different generations of leaders and their development. The book reviewed here is the outcome. Their leadership competencies, learned through dening experiences (or crucibles) are adaptive capacity, engaging others by creating, voice and integrity (p. 123).

Chapter 3: crucibles of leadership

Extract 1 To the extent that any single quality determines success, that quality is adaptive capacity . . . in studying both very young and older leaders, we found over and over again that much more important than a persons measured intelligence to take just one factor was his or her ability to transcend the limits that a particular IQ might impose. . . . Yes, adaptive capacity, which includes such critical skills as the ability to understand context and to recognize and seize opportunities, is the essential competence of leaders. (p. 91) The striking use of the metaphor transcend evokes a Christian religious imagery, and suggests superhuman or mystical powers. This is reinforced by the modality of the narrative which implies certainty: is the essential competence of leaders and persuades the reader through repetition: over and over again. This refrain has a regulative feel. The leader here is still portrayed as the one who makes things happen, the one with extraordinary qualities. Extract 2 In essence, adaptive capacity is applied creativity. It is the ability to look at a problem or crisis and see an array of unconventional solutions. Adaptive capacity includes the quality Keats found essential to the genius of Shakespeare negative capability. This gift, the poet explained in an 1817 letter to his younger brothers, is evident when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubt without any irritable reaching after fact or reason. (p. 101) The character of leader as unconventional echoes Samples book published the same year. So too does the creative metaphor of the artist or playwright. A supposed semantic relation is implied between adaptive capacity and creativity (see also Simpson and French, this volume).

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Extract 3 We spoke earlier of the gift our leaders have for thriving in chaos, for tolerating ambiguity and change . . . creative people are not only more tolerant of ambiguity than others, they are also able to consider multiple options for a longer period. They dont rule out possibilities prematurely and so they are able to make better, more artful choices. (p. 101) Another potentially religious metaphor is adopted here: the idea of leadership as a gift. Is the implicit message suggesting that leadership is God-given? The unusual co-location of the words choice and art in artful choices appears to be designed to surprise and provoke. The word choice in the managerial literature is more often associated with rationality than art.

Chapter 5: the alchemy of leadership

Extract 4 Every one of our leaders had three other essential qualities as well: the ability to engage others in shared meaning, a distinctive and compelling voice, and a sense of integrity (including a strong set of values). (p. 121) and Leadership is one of the performing arts, and the leader always has to sell himself or herself to the audience. (p. 126) Here we see an extension of the metaphor of leader as performer. The authors use the word voice as metaphor for clarity and projection, also evoking theatrical associations. Note also the metaphor of leader as salesperson, reminiscent of Hersey and Blanchards (1982) selling styles found within situational leadership theory.

Leading Quietly: An Unorthodox Guide to Doing the Right Thing

Even in the books title the phrase leading quietly appears to be designed to strike the reader as an oxymoron. Written by a Harvard professor, this book continues the theme of unorthodoxy and unconventionality, echoing further the previous two texts. Its message focuses on ordinary members of organizations, and the low-prole incremental actions they take to affect change.

Extract 1
The book opens as follows: Every profession and walk of life has its great gures, leaders, and heroes. Think of the men and women who create or transform major companies, the political leaders who reshape society, the reghters who risk their lives to save others. We exalt these individuals as role models and celebrate their achievements. They represent, we feel, the true model of leadership.

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But do they really? I ask this because, over the course of a career studying management and leadership I have observed that the most effective leaders are rarely public heroes. These men and women arent high prole champions of causes, and dont want to be. They dont spearhead ethical crusades. They move patiently, carefully, and incrementally. They do what is right for their organizations, for the people around them, and for themselves inconspicuously and without casualties. I have come to call these people quiet leaders because their modesty and restraint are in large measure responsible for their impressive achievements. (pp. 12) The modality used in the rst paragraph is one of certainty and fact. The phrase true model of leadership appears to be employed in order to create an element of surprise when Badaracco contradicts this statement in the next paragraph, suggesting that the commonly accepted model of knowledge is awed. His use of the rst person: I have observed . . . in the second paragraph to draw on his career experience adds weight to his controversial claim. We also note a deliberate element of surprise created by contrasting leaders with public heroes. This portrayal is deliberately reactionary, an attempt to debunk the value of the heroic leader. In the nal paragraph, a new character of leader is portrayed as inconspicuous, careful, incremental, and modest.

Extract 2
The problem is that heroic leadership looks at people in terms of a pyramid. At the top are great gures. They have clear, strong values and know right from wrong. They act boldly, sacrice themselves for noble causes, set compelling examples for others, and ultimately change the world . . . But where does this leave everyone else? . . . The pyramid approach, by saying little about everyday life and ordinary people, seems to consign much of humanity to a murky, moral limbo. (pp. 23) Badaracco employs various persuasive devices in this extract, in particular he contrasts his model of quiet leadership with the commonly held heroic model. He appears to suggest in employing strong vocabulary murky, moral limbo that conventional leadership leads at best to amorality.

