French leadership: exploring organizational leadership in French contexts

ABSTRACT

Our paper offers an overview of French organizational leadership by looking at its power sources (inputs), consequences (outcomes), and a triad model. We found that having connections with powerful entities such as top management and the Grandes écoles is the main source of French leadership as these connections confer strong legitimacy, which is an important notion in the French leadership process. Hierarchical, honour-based, and ends-over-means styles of leadership are proposed as a triad model for French leadership. While French leadership focuses heavily on results as outcomes, French management can be either participative or closed, depending on the role of the leader. Enlightenment ideology since the time of the French Revolution may explain the overall characteristics of French leadership from a historical and cultural context. The overview of French leadership in our paper is developed from 31 in-depth interviews with mid- to high-level (ex-) managers who shared their perspectives and experience both as leaders and as followers.

KEYWORDS:

• French leadership
• organizational leadership
• legitimacy
• honour
• institution
• culture
• the enlightenment
• Grandes écoles
• triad model

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).