From Transformational Leadershipto Leadership Trans-Formations: A CriticalDialogic PerspectiveRahul Mitra
Department of Communication, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI 48201, USA
Noting overlaps between leadership and transformation processes, I outline a criticaldigital perspective that shifts focus from transformational leadership behaviors to howleadership ‘‘trans-formations’’ occur. Specifically, this article avers that naming particularidentities, processes, and concepts by leaders and change participants enacts transfor-mation. These three domains are ‘‘co-named’’ by leaders and participants in ongoingcommunicative sequences of acting/re-acting, attuned to the discursive flows and materialconditions/actants shaping various contexts. I illustrate this framework via the U.S.-basedclimate change nonprofit 350.org and its founder Bill McKibben, focusing on how leaders orparticipants acquire and mobilize voice, organize in different forms, and how ‘‘new’’ formsintersect with traditional institutions. Implications for leadership, dialogue, and practicalaccomplishments of transformation are discussed.
doi:10.1111/comt.12022
The transformation of social relations and practices is a core concern of communica-tion theorists (Carbaugh & Buzzanell, 2010). Whereas scholars have long recognizedthe importance of strong leaders in systemic change, alternative organizing, andsocial justice, leadership phenomena remain relatively underexplored in this respect(Dutta, 2011; Zoller & Fairhurst, 2007). In part, this is due to mainstream framingof leadership as a managerial concern, exercised to attain maximum work produc-tivity out of organizational workers. Moreover, leadership literature dealing withtransformation—most notably, transformational leadership theory (Avolio, 2004;Bass, 1985; Burns, 1978)—is rooted in the cognitive-behavioral tradition that rarelycenters the communicative (inter)actions at play, and runs counter to the goals ofcritical change theorists, who tend to locate agency in collective bodies rather thansingular heroes.
Nevertheless, noting the multiple overlaps between leadership and transforma-tive processes, I outline a critical dialogic perspective to leadership transformations,locating communicative agency in the interplay of leaders and change participants. Inaddition to dialogue theory/ies and extant research on transformational leadership,
I draw from discursive or narrative approaches to organizational change, systemicviews of risk and transformation, and recent work on organizational materiality, toprivilege both systemic and contextual levels of transformation. This becomes neces-sary when we take into account critiques of mainstream transformational leadershiptheory as too narrowly focused on dyads, biased toward heroic conceptions andcorporate contexts, containing overlapping categories, and insufficiently specifyingits limiting conditions (Yukl, 1999, 2006). While its own proponents have calledfor deeper engagement with the ‘‘messy’’ processes underlying transformation (e.g.,Avolio, 2004), scholars in organization studies have more recently highlighted theentanglement(s) of symbolic/material realms, so that both ‘‘transformation’’ and‘‘leadership’’ can be further unpacked.
Accordingly, this article broadens the conversation about how leaders transformfollowers (i.e., extant transformational leadership theory) to considering the com-plex ways that leadership ‘‘trans-formations’’ occur, with multiple actors and voicesseeking to name these processes. I emphasize the etymological roots of the word‘‘transformation’’ (trans + form) deliberately, understanding it as a profoundly dia-logic process involving the dynamic relinquishment, metamorphosis, and adoptionof symbolic or material ‘‘forms’’ across space and time, grassroots and elite con-stituencies, rather than cross-sectional, before-after states of being. Transformation isaccomplished through communication, which may be defined as ‘‘the ongoing, situ-ated, and embodied process whereby human and nonhuman agencies interpenetrateideation and materiality toward meanings that are tangible and axial to organi-zational existence and organizing phenomena’’ (Ashcraft, Kuhn, & Cooren, 2009,p. 34). Since leadership is defined as the process of social influence whereby someactors (‘‘leaders’’) shape the attitudes, discourses, and lived conditions of organiza-tional members and impacted communities (‘‘followers’’) (Burns, 1978; Hickman,2009; Yukl, 2006), the communicative enactment of transformation depends on theleadership relations at hand. While conventional transformational leadership takesthese relations to be set a priori (Bass, 1985), the critical dialogic perspective allows for‘‘new’’ hybrid relations to emerge, through the trans-formational processes at work,so that leadership both transforms and is transformed (Fairhurst & Cooren, 2009).
Specifically, this article avers that the (communicative) naming of particu-lar identities, processes, and concepts by leaders and change participants enactstransformation. These three domains—identities, processes, and concepts—areinterconnected in change processes and are ‘‘co-named’’ by leaders or participantsin ongoing communicative sequences of acting/re-acting, attuned to the discursiveflows and material conditions that shape various contexts. Different combinationsof such actions/re-actions subsequently inform the attributed behaviors of transfor-mational leadership, such as idealized influence and inspirational motivation, so thatthe leadership ‘‘trans-formations’’ perspective both extends and probes deeper intothe ‘‘first order’’ processes of transformational leadership.
I illustrate the naming of identities, processes, and concepts by using thecase of prominent U.S.-based environmentalist nonprofit organization (NPO)
350.org and its founder Bill McKibben. 350.org’s goal is to reduce carbon dioxideconcentration in the earth’s atmosphere from the present average of 392 partsper million (ppm) to 350 ppm, which is supposed to be the ‘‘safe’’ limit to avoidirreversible climate change. This necessitates a sustained transformation in howpeople build products and houses, travel, and consume food, among other things;as the logo of a banner from one of 350.org’s rallies proclaims: ‘‘System change,not climate change’’ (McKibben, 2012b). I piece together the case from a mixedcorpus, consisting of mainstream news, progressive media coverage, 350.org’s Websites, and McKibben’s own writings, to understand the dialogic flow of information,ideas, and material practices1 within which social system 350.org is embedded. Inchoosing this case, I heed Bimber, Flanagin, and Stohl’s (2012) call to take broaderviews of collective action and organizing given the local/global intersections amongindividuals and collectives via communication technologies, human migration, andresource flows. Contemporary environmental movements provide ideal contexts toresearch such processes, with the proliferation of ‘‘new’’ organizational entities andlandscapes concerned with so-called ‘‘intractable’’ conflicts (Brummans et al., 2008;Czarniawksi, 2013; Nicotera, 2013; Wittneben, Okerke, Banerjee, & Levy, 2012; alsothe 2012 special issue of Organization Studies on climate change organizing). Thus,I examine how individuals associated with 350.org and the organization itself lead(with) other actors, dialogically naming identities, processes, and concepts. My goalis not to outline, nor advocate for, a ‘‘neat’’ model of controlled transformation,but to center how both leadership and transformation are incredibly complex,contingent, and interconnected through communication. In adopting such a‘‘distinctively communicative’’ approach, this article should be of interest to scholarsof and beyond organizational communication, who examine communication ascause, effect, and process in different contexts (Carbaugh & Buzzanell, 2010).
