"The answer to the question of why certain everyday interactions can be interpreted as examples of how leadership is exercised can be found in the temporary nature of the relationships created between individuals. Although extraordinary and sacralisation are two central themes in this thesis, its more general contribution ultimately becomes an everyday approach to the belief in leadership. Even when individuals ‘only’ talk about seemingly everyday things, such as faeces, toilets and personal hygiene, they can together do something that is elevated above the ordinary. In this thesis, I explore how leadership can be understood as both everyday and extraordinary", Marcus Persson writes in his thesis.
The public defence will take place on Thursday, 24 March, at 1:15 p.m. in U203 at Campus Helsingborg. The faculty examiner is Johann Packendorff, KTH, professor of Industrial Economics and Organisation with a specialisation in industrial project management.
About the dissertation
Title: "How is leadership enacted?: Sacralization in everyday interactions at a care and elderly care administration"
Leadership has been described as a disappearing phenomenon – a (positive) solution that can be attached to almost any problem, yet it is difficult to capture as it happens. Charisma, transformation, and extra-ordinarization are perspectives on leadership where certain individuals are ascribed extraordinary qualities, but this is not captured analytically in everyday interactions. However, Leadership-as-Practice and leadership in interaction together constitute an emerging approach, where scholars are explicitly interested in studying how leadership is enacted in situ. Working with observations and recordings, several studies have so far explored how leadership is enacted in continuous negotiation between individuals and their context. However, the argument that leadership is constantly emerging means that the understanding of how the phenomenon is enacted is susceptible to criticism that it happens all the time, everywhere. It is unclear when what is enacted, in everyday interactions, is not leadership and it is difficult to understand how it could be related to a more general faith in leadership, being about extraordinary qualities or a positive solution to problems. In this dissertation, I draw on an ethnographic fieldwork from a care and elderly care administration, in one Swedish municipality, to contribute with knowledge about why certain everyday interactions in formal organizations can be understood as leadership. Starting with the concept “accomplishment of direction”, I first discover how rhythm is performed between individuals. Then, by using interaction ritual chains as my theoretical framework, I explore how individuals together enact sacralization: a situated extra-ordinarization where actions connected to the accomplishment of direction is actively ascribed symbolic meaning. In the present, what individuals are doing represent something more than the everyday. Hence, enacting leadership could be understood as the accomplishment of direction and sacralization, where the latter is captured in everyday interactions when silences disappear, because individuals are filling in each other’s utterances, laughing together, making exclamations, and gesturing. Certain interactions in the care and elderly care administration, where individuals are talking about for instance measuring feces, could therefore be examples of how leadership is enacted, while others are not – and in this dissertation I contribute to an understanding about why. Enacting leadership is both mundane and extraordinary.
The book is in the Lund University research portal. It is in Swedish. Link to the publication.
