Within contemporary culture, ‘leadership’ is seen in ways that appeal to celebrated societal values and norms. As a result, it is becoming difficult to use the language of leadership without at the same time assuming its essentially positive, intrinsically affirmative nature. Within organizations, routinely referring to bosses as ‘leaders’ has, therefore, become both a symptom and a cause of a deep, largely unexamined new conceptual architecture. This architecture underpins how we think about authority and power at work. Capitalism, and its turbo-charged offspring neo-liberalism, have effectively captured ‘leader’ and ‘leadership’ to serve their own purposes. In other words, organizational leadership today is so often a particular kind of insidious conservativism dressed up in radical adjectives. This book makes visible the work that the language of leadership does in perpetuating fictions that are useful for bosses of work organizations. We do this so that we – and anyone who shares similar discomforts – can make a start in unravelling the fiction. We contend that even if our views are contrary to the vast and powerful leadership industry, our basic arguments rest on things that are plain and evident for all to see. Critical Perspectives on Leadership: The Language of Corporate Power will be key reading for students, academics and practitioners in the disciplines of Leadership, Organizational Studies, Critical Management Studies, Sociology and the related disciplines.

The facilitator's guide brings to life the content of the survey text, Leadership Theory. It offers instructive advice on how to prepare for the use of a critical perspective as well as providing practical resources to translate survey text content to practice. The facilitator's guide consists of: An overview of how to use the guide as well as recommended skills and reflection questions for educators prior to implementing material. Objectives, critical concepts, a chapter overview, and a chapter framework for each chapter from Leadership Theory Lesson plan "walk-throughs" containing 2-3 activities for each chapter of the survey text, with information for learning outcomes, activity setup, and additional notes for facilitation.

'All too frequently leadership is depicted as an unequivocal "good". Lemmergaard and Muhr's excellent collection disabuses us of this misleading view, serving as a timely and salutary reminder that leadership is often emotionally charged, toxic, dysfunctional or downright stupid. This book's critical message should be read and heeded by students and practitioners of leadership alike.' Peter Case, James Cook University, Australia 'The book provides a rich kaleidoscope of critical engagements with leadership in all its complexity and ambiguity. The contributors to this collection do not deny the vital role that leadership can play nor the many ways in which it can affect the emotional dynamics of organizations for good and bad. What they do is to shift thinking away from the comforting but misleading simplicities of toxic leaders and inert followers, offering a welcome tonic to the critical study of leadership. The book will appeal to leadership scholars as well as to students and to reflective practitioners.' Yiannis Gabriel, University of Bath, UK This book offers a critique of the field of leadership studies, focusing on the dynamics between post-heroic leadership and the notion of functional and dysfunctional emotions. Situated in the field of critical leadership studies, the chapters of this book set out to challenge the general assumption that emotionality is the antithesis of rationality. The authors expand upon the existing discussions of leadership emotions and reveal how toxicity and dysfunctionality are not merely simple, negatively coercive, or repressive phenomena, but can also have productive and enabling connotations. The book includes comprehensive overviews of traditional leadership thinking and in addition provides readers with critical reflections on concepts such as ignorance, authenticity, functional stupidity and vanity in leadership. As the book presents a series of critical perspectives on how emotions can be theorized in leadership studies, it is suitable for advanced courses in the subject, as well as being a highly interesting monograph for academics in the field.

This book is an edited collection of original papers which challenge in a very direct manner the dominant behviourist and functionalist views that have come to entrap those who live, work and conduct research in the areas of educational leadership, and focusing instead on the structures and processes within schools as organisations that frustrate, distort and ultimately stifle educative relationships the writers provide a much needed way of reconceptualising both thought and action in so-called acts of educational leadership.

This book addresses the significant problems that can arise for pre-service teachers, teachers and school leaders who are unprepared for the complexities of 21st century teaching. It focuses on major factors impacting teacher preparation during an era of significant change, including student learning, academic growth, classroom practice, and the efficacy of teachers. In turn, the book considers crucial aspects that can enhance educational outcomes and investigates questions including what impact the changing nature of teachers’ work has on teacher preparation; how educators can evaluate blended learning; and what impact teachers have on learners. This book provides evidence-based approaches that can be used to achieve a positive impact on education and narrow the gap in contemporary and emerging global topics in education.