In the following sections, I discuss transformational leadership theory andsome different approaches to dialogue. Next, I outline the key elements of thecritical dialogic perspective to leadership transformations, arguing that it is thedialogical naming of identities, processes, and concepts by leaders or participantsthat enacts trans-formation. I then use 350.org to illustrate this framework. Finally,I discuss some key implications for leadership studies, dialogue theory, and practicalaccomplishments of transformation.
Transformational leadership
While most leadership theories center change—through observed follower behavioralchanges, strategic change management, management of linguistic meanings, orother avenues (see Hickman, 2009; Yukl, 2006)—transformational leadership theoryexplicitly takes up this issue. Since its inception almost 4 decades ago as ‘‘transformingleadership’’ (Burns, 1978), transformational leadership has become enshrined as a‘‘special’’ form of leader influence, contrasted against exchange-driven control orhierarchical/institutionalized authority (Bass, 1985). Burns (2010) argued that ‘‘the
transforming leader recognizes and exploits an existing need or demand of a potentialfollower. But beyond that, the transforming leader looks for potential motives infollowers, seeks to satisfy higher needs, and engages the full person of the follower’’ (p.67). Transformational leadership theory promotes leaders who ‘‘help followers growand develop into leaders by responding to individual followers’ needs by empoweringthem and by aligning the objectives and goals of the individual followers, the leader,the group, and the larger organization’’ (Bass & Riggio, 2010, p. 76).
Early versions identified four broad strategies—termed the ‘‘4 I’s’’—used bytransformational leaders. The first is idealized influence, whereby visionary andcharismatic leaders exude self-confidence, are seen as masters of their own destinies,and have impeccable values and deep insight into follower needs. Second, leadersprovide inspirational motivation to followers, building their confidence, orientingthem to action, and encouraging novel methods. Leaders lead by self-example, andfollowers are encouraged to empower themselves, in what Bass (1985) labels the‘‘Pygmalion effect.’’ Third, leaders provide individualized consideration to followers,which involves building familiarity, counseling, and delegating authority. Finally,leaders stimulate followers intellectually, in that followers’ issue awareness andproblem-solving skills are enhanced, with a focus on consciousness-raising. Inthe original model, these 4 I’s were contrasted against transactional leadership,which involved the use of rewards or incentives contingent to follower behavior inaccordance with leader-goals, and active and passive management by exception, oractively micro-managing followers to enforce rules and only issuing penalties whenfollowers deviate from leader-goals, respectively (Bass & Avolio, 1990). Recently,Bass and Riggio (2010) emphasized that ‘‘the full range of leadership model’’includes both transformational and transactional strategies, together with laissez-faireleadership, which basically ‘‘represents a nontransaction’’ (p. 79). Departing fromearlier conceptions of transformational leadership as ‘‘rare,’’ the full range modelposits that leaders display all three forms of leadership, though transformationalstrategies are still encouraged over others (Bass & Avolio, 1997).
A sizeable body of empirical work validates the transformational leadershipconstruct. For instance, it has been found to augment the effects of transactional styles,enhancing worker productivity and satisfaction (Seltzer & Bass, 1990), minimizeage-based conflicts among teams (Kunze & Bruch, 2010), and enhance leaders’abilities to gain trust, manage employee frustration, and ease decision-makingconflicts (Jin, 2010). Nevertheless, the theory has some significant shortcomings.First, most empirical work focuses on corporate dyads instead of tracing leader orfollower embeddedness within larger social or organizational systems (Yukl, 1999),although contemporary local/global interconnections across political, economic, andinformational realms mean that such intersections become key. As Burns (2003)notes, ‘‘Transformation means basic alteration in entire systems—revolutions thatreplace one structure of power with another’’ (p. 24). Thus, the crisis and changeconditions that both enable and constrain transformational leadership have rarelybeen unpacked empirically (Yukl, 2006).
Second, extant research centers leader actions, privileging individual agency, whileignoring the social interactions within dispersed leader–follower networks. However,Hickman and Couto (2009) argue that judging leaders’ efficacy only by the intendedeffects of their actions is shortsighted and unethical, since transformation results fromintricate internal and external networks that may have significant spillover effects.The theory’s implicit stance that, despite transforming, the leader himself/herselfdoes not change (i.e., only followers are transformed) is also at odds with recentwork on self and authority, which envision shifting and layered identities (Benoit-Barne & Cooren, 2009). While examining the collaborative processes undergirdingtransformation, scholars must also note how leaders and followers move across eliteand grassroots camps (Zoller & Fairhurst, 2007).
A third set of critiques centers around the ‘‘messiness’’ of transformationprocesses, which the theory generally avoids. Avolio (2004) urges researchers ‘‘to chal-lenge themselves and the field of leadership to move away from simplistic conceptual-izations of leadership that form neatly into two or three factors’’ (p. 1564), while Yukl(2006) notes the absence of structural, contextual, and cultural influences in the frame-work. The material constraints and enablers of transformation are ignored, despiterecognition that material conditions crucially inform organizational sensemakingprocesses, observed behaviors, and discourses (e.g., Whiteman & Cooper, 2000).
To summarize, transformational leadership theory posts that leaders use a combi-nation of idealized influence, inspirational motivation, individualized consideration,and intellectual stimulation tactics to ‘‘transform’’ followers and organizations. How-ever, it has been critiqued for being too insular, ignoring collective action processes,and eschewing the messiness of transformation. There is thus room to extend theframework in line with 21st century complexities of organizing, which involve neworganizational forms, organizing practices, and environmental or other materialrisks. Re-visioning leadership ‘‘trans-formations’’ from a critical dialogic perspec-tive assuages these shortcomings, as I show below, by suggesting a more nuancedapproach to both leadership and transformation. Next, I examine dialogue in moredetail.
