Article

An Exchange of
Letters: What Can
a Specifically Social
Constructionist
Perspective Bring to
Bear on What Must Be
One of the Most Studied
Subjects in Human
History?

Management Communication Quarterly

24(2) 322347
The Author(s) 2010
Reprints and permission: http://www.
sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0893318909359698
http://mcq.sagepub.com

Dennis Tourish1 and J. Kevin Barge2

Keywords
social constructionism, phronesis, power, practice
Dear Kevin,
The articles in this Special Issue are further evidence of a growing fascination for leadership that transcends disciplinary boundaries. Events in the
world economy over the past few years will have heightened this yet further.
In good times or bad, it appears that most of us attribute great significance to
leadership. Indeed, as many have suggested (e.g., Lipman-Bluemen, 2008), it
may even be that difficulty and uncertainty heighten our tendency to hope for
the appearance of a Messiah figure and in the process render us more susceptible to the persuasive charms of snake-oil salesmen, whatever the toxicity of
the brew they are peddling. The key question here is what can a specifically
1

University of Kent, UK
Texas A&M University, College Station

Corresponding Author:
J. Kevin Barge, Department of Communication, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX
77843-4234
Email: kbarge@tamu.edu

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social constructionist perspective bring to bear on what must be one of the

most studied subjects in human history?
My own interest in leadership is born from the intersection of many
factorspersonal and professional. The professional is rooted in a disciplinary background of communication studies, heavily shaped by linguistics,
sociology, and social psychology. How one person influences another is an
intrinsically fascinating question. The personal emerges from my experience
of being subject to and an observer of leadership practice in both functional
and dysfunctional contexts. I grew up in Northern Ireland at the height of
what has been termed the troubles. Seemingly charismatic and indubitably
influential individuals advocated political ends, in the pursuit of which the
lives of their followers, not to mention those of their enemies, were of little
significance. Leaders came and wentsome summarily dispatched by followers who had grown weary of attempts at compromise or a perceived
failure to achieve much ballyhooed goals. Yet, some also endured through all
the strife, unaffected by fashion, failure, or the lethal disdain of their opponents. What distinguished those who achieved lasting influence from those
who held exalted positions one day only to be discarded the next? Why were
so many people willing to follow some leaders to the precipice and even
beyond?
Thus began a preoccupation with the dark side of leadershipleaders
who hold followers enthralled by dint of their rabble-rousing oratorical gifts;
who offer an appealing simplicity of purpose in the face of lifes complexities; who compel a transformation in follower attitudes, thereby converting
apparently normal people into devotees of rigid ideologies, totalistic beliefs,
and violent means; who exploit the devotion and commitment of their followers to further an agenda frequently at odds with its proclaimed
emancipatory intent; and leaders who promise to right all wrongs, only to add
fresh layers of hurt to an already besmirched human condition. Leadership
for me has always been about studying the limits on the power of leaders to
do good and the propensity of some to champion an agenda that may exercise
a destructive impact but that nevertheless exerts a powerful emotional appeal.
Echoing Winston Churchill, many leaders promise blood, sweat, toil, and
tears. However, few do so for equally worthwhile ends. So the study of leadership inevitably becomes an exploration of leader and message effects, and
of how leaders and followers exercise a reciprocal influence on the mind-sets
and practices of each other.
Purely functionalist perspectives therefore have little appeal to me. Yet
they are widely held. Read any issue of the Harvard Business Review (HBR),
required reading for students on MBA programs around the world.

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Practically every issue contains eulogies of leadership practice and uncritical

interviews with CEOs, from whom we are expected to learn rather than question. In this world, leaders determine a vision without needing much in the
way of feedback. Macho imagery is rife. One recent edition devoted to the
tests of the leader adorned its cover with an image of an executive performing push-ups on a boardroom table. The job of such leaders is to then cajole,
convince, or bully followers into submission (if the global economic crisis is
any indication, the results have not been inspiring). In a slightly less crude
form, I have argued that this is more or less what transformational leadership
theories seek to legitimate (e.g., Bass & Riggio, 2006). In my view, a stress
on how leaders transform others inevitably changes communication from a
two-way exchange into a one-way process of domination that has an inherently autocratic potential (Tourish & Pinnington, 2002). How can such crude
approaches have been so influential?
Part of the answer is our forgetfulness. In medieval days, it was commonly
believed that monarchs held their position by virtue of the divine right of
kings. They were the anointed representatives of God on earth, and to challenge the legitimacy of their rule was to flout the will of the divine. It
sometimes seems as if mainstream leadership work, lacking a sense of historical continuity, offers a similar view: the divine right of leaders. To offer
one example, the growing interest in evidence-based management, championed in particular by Pfeffer and Sutton (2006) and Rousseau, Manning, and
Denyer (2008), adopts a purely functionalist view of the leadership role. The
argument is that managementand leadershippractice should be on the
basis of the evidence about what works and that management research must
therefore be more relevant to the needs of practitioners. However, practitioners are defined purely in terms of managerial elite, whose legitimacy is
taken for granted rather than interrogated. It is assumed that decision-making
power rests with managers, who are thus free to determine all key issues
without their subjects being required to offer a voice. Employees, cast in the
role of infantilized dependents, must grant power of attorney over many of
the most important aspects of their lives to powerful others. This simply
doesnt square with my life experience of leadership. Nor is it possible to
reconcile it with communication perspectives that stress ambiguity, indeterminacy of meaning, and the subtlety and range of most human-inspired
messagesin short, with perspectives that owe much to social constructionism. To study leadership must be to study voice, power, words, discourseand
not just those of the elite. Leaders have no divine right to rule over followers.
Rather, the challenge is to delineate the limits of their power, to explore the
sense-making processes whereby this power is enacted in the minds and lives

