“Free to do what I want”? Exploring the ambivalent effects of liberating leadership

Hélène Picard and Gazi Islam
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Hélène Picard: EESC-GEM Grenoble Ecole de Management
Gazi Islam: MC - Management et Comportement - EESC-GEM Grenoble Ecole de Management, IREGE - Institut de Recherche en Gestion et en Economie - USMB [Université de Savoie] [Université de Chambéry] - Université Savoie Mont Blanc

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Abstract: The current study examines the phenomenon of "liberating leadership", an emerging trend promising self-mastery and collective unity, resonating with the literature on post-heroic leadership. We evaluate the claims of liberating leadership from a psychodynamic perspective, using a Lacanian approach. We examine how post-heroic forms of leadership reconfigures the symbolic and imaginary aspects of follower identification, with ambivalent effects. Drawing empirically on a case study of a Belgian banking department, we trace how a "liberating" leader was able to garner intense psychological attachment among followers, accompanied by the "dark sides" of personal exhaustion and breakdown, normative pressure to be overly happy, and the scapegoating of contrarian managers who represented symbolic prohibition. We discuss the implications of our study for psychodynamic approaches to leadership, and more generally, for critical research on the recent trends toward the humanistic, post-heroic turn in leadership practices.

Keywords: leadership; liberated companies; symbolic authority; superego; imaginary; jouissance; Lacan (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-01-25
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec
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Published in Organization Studies, 2019, 41 (3), pp.393-414. ⟨10.1177/0170840618814554⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-01958935

DOI: 10.1177/0170840618814554

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