Dialogue
Although dialogic communication is largely idealized in various social/organizationalcontexts (see Anderson, Baxter, & Cissna, 2004), Deetz and Simpson (2004) averthat such ‘‘native’’ understandings of dialogue merely stress getting everyone to theproverbial table without actually deconstructing the difficult processes of deliberation,owing to the underlying structural and political relations (p. 152). For Cissna andAnderson (1998), dialogue is ‘‘both a quality of relationship that arises, howeverbriefly, between two or more people and a way of thinking about human affairs thathighlights their dialogic qualities’’ (p. 64). They articulate two different (yet related)views on dialogue. Prescriptive views take dialogue to be a form of conversation opento other stances, or ‘‘a particular quality or type of relating’’ that emphasizes the
communicative structures to enable understanding I-thou—the meeting of self andother to their mutual benefit (Stewart, Zediker, & Black, 2004, p. 21; see Buber, 1970).Descriptive views see dialogue as ‘‘a pervasive and defining feature of humanity that[highlights] the irreducibly social, relational, or interactional character of all humanmeaning-making’’ (Stewart et al., 2004, p. 21). Here, dialogue stems from ontologicaldifference and privileges conflict as productive of social reality, rather than seekingcommon ground between self and other (Bakhtin, 1981). Prescriptive dialogue studiesgenerally focus on the micro context at hand—that is, the forum structure and voicesheard in particular situations—whereas descriptive dialogue research tends to notehow macro discourses intersect as they are appropriated in different contexts.
Both frameworks significantly overlap. Bakhtin’s (1981) (descriptive) work ondialogism, with its emphasis on ‘‘double-voicedness’’ of discourse, or the presenceof multiple strands of meanings in any text, was closely inspired by Buber’s (1970)(prescriptive) conception of I-thou, which privileged the self/other combination forself and other to be ‘‘heard’’ adequately. Thus, Stewart et al. (2004) argue thatall dialogue theories share some commonalities: a holistic focus, or concern withbalancing parts with their totality; an abiding tensionality rather than resolution ofself/other; and a preoccupation with communication, so that self/other is enactedand challenged constantly through communication. Such perspectives acknowledgecommunication to be ‘‘a fluctuating, multivocal process in which uncertainty infusesencounters between people and what they mean and become’’ (Wood, 2004, p. xvi),so that self/other is never entirely certain. That is, dialogue is both constitutive andcontingent: ‘‘dialogic engagement predates selfhood, both of which are fluid andconstantly remade’’ (p. xvii).
Dialogic perspectives are well-positioned to unpack leadership transformations,especially when we note that ‘‘dialogue’’ means ‘‘through’’ or ‘‘across’’ (dia) ‘‘word’’or ‘‘meaning’’ (logos) (Cissna & Anderson, 1998, p. 64), whereas to ‘‘trans-form’’signifies a movement or shift across forms. Ideals of dialogue as prescriptive pervadetransformational leadership theory, so that leaders are encouraged to search forcommon ground with followers and empower them through the 4 I’s (e.g., Burns,2003). Recent work on leadership also suggests that leaders (re)craft ‘‘hybrid’’presences by drawing on various discourses, artifacts, and entities (Fairhurst &Cooren, 2009), or a descriptive view of dialogue. The critical dialogic perspectiveoutlined here draws from both descriptive and prescriptive views to highlight theconstitutive and contingent nature of dialogue, as leaders and change participantscommunicatively enact transformation, while being cognizant of underlying powerrelations (Deetz, 2010; Ganesh & Zoller, 2012). Such engagement concerns not merelyself expression but also ‘‘self de[con]struction,’’ so that ‘‘every interaction . . . holdsboth the possibility of closure or new meaning, either a reproduction of the dominantsocially produced subjectivity or responsiveness to the excess of external events overthese conceptions’’ (Deetz & Simpson, 2004, p. 143). Accordingly, I note how‘‘new meaning’’ intersects with ‘‘external events,’’ privileging both contextual andsystemic sites of transformational leadership, keeping in mind the ongoing struggle
between elite and grassroots, dominant and marginalized actors and discourses(Zoller & Fairhurst, 2007). This stance also aligns with holistic approaches to risk,so that ‘‘in uncertain environments, organizations must generate transformation onmultiple levels—individual, organizational, and societal—if they are to change inways that will ensure both their own viability and the overall well-being of society’’(Hickman, 2004, p. 1571; also see Beck, 2008). It urges systemic and tensional viewsof organizing, looking at intra/inter-organizational relations, political movements,and social/cultural pluralism to produce hybrid forms of leading.
Next, I outline how leaders and change participants may dialogically name—andthereby, accomplish—‘‘trans-formation.’’
Naming/trans-forming and leadership
Consider the avenues of transformation suggested by the literature on dialogue (seeTable 1). First, taking dialogue to be a quality of human contact, proponents ofBuber (1970) argue that dialogue itself is ‘‘the site of human becoming’’ (Stewartet al., 2004, p. 33), creating the basis for imagining self-identity through other, intrue ‘‘mutuality.’’ Second, the Bohmian avenue to change sees dialogue creatingsomething anew through the collaboration of multiple actors and voices, resulting in‘‘common consciousness’’ (Bohm, 1996). Third, Freirian scholars argue that dialoguegenerates critical thinking among participants to produce new modes of thoughtand outcomes as they re-appraise self/other: ‘‘to transform the issue and the qualityof contact between those in a similar or common struggle’’ (Stewart et al., 2004,p. 34). Finally, Bakhtinian dialogue centers constant transformation, through theintersection of multiple discourses, rather than dramatic breakthroughs (Bakhtin,1981). A discursive event may reinforce existing hegemonies or enter into conflictwith them, producing recombinant forms, until the contradictions gradually becomenormalized.