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of leaders and followers alike, to ascertain what it is that holds people

enthralled by flawed visions and dysfunctional leaders, and to question continually and challenge the legitimacy of a leader-centric view of the social
world we inhabit.
Which brings me back to HBR and the question I posed earlier: Why can
such approaches be so influential? In addition to amnesia, I would suggest
that another reason has been a failure on the part of communication scholars
to engage sufficiently with the world of leadership theory and practice. The
Journal of Business Communication, in its entire history, has published an
average of about one article per year that addresses leadership issues. Management Communication Quarterly (MCQ), in existence since 1987, has
published a grand total of 13 articles in that time with the word leadership in
their titleexcluding this Special Issue. Purely psychological perspectives
have been dominant and have delivered the minimum of challenge to a
leader-centric agenda. Critical scholars have been slow to explore the issue
of leadership in their work (Zoller & Fairhurst, 2007). Indeed, as the Sailing
Guide Introduction to this Special Issue points out, many have even been
hostile to a serious exploration of leadership dynamics, for a variety of reasons. It is, in my view, time for a more robust agenda of engagementone, I
am glad to say, which is much in evidence in this Special Issue. I believe that
a social constructionist perspective is inherently inclined to ask the critical
what, why, and how questions. What is power? Why should we tolerate it? How do we make sense of it? Why should followers obey leaders?
Who says that some messages have more legitimacy than others? How does
the exchange of information and ideas between leaders and followers shape
our social world, for good or ill?
However, there are limits. Leadership is enacted through discourse, but it
is much more than that. For example, the bankruptcy of General Motors is
open to much interpretation and contested social construction. It is also a
flesh and blood event, of real and tragic significance to many thousands of
people. Its leadership failures, bankruptcy, partial rebirth, and associated job
losses can be no more socially constructed out of existence than I can dematerialize from one space to reappear in another. Social constructionism
enriches our view of leadership. It explores what crucial events mean to the
people involved. However, it cannot ever be the whole story, and I resist any
suggestion that it should be. The world of leadership is too complex to avail
of a single explanation, and no one theoretical orientation can exhaust all its
complexities (Fairhurst, 2007).
It is precisely because leadership has such importance, precisely because
words often have such tangible power, that we are obliged to pay them the

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greatest possible attention. Social constructionist perspectives can help us

chart these tensions, paradoxes, and transitions and greatly enhance our
understanding of both what is happening in the world of leaderfollower
relations andmore criticallywhat needs to be done. We can do better, in
both the theory and practice of leadership. Surveying the world, it may even
be that we have little choice.
I greatly look forward to your perspective on these and other issues.
Regards,
Dennis
Dear Dennis,
As I read your letter, I was struck by your question, What can a specifically social constructionist perspective bring to bear on what must be one of
the most studied subjects in human history? Is it simply opening up the
black box of communicative interaction as suggested by leadership psychology? Or is it something distinct from leadership psychology, a new way of
thinking about how we engageboth in theory and practicethe way that
social phenomena such as leadership are performed in everyday life? My
sense is that it is the latter as social constructionism invites us to explore the
power of language to create our social worlds by offering a different set of
epistemological, ontological, and axiological assumptions to approach the
study of leadership.
My initial interest in the social construction of leadership can be traced
back to my father, a Presbyterian minister. As a child growing up in the Midwest of the United States during the turbulent 1960s, I remember my father
driving with five other ministers to Memphis, Tennessee, following Martin
Luther Kings assassination to march in support of social justice. I remember
my father and mother staying up late on Saturday nights meticulously going
over my fathers sermon for Sunday to ensure that the sermons language and
message as well as its delivery would be inspiring, thoughtful, and coherent.
I quickly became aware of the magical power of language and its immense
potential for inviting new patterns of meaning making and actionparticularly ways that emphasize social justice and the cultivation of collaborative
working relationships for the common good. My doctoral studies in organizational communication occurred at the moment the discipline took the
symbolic interpretive turn, which gave me the space to develop my interest
in how people cocreate various possibilities for meaning and action through
the way they talk and manage their conversations. Perhaps, the most critical
influence in my professional development was my involvement with the
London-based Kensington Consultation Centre Foundations (KCCF)

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program in systemic constructionist leadership that demonstrated how

sophisticated communication theory such as Wittgensteins notion of language games, Batesons perspectives on communication and learning, and
Deweys ideas concerning meaning as action and inquiry could be used as
inspiration for creating leadership practices that liberate human potential and
nourish the human spirit (see Barge, 2004a, 2004b, 2007; Barge & Fairhurst,
2008).
A social constructionist approach to leadership focuses on the communicative practice of individuals and the construction of social arrangements.
From my work with the practitioners at KCCF, I learned an important distinction between first- and third-person perspectives toward communication
(Pearce, 1994). A first-person perspective focuses on the way that individuals
who wish to create a lead position work from within the ongoing flow of
communication and focuses on the key question, What do I do now? A
third-person perspective focuses on an outside observer articulating the rules
of the gamea retrospective accounting of the resources an individual or
group used for making sense and acting in situations. Drawing on Wittgenstein, a third-person perspective is interested in questions such as, What are
the grammars and moral orders that constitute leadership? and How do
particular grammars and moral orders invite particular forms of life? The
difference between first- and third-person perspectives is that the former
focuses on living speech, words in their speaking, whereas the latter focuses
on already spoken words (Cunliffe, 2008).
A third-person perspective toward leadership has enormous potential
for highlighting the way that human systemsgroups, organizations, and societiescan be constructed. We can begin to look at the way that discursively
constructed resourcesideologies, discourses, interpretative repertoires, and
deep structuresinfluence the way that people make sense of situations and
act, and we can also explore how linguistic utterances shape the interpretations
people make about situations and lead to different forms of action. Such an
approach allows us to explore important concerns such as the way meaningmaking activities such as problem framing are constructed (Liu, 2010 [this
issue]), the role of power in leadership (Gordon, 2010 [this issue]), and the connections among leadership, identity, and learning (Carroll & Levy, 2010 [this
issue]). As you also point out in your letter, we can also explore the boundaries
of social constructionism and its intersection with the material. As Harvey and
Shields (2010 [this issue]) suggest, we need to be careful about drawing causal
claims about the effects of particular social constructions on material outcomes,
but we do need to explore how the mutual interplay between the symbolic and
the material and how each can occasion the other.

