The romance of human leaders? A socio-material analysis of a follower’s account of being inspired

ABSTRACT

The romance of leadership (ROL) has been much discussed amongst leadership researchers, yet few researchers actually analyze the way in which it is talked into being as it is socially constructed in the here-and-now of localized interaction. Drawing on the Montreal School’s interactional twist to Actor Network Theory with which to analyze transcripts of interview talk from a socio-material perspective, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the way in which a follower discursively constructs leadership. Findings indicate that, from the follower’s emic perspective, leadership occurs within a network of human and other-than-human actants that inspire her to act and follow the leader. This therefore challenges and nuances the conventional wisdom of leadership research that locates the ROL in the purely human leader. The implication of this for leadership research is clear: if followers construct (transformational) leadership in terms of socio-materiality, then so should leadership researchers.

KEYWORDS:

• Montreal School
• socio-materiality
• romance of leadership
• transformational leadership
• discursive leadership
• inspiration

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 The Green Belt Movement. Available at: https://www.greenbeltmovement.org/who-we-are