These avenues are not entirely disparate, and each centers the communicativenaming of identities, processes, and concepts through dialogue, allowing the adoptionof and movement across (‘‘trans’’) hybridized forms. That is, it is through the namingof these interrelated domains that change is accomplished, and leaders and changeparticipants ‘‘trans-form’’ or move across forms. Naming has long been recognized asa potent performative, a form of talk that ‘‘does’’ deeds simply by being stated. Loxley(2007) describes performatives as ‘‘actions in themselves . . . [that are] ‘performed,’like other actions, or take place, like other worldly events and thus make a difference inthe world; it could be said that they produce a different world’’ (p. 2). More recently,naming has been highlighted by leadership and organizational change scholars.Hickman and Couto (2009) argue that for leadership to accomplish change, threeconditions must be noted—social climate, timing and duration, and the threshold ofwhat counts as ‘‘change’’—all of which are shaped by the naming of social phenomenaand objects by leaders (p. 18). Naming reifies and transcends organizational and socialboundaries, imagining old and new entities in novel relationships (Hickman, 2009,
p. xiv). The Montreal School of organizational communication also centers namingby organizations and organizational leaders to establish their ‘‘presence,’’ drawingon higher order abstractions, concrete tangibles, or particular bodies, depending onthe context (Fairhurst & Cooren, 2009). For Cooren, Brummans, and Charrieras(2008), ‘‘naming signifies an important step in an organization’s existence becauseit is through various incarnations that ‘it’ can then be made present (and be madepresent again or ‘re-presented’)’’ (p. 1344). It is when the individual members of acollective ‘‘we’’ dissociate themselves from ‘‘it’’ by naming ‘‘it’’—and themselves asbeing authorized by ‘‘it,’’ or acting in ‘‘it’s’’ name—that an organization becomesan ‘‘entitative being’’ (Nicotera, 2013). Benoit-Barne and Cooren (2009) thus drawparallels between the etymological roots of ‘‘authority’’ and ‘‘author-ing,’’ so thatinscriptions of leadership authority depend on how leaders and followers cowritesocial reality.
Discursive and narrative perspectives to organizational change also showcase theimportance of naming. Marshak (1998) concludes that the accomplishment of changerests crucially on the dialogic framing of broad parameters (mythopoetic talk), con-textualizing broader ideas in everyday situations (frame talk), and issuing directivesto enact ideas (tool talk). In a 2010 special issue of the Journal of Applied behavioralScience on this topic, Whittle, Suhomlinova, and Mueller (2010) trace the ‘‘discursivetranslation’’ that change leaders perform as they (inter)act with participants. Themeanings of intended change are not fixed from the start, but fluid, as participantsalternatively push back and re-act with their vision(s) of what and how changeshould be accomplished. These findings seem validated by Sonenshein’s (2010)study of manager–employee narratives during large-scale organizational change,so that even as managers deliberately adopted strategic ambiguity—transformationas good-and-bad—in their interactions with employees, how employees re-actedto the change—accepting, resisting, or championing—depended on the time andlocation-sensitive appropriation of these narratives.
From these different bodies of work, then, we may conclude that: (1) namingidentities, concepts, and processes accomplishes trans-formation, (2) both leadersand participants ‘‘co-name’’ trans-formation, and (3) naming is an uncertain,contingent, dialogic practice involving communicative action/re-action. Namingsignificantly extends the ‘‘vision’’ extolled by transformational leadership theory,where it is mainly reduced to foresight or planning for performance-based changes incorporations or producing psychological changes in employees (e.g.., Bass & Avolio,1990, 1997). Whereas ‘‘vision’’ celebrates strategically tying loose ends together,‘‘naming’’ centers the ongoing messiness of transformation. While noting leadershipto be ‘‘a structure of action’’ (Burns, 2010, p. 66), naming also notes the re-actions byother participants, which are not preset responses to leader actions but strategicallyenacted in the course of dialogic interactions, whose final outcomes may not be whatleaders had intended. While the 4 I’s of transformational leadership are concernedwith the observed attributions of leaders, there is room for theorizing deeper, more‘‘first order,’’ practices. For example, one of the items on the Multifactor LeadershipQuestionnaire (MLQ) scale for transformational leadership, pertaining to idealizedinfluence, states: ‘‘Talks optimistically about the future’’ (Bass & Avolio, 1997).However, how this talk occurs, or how ‘‘optimistically’’ and ‘‘the future’’ are namedfor (and with) change participants, remains crucially unsaid. The critical dialogicperspective addresses these gaps, so that a MLQ item like this one is constituted byparticular action/re-action sequences, which name identities, processes, and concepts.
Importantly, this perspective does not entirely re-locate leadership from theexisting power relations that ‘‘authorize’’ leaders to the ‘‘author-ing’’ processes ofthe moment. In its embrace of both prescriptive and descriptive views of dialogue, itcontends that leadership names and is named by transformation. That is, leadershipas a process of social influence follows from existing hierarchies and relations,while the accomplished ‘‘trans-formation’’ also produces new or hybrid leadershiprelations—centering a dialogic arrangement between transformation and leadership.Naming is not confined to ‘‘in the moment’’ experiences of authoring-through-interaction (e.g., Benoit-Barne & Cooren, 2009; Whittle et al., 2010), but also occursin retrospective accounts and socially percolated discourses (e.g., Fairhurst & Cooren,2009; Nicotera, 2013; Sonenshein, 2010).
What, then, might some of these communicative actions/re-actions that accom-plish naming be? As a starting point, consider the five ways Fiol (2002) notes leaders toname organizational change. These are: adopting the assumed or transcendent ‘‘we’’ toinclude all participants, using both inclusive and exclusive referents to talk about inter-nal and external entities as change unfolds, employing negation as a rhetorical deviceto disidentify with particular outcomes and/or actors, grounding ‘‘possible selves’’in concrete situations for greater legitimacy, and invoking higher-order abstractionsto invest leader authority. These strategies are both implicitly and explicitly dialogic,utilizing prescriptive and descriptive stances; for instance, in the simultaneous useof inclusive and exclusive referents (descriptive) while noting the fluid nature ofpossible selves (prescriptive). Additionally, we may note how leaders and participants
utilize strategic ambiguity to articulate change (Sonenshein, 2010; White, 2008), andsilence as a key communicative move, especially for subaltern interests2 (Dutta &Pal, 2010). As White (2008) observes, ‘‘speaking out is always potentially scary. Itimplicates us as speakers and as hearers in an act of power, with the potential tobind us together or set us at each other’s throats’’ (p. 22). Others have highlightedthe adoption of parody, spectacle, and performance, in line with what Bakhtin termed‘‘the carnivalesque,’’ or carnival sense of the world, which mocks dominant interestsby ‘‘discrowning’’ or inverting the status quo (Morson & Emerson, 1990). Ganeshand Zoller (2012) have shown how radical disagreement, to the extent of disobedienceand protests, might also name and ‘‘do’’ transformation (see also Deetz, 2010).
