PhD defence: Maria Lundberg

This dissertation explores the narrative construction of leadership identity, offering a broadened perspective on post-heroic leadership identity constructions approached with a critical lens. The investigation builds on an empirical inquiry based on qualitative interviews with 20 leaders and concentrates on how a dyadic coexistence of trust and self-trust in leadership language can be understood to operate as an underlying potency in leadership identity constructions. Based on an interpretative framework and building on a phenomenological and ethnomethodological perspective, the thesis offers an exploration of how leaders operate as creative bricoleurs constructing their narrative identities by drawing upon resources in a narrative ecosystem for identity construction. The discussion attempts to elucidate how trust and self-trust provide agency for post-heroic leadership mastery, replacing leadership agency associated with formal power and authority that links to traditional leadership ideas. As part of this, the text examines how the heroic and post-heroic leadership paradigms operate as competing big “D” Discourses, occurring side by side in the little “d” discursive leadership-as-talk identity context. A novel feature of this research is that it addresses the roles of trust and self-trust in narrative leadership identity constructions, in an attempt to grasp how notions about trust and self-trust play a role in the narrative fashioning of leadership identity through the use of leadership language.

Primary Supervisor:
Professor Dan Kärreman
Department of Management, Society and Communication
Copenhagen Business School

Assessment Committee:
Associate professor Eric Guthey  (Chair)
Department of Management, Society and Communication
Copenhagen Business School

Professor Laura Empson
Cass Business School

Professor Stefan Sveningsson
Department of Business Administration
Lund University

Thesis:
The thesis will be available from here.

Reception:
The Doctoral School of Organisation and Management Studies will host a reception, which will take place immediately after the defence in the Gallery.