CEOs narrating leadership: Constant gardeners, team players, actionable pragmatists and business directors
Paper in proceeding, 2018

There is an increasing stream of leadership-related rhetoric, organisational discourses and training interventions stemming from policy-makers, media and management consultants concerning the ‘right’ kind of leadership needed in order for industries to meet their current and future challenges. Yet seldom is the concept itself problematised or viewed from the perspective of leadership as it unfolds in situated practice. The purpose of this explorative pilot study is to examine CEOs discursive constructions of their leadership, their ambitions and concerns in their every-day practice. Using a narrative-survey approach, life-stories of 12 CEOs in private construction-related organisations in Sweden were collected and analysed against the backdrop of recent studies of managerial leadership of site managers in construction. Four main metaphorical themes emerged of CEOs leadership practices: constant gardeners, team players, actionable pragmatists and business directors. These mindsets showed quite different orientations to those advocated in much of the normative leadership literature. Rather the practices had interesting similarities with the leadership views of site managers. The paper contributes with a more nuanced, and maybe humbler, view of leadership at the top, which aligns well with leadership practices on site. We also introduce a novel qualitative research tool and briefly reflect over its viability.

CEOS

leadership

Author

Martin Löwstedt

Chalmers, Architecture and Civil Engineering, Construction Management

Christine Räisänen

Chalmers, Architecture and Civil Engineering, Construction Management

Proceeding of the 34th Annual ARCOM Conference, ARCOM 2018

697-706

34th Annual Association of Researchers in Construction Management Conference, ARCOM 2018
Belfast, United Kingdom,

Mapping middle managers´ work situation and leadership potential to enhance social sustainability in the construction sector: A question of futures thinking

Formas (211-2013-1218), 2013-11-12 -- 2017-12-31.

Driving Forces

Sustainable development

Innovation and entrepreneurship

Subject Categories

Work Sciences

Business Administration

Communication Studies

More information

Latest update

1/9/2019 4