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My personal fascination with leadership tends to be more aligned with a

first-person perspective as I am extremely curious about how individuals and
collectivities mobilize resources to act in the moment. How do they know
how to go on? There is a growing body of work in leadership that recognizes
leadership is a highly contextualized and situated activity that is more about
making wise choices in the moment than following a fixed a priori script. The
idea of situated judgment goes by a variety of names, such as wisdom-inaction (Raelin, 2007), phronesis (Grint, 2007), and acting with sensibility
(Barge & Little, 2008). What ties these approaches together is the notion that
situations are unique, emergent, and reflexiveYour actions help construct
the very situation to which you must respond. I found myself wondering
what the articles in this Special Issue would look like if they adopted more of
a first-person position toward leadership. Carroll and Levy (2010) start down
this road by exploring the connection between identity and wisdom-in-action
but could go much further. Their study is a detailed analysis of the way identity construction connects with issues of ambiguity and power, but what I
kept wondering about is what identity choices did participants have to make,
how did they know they had to make them, when did they notice they had to
make them, and how did they work through the choiceIn other words, how
do they live out wisdom-in-action?
If we take a first-person perspective to leadership seriously, I think that we
will have to reconceptualize what counts as leadership competencies and
focus much more on the grammatical abilities that enable individuals wishing to create a lead position within a human system to connect with and
change the system. What are the communicative abilities that allow leadership to make sense of situations and systems and take action? Moreover,
what is the role of the body, tacit knowledge, and intuition in leadership? The
grammatical abilities associated with leadership are much more than simply
thinking about situations and systems; it also involves feeling our way forward in situations using our body, our intuition, our gut feelings, and hunches.
We need to focus our attention to the moment-by-moment way individuals
consciously or intuitively feel their way forward in the conversation. If situations and systems are unique, emergent, and complex, how can leadership
be improvised in the moment? Fixed scripts dont work particularly well in a
fast-paced continuously changing world.
I agree that there are many reasons that social constructionist approaches
have not played a significant role in mainstream venuessuch as HBR,
MCQ, or Journal of Business Communicationsuch as amnesia and the limited engagement communication scholars have with practitioners. However,
I would add another reasonthe complex and contested flavor of leadership.

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Social constructionism moves us to get into the detailsthe complex details

of the way systems get constructed with a recognition that social constructionism is not really about the truth as many different constructions about
situations and systems may exist. Rather, it is about utilityis a particular
social construction useful for moving individuals and systems forwardand
power, who gains from a particular social construction emerging as dominant. As a friend of mine from KCCF once said, A systemic constructionist
approach is a thinking persons game. You have to think about the complexity of the situation and be willing to stake out your articulation in a way that
fits with the uniqueness of the situation. Crude approaches tend to oversimplify leadership offering thin advice for complex games and thus make
leadership appear to be easy, provided you follow the rules. Social constructionist approaches, when done well, embrace the complexity and work with
it, suggesting that we make the road as we walk it. For many individuals and
groups, the notion that we make it up as we go can be quite disturbing.
I look forward to hearing your response.
Take care,
Kevin
Dear Kevin,
I am very struck by your concluding suggestion of disturbance. For me,
this is intimately bound up with the realization that leadership is so deeply
contested, as you outline. I would only addnow more than ever. To write
about organizations as unitary formations, with leaders uniquely qualified to
articulate the common good, is to evade this problem and miss most of what
makes the leadership role so challenging and even sometimes impossible to
perform. Social constructionist perspectives inherently challenge these presumptions and in so doing disturb.
It is not accidental, I think, that disturbance is a trait shared by all the
articles in this Special Issue. That is, they explore such issues as identity
construction, failure, hostility, and dispersed leadership and in doing so
upend much conventional wisdom. What is missing are simplistic causal
models, claims to have found absolute truths, and the alltoo-common tendency to commit what Rosenzweig (2007) has termed the halo errorthat
is, to overattribute either organizational success or failure to the role of those
who hold a handful of top positions. This error is particularly pronounced in
the influential work of Jim Collins, best-selling author of Built to Last (1994),
Good to Great (2001), and now How the Mighty Fall (2009), who attributes
total agency to the intentions and actions of top CEOs. Despite occasional
disclaimers, Collins work draws heavily on the retrospective accounts of

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organizational actors (usually in a senior role) and/or business commentators

without considering whether their accounts have been tarnished by precisely
a tendency toward overattribution. The managerial voice dominates, functioning like an omniscient narrator who talks over the opening titles, main
action, and closing credits of a movie. It seems clear to me that social systems
are far too complex and emotionally charged and contested to be reducible to
simple models that not only assume too much agency but also concentrate
that agency in too few hands. The sense-making models that both leaders and
followers employ to coconstruct each other is a vital aspect of the leadership
process and one which traditional trait, situationist, contingency, or transformational models have been slow to recognize.
Another example of this can be drawn from the burgeoning literature on
spirituality at work (SAW) and the associated realm of spiritual leadership.
This generally assumes that organizations have a taken-for-granted quality
that precludes multiple and contested interpretations of either the common
good, spirituality, or the role of leaders in installing what are deemed to be
positive values in the minds of followers. The rhetoric is, of course, emancipatory. We must abolish barriers between peoples work and nonwork selves;
we must permit them to bring all of who they are into work with them; we
must have positive values, as determined by senior managers, guiding our
behavior and relationships. However, the problem is that, in the power-saturated
organizational contexts where most people actually work, this approach
gives managers more power than everpower to frame all aspects of reality,
to reshape deeply held personal values so that they are consistent with organizational purposes, to monitor behavior in ever more intrusive directions, to
judge what attitudes are permissible and what are prohibited, and to manage
meaning in such a way that the most important elements of peoples private
value systems now have a work-oriented focus. A performative intent is
therefore also endemic to most of this discourse (Driscoll & Wiebe, 2007)
That is, the assertion is made that organizations that embrace spirituality will
improve effectiveness, productivity, and profitability. It is assumed that these
are worthwhile outcomes. Spirituality seems to be viewed as another means
of asserting that the visions developed by an organizations leaders have been
designed to reflect genuinely their followers interests, as opposed to, say,
those of an elite few. Followers should therefore comply, to boost organizational performance. It is merely a coincidence, albeit a happy one, that profits
will rise in consequence.
How might such perspectives affect the means by which we research leadership? Because a considerable volume of the SAW literature has a
managerialist bias, it is quite consistent for Giacalone and Jukiewicz (2003)