True to its tensional, hybridized spirit, the critical dialogic perspective is attunedto how leaders and participants shift among these actions/re-actions, depending onthe need for discursive translation in particular situations (Whittle et al., 2010), sothat these are not discrete but overlapping moves, and may even produce second-order outcomes that fuse MLQ items or be very different from those expected. Suchcontingent outcomes are in line with empirical research that suggests cooccurrenceof transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire leadership (i.e., the ‘‘full range’’model of Bass & Riggio, 2010). Although these overlaps have been critiqued inmainstream management scholarship as drawbacks of transformational leadershiptheory (e.g., Yukl, 1999), the naming/trans-forming perspective explains why theymay occur and takes them to be not drawbacks, but inevitable given the dialogicnature of social reality.
Finally, the framework outlined here notes how the ‘‘real-ization’’ of namingactions/re-actions is shaped by the material complexity of particular situations wherechange is enacted. This follows from the definition of communication noted earlier,which highlights the dialogic nature of symbolic and material realms, so that ‘‘it is themechanism whereby the material and ideational comingle and transform accordingly.In communication, symbol becomes material; material becomes symbol; and neitherstay the same as a result’’ (Ashcraft et al., 2009, p. 34). While ‘‘real,’’ materialityis never entirely fixed, involving both what is (i.e., the physical description andeffects immanent in a particular situation) and what might be (i.e., the affordancesand possibilities suggested, transcending local contexts). Thus, leaders/participantsmobilize different actions/re-actions to negotiate the physical realities of their materialcondition, invoke the physically absent (but materially in existence) thing, and/or‘‘presentfy’’ the possible (but materially ‘‘absent’’ as yet) entity (Cooren et al., 2008;Fairhurst & Cooren, 2009; Nicotera, 2013).
To consider how human actors make sense of and re-act to/with the variousmaterial conditions of object, place, and body (Ashcraft et al., 2009), the notionof ecological embeddedness (Whiteman & Cooper, 2000, 2011) is useful. Whileactors may be ‘‘ecologically embedded within an ecosystem when he or sheunderstands the local peculiarities and interactive effects—of terrain, climate,seasons, vegetation, and animals—and the impact of disturbances such as a fire oran insect outbreak’’ (Whiteman & Cooper, 2011, p. 892), other characterizations of
ecological sensemaking also occur (e.g., as expert, fragmented, or disembedded—indecreasing degree of embeddedness). Often, where material conditions are invokedby human actors, they are essentially nonhuman actants that ‘‘speak’’ and ‘‘name’’through their human interactants, and vice versa (e.g., organizational leaders andmembers often speak in the name of objects like annual reports, podiums andgavels) (Cooren et al., 2008; Fairhurst & Cooren, 2009; Nicotera, 2013). Thus, evenas human actors engage each other in communicative action/re-action to nameidentities, processes, and concepts, they also do so with a variety of nonhumanactants that assume agency to enact ‘‘trans-formation,’’ with very ‘‘real’’ materialconsequences.
An illustration: 350.org
Thus far, I have argued that a critical dialogic perspective to leadership and trans-formation, drawing from both prescriptive and descriptive views, centers naming byleaders/participants as ‘‘trans-formation,’’ via ongoing sequences of action/re-action.Naming/trans-forming occurs along three intersecting domains—identities,processes, and concepts—as I demonstrate below in the case of 350.org and BillMcKibben. It is not my intention here to attempt a full-scale empirical study, but touse the case primarily as a theoretical ‘‘springboard’’ for future research.
Naming identitiesMoving across identity forms requires what Fiol (2002) terms ‘‘possible selves,’’which ‘‘provide new means-ends patterns (e.g., a clear articulation of a different rolefor engineers in the new organization) that can bring about resituated identification’’(p. 660). That is, there is simultaneous disruption of old selves and creation of new,contingent selves. For instance, Buzzanell et al. (1997) showed how organizationalmembers frequently interchange leadership roles among themselves, depending onthe task, expertise, resources, and constraints at hand, drawing on invitational rhetoricand dramaturgical metaphors of ‘‘front stage’’ and ‘‘backstage.’’
Bill McKibben’s story is well-known in environmentalist circles. A college pro-fessor in Vermont, he wrote one of the first bestsellers on global warming almost25 years ago and then formed a climate change campaign called Step It Up withsome university students, which morphed into 350.org in 2008. Since then, he hasbecome fairly prominent as an activist, especially for organizing protests againstthe proposed Keystone XL pipeline to transport oil from the Canadian tar sandsacross the U.S. Midwest. While progressive media outlet Tom Dispatch calls him ‘‘themost important story of our lives’’ (McKibben, 2012c), McKibben is confessedly an‘‘environmental writer turned unlikely activist’’ (Walsh, 2012, p. 44). Both McKibben(the man) and 350.org (the nonhuman collective) trans-form over time, driven bythe urgencies of climate change activism, naming different identities when requiredrather than adopting one or the other. Describing the damage to a bridge across theWilliams river in Vermont from Hurricane Irene, McKibben says,
I watched it on TV in Washington just after emerging from jail, having beenarrested at the White House during mass protests of the Keystone XL pipeline.Since Vermont’s my home, it took the theoretical – the ever more turbulent,erratic, and dangerous weather that the tar sands pipeline from Canada wouldhelp ensure – and made it all too concrete. It shook me bad. And I’m not theonly one. (McKibben, 2012c)
In this excerpt, as in other communiques, he moves from A-list activist leaderto ordinary person from Vermont and back again, to legitimize his authority overeveryday understandings of climate change, and to mobilize others affected—both inthe present and hypothetical (but nonetheless ‘‘concrete’’) future—by the ‘‘turbulent,erratic, and dangerous weather,’’ so that he is ‘‘not the only one.’’ He also combinesthese identities with that of family head, portending the devastation invited uponhis children and grandchildren, and those of other Americans (e.g., Walsh, 2012).In the above excerpt, he utilizes several first-order communicative actions to namevarious actors (including himself): he actively negates his ties with ‘‘Washington,’’uses inclusive referents to extend his support base, grounds his leadership authorityin the local Vermont context, and is strategically ambiguous (so that he is both partof and opposed to the elite, given the high-level attention his protests received).
