PhD defence: Frank Meier
The dissertation explored leadership development programmes (LDPs) and offers two contributions. Leaders in LDPs are jointly constructed as being in need of leadership development. This construction takes place through particular texts and sequences of interactions that appropriate texts, and in this appropriation process the leader, or, more precisely, the identity of the leader, is constructed. The study complements Foucauldian-inspired LDP studies by showing just how regulation of the leader in an LDP is the outcome of regulation work at the very site of the programme. The constructionist leadership development studies are then extended to address how personal agency within LDPs is rather thought of as a spokesperson who amplifies the agents that are authorizing her: the personality test, theory, practice accounts. One speaks, so to say, on behalf of many; in other words, when one speaks, one ventriloquizes in the words of Francois Cooren. The neologism ventriloquial reflexivity is offered to reveal to interactants how the focal agency is assembled – and to what effects.
Primary Supervisor:
Associate Professor Magnus Larsson
Department of Organization
Copenhagen Business School
Secondary Supervisor:
Associate Professor Brigid Carroll
Department of Management and International Business
The University of Auckland
Assessment Committee:
Professor Dennis Schoeneborn (Chair)
Department of Management, Society and Communication
Copenhagen Business School
Professor Gareth Edwards
Leadership and Community Studies
University of the West of England
Associate Professor Lucia Crevani
School of Business Society and Engineering
Mälardalen University
Access to Frank Meier's online PhD defence here
*Please note in connection with the online defence that the microphone and camera of all spectators must be turned off!