Extract 3
But what do these patient, unglamorous, everyday efforts add up to? The answer is they are almost everything . . . Put differently, quiet leadership is more than a set of highly pragmatic tactics. It is a way of thinking about people, organizations and effective action. It is a way of understanding the ow of events and discerning the best ways to make a difference. And in a small way, quiet leadership is also an act of faith: an expression of condence in the ultimate force of what Schweitzer called small and obscure deeds. (pp. 910) A further persuasive device is employed, using a quotation from Albert Schweitzers autobiography to justify his position. In the rst sentence a semantic relationship is

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implied between unglamorous, everyday efforts and leadership. Note also the religious language employed in the words: act of faith and condence in the ultimate force.

Extract 4
Quiet leaders think about doing the right thing in a different way. They are realists, not romantics. (p. 72) Here we note echoes of Samples text (Extract 4) as Badaracco continues to challenge the idea of leadership as glamorous or romantic: Badaracco is also a master of the metaphor: Quiet leaders see the world as a kaleidoscope rather than a xed target or a well-mapped terrain. (p. 1112) The metaphor of a kaleidoscope suggests both the non-static, and the complex: Quiet leadership is a long, hard race, run on obscure pathways, not a thrilling sprint before a cheering crowd. (p. 34) This metaphor suggests that endurance is required for quiet leadership and also suggests a lack of extrinsic reward which is compatible with the notion of act of faith suggested in the previous extract. Is Badaracco implying that these quiet leaders must be rewarded in a future life (heaven)? When faced with a challenge, effective leaders rarely rush forward with The Answer. Instead, they do something quite at odds with the conventional view of leadership. Instead of charging the hill, they often look for ways to beg, borrow, and steal a little time. (p. 53) In both extracts we nd the strikingly parallel metaphors: in the rst the contrast is between the long, hard race vs a thrilling sprint. In the second, charging the hill (military metaphor) contrasted with begging, borrowing, stealing, imagery normally associated with subordination and poverty, and suggesting that such humility is a virtue.

Leadership refrains: artists, performers and anti-heroes

These three post-millennial texts are striking in their repetitious refrains. They play at once regulative, restorative and reactionary functions, sometimes in harmony and sometimes using counterpoint to shock or disturb, seeking at once to challenge the status quo, but at the same time offering reassurance that these new leaders will be even more able to offer security and reassurance to organizational members. In the rst text (Sample), which posits the idea of contrarian leadership, the character of the leader is portrayed as independent, free thinking, unglamorous and male. Samples predominant metaphors are leader as artist, musician or poet, and leader as hard-working manual worker. The second text, Geeks and Geezers, refers to the crucibles of and alchemy of leadership implying an element of mystery in the process of leading. The character

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of the effective leader is unconventional, gifted and adaptive. The dominant metaphors employed are leader as artist, poet, and performer the artistic character resonating with Samples contrarian leader. The third text Quiet Leadership portrays the character of the leader as inconspicuous, careful, incremental, modest, restrained and seeking little reward. The dominant metaphors are of the leader as ordinary person, unglamorous, a realist the anti-hero, revealing close parallels with the contrarian leader. In all three texts we nd common refrains. These three leader characters are all creative. They are free spirits, unconventional and hence often artistic. At the same time, however, they are ordinary and quite humble found at all levels of the organization and commonly at lower levels. Essentially they are non-glamorous and nonheroic, and must not expect rewards or glory for their efforts. The idea of leader as artist is not new. Grint (2000), for example, has suggested that leadership is an ensemble of arts. His interpretation of leader as artist is perhaps less radical than the metaphors in the three texts that propose the character of the leader as poet, playwright, and artist. Grints leadership arts are summarized more conventionally as the invention of an identity, the formulation of a strategic vision, the construction of organisational tactics and the deployment of persuasive mechanisms to ensure followers actually follow (p. 27). However, he similarly identies the performing arts as being crucial to leadership: fundamentally this is the world of the performing arts, the theatre of rhetorical skill, of negotiating skills, and of inducing the audience to believe in the world you paint with words and props. The discourse of the anti-hero has been growing, inuenced at least in part by feminist theory which has critiqued the masculine image of heroic leadership. However, this has not diminished the popularity of distinguishing management from leadership, and attributing to leadership something extraordinary, even magical. The appeal of this message to organizational members at all levels is self-evident. Even the least charismatic manager or the quietest worker can now be a leader. Such acts of leadership will require grungy chores, will be a long hard race, require an an act of faith, and they must not expect a cheering crowd. But the implication is that it will be worth it in the end (or in a future life?). The fast rise and subsequent crash of the e-boom and claims of the inevitability of organizational transformation to support the transition from industrial to information society (De Cock et al., 2005) may all contribute to the emergence of these alternative leadership refrains. De Cock and colleagues conclude that in New Economy discourse Juxtaposition of traditional conservative business values and innovative entrepreneurial values . . . is neither contradictory nor problematic (p. 44). The New Economy rhetoric is, they suggest, incredible, explosive, otherwordly, unparalleled and unbelievable (p. 42) while remaining deeply attached to capitalist ideology. The alternative leadership refrains found in the three texts also contain these parallel assumptions. New leadership must be radically different to support the demands of post-millennial organizations, but at their core, the aims of modern business organizations remain roughly unchanged. It is perhaps signicant that in accounts of 9/11, stories of the extraordinary courage of ordinary people abound. These stories, such as those of re-ghters who gave their lives, impacted greatly on restoring morale in the USA at a time when the leadership of their political leaders was in question. The New York Mayor, Giuliani,