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to argue that researchers must effectively demonstrate the utility of spirituality in the workplace by framing it as a question of value-added: How
does spirituality help us to undertake work processes more effectively?
(pp. 9-10). It seems that CEOs must frame reality not only for their employees
but also for researchers, to the point of determining the outcome of research
investigations in advance. A full research menu may be available, but only one
choice is allowed. To ask for more, as Oliver Twist found out the hard way, is
to incur the wrath of the powerful. Your letter mentioned the need to reconceptualize what counts as leadership competencies and focus much more on
the grammatical abilities that enable individuals wishing to create a lead position within a human system to connect with and change the system. From the
standpoint of Giacalone and Jukiewicz, this is quite unnecessary. Rather,
researchers should set out to explore how leaders can use such phenomenon as
SAW to improve their profits and presumably aim to help them acquire whatever competencies are needed to succeed in the task.
However, there is a deeper story to be explored here, one which such functionalism evades. There is no intrinsic reason why leaders should be allocated
this power of determination over the mindsets of their followers and even
less reason to imagine they can succeed in whatever such efforts they make.
I believe that a social constructionist approach to leadership in the context of
SAW would take as a starting point the knowledge that follower identities are
complex, conflicted, and discursive formations. It follows that any definition
of spirituality countenanced by an organizations leaders would exclude
many organizational members and be opposed by others. In short, social constructionism is resistant to reductionist approaches that equate the needs of
followers with those of leaders. It explores where meanings are contested,
ambiguous, challenged, and fought over. This means engaging with power at
what has been termed a deep-structure level, an issue that you also raised in
your letterthat is, going beyond surface-level structures, such as those evident in organizational charts or a workers job title, objectives, and goals.
Instead, we can explore forms of constraint that are much less readily identifiable, such as ideology, beliefs, emotions, and the meanings attached to
symbolic communicative acts. Traditional functionalist perspectives on leadership simply dont do this. No wonder so much conventional leadership
literature bears only a flimsy relationship to the world of leaderfollower
relations as most people experience them. Social constructionist perspectives, however, can offer a deep-structure study of paradox and contradiction.
By contrast, and besotted by heroic myths of leadership, the world seems full
of people who imagine they are charismatic visionaries, whereas everyone
else simply sees boring men and women in suits.

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I suspect that such ideas have become less heretical than might have been
the case even a few short years ago. Trust in leaders is at an all time low
according to some surveys, and particularly in the United States, even lower
than in the immediate post-Enron period. Rather than allow ourselves to be
seduced by the rhetoric of visionary leaders, we can assume responsibility for
our destiny ourselves. We can challenge, question, dissent, and resist. However, it is easier to condone the status quo, particularly under conditions of
autocracy. Followers are thus often complicit in their own subordination.
Although dissent and resistance clearly exist, and may be growing, it is not
unusual for people to merely to transfer their allegiance from one false God
to another. The attitude often is if one messianic leader has failed, let us canonize another.
Despite this, the need to question and challenge will not go away. It persists, however many changes in leadership practice are instituted. I believe
that research is most useful and is certainly at its most illuminating when it
resists the status quo, questions authority, challenges the conventional
wisdom, searches for deeper meanings, and disturbs.
Best regards,
Dennis
Dear Dennis,
Im fascinated with our letters emerging focus on the connections between
power, agency, and complex systems and share many of your concerns regarding how contemporary leadership theory and research address these issues.
Trait, situationist, contingency, and transformational leadership approaches
do tend to place agency in the hands of a few individuals, typically seniorlevel leaders, which foster images of leaders as messianic. By equating the
needs of followers with those of leaders, significant issues concerning the
construction of power and who benefits from configuring power relationships
in particular ways are erased. Im particularly troubled when emancipatory or
liberatory leadership practices become transformed into technologies and
used as simple tools for improving performance, productivity, and profitability as you suggest is the case with the SAW literature. The notion that research
is most useful and is certainly at its most illuminating when it resists the status
quo, questions authority, challenges the conventional wisdom, searches for
deeper meanings, and disturbs rings true for me, particularly when it disturbs
and provokes our thinking regarding the way that agency, power, linguistic
practice, and consequences are connected.
However, let me take the concerns you voice in your letter regarding messianic leadership and the preoccupation with profits and performance in a

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different direction. When would it be good for organizations and societies to

construct messianic forms of leadership? When would it be good to construct
profits and performance as the most important leadership outcomes? Leadership can be constructed in a messianic fashion within certain forms of life, and
it also can be constructed in other ways. If we take the pragmatic notion of
utility seriously, our focus is on what happens when we construct leadership
in a messianic fashion and focus on performance as the primary outcomes and
what kinds of consequences that invites. Pursuing higher levels of performance and profitability is an important task, but its importance must also be
tempered by the recognition that it is only one of many tasks that is accomplished simultaneously through interactional and discursive activity. That is
what a social constructionist perspective toward leadership brings to the table;
we can explore the messy interrelationships, tensions, and paradoxes between
individuals, contexts, discourses, and consequences. As du Gay, Salaman, and
Rees (1996) point out, big-D discourses or ideologies define what management is, how it is to be performed, and whether it is distinct from leadership.
Our quest is to engage the dynamic complexity of leadership by focusing on
the way that it is constructed, accomplished, and built through interactional
and discursive activity and what intended and unintended consequences a particular construction at a specific moment in time and space invites.
Forms of leadership are made not found, emergent not fixed, and relational not individual. Scholars who adopt a social constructionist approach to
leadership are curious about how people construct leadership, when particular linguistic styles and patterns fit with the way the situation is constructed,
what (un)intended consequences they generate, and what challenges, tensions, and paradoxes constitute the way leadership is constructed and the
consequences it invites. They are interested in exploring the multiversity of
leadership and its consequences as opposed to producing the singular truth
about leadership. Its about taking a bothand position where we become
curious about how leadership works in the way it does and what it invites
For example, why messianic forms of leadership seem to recur, and what
opportunities and constraints it creates versus fixing the meaning of messianic leadership as inherently good or bad. The curiosity is about utility, what
creates the space for certain forms of leadership to emerge at particular
moments in time and space and to be viewed as more or less appropriate and
useful by others. What is it about the style of practice within a social constructionist framework that encourages scholars to retain their curiosity about
the various ways leadership is accomplished and what it invites? Though
tentative, let me propose three ways of working that help keep the curiosity
of social constructionist researchers alive.

