Northeastern Leaderless Organizing in Social Movements Analysis Paper Skim the set of articles on research that argues for and against leaderless organizin

Northeastern Leaderless Organizing in Social Movements Analysis Paper Skim the set of articles on research that argues for and against leaderless organizing in social movements. Consult the list to find your pro/con assignment, and post a starter message arguing your side. Starter messages should state their position clearly and give three reasons of support. Castells, Manuel. Networks of Outrage and Hope : Social Movements in the Internet Age (2nd Edition). Oxford, GBR: Wiley, 2013. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 21 April 2016.
Copyright © 2013. Wiley. All rights reserved.
Castells, Manuel. Networks of Outrage and Hope : Social Movements in the Internet Age (2nd Edition). Oxford, GBR: Wiley, 2013. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 21 April 2016.
Copyright © 2013. Wiley. All rights reserved.
Castells, Manuel. Networks of Outrage and Hope : Social Movements in the Internet Age (2nd Edition). Oxford, GBR: Wiley, 2013. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 21 April 2016.
Copyright © 2013. Wiley. All rights reserved.
Castells, Manuel. Networks of Outrage and Hope : Social Movements in the Internet Age (2nd Edition). Oxford, GBR: Wiley, 2013. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 21 April 2016.
Copyright © 2013. Wiley. All rights reserved.
Castells, Manuel. Networks of Outrage and Hope : Social Movements in the Internet Age (2nd Edition). Oxford, GBR: Wiley, 2013. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 21 April 2016.
Copyright © 2013. Wiley. All rights reserved.
Castells, Manuel. Networks of Outrage and Hope : Social Movements in the Internet Age (2nd Edition). Oxford, GBR: Wiley, 2013. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 21 April 2016.
Copyright © 2013. Wiley. All rights reserved.
Castells, Manuel. Networks of Outrage and Hope : Social Movements in the Internet Age (2nd Edition). Oxford, GBR: Wiley, 2013. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 21 April 2016.
Copyright © 2013. Wiley. All rights reserved.
Castells, Manuel. Networks of Outrage and Hope : Social Movements in the Internet Age (2nd Edition). Oxford, GBR: Wiley, 2013. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 21 April 2016.
Copyright © 2013. Wiley. All rights reserved.
Castells, Manuel. Networks of Outrage and Hope : Social Movements in the Internet Age (2nd Edition). Oxford, GBR: Wiley, 2013. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 21 April 2016.
Copyright © 2013. Wiley. All rights reserved.
Castells, Manuel. Networks of Outrage and Hope : Social Movements in the Internet Age (2nd Edition). Oxford, GBR: Wiley, 2013. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 21 April 2016.
Copyright © 2013. Wiley. All rights reserved.
Castells, Manuel. Networks of Outrage and Hope : Social Movements in the Internet Age (2nd Edition). Oxford, GBR: Wiley, 2013. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 21 April 2016.
Copyright © 2013. Wiley. All rights reserved.
Castells, Manuel. Networks of Outrage and Hope : Social Movements in the Internet Age (2nd Edition). Oxford, GBR: Wiley, 2013. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 21 April 2016.
Copyright © 2013. Wiley. All rights reserved.
Castells, Manuel. Networks of Outrage and Hope : Social Movements in the Internet Age (2nd Edition). Oxford, GBR: Wiley, 2013. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 21 April 2016.
Copyright © 2013. Wiley. All rights reserved.
Castells, Manuel. Networks of Outrage and Hope : Social Movements in the Internet Age (2nd Edition). Oxford, GBR: Wiley, 2013. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 21 April 2016.
Copyright © 2013. Wiley. All rights reserved.
Castells, Manuel. Networks of Outrage and Hope : Social Movements in the Internet Age (2nd Edition). Oxford, GBR: Wiley, 2013. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 21 April 2016.
Copyright © 2013. Wiley. All rights reserved.
Castells, Manuel. Networks of Outrage and Hope : Social Movements in the Internet Age (2nd Edition). Oxford, GBR: Wiley, 2013. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 21 April 2016.
Copyright © 2013. Wiley. All rights reserved.
Castells, Manuel. Networks of Outrage and Hope : Social Movements in the Internet Age (2nd Edition). Oxford, GBR: Wiley, 2013. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 21 April 2016.
Copyright © 2013. Wiley. All rights reserved.
Castells, Manuel. Networks of Outrage and Hope : Social Movements in the Internet Age (2nd Edition). Oxford, GBR: Wiley, 2013. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 21 April 2016.
Copyright © 2013. Wiley. All rights reserved.