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was congratulated for his decisive actions, which were very much depicted at the time as following a connectionist mode of leadership. His quiet grip on the situation, and his preference for recognizing the small acts of others are qualities that appear to be embedded in the discourses of the three texts. In many ways Giuliani was the archetypal anti-hero. The questions raised by the series of corporate scandals that commenced with Enron sent an inevitable ripple through established leadership theory. Trust in the integrity of corporate leaders, for example, could no longer be expected or assumed. Trust in the ordinary worker to lead in small ways began to seem more desirable. The ground was prepared for a popular challenge to the leadership at the top of the organization, and to charismatic or transformational forms of leadership which were now seen as potentially dysfunctional and, as Kets de Vries (1993) had suggested ten years earlier, as narcissistic. The refrains identied within the three texts reviewed for this article reveal considerable evidence of Boltanski and Chiapellos (1999) connectionist discourse of adaptability. However, there is strikingly little evidence of the previously popular inspirational discourse. Indeed, the converse was found in the guise of the anti-hero in all three texts. This alternative leadership discourse, portraying leaders as nonglamorous, quiet, inconspicuous, and dispersed throughout organizations is an interesting development. Found in the stories of ordinary people, this discourse is about the gift of the quiet enactment of freedom, creativity, artful choice and adaptation, and the cumulative effects of numerous leadership acts. It is not about charisma, glory or reward for heroic acts. This anti-hero discourse appears to reect the growing inuence of the spiritual discourse in organization literature, and a shift in the ideology of leadership away from American/western individualism towards more collectivist ideologies, inuenced by many eastern theologies in which material reward is eschewed in favour of spiritual growth and Nirvana. If organizational members can be led to believe that their rewards will come later, even (or particularly) for the most humble among them, they are perhaps more likely to devote increasing effort to their everyday work, however hard and however grungy. The sharing of the leadership title with them may be but a small sacrice for those with material power in the capitalist system to make. The popularization of leadership through the apparent silencing of the inspirational voice in favour of the connectionist raises concerns that, like the empowerment discourse that went before it, the idea of dispersed leadership is merely a rhetorical device. Designed to increase motivation and effort, the message may hold great appeal to those at the top of organizations, and may also be persuasive to those at the bottom. However, as Alvesson and Sveningsson (2003) point out, mundane acts are only identied with leadership when performed by those in senior organizational roles. This observation is contrary to the messages in the popular books reviewed which have been shown to suggest that leadership is open to all. Reecting on the implications of this extended review, we should perhaps ask what kind of organizations the authors are implicitly constructing for our society and what kind of society they are seeking to construct through these discourses. If we are to be led by artists, performers and anti-heroes, these questions are important ones for the leadership agenda, and have important repercussions for leadership and

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management development programmes, which now constitute a multi-billion-dollar global industry. Through the enactment of these leadership refrains, leadership courses are paradoxically playing a key role in shaping society, as they themselves are continuously being shaped by society. Storey and Mangham (2004) have called for leadership to be studied within its wider social context, since all leadership forms represent the outcomes of negotiated order. More textual analysis of popular management texts is now needed. These so called airport books are read much more extensively than all but a handful of academic texts. An understanding of the refrains they contain and the messages they promote will be important if we are to engage with these alternative emergent leadership discourses and their implications for work and organizations.