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First, the situation is our unit of analysis. Our focus is on articulating the
connections among people, action, meaning, and contextthe integrated
complexity of the situationwhich serves as the focus of inquiry for social
constructionist researchers. For example, Keith Grints (2005) work on the
situation is instructive in this regard. Situationist approaches to leadership
tend to treat the situation as an object to be read, existing apart from the
actions of leaders and followers. However, Grint argues that leaders are coauthors of the situations that they create through rhetorical means. For example,
when leaders frame and invite others to construct situations as crises, this
creates the ground for a command approach to leadership. However, when
situations are constructed as wicked, or interacting sets of multiple problems,
a style of leadership that is based on inquiry and asking questions is more
suitable. Nonetheless, a fascinating contradiction exists whereby people
often prefer command styles of leadership when they encounter a wicked
problemwhich perhaps explains their messianic commitment to continually seeking out individuals who have the answer. What I think is interesting
about Grints essay is that by taking the situation as our unit of analysis seriously, we can explore how the unique configuration of people, topic, linguistic
practice, time, and place congeal to construct particular forms of leadership
as appropriate. Moreover, we notice and, as a result, can begin to unpack the
contradictions, tensions, or paradoxes that exist among these elements. We
can look at the dynamic mutual influence these different elements have on
one another over time to construct the kind of leadership that fits at a particular moment in time and space. We get curious about the wisdom of the system
to create a form of leadership that appears to address the complexity of the
situation. As Peter Lang, an organizational consultant, says, What is it that
guides the ship of leadership? It is the context. It is a context that people
have had a hand in shaping.
Second, our analyses probe the coherence of situations and systems. One
strength of a social constructionist approach to leadership is its focus on
articulating the multiple voices that comprise a situationsome marginal,
some that exist but are not yet heard, and some that have yet to emergeand
how they influence the system. One way that I respond to your concern with
reductionist approaches that equate the needs of followers with those of
leaders, is to say that social constructionist approaches emphasize the
importance of keeping those differences alive. For example, Jabri, Adrian,
and Boje (2008) critique traditional approaches to leadership and organizational change as emphasizing the importance of consensus, thereby erasing
differences among leaders and followers. Consensus can be achieved either
through visionary leadership where a charismatic leader articulates the goal

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and imposes it on followers (top-down) or through participative leadership

that is aimed at achieving consensus (bottom-up). However, the pursuit of
consensus elides important differences among peoples stakes and interests
and diminishes the requisite variety of the system, which lessens its ability to
adapt to subsequent environment challenges. Jabri et al. (2008) pointed out
that we need to develop change and leadership practices that keep these differences alive. However, that begs the question of whose voices, when,
where, and about what? This poses an interesting set of questions regarding
how differing voices are managed in human systems that touch on issues of
power and agency, whose voices get to be heard and when and how are they
orchestrated, and what does a particular orchestration create? We become
curious regarding the unique coherence of the situation or system, whose
voices are heard, how they are nourished and supported (or not), how they fit
together, and the effects they invite.
Third, we treat the consequentiality of discourse as complex and emerging. The predominant focus on performance, adding value, and productivity
is important because organizations and human systems do need to produce to
stay viable. However, any story or account of performance can also be told as
a story of power, legitimation, aesthetics, and ethics. Our activity does not
simply reside in a domain of production; it coexists simultaneously in a
domain of explanationhow we interpret and make sense of our activity
as well as a domain of aesthetics that include issues of ethics, beauty, and
power (Lang, Little, & Cronen, 1990). This moves us to be curious about the
variety of effects that can be created by particular patterns of leadership, over
time, and at multiple levels. We are no longer satisfied with making relatively
simple cause claims that say leadership behavior X generates effect Y. We are
more interested in exploring the recursive relationships between linguistic
activity and effects over time at multiple levels in the system.
In writing this letter, I find myself coming back to a basic question, Why
do I find myself attracted to a social constructionist approach to the study of
leadership? Although several reasons exist, perhaps the simplest answer is
that it allows us to get into the detailed complexity of the construction of
leadership. Life is messy, contingent, and emergent, and resists simple
answers. The style of social constructionist research allows us to get at the
complexity, contradictions, and paradoxes that constitute the hurly-burly of
lived experience in ways that other approaches do not. I look forward to hearing your response.
Take care,
Kevin