Moreover, McKibben’s leadership at 350.org and within the broader environ-mental movement become evident only when other actors articulate their owntransformational agendas, drawing from and extending his, so that an ongoing shiftof leader/participant roles is centered. These other participants/leaders include bothindividuals (e.g., climate change scientist Kim Knowlton, President Barack Obama),and formal and informal organizations (e.g., Taxpayers for Common Sense, SierraClub, First Nations communities), in line with the ‘‘co-evolution model’’ of collectiveorganizing proposed by Bimber, Flanagin, and Stohl (2012). McKibben is oftenframed as ‘‘follower’’ to some of these actors, such as NASA scientist and activistJames Hansen. As for 350.org, the Keystone protests highlight how it moves backand forth across elite and grassroots, informal and formal, and local and global,identities—reflecting the complexities of 21st century organizing. The organizationmakes common cause both with subaltern First Nation groups in Canada impactedby the Keystone pipeline and with privileged middle-class taxpayers in the UnitedStates; even as it deploys civil disobedience against the U.S. government, it is keenlyattuned to its burgeoning political clout by virtue of its First World location.
Materiality clearly informs the communicative naming of identities here. Inthe earlier excerpt by McKibben (2012c), both the physical landscape and bodilyprocesses of knowing are invoked to legitimize his authority. Extending these themes,Knowlton (2012), writing on the blog of the National Resources Defense Council,constitutes New York state farmers impacted by the material effects of climate changeas ecologically embedded activist-leaders:
In hard-hit Schoharie County, the Lloyd family—dairy farmers since 1974—lost47 animals, many of them young calves too small to fend for themselves when
flood waters rose. The Lloyds lost more than a year’s worth of feed crops and atleast 20 percent of their yearly income. Nevertheless, Denise Lloyd, who farmswith her husband and two grown sons, feels grateful. ‘‘Fortunately, no humanlife was lost. And our sons still want to farm,’’ she told NRDC.
Object, place, and body are invoked here as materialities that position ‘‘ordi-nary’’ people to lead their neighbors; for instance, in terms of the loss to incomeand farm resources, ancestral familiarity with the land, physical dangers fromthe flood waters, and the bodily experience drawn on, respectively. The trans-formations to their environment—driven by climate change as a nonhuman actantwith ‘‘real,’’ material implications—create new relations of resilience and leader-ship, different from ‘‘the old way’’ (what Fiol (2002) termed ‘‘possible selves’’).McKibben (2011) and his allies imbue the material world with powerful agency,so that the newly transformed ‘‘Eaarth’’ (note the new name) is much too tem-peramental and risky for human beings to dally with. Nor is Eaarth always afearsome actant—it nurtures human actors to grow and develop ancestral skills(e.g., farming), and is also increasingly vulnerable—so that it frequently trans-forms, often in the same text. To engage meaningfully with this powerful, flexiblenew Eaarth, transformational processes of activism and knowing must in turn be(re)named.
Naming processesAt 350.org, ‘‘native’’ versions of dialogue (Deetz & Simpson, 2004) are often high-lighted, so that actors note the importance of ‘‘start[ing] meaningful conversations’’(Knowlton, 2012) with stakeholders and petitioning the government through legit-imate channels (Hadish, 2012; McKibben, 1989/2006). The limits to this approachare also recognized, especially when dominant interests (e.g., the billionaire Kochbrothers are often cited) use it to deceive stakeholders and stall deliberations, sothat ‘‘the debate continues’’ without concrete action (McKibben, 2012a). In suchsituations, other processes of activism are named, such as ‘‘creative activism.’’ In oneof McKibben’s earliest protests, ‘‘These creative actions—from skiers descendinga melting glacier to divers hosting an underwater action—helped convince manypolitical leaders, including then Senator Barack Obama, to adopt [their] commoncall to action: cutting carbon 80% by 2050’’ (350.org, .).
The more recent Connect the Dots campaign also embraces the carnivalesque,using spectacle to disrupt naturalized frames. People in different parts of theworld—both iconic and mundane to highlight the everyday impacts of climatechange—held large colored ‘‘dots,’’ usually featuring messages. The dots are crucial(nonhuman) actants here: presentified by the (human) actors who wield them, they‘‘speak’’ to the (nonhuman) cameras and the (human) audiences watching them,via other (nonhuman) technological actants such as computers, so that an ongoingdialogic sequence—across actors and places—is centered. In some cases, the dotsare formed by human actors, arranged in a large circle with a giant message, furtherblurring the boundaries of human/nonhuman agency. In addition to voicing the
reasons for their presence (e.g., ‘‘Climate impact day’’), the dots name their locations(‘‘Kabul’’ in English, or they use local languages), the specific consequences ofclimate change apathy (‘‘Your carbon emissions kill our corals’’) and the abstractuncertainty of its devastation (‘‘?’’). The activists/dots, human/nonhuman hybridsoften work together (e.g., dots in a row ‘‘Climate’’ ‘‘Change’’ ‘‘Hurts’’ ‘‘Farmers’’)to presentify ‘‘larger’’ actants (e.g., a large dot atop the snowy Alps proclaiming‘‘I’m melting’’). They invoke grassroots testimonies to co-name transformation,narrating fragmented yet coherent community experiences, as opposed to abstractedglobal versions, while being linked to other local narratives via a global network(Dutta & Pal, 2010).
Bodily disruption and violence are also centered as transformational processes toforce discursive openings hitherto closed. Mobilizing protests and pickets at the WhiteHouse and at various sites along the proposed Keystone pipeline are perhaps themost prominent marker of this re-named process; reporting on the Keystone protests,Marshall (2012) notes, ‘‘Yesterday, Kenny Bruno of Corporate Ethics Internationalsaid protesters would not give up and would put their bodies in front of bulldozers andpipes to stop the pipeline if Obama approves it.’’ Transformation, we are reminded, isenacted by putting bodies on the line, ‘‘stand[ing] in solidarity’’ (McKibben, 2012c).For a Time magazine interview, even as McKibben allows himself to be photographedin 350.org gear against the backdrop of the snowy Vermont countryside, he askedhis home not to be featured in the pictures, switching from organizational leader tofamily head role, fearing bodily violence against his family from extremist opponents.Thus, while in some cases, he and 350.org embrace confrontation and the potentialfor violence, selective/strategic silence is also utilized to avoid it.
