Docility, Obedience and Discipline: Towards Dirtier Leadership Studies?

Abstract

Leadership is a popular term, among scholars and in general. It is romanticized and seems to cover everything and nothing. Its analytical value has therefore been questioned, and so has the very existence of leadership as a phenomenon. Here, based on the social psychology of GH Mead, I argue that leadership is a fundamental human phenomenon emanating from docility. By exploring this through the lens of three classic texts–Milgram’s Obedience to Authority, Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, and Taylor’s The Principles of Scientific Management–I argue that processes that accomplish leadership are often not understood as leadership, but as something else, for example manipulation or management. More generally, I argue that leadership disappears as we identify the details of its manifestations, and from this I argue that leadership is a concept that denies its own ontological foundation. My conclusions suggest that leadership scholars and practitioners increasingly should draw attention to the choices involved in leadership processes and to practices commonly seen as not being about leadership–leadership studies will benefit from making the immaculate concept of leadership dirtier. MAD statement: I set out to Make a Difference (MAD) by arguing that leadership is a fundamental feature of human existence and that it is an outcome of humans’ innate predisposition towards docility. I argue that the key to understanding leadership is to see it as a social process that denies its own existence, and that it is in this the mystery and romance of leadership originates. Leadership scholars and practitioners should increasingly draw attention to the choices involved in leadership processes and to those ‘dirty’ practices commonly seen as not being about leadership.