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Dear Kevin,
I have enjoyed our dialogue on these questions. We seem to share a concern that traditional functionalist approaches tend to simplify leadership and
rather avoid the complexities of power, resistance, and differential interests,
which characterize the real world of organizations inhabited by most of us. At
the same time, in your last letter, you stress that leadership is multifaceted.
Although it has the potential for domination and oppression, a messianic,
top-down, and oppressive style is not the only option available, nor is its
adoption inevitable. Leadership happens, is necessary, and can accomplish
useful social goals. Thus, as you write, Pursuing higher levels of performance and profitability is an important task, but its importance must also be
tempered by the recognition that it is only one of many tasks that is accomplished simultaneously through interactional and discursive activity.
However, as Gordons (2010) discussion of dispersed leadership in a police
force shows, precisely how this discursive activity takes place is often problematic and can obliterate many positive intentions.
Given this, I would like to broaden our discussion to consider the role and
responsibilities of leadership researchers. We are still in a period of great
economic turmoil. Beyond the immediate situation, we face enormous environmental challenges wrought by a soaring world population, ongoing issues
flowing from globalization, and renewed questions about how our economy
functions and how it should function. Notions that were once incontestable,
such as the primacy of shareholder value, have revealed their weaknesses.
People are actively exploring alternatives. How does the kind of discussion
we have been having relate to these issues?
You mention the critical management studies (CMS) literature and its very
useful emphasis on issues of power and agency. Yet, for all its value, I have
long been troubled by the tone of much such scholarship, and I wonder
whether at some level you are as well. It seems to me that many CMS writers
imagine that their work stops with critique rather than starts. I recall a colleague discussing a seminar presented by a leading CMS scholar. When asked
yes, but what is your alternative, the speaker paused for a moment and then
replied, Well, there is no alternative. In short, oppressive power relations are
inscribed on all human interaction, meaning that leaderfollower relations
remain inescapably tortured, conflicted, alienated, and incapable of resolution. I find this an underwhelming response to the challenges that we face as
the dominant species on the planet. The world is on fire, and it will take more
than a spirit of sorrowful torpor to extinguish the flames. It is vital that we
deconstruct leadership, that we ask critical questions of its practice, and that
we open up our research to different voices and interests. However, it is also

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important, I think, that we attempt to offer solutions, humanize the phenomenon we are exploring, and attempt to make our world a better place. This is a
challenge which, in fairness, at least some CMS scholars (e.g., Cunliffe, 2008)
are beginning to address, particularly in terms of critical management education. Symptomatic of this trend, the British Journal of Management (2010)
has just published a Special Issue that explores the role of business schools
from a critical perspective.
Nor, in my view, is it either desirable or accidental that much scholarly
writing on these issues is so turgid. Social constructionism derives its
strength in part from the fact that a great deal of the quantitative, positivist
literature is frankly unreadable and of only marginal relevance to really
occurring world problemsa point made with increased frustration by
Henry Mintzberg, among others. Yet, when I encounter articles with titles
such as Strategy as Practical Coping: A Heideggerian Perspective (Chia &
Holt, 2006), I almost lose the will to live. Sure, one can figure out what the
point is, but first you have to wade through passages such as the following:
Specifically, we argue that the dominant building mode of strategizing that configures actors (whether individual or organizational) as
distinct entities deliberately engaging in purposeful strategic activities
derives from a more basic dwelling mode in which strategy emerges
non-deliberately through everyday practical coping. Whereas, from the
building perspective, strategy is predicated upon the prior conception
of plans that are then orchestrated to realize desired outcome, from a
dwelling perspective strategy does not require, nor does it presuppose,
intention and purposeful goal-orientation: strategic intent is viewed
as immanent in every adaptive action. (p. 635)
Do we have to write like this? Are we really trying to explain something? Or,
like the Wizard of Oz, are we spinning our wheels to disguise the absence of
genuinely purposeful activity?
I am not the only one to voice this anxiety. Grey and Sinclair (2006) have
written a marvelous, satirical article on this themea minor miracle in academic publishing. As they stress, ultimately, our work is straightforwardAfter
all, we are only studying how people interact with each other in organizations. Of course, a certain amount of specialized language is unavoidable.
However, they highlight the prevalence of what they lambast as pompous,
impenetrable writing; writing that seems driven by desires to demonstrate
ones cleverness, or to accrue publications as ends in themselves (Grey &
Sinclair, 2006, p. 443). I am reminded of George Orwells famous 1946 essay

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on Politics and the English Language. In it he wrote, When there is a gap

between ones real and ones declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively
to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In this
case, I suspect that many of us employ obscurantist language more to hide the
shallow nature of our enterprise than to illuminate what we are discussing.
Sadly, the habit of complexity is so ingrained that accessibility has become
faintly disgraceful, on a par with wearing inappropriately casual attire to a
particularly stuffy dinner party. I suspect that if some critical scholars were
given the choice of writing clearly or being caught shoplifting they would
prefer the latter, feeling that there is less shame in it and therefore less likelihood of professional ruin. Why, for example, do we seem so reluctant to
employ humor in our articles and books? Humans, their organizations, their
leaders, andoftenthose who write about them are nothing if not ridiculous. In our desire to be taken seriously, we sometimes fail to laugh at the
preposterous, slipping instead on the banana skin of pomposity. None of us
are immune. Pretentiousness is a plague, corroding all our syntactic structures. I am sure that a careful reading of the articles in this issue, and of our
own responses to them, would find all of usmyself includedcommitting
the very crimes I am complaining about here. However, although occasional
misdemeanors can be forgiven, my fear is that regular transgressions reflect
a reluctance to engage with the world as it is. Perhaps, it is safer to hide from
the heat outside, seeking refuge in remote metatheoretical disputes that only
a handful of initiates understand or genuinely care about.
I think that this matters. There is no reason for scholarship to be inaccessible, disengaged from real-world impacts, or concerned only with critique.
As you intimate in your letter, leaders need real tools to address the challenges they face. However, as you also say, many of the processes of, for
example, consensus building that are taken for granted rather than questioned
tend to avoid critical questions to do with voice, agency, and power. Although
this means that the challenges we face are not easy, it certainly does not mean
that they should be avoided. Leadership is too important. Yes, social constructionist perspectives will give us a much more rounded view of both
leadership and followership. However, the key question that emerges for me
at the end of it all is really this: How can social constructionist perspectives
on leadership help to make the world a better place? As Thompson (2005)
has remarked, in an invigorating critique of the CMS field, productivity
matters to employees as well as managers (p. 375). Try telling redundant
General Motors workers any different and see what response you get. Thus,
if the world cant be made perfect, maybe it can at least be improved! And
maybe we can help.1

