Leadership: A Critical Text, by Simon Western (original) (raw)

Administration in Social Work, 2010

Abstract

Leadership continues to be a widely investigated construct explored by a number of academic traditions that span across social and behavioral science, management sciences, humanities, arts, and most recently quantum physics, biological and ecological paradigms that focus particularly on interrelations and the complexities of adaptive systems. Some texts describe development, some explore new pathways, and some even expand theoretical thought, while few take a contrarian perspective and systematically critique leadership theory to provoke critical thinking about the complexity of this construct. Simon Western takes a refreshing leap into developing a critical theory framework informed by critical theorists that aims to increase both collective human agency and autonomy in the study of leadership. In order to understand leadership and organizations from a critical perspective, Western developed a framework in Chapter 1 that poses four key critical lenses. The first stance of emancipatory critical approach, grounded in the early Frankfurt School of thought, ethically aims toward an emancipator agenda that spotlights power relations within social structures and methods to transform practices that weaken liberties into methods that enhance human agency. The second stance of depth analysis introduces an approach grounded in psychoanalytic theory that taps into the intricacies of the unconscious process internalized and systemically enacted by individuals, social groups, and organizations—facets important to understanding various models of leadership. Looking awry is the third stance, which focuses on depth through historical and contextual perspectives that engages multiple angles and personal assumptions in a reflexive way. The final stance of systemic praxis applies critical theory to the ecology of leadership and takes the contrarian perspective of not simply studying the leader in isolation from the context, but rather investigating inter-relations of living systems in environments like organizations. These four stances are introduced to create theoretical frames for renewing ‘leadership in practice,’ diminishing post-industrial exploitive power relations, and enhancing individual and collective autonomy.

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