Innovation in Environmental Leadership offers innovative approaches to leadership from a post-industrial and ecological vantage point. Chapters in this collection are written by leading scholars and practitioners of environmental leadership from around the globe, and are informed by a variety of critical perspectives, including post-heroic approaches, systems thinking, and the emerging insights of Critical Leadership Studies (CLS). By taking the natural environment seriously as a foundational context for leadership, Innovation in Environmental Leadership offers fresh insights and compelling visions of leadership pertinent to 21st century environmental and social challenges. Concepts and understandings of leadership emerged as part of an extractive industrial system; this work asks its readers to re-think what leadership looks like in an ecologically sustainable biological system. This book provides fresh insights and critical perspectives on the vibrant and growing field of environmental leadership. It shows the latest state of knowledge on the topic and will be of interest both to students at an advanced level, academics and reflective practitioners. It addresses the topics with regard to leadership theory and environmental leadership and will be of interest to researchers, academics, and students in the fields of sustainability, environmental ethics, natural resource management, environmental studies, business management, public policy, and environmental management.

Understanding Educational Leadership guides you through critical perspectives and approaches across the world, taking in the global north and south, and explores the ways in which educational leadership is currently understood, theorised, researched, modelled and practised. The book also covers contemporary issues including gender, sexual identity and race, as well as topics such as governance, performativity and corporatisation. It brings together evidence and ideas that illuminate the power structures and relations in educational leaders, leading and leadership and helps you to consider the impact on policy and practice, and to think about changes needed to mitigate the issues identified. The book showcases a wide range of theorists, including Bourdieu, Foucault and Fraser. Its impressive scope includes analyses of collectivist, neoliberal and historical influences on educational leadership. It explores forensically leadership styles, with an explicit focus on distributed, instructional, democratic, autocratic, laissez-faire and organisational forms. Carefully curated by the editors, the world-leading contributors draw on their wealth of knowledge about research and practice to provide you with an overview of educational leadership today, looking at global research, evidence, arguments and conceptualisations. Each chapter is written in an engaging and inspiring way, following a consistent approach to help you to develop your understanding in each of the areas covered. Full pedagogical features throughout include chapter summaries, key questions, case studies, questions for readers and further reading suggestions with questions on key texts. A companion website provides links to open-access outputs, research-project outcomes, and networking seminars, conferences with links to local, national and global events and connections.

This book contributes five novel tenets for building a critical theory of leadership studies. Drawing from transdisciplinary insights, these tenets help shape the emerging field of inquiry. They also facilitate the examination of normative social processes that reinscribe hegemonic power relations — because much of what is accomplished in current leadership scholarship, teaching, and practice reinforces these power relations. The book begins by contrasting critical theory with positivist approaches to analyzing social phenomena, and what follows is an exploration of four broad disciplines using sub-components of leadership as an investigatory lens. The resulting five tenets are presented and discussed so that they may be picked up and used by scholars contributing to the developing field of critical leadership studies.

Most research into leadership has presented leaders as heroic, charismatic and transformational 'visionaries'. The leader, whether in business, politics or any other field, is the most important factor in determining whether organizations succeed or fail. Indeed, despite the fundamental mistakes which have, arguably, directly led to global economic recession, it is often still taken for granted that transformational leadership is a good thing, and that leaders should have much more power than followers to decide what needs to be done. The Dark Side of Transformational Leadership confronts this orthodoxy by illustrating how such approaches can encourage narcissism, megalomania and poor decision-making on the part of leaders, at great expense to those organizations they are there to serve. Written in a lively and engaging style, the book uses a number of case studies to illustrate the perils of transformational leadership, from the Jonestown tragedy in 1978 when over 900 people were either murdered or committed suicide at the urging of their leader, to an analysis of how banking executives tried to explain away their role in the 2008 financial crisis This provocative and hugely important book offers a rare critical perspective in the field of leadership studies. Concluding with a new approach that offers an alternative to the dominant transformational model, The Dark Side of Transformational Leadership will be an invaluable text for academics interested in leadership, students on leadership courses requiring a more critical perspective, and anyone concerned with how people lead people, and the lessons we can learn.

In a critical analysis of conventional understanding, leading authors Claire Davis and Marisa Silvestri present bold new conceptualisations of police leadership. Drawing on empirical research in criminology, sociology and leadership studies, they present a thoughtful critique of the nature and practice of leadership in contemporary policing. The book: - Critically explores the identities of leaders and their positions within wider organisational structures and processes; - Provides a critique of contemporary reform to police professionalisation, training and education, equalities and diversity by situating these developments within wider historical, social and political contexts; - Draws on critical theory to offer an alternative, challenging and novel interpretation of police leaders as not simply the result of individual experiences and attitudes, but of the social, institutional and historical processes of policing and the cultures that exist within it; - Points towards future directions and a reimagining of leadership in the police. Accessible and stimulating, this is an essential text for policing students and valuable reading for current leaders and those interested in policing, criminology and leadership.