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There are many questions that I think a social constructionist perspective

could help us to answer and that go some way to addressing this challenge.
These include the following:
What do leaders really want from their followers? Is it blind obedience, input, critique, or something we havent yet figured out?
What do followers really want from their leaders? Is it mainly financial reward? or is it forms of recognition, empowerment, and
autonomy that are to some extent inherently in conflict with modern
business organizations? If so, what can we do about it? What is that
remains constant in leaderfollower relations, and what is there
about such relations that are subject to change?
We hear much in the literature these days about authentic leadership. What about authentic followership? Can followers genuinely
bring their real selves into the workplace, or are existing power
structures too pervasive and destructive to permit this? For that
matter, where does pathological leadership (of which there is much)
fit into the schema of authenticity, which seems to assume that an
authentic inner self is invariably positive in nature (Fairhurst,
2007)?
What are the limits on freedom and agency within social systems?
Is hierarchy innately oppressive, or is it indispensable for organizational life? How, if at all, can its downsides be curtailed or
eliminated?
For me, this also means that we should reject what I view as extreme social
constructionism, which asserts that there is only interpretation, rather than a
social reality (gender relations, power imbalances, etc.) that existsto some
extentbeyond our immediate perception of it. Everything has its limits
including social constructionism. It is illogical to assert that everything is
relative, except the notion that everything is relative. I agree with Thompsons
(2005) point that while there is a role for deconstruction, when it becomes
the sole purpose of analysis, the outcomes are ultimately arid and selfdefeating (p. 370). It is vital to avoid despair and disengagementeverpresent dangers when relativism and the consequent indeterminacy of
meaning become articles of faith rather than tools of analysis.
I dont entertain any illusions that the issues we have been discussing are
capable of ultimate resolution. Our species has shown a remarkable capacity
for reinforcing hierarchy even as it pronounces its intention of abolishing it,
sometimes through revolutionary action. However, thats not the point. I dont

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believe that merely uncovering dysfunctional dynamics is sufficient. People

are trying to make sense of their social world, but most also want to improve it.
To remain only at the level of critique, in my view, is to evade our most fundamental responsibility of all, as citizens of the planet. Lets use the intellectual
tools at our disposal to do better. Lets ask big questions rather than small ones,
and let us try to answer the following question: What is the alternative?
Regards,
Dennis
Dear Dennis,
I think your last letter raises again a critical issue that began these letters,
How can social constructionist perspectives on leadership help make the
world a better place? My sense is that most people enter academic careers
out of a profound sense of curiosity about the ways our social worlds operate
with the hope of making a significant scholarly contribution that improves
the quality of peoples personal, social, or professional lives. Yet, a diverse
set of management and leadership scholars within a growing number of
disciplines, including organizationalindustrial psychology, management
studies, and communication, recently have lamented the lack of influence
or relevance of their scholarship for practitioners and policy makers (e.g.,
Shapiro & Rynes, 2005). Why are we not making the impact we desire? I
share your concern that that the specialized language academic scholars use
can be quite incomprehensible to a lay audience. However, more importantly,
when one strips away the academic jargon, many times the practical implications for practicing leaders and followers seem rather simplistic and trite; the
payoff for working through the complex theoretical language is small. I agree
with you that the potential power of social constructionism may be its accessibility; we pay attention to the way language is used, and when we construct
our research reports we draw on linguistic material, such as stories, metaphors, and examples, to make our points. Given that most people tell stories,
employ metaphors, and use examples in their everyday life, one would hope
that if we write up our research using this material in an accessible engaging
way, a motivated lay reader would be able to connect to the ideas presented
in our essay.
I think the bigger issue your essay raises is how we as social constructionist researchers can ask more interesting and provocative questions that
promote exciting lines of inquiry to improve the lives of leaders and followers and those that they serve. The traditional way this issue has been
addressed, called the scholarship of translation, positions the researcher as
the expert with the notion that researchers generate valid and reliable research

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findings that are to be translated subsequently to practitioner audiences

(Barge & Shockley-Zalabak, 2008). You can see this assumption at work in
such journals as the Academy of Management Perspectives, Harvard Business Review, OD Practitioner, and Organizational Dynamics, which tend to
be populated by articles that are either translations of existing research articles, summaries of research programs, or essays that are informed by research
written in a way that is accessible for an informed lay audience. Similarly, the
impulse behind evidence-based practice is that academic researchers are
uniquely positioned given their expertise to generate useful knowledge,
which can be translated into useful prescriptions for leaders and followers.
My guess is that some of our colleagues who conduct social constructionist
leadership research may feel quite at home with this approach.
Although useful, there are at least three reasons why the scholarship of
translation takes us on a rather slow road for positioning our research to make
the world a better place. First, academic researchers typically have different
ideas about what count as important questions than practitioners, which can
limit our researchs appeal to them and diminish its circulation in the public
sphere. We can overcome this limitation by remaining attuned to the interests
of practitioners. However, over time this attunement may be challenged as
we become more closely wed to our pet ideas and theories (read our own
research programs and previous articles) than the interests of practitioners,
potentially diminishing the relevance and transferability of our research studies (Tracy, 2002). Second, the implications for leadership practice are not
necessarily considered prior to the research project. As you point out in
regard to CMS, researchers are often more interested in critique, as opposed
to articulating positive alternatives. Although some problems are intractable,
we can still find ways to manage them if we have the will to ask the question
How do we work with these problems? and answer it. Third, academic
scholars often dont have the time to translate their work given the pressures
of producing original research for top academic journals. The scholarship of
translation doesnt have the cache that original research does, and the publication venues for such scholarship may not be as highly regarded by ones
peers as some traditional academic outlets. Nonetheless, the scholarship of
translation can help make the world a better place provided leadership scholars ask important questions, think through the relevant implications for
practice, and take the time to translate and disseminate their work.
I think there is an alternative approach, engaged scholarship, which is
consistent with the ideas informing social constructionism and may generate
knowledge that can transform more rapidly our social worlds. Van de Ven
and Johnson (2006) view engaged scholarship as a collaborative form of