In addition to processes of activism, 350.org names hybridized processes ofknowing, such as the ‘‘evidence’’ for climate change. While climate science hashistorically drawn on ‘‘statistics and hard facts’’ for legitimacy (Knowlton, 2012),McKibben downplays high theory to forefront the everyday experiences of ordinarypeople, which makes the abstract intensely local and relevant. Prefacing Eaarth,McKibben (2011) writes, ‘‘Walking along this river today, you don’t need toimagine a damned thing—the evidence of destruction is all too obvious. Muchmore quickly than we would have guessed in the late 1980s, global warming hasdramatically altered, among many other things, hydrological cycles’’ (p. xii, empha-sis added). The same tactic is adopted by the Connect the Dots activist leaders,who voice everyday descriptions of their homesteads—past, present and imaginedfuture—from rising water levels in Bangladesh, to dense smog curtains in NewYork. This experiential approach to evidence provides an intensely material spinto Deetz and Simpson’s (2004) view that it is ‘‘only through our encounter withradical difference does transformation become possible, as the taken-for-grantedassumptions of dominant ideologies are made visible through juxtaposition withalternative understandings’’ (p. 145, emphasis added). It is through the materialencounter with ‘‘trans-formed’’ environments that alternative naming of scien-tific processes and public actions is enabled here. Importantly, scientific rigor is
not entirely dismissed, and still claimed to legitimize action, as when Hansen(2012) comments, ‘‘the science of the situation is clear—it’s time for the politicsto follow.’’
Naming conceptsFinally, there is the naming of concepts—either the outcomes of change or instru-mental in the processes. To save space, I focus on the interrelated ‘‘crisis’’ and‘‘change’’ concepts here.
The 350.org case highlights the expected meaning of ‘‘crisis’’ as environmentaldisaster, but with competing interpretations, rooted both in present and future. Thefuture is stressed in the usage of standard scientific definitions of climate change as along term process, and sustainability as preserving the environment for subsequentgenerations (Knowlton, 2012). At the same time, emphasizing everyday experiencesof climate change, crisis is positioned as ongoing with time ‘‘running out,’’ demandingimmediate transformation of social systems (Walsh, 2012, p. 46). This meaning ofcrisis and risk as rapid, everyday danger both draws from and challenges dominanteconomic interpretations that foreground job growth and combatting the globalrecession, while backgrounding carbon emissions. McKibben (2012b) writes: ‘‘So, ifwe have an emergency, and we have the tools to fight it, the only question is whywe’re not doing so. And the answer, I think, is clear: it’s in the interest of someof the most powerful players on earth to prolong the status quo.’’ Combining thetranscendent ‘‘we,’’ exclusive referents, and disidentification vis-a-vis the oil industryhere, he forefronts the ‘‘financial clout to block political action’’ that necessitatesagonistic ‘‘creative action.’’ He warns that meaningful change will only occur if thereis widespread moral outrage and a ‘‘naïve’’ refusal to take things for granted (alsoGeman, 2012). This call for moral outrage is appropriated by mainstream scholarsof organization studies—illustrating the interdiscursivity at play—as in Wittnebenet al.’s (2012) recognition that for successful transformation, theories of capitalaccumulation and distribution must be ‘‘re-formed’’ (p. 1445).
Nevertheless, McKibben does not advocate widespread revolution in responseto this crisis, but deploys strategic ambiguity to make the case for both ‘‘creativeaction’’ and conventional lobbying. During the Keystone protests, he and his alliesnote the kairotic moment afforded both by the upcoming U.S. elections (so thatdismissing them may critically jeopardize President Obama’s re-election) and theuptick in extreme weather (e.g., Hurricane Irene in the northeast United States,severe draught in Australia and Texas) (Efstathiou, 2012). These events set aprime crisis situation for transformational leadership to emerge (Burns, 2003)—anephemeral ‘‘dialogic moment’’ (Cissna & Anderson, 1998) for politicians and thepublic to finally ‘‘get’’ the material and symbolic implications of climate change.Despite critiquing Big Business, McKibben (2012b) cites insurance companies aspotential allies, to accurately analyze climate risks. Exemplifying the tension betweenstatus quo and change, 350.org highlights the economic costs—and thus currencyas material object—of inadequate climate change policy, urging politically viable
market-based solutions, like cap-and-trade systems, tax credits for renewable energy,and carbon tariffs (Marshall, 2011). Although such strategic ambiguity would bedecried by extant transformational leadership theory as inauthentic, the criticaldialogic perspective takes it to be inevitable, given the contingency and unfinalizabilityof ‘‘trans-formation.’’
A comparisonHow might these implications compare with those derived via conventional trans-formational leadership theory? The mainstream model would hold that the twincrises of economic recession and climate change have created an opportunity forleaders like Bill McKibben to emerge, using the four transformational I’s—togetherwith transactional and laissez-faire tactics, as needed—to lead 350.org and mobilizeexternal followers. McKibben’s projection as a grassroots leader impacted by climatechange builds idealized influence, his invocation of everyday resilience to createbetter follower ‘‘selves’’ signifies inspirational motivation, his rhetorical concern withindividual locations and (human) actors suggests individualized consideration, andhis (limited) reconception of capitalism stimulates others intellectually.
The leadership ‘‘trans-formations’’ approach goes much deeper, as I have shown.Examining how transformation occurs dialogically through naming identities, pro-cesses, and concepts, it addresses the three main blind spots of transformationalleadership theory: It notes the systemic level, leader/participant interactions, andmessiness of transformation. The intersections between process and entity, or orga-nizing and organization, are noted in this approach, as McKibben’s leadership issituated in a dynamic organizational and policy landscape, so that his directives to350.org activists are deeply connected with how activist-leaders from other organiza-tions (corporate, government, or NPOs) interface and the messages they (re)constructin turn. The 4 I’s build on various communicative action/re-action sequences, suchas the projection of unified/transcendent collectives, inclusive/exclusive referents,disidentification, abstractions, specificities, strategic ambiguity, selective silence,visual interruptions, and bodily disruptions. For example, I have shown how themolding of McKibben as grassroots leader for idealized influence makes use of severalor all of these first order tactics. These tactics center the material conditions of object,place, and body, so that actors’ ecological embeddedness becomes important while‘‘authoring’’ leadership relations—as do various nonhuman actants (e.g., Eaarth).Moreover, hybrid combinations of actions/re-actions may result (e.g., disruption andcreative activism, generally not included among native versions of dialogue espousedby transformational leadership theory), which are dialogically re-interpreted in subse-quent translations, depending on the context (e.g., Connect the Dots, or protests at theWhite House)—so that the contingency of leadership trans-formations is centered.