Notes
1. Discourse analysis is rooted in a wide range of disciplines ranging from sociology to linguistics (discussed elsewhere; see De Cock et al., 2005; Grant et al., 2004; Van Dijk, 1997). 2. The intertextuality of a text is dened as the presence within it of elements of other texts (and therefore potentially other voices than the authors own) (Fairclough, 2003: 218) or in an earlier text as: basically the property texts have of being full of snatches of other texts, which may be explicitly demarcated or merged in, and which the text may assimilate, contradict, ironically echo, and so forth(Fairclough,1992: 84). It is these pragmatic denitions that have inspired the intertextual lens used, and enabled each of the three texts to be compared rst with each other, and second, with earlier leadership texts (see McKenna, 2004).

References
Abrahamson, E. (1991) Managerial Fads and Fashions: The Diffusion and Rejection of Innovations, Academy of Management Review 16(3): 586612. Anthony, P. (1994) Managing Culture. Buckingham: Open University Press. Avolio, B., & Bass, B. (1988) Transformational Leadership, Charisma and Beyond, in J. Hunt, H. Baliga, & C. Dachler (eds) Emerging Leadership Vistas. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books. Bass, B. (1985) Leadership and Performance Beyond Expectations. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Boltanski, L., & Chiapello, E. (1999) Le nouvel esprit du capitalisme. Paris: Gallimard. Burns, J. M. (1978) Leadership. New York: Harper & Row. Chiapello, E., & Fairclough, N. (2002) Understanding the New Ideology: A Transdisciplinary Contribution from Critical Discourse Analysis and New Sociology of Capitalsim, Discourse and Society 13(2): 185208. Conger, J., & Kanungo, R. (1998) Charismatic Leadership in Organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. De Cock, C., Fitchett, J., & Volkmann, C. (2005) Constructing the New Economy: A Discursive Perspective, British Journal of Management 16: 3749. Downton, J. V. (1973) Rebel Leadership: Commitment and Charisma in the Revolutionary Process. New York: Free Press. Fairclough, N. (1989) Language and Power. London: Longman. Fairclough, N. (1992) Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity.

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Extended Book Review Turnbull Fairclough, N. (1995) Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language. London: Longman. Fairclough, N. (2003) Analysing Discourse. London: Routledge. Fairclough, N., Graham, P., Lemke, J., & Wodak, R. (2004) Introduction, Critical Discourse Studies 1(1): 18. Hersey, P., & Blanchard, K. H. (1982) Management of Organizational Behavior: Utilizing Human Resources. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Grant, D., Hardy, C., Oswick, C., & Putnam, L. (2004) The Sage Handbook of Organizational Discourse. London: SAGE. Grint, K. (2000) The Arts of Leadership. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jackson, B. (1996) Re-engineering the Sense of Self: The Manager and the Management Guru, Journal of Management Studies 33(5): 57190. Jessop, R. (2000) The Crisis of the National Spatio-temporal Fix and the Ecological Dominance of Global Capitalism, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 24: 32360. Kets de Vries, M. (1993) Leaders, Fools and Imposters. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Kristeva, J. (1986) Word, Dialogue, and Novel, in T. Moi (ed.) The Kristeva Reader, pp. 2433. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Kunda, G. (1992) Engineering Culture, Control and Commitment in a High Tech Corporation. Philadelphia, PA: Templeton University Press. Mangham, I. (2004) Leadership and Integrity, in J. Storey (ed.) Leadership in Organizations: Current Issues and Trends, pp. 4157. Milton Park: Routledge. McKenna, B. (2004) Critical Discourse Studies: Where to From Here?, Critical Discourse Studies 1(1): 940. Ray, T., Clegg, S., & Gordon, R. (2004) A New Look at Dispersed Leadership: Power, Knowledge and Context, in J. Storey (ed.) Leadership in Organizations: Current Issues and Trends, pp. 31936. Milton Park: Routledge. Storey, J., & Mangham, I. (2004) Bringing the Strands Together, in J. Storey (ed.) Leadership in Organizations: Current Issues and Trends, pp. 33945. Milton Park: Routledge, Turnbull, S. (1999) Emotional Labour in Corporate Change Programmes: The Effects of Organizational Feeling Rules on Middle Managers, Human Resource Development International 2(2): 12546. Van Dijk, T. (ed.) (1997) Discourse Studies: A Multidisciplinary Introduction. London: SAGE.

Sharon Turnbull is Deputy Director of the Research Centre for Leadership Studies at The Leadership Trust Foundation in Ross-on-Wye, UK, and Senior Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of Management Learning at Lancaster University Management School. She researches and teaches in the eld of HRD, organizational change, corporate ideology and leadership. Her publications include Critical Thinking in Human Resource Development (with C. Elliott; Routledge, 2005) and Your MBA with Distinction: A Systematic Approach to Success in Your Business Degree (with C. Gatrell; Pearson Education, 2003). [email: [email protected]]

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