Castells, Manuel. Networks of Outrage and Hope : Social Movements in the Internet Age (2nd Edition). Oxford, GBR: Wiley, 2013. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 21 April 2016.
Copyright © 2013. Wiley. All rights reserved.
Article
Anti-leaders(hip) in Social
Movement Organizations: The case
of autonomous grassroots groups
Organization
2014, Vol. 21(6) 759­–781
© The Author(s) 2013
Reprints and permissions:
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DOI: 10.1177/1350508413480254
org.sagepub.com
Neil Sutherland, Christopher Land and
Steffen Böhm
University of Essex, UK
Abstract
Through the Arab Spring and the Occupy movement, the idea of horizontal, leaderless organization
has come to the attention of the mass media. In this article we explore radical, participativedemocratic alternatives to leadership through an empirical study of four Social Movement
Organizations (SMOs). Whilst there has been some writing on leadership within SMOs, it
has mirrored the ‘mainstream’ assumption that leadership is the product of individual leaders
possessing certain traits, styles and/or behaviours. In contrast, critical leadership studies (CLS)
recognize that leadership is a relational, socially constructed phenomenon rather than the result
of a stable set of leadership attributes that inhere in ‘the leaders’. We utilize this framing to
analyse how leadership is understood and performed in anarchist SMOs by examining how actors
manage meaning and define reality without compromising the ideological commitments of their
organizations. Furthermore, we also pay attention to the organizational practices and processes
developed to: (a) prohibit individuals from permanently assuming a leadership role; (b) distribute
leadership skills and roles; and (c) encourage other actors to participate and take-up these roles in
the future. We conclude by suggesting that just because an organization is leaderless, it does not
necessarily mean that it is also leadershipless.
Keywords
autonomy, critical leadership studies, leadership, resistance, social movement organizations
The Arab Spring and Occupy movements have brought the idea of leaderless social movement
organizing to the attention of the mass media. Although perhaps too diffuse to meet common
definitions of an ‘organization’, they have nevertheless challenged the orthodoxy that social action
needs clearly identifiable, hierarchically positioned leaders. At the same time, we have seen a
Corresponding author:
Neil Sutherland, Essex Business School, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, C043SQ, UK.
Email: nssuth@essex.ac.uk
760
Organization 21(6)
series of scandals involving some of the biggest business organizations, from the hacking scandal
at News of the World and the disgrace of the Murdochs, to Bob Diamond’s implication in Barclays’
fixing of the Libor rate. The fault lines seem clear: the leaderless masses line up on one side against
corrupt leaders on the other. Framed like this, these global events have brought the practical necessity and ethical desirability of leadership into question, opening up a space to examine alternatives
to leadership within organizations.
In this article we explore radical, participative-democratic alternatives to leadership through an
empirical study of four Social Movement Organizations (SMOs). Whilst there has been some writing on leadership within SMOs, this has mirrored ‘mainstream’ leadership theories, that leadership
is the product of individuals with certain traits, styles and/or behaviours. Taking issue with this,
critical studies of leadership have theoretically decentred the leader in leadership studies (Wood,
2005) as well as examining the dark side of leadership practice (Collinson, 2011; Gemmill and
Oakley, 1992). However, most critical studies have focussed their attention on capitalist organizations, or hierarchical forms of organization in the military and government. Such approaches have
had less to say about the construction of leadership in horizontal, anarchist SMOs. In part this
might be due to the difficulty of identifying leadership in the absence of designated leaders.
However, critical leadership studies (CLS) has long recognized that leadership is a relational,
socially constructed phenomenon rather than the result of a stable set of leadership attributes that
inhere in ‘the leaders’ (Wood, 2005). Despite this, on-going debates over the essence of leadership,
or its primary functions (e.g. Kelly, 2008), mean that identifying leadership in the absence of individual leaders remains a complicated proposition.
In this article we work with the definition that leadership is primarily concerned with the ‘management of meaning’ and reality definition (Smircich and Morgan, 1982). Therefore, after introducing mainstream leadership perspectives, we review the key tenets of CLS: a relational perspective
on leadership as a socially constructed and culturally specific phenomenon, with potentially negative consequences for organized social relationships (Collinson, 2011; Fairhurst, 2007, 2008, 2009;
Fairhurst and Grant, 2010; Gronn, 2011; Spicer and Alvesson, 2012). The article then explains our
methodological approach and how leadership emerged as a key analytical category. The empirical
section first examines the orientation to leadership in the organizations we studied, finding that the
emic perspective on leadership broadly follows the equation of leadership with leaders. This ontological understanding of ‘leadership’ is combined with an axiology more readily associated with
CLS, in which leadership produces alienation and disempowerment. For these reasons, the organizations we studied explicitly rejected leadership as an organizational principle. The second part of
the empirical discussion examines how leaders are kept at bay through practices like consensus
decision-making. The third part examines how meaning-making and leadership was performed in
the absence of designated individual leaders. The final part of the empirical discussion considers
some of the challenges faced, most notably the danger of leaders emerging through the formation of
cliques, or through imported forms of cultural capital, competence and gender identity.