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inquiry in which academics and practitioners leverage their different perspectives and competencies to coproduce knowledge about a complex
problem or phenomenon that exists under conditions of uncertainty found in
the world (p. 803). For Van de Ven and Johnson, the reason that our scholarship is not being picked up by practitioners is a knowledge-production
problem, a failure to cocreate research studies with practitioners that have
relevance for their lives, not a knowledge-transfer problem, a difficulty with
getting our point clearly across to practitioners. The former treats practitioners, leaders, and followers as cocreating knowledge with scholars, not as
passive recipients. The idea of engaged scholarship resonates well with social
constructions commitment to the idea that new forms of social knowledge
emerge through coconstruction.
How might engaged scholarship influence our social constructionist
research practice? One important strategy might be to invite practitioners to
cocreate our research projects with us. When we invite leaders and followers
to articulate their stake in a situation and inquire into what they are interested
in learning, when we incorporate their interests into our research questions
and design, then we are more likely to create knowledge that they will find
useful. Does this mean that academic scholars should focus solely on the
interests of leaders and followers and forsake our own interests? Absolutely
not. Academic scholars bring a specific take to a situation that is valuable and
can often be used to challenge dominant interests and stories, but it does
mean that academic scholars should be flexible in working with people and
aspire to create projects that also connect with their interests.
Even when we are working with historical and archival data where we do
not have direct access to the participants through interviews or participant
observation, researchers can still test out their ideas and analyses to see if
they are relevant and resonate with other practitioners. If we begin to reflect
on the kinds of practical implications and change we hope to create prior to
conducting a study, our research projects may be better designed and constructed to bring them about. We can ask ourselves a variety of questions,
such as How will this make a difference in the lived experience of leaders
and followers? What new practices does this suggest for leaders and followers? How does this challenge and extend current practice? What
would leaders and followers find interesting and useful about this project?
Even those articles that offer prescriptions for practice seem to do so as an
afterthought rather than as a main focus for the study. By testing out our
thinking regarding the practical implications of our work before, during, and
after our study and continually asking leaders and followers to reflect on
what kinds of practices and implications that they find inspiring, we are more

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likely to create research that will be noticed by practitioners and has the
potential to change the world.
Another important move that I would suggest scholars make in their
research practice is to make it generative. By generative, I mean that it should
make a positive difference for the participants who are involved in our study
by building their capacity for learning, meaning making, and action. If we
take social constructionism seriously, the minute we begin to inquire into a
system as a researcher, we influence that system. We cocreate interpretations
and perceptions with the people we work with, and the experiences that
people have with us become the fodder for other stories that percolate through
the system. Simply, when we conduct our research, we have an effect on the
system; our actions are consequential. So the question becomes, What kind
of effect do we want to invite? For example, if we asked Carroll and Levy
(2010) what kinds of effects they wanted to create through their interview
process, what would they say? How might they ask questions and develop
feedback processes to invite forth the kinds of effects they envision? When
we begin to think about our interviews as a coconstructed process, we need
to be mindful of the effects that our interviews can generate.
My argument would be that social constructionist research needs to be more
closely aligned with modes of inquiry that emphasize joint action and learning,
such as action research, participative inquiry, and collaborative inquiry (McNiff
& Whitehead, 2009; Reason & Bradbury, 2007). We need to draw on the
resources offered by these modes of inquiry to develop research methods that
allow us to give back to the people we work with in our research. How do we
invite them to design our study and analyze our data? How do we feedback the
information to our participants to develop their learning and practice? If we
want to make a difference in our research projects, then we need to find a way
to build the capacity of the people we work with, and one way to do that is to
enlist their help in the design and execution of the project.
What both of us are suggesting in our letters is not work for the faint of
heart. We need to have the courage to ask important questions and question
dominant views. If we choose to work with people in a collaborative fashion,
then we must be prepared to manage conflict as different needs, takes, and
perspectives emerge. When I was in graduate school, I took an organizational
design class with a business school professor. We used his textbook and read
a lot of his scholarship. One day I was in his office talking about my final
article, and he asked what I thought of his work. I replied that I thought it was
interesting but didnt go far enough. When he asked what I would do differently, I said I didnt know and continued on with my critique. He stopped me
in midsentence and said, Get the hell out of my office. I was stunned as he

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went onto say, Its not enough to critique; you have to have something substantive to add in its place, to improve it. This was an important life lesson
for me as it clearly demonstrated that critique by itself is insufficient; it needs
to be coupled with a way forward. Can our scholarship make a difference?
Absolutely, if we are willing to take a humble attitude and invite leaders and
followers along with us on the research journey to cocreate questions and
answers regarding practice that we find mutually inspiring and provocative.
Take care,
Kevin
PS: In looking back over our essay, I found myself wondering if we have
offered our readers a clear portrayal or description of social constructionism.
I pose this question because the term, social constructionism, is often used as
a gloss for any theory that focuses on the way words, talk, and discourse
construct social arrangements in the literature. However, there are a growing
number of different schools of thought regarding social constructionism that
hold divergent sets of assumptions, which might provide varied answers to
the issue of the differences a social constructionist approach to leadership
may bring (see Cunliffe, 2008, as an example). It makes me wonder how
scholars from the different approaches comprising the social constructionist
approaches to leadership laid out in the sailing guide might view some of our
concerns and arguments. Perhaps, that is the focus for our next set of
letters!
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship
and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research and/or authorship of this
article.

Note
1. A good start might be if we stopped writing articles, usually stuffed with footnotes that nobody understands.

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Bios
Dennis Tourish is a professor of leadership at the University of Kent. He has published more than 60 journal articles and coedited or coauthored six books on leadership
and organizational communication.

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J. Kevin Barge is professor of communication at Texas A&M University. His

research interests center on developing a social constructionist approach to
management and leadership, exploring the role of appreciative forms of communication
to transform organizations, and articulating the relationship between dialogue and
organizing in organizational and community contexts.