Conclusion
Upon closing, several thoughts come to mind on how the critical dialogic per-spective outlined here reworks some key issues related to leadership—especially
transformational leadership theory—and dialogue studies, while suggesting somepractical implications for accomplishing systemic transformation. I briefly articulatethese thoughts below, noting significant scope for future research on these counts.
First, this article shifts focus from transformational leadership motives andbehaviors to how leadership ‘‘trans-formations’’ occur dialogically. This is not toreject extant theory—which may be premature, given the sizeable empirical evidencesupporting the transformational leadership construct and its frequent invocationin the popular press—as it ‘‘re-names’’ the identities, processes, and conceptsassociated with it. Inspired by Kelly’s (2008) defense of ‘‘leadership’’ in general, Iargue that our challenge is to trace new and hybrid forms of both ‘‘transformation’’and ‘‘leadership,’’ noting their interconnections, and extending theories rather thansummarily rejecting them. In contrast to both extant transformational leadershipand some context-driven perspectives to leadership ‘‘presence’’ and organizationalchange, this article takes leadership to be ongoing structures of action/re-action, sothat even as authority is constituted by existing power relations, it is emergent andconstantly contested through dialogic encounters.
The 350.org case study urges recognition of broader transformational contexts,beyond the corporation, noting how 21st-century organizing involves new formsof collective action and organizational landscapes (Beck, 2008; Bimber et al.,2012), so that leaders and change participants trans-form communicatively acrosshybrid modes, outcomes, and selves. On the one hand, it ascribes to the study ofwhat Czarniawksi (2013) calls ‘‘action nets,’’ or the complex organizing processes(e.g., naming, trans-forming, leading) that may not be captured within theformal boundaries of organizations; on the other hand, it also traces how suchactions incarnate entitative beings (e.g., 350.org, nature), which may or may not be‘‘organizations’’ in the strictest sense (Nicotera, 2013). By noting how nonhuman andhuman actants dialogically name transformation, the article avoids a deterministicreading while centering the ‘‘real’’ influences of environment on leadership. Theconsideration of material actants that call into being human actors’ ecologicalembeddedness, and are in turn presentified by them, crucially extends mainstreamtransformational leadership. Finally, the tripartite naming of identities, processes,and concepts might be methodologically useful when considering new directionsin change-focused leadership, such as paradoxical leadership (e.g., Smith, Besharov,Wessels, & Chertok, 2012). The perspective outlined here extends this research byproviding key sites—identities, processes, and concepts—to locate paradox andongoing shifts, while downplaying the ‘‘finalizability’’ of resolution.
Second, this article urges dialogue theorists to further unpack strategy andpower/resistance, specifically through leadership as a process of social influence,noting how the self seeks to ‘‘trans-form’’ both itself and other. Although strategy isoften dismissed as unethical or inauthentic by ‘‘native’’ versions of dialogue (Deetz& Simpson, 2004; White, 2008), this article holds actors’ strategic considerations tobe crucial, given the complex power relations, geographic and temporal locations,and material realities that shape contexts. A politically attentive interpretation of
dialogue is adopted here, which sees value in ‘‘highlighting shifting relationships ofpower, identity, and vulnerability, while simultaneously paying explicit attention toquestions of justice and social and material needs’’ (Ganesh & Zoller, 2012, p. 77;see also Deetz, 2010). The article also extends dialogue to consider the dialecticalaction/re-action sequences among human and nonhuman actants, and discursiveand material realities, enacted through communication. Communication thus isdialogic not just in what we say and do, but who we ‘‘are’’—and can be—vis-a-visour ecologies. Future research should thus empirically explore these processes ofbecoming/naming: How do actors come to communicate/be dialogically, how isecological embeddedness constituted communicatively, how does it ‘‘in-form’’ ourdialogic encounters, and how are power/resistance and strategy implicated?
Finally, this article suggests some practical lessons for ‘‘doing’’ transformation,chiefly related to its moral implications. Mouffe (2005) argues that narrow (‘‘native’’)versions of dialogue engender moralistic framing of ‘‘right’’ versus ‘‘wrong,’’ usu-ally producing deadlock, and she advocates more agonistic forms of dialogueinstead—like the spectacle, protest, and difference-engaging strategies outlined ear-lier. However, the 350.org case indicates a more complicated picture. On the onehand, it presses for ‘‘moral outrage,’’ citing bodily threats from rightwing ideologues(‘‘wrong’’) while glorifying the resilience of climate change survivors and activists(‘‘right’’). On the other hand, it does not rule out rapprochement with opponents,as in the case of Big Insurance that might help implement climate risk measures.Wittneben et al. (2012) aver, the challenge is exploring how actors organize tobuild this moral outrage and constructively direct it toward meaningful change.Thus, a combination of communicative actions/re-actions, spanning both nativeand agonistic approaches, is likely to be important, as actors co-name the iden-tities, concepts, and processes at work. Communication researchers must explorethe complex dynamics of naming moral outcomes, procedures, and actors in suchcontexts, taking care to note how moralistic discourses dialogically draw from eachother, conceal or tout particular leadership relations and power structures, and ‘‘givevoice’’ to and ‘‘gain voice’’ from underlying material conditions and metaphysicalentities.
To conclude, the critical dialogic perspective suggests a crucial need for dialogicopenness that is politically aware of strategic and power relations, as well as ecologicallyembedded in material considerations. Such openness is required both on the part ofactors that organize for transformation, as well as researchers who interrogate thesepractices, with an eye to what ‘‘trans-formation’’ is, how ‘‘leadership’’ enacts it, andhow ‘‘dialogue’’ is accomplished.
Notes
1 Despite not being an ethnomethodological study of communication among 350.orgmembers, this case provides insight into the symbolic/material entanglements oftransformation through the invocation of nonhuman objects, places, and human bodiesin the mixed corpus of texts. Such an approach has been successfully used, for instance,
by Whiteman and Cooper (2011) to detail ecological sensemaking vis-a-vis themateriality of the natural environment.
2 Here, I define subalternity not by any essentialist condition of place, race/ethnicity, class,or gender, but by the lack of access to the forums and voices whereby dialogue isperformed (Dutta, 2011). This holds open possibilities for forming subaltern networksacross space/time and developing alliances/tensions with elite constituents (Zoller &Fairhurst, 2007).
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