Challenging leadership: from mainstream to critical
perspectives
‘Mainstream’ leadership research
Since the early 1920s, leadership has been a focus of academic research. Collinson (2011) notes
that a majority of studies can be located within a ‘mainstream’ paradigm, which encompasses a
diverse range of perspectives. Trait-based theories, for example, locate leadership in leaders’ innate
Sutherland et al.
761
physical and psychological characteristics, such as authenticity and charisma (Avolio and Gardner,
2005; Bass, 1975; Burns, 1978). Style or behavioural perspectives change this focus to studying
the specific skills and behaviours that make an individual a ‘good’ leader (Lewin, 1939; McGregor,
1966). Situational or contingency theories emphasize organizational context, suggesting that specific styles of leadership are preferable in different situations (Fiedler et al., 1975; Hersey and
Blanchard, 1977). Although these theories have their differences, they all understand leadership as
the product of individual leaders who possess certain skills and are solely responsible for inspiration, influence and organizational performance (Forster and Browne, 1996; Yukl, 1989).
Ontologically speaking, these theories assume that leadership is something with an independent
existence and a coherent ‘essence’ that can be identified through causal relationships (Alvesson
and Spicer, 2012). Furthermore, these perspectives function on the unitarist assumption that there
is a top-down influence process through which leaders in hierarchical positions of authority ‘have’
the power and right to influence followers (Barker, 1997, 2001). A distinction is drawn between
leaders and followers therefore, in which followers are simply marked by their ‘susceptibility to
certain leader behaviours or styles’ (Collinson, 2005: 1424).
More recently, theorists have sought to distance themselves from this conceptualization, marked
by the introduction of post-heroic (Fletcher, 2003, 2004; Pearce and Sims, 2000) and distributed
(Drath et al., 2008; Spillane, 2004) approaches. These perspectives emphasize a more dynamic
understanding of leadership, particularly in the context of flatter hierarchies and team-working
structures (Collinson, 2011; Raelin, 2003). Gronn argues that this has attracted a large following in
recent years and is ‘fast approaching hegemonic status’ (2011: 439) in leadership research more
generally. Despite this change of focus however, Collinson and Collinson (2009) note that distributed leadership is still fundamentally about top-down delegation, rather than bottom-up engagement. Whilst the rhetoric suggests that it enables a more collaborative approach with equalized
power relations, so long as participative leadership exists within a hierarchical organizations
located in the capitalist market, then at best it may be another style to be adopted by individual
leaders seeking to increase economic efficiency through participation, whilst continuing to provide
direction, vision and steer expectations (Gronn, 2011). Therefore, whilst post-heroic and distributed perspectives do much to advance understandings of leadership in post-bureaucratic organizations, the relative success/failure of such structures is still determined by the effectiveness of
individual leaders.
In regard to the social movement literature, leadership is an understudied area (Barker et al.,
2001; Bate et al., 2004; Klandermans, 1989; Melucci, 1996; Morris, 1999; Morris and Staggenborg,
2002). Where attempts have been made, they have generally mirrored mainstream leadership theory. Building upon the classic work of Robert Michels (1969), who argued that even radically
democratic organizations develop oligarchic tendencies and centralize leadership, some theorists
have claimed that leaders are essential for the formation, growth and success of SMOs (McCarthy
and Zald, 1973; Oberschall, 1973; Zald and Ash, 1996). A variety of theorists have sought to delineate SMO leaders’ specific styles and behaviours, such as charismatic traits (Blumer, 1969); their
capacity to shift roles in different stages of organizational lifecycles (Michels, 1969; Wilson,
1973); their ability to encourage, energize and enable subordinates to act (Nadler and Tushman,
1990: 81); to articulate ideologies and mobilize the ‘rank and file’ (Zald and Ash, 1973: 331) or to
be ‘guardians of themes’ (Bate, 2004: 23). More recently, there has been a shift in emphasis as
attempts have been made to explain how leadership can be performed more democratically.
