Social constructionist perspective of the leadership in Serbia

Abstract

Over the past decades, psychological approaches to leadership backed by quantitative research have emerged. However, these approaches often show very narrow perspectives and address only a few factors. As a result, over the past few years new approaches to leadership with broader perspectives and qualitative research methodologies have been developed, but only a few scholars have as yet managed to conduct studies within this framework. The main goal of this paper is to find out more about the social and cultural context in which leaders make sense of their leadership, and how the mixture of old and new socio-cultural influences affects them. Discursive leadership, with its social and cultural focus, emerged as the appropriate model for this study. Our findings reveal the important role of communication in leadership, identify two major forces that influence Serbian managers’ leadership and show their willingness to accept new values and standards in making sense of their leadership. The value of this study is its contribution to a new, broader and more meaningful way of the approach to leadership, as well as its influence on scholars, leadership experts and practitioners, primarily in non -Western and post-transitional environments. It also gives recommendations to scholars to conduct social constructionist leadership research, so that in the near future a true balance between social constructionist and psychological approaches can be achieved.