Paralleling the rise of post-heroic and distributed leadership discourses, social movement theorists
have sought to re-imagine leadership by highlighting how leaders are able to encourage democratic
practices within organizations (Ganz, 2000; West, 2008). Despite these attempts to expand the
762
Organization 21(6)
notion of leadership, the assumption that it emanates from an individual (albeit ‘democratic’)
leader remains, rather than being a process enacted by a multitude of organizational members. For
example, whilst Ganz notes that leadership in SMOs ‘goes well beyond that of the stereotypical
charismatic public persona’, the development of democratic and participative structures is still
seen to be the ‘responsibility’ (2000: 510) of permanent individual leaders.
Although mainstream perspectives have enjoyed a rich history, their underlying assumptions
occlude the organizational power dynamics emerging around leadership, and fail to adequately
analyse the contingent, on-going and contested social construction of leadership. Adopting a stance
more readily associated with CLS, along with its focus on the relational, socially constructed
nature of leadership, may allow a move away from the mainstream ontology. Rather than focussing
on what individual leaders do, emphasis is placed on seeking to understand what leadership is, and
how it can be recognized (Collinson, 2011; Spicer and Alvesson, 2012). CLS may therefore be
understood as a particularly well suited paradigm for studying SMOs, especially when seeking to
understand how leadership is performed in the absence of individual leaders.
Critical leadership studies
CLS utilizes ideas outlined by Critical Management Studies (CMS), aiming to deconstruct and denaturalize hegemonic representations of organizational life and knowledge (Alvesson and Spicer,
2012; Fournier and Grey, 2000; Spicer et al., 2009; Western, 2008). Because it draws upon a range
of theoretical perspectives including, but not limited to, feminism, Marxism, labour process theory
and post-structuralism, CMS has been referred to as a ‘slippery and fragmented domain’ (Adler
et al., 2008: 32). Beneath this apparent heterogeneity, however, there is some agreement as to the
overarching principles and goals. On a very broad level, Fournier and Grey suggest that ‘to be
engaged in CMS means […] to say that there is something wrong with management […] and that it
should be changed’ (2000: 8). Similarly, within CLS, although scholars draw upon a vast range of
approaches, there is a common view about ‘what is neglected, absent or deficient in mainstream
leadership research’ (Collinson, 2011: 181).
In one strand of CLS research, theorists have sought to understand these deficiencies and have
highlighted leadership’s negative and destructive potential by investigating its ‘dark side’ through
issues such as domination, conformity, abuse of power, blind commitment, over-dependence and
seduction (Calás and Smircich, 1991; Conger, 19907; Gemmill and Oakley, 1992; Khoo and Burch,
2007; Marcuse, 2008; Mellahi et al., 2002). Gemmill and Oakley (1992), for example, suggest that
the problem is not leadership going wrong, or with particular styles, but leadership itself. In their
account, leadership is an ‘alienating social myth’ that disempowers organizational members, reducing them to helpless followers who are lost without a leader to take control of events. Organizational
members are able to project their worries and anxieties onto their leader, who is constructed as
omnipotent and the original source of leadership, rather than leadership being attributed to the
leader by followers. From this perspective, leadership is dangerous and necessarily leads to infantilization and, through existential deskilling, dehumanization.
Many have also problematized a reliance on individual leaders in SMOs, rejecting the notion
that individuals should occupy hierarchical positions. From this perspective, a reliance on leaders
represents an attack on autonomy, meaning that instead of an organization being democratically
maintained, it becomes the product of an elite who direct and control from the top-down and prohibit participation (Day, 2005; Dishman, 2005; Garfinkel, 2003; Guerin, 2005; Kaplan, 1997;
Michels, 1969; Purkis, 2001). Given the turn toward anarchistic organizing principles in SMOs
more generally (Crossley, 2003; Day, 2005), it is perhaps unsurprising that activists and theorists
Sutherland et al.
763
have highlighted these ‘leaderless’ structures. Indeed, discussing the Occupy movement, Graeber
notes that ‘we don’t want leaders’ and stressed the need to construct forms of organization that
allow participants to act ‘autonomously’ and ‘as a collective’ free from the constraints of powerful
individuals (cited in: Berret, 2011). However, it is important to note that the mainstream conceptualization, that leadership can only exist if there are leaders to enact it, is still retained. Therefore, a
leaderless organization must, by definition, be leadershipless. Fyke and Sayegh (2001) suggest
that by refusing to acknowledge any kind of leadership, organizations may be at risk of re-creating
the same hierarchical relations they seek to abolish as informal hier…
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