Looking in the wrong place for the wrong people: the myth of authentic
leadership
As European economies begin to slowly emerge from recession, there is a growing
clamour for evidence of more ethical behaviour amongst leaders within both the
private and public arenas. This will lead to a growing demand for organizations to
overtly display greater levels of responsibility, governance and promotion of ethical
leadership, actively illustrating that things have changed (Mayer et. al, 2009). The
rush towards notions such as, authentic and ethical leadership may reflect a need to
seek solace in what is positive about leaders and leadership in general. However, as
Gardner et al.’s (2011) review of the literature and research agendas prevalent in
authentic leadership (AL) detail, there are problems, “compounded by a limited
amount of empirical research which makes it difficult to assess the validity of
assertions regarding the positive effects of AL that are commonly advanced by its
proponents” (2011: 1120). This sort of argument concerning the constriction of
theoretical contribution and technical rigour has also led to a call for greater applied
work within the leadership and management fields in general (George, 2014: 1-6).
This paper argues that there is a difficulty with research because the concepts of
authentic and ethical leadership, the manner in which they are defined, and the
assumptions made of the actors in play have created a myth that cannot be readily
accessed. By examining the basis of Gardner et al.’s critique of the current research,
their acceptance of US-centric bias, and by drawing on evidence from organizational
politics, change management, and notions of the social construction and competing
narratives of leadership this paper suggests that authenticity is in the eye of the
beholder. What would be useful to academics and practioners are studies of the way
ethical leadership is “done” in organizations. Until more explicit narrative-based,
processual-contextual approaches are developed these notions will remain too vague
to be useful in leadership development terms. It concludes by suggesting that Chia’s
(2014) perspective of European management scholarship and Eisenbeiss’s (2012)
recommendations of an interdisciplinary ethical leadership approach founded on real
cases offer clear pointers to the need for both European and Asian research which is
application based. In this sense, a positivist approach that seeks quantitative studies
amongst well-defined variables to enable universal claims to be made about the causal
affects of leadership is looking for the wrong person in the wrong place.
Moving out of the shadow
For too long leadership research has been dominated by US-centric agendas. Gardner
et al. (2011) found that 82 per cent of Authentic Leadership publications they studied
were from North America. In analysing management research in general Chia (2014,
p.684) argues that we have suffered from a preponderance of technical rigour leading
to, “an increasing homogenizing of research preoccupations and findings as evidenced
in much of what ends up getting published.” When considering leadership and issues
of authenticity and ethicality in particular, there appears to be a logical flow and
inevitability associated with the process of research suggesting that:
1. Western and US-bias in particular leads to a preponderance of quantitative
analysis. Hernes (2014, p.852) argues that, “A logic of misplaced scientific
ideals demands increasing amounts of data to back up even the most trivial
claims at times, without being checked more fundamental questions as to the
actual relevance of the data to the dynamic reality on the ground.”
2. This may caused by pressures and biases created by agendas such as, the
pressure to publish in the United States, the REF in the UK and Schekman’s
assertion that leading academic journals, “have, in fact, inadvertently distorted
research priorities and constitute a ‘tyranny’ in the research publication
process that must be broken…. that these journals are more preoccupied with
aggressively curating their own brands to increase subscriptions than to
stimulating important research.” (Schekman, 2013).
3. The richness of the “lived” experience gets minimalised and the search for
scientific rationality not only belittles the actors in play it ignores context and
time (Sandberg and Tsoukas, 2011). There is a need to “bring attention to
what actors actually do in organizations and how actor-worlds are
constructed.” Hernes (2014, p.854)
4. Authentic and ethical leadership appear to be bracketed together and
subsequent research, exacerbated by (2) has led us down a path of attempting
to show, more often than not, by quantitative means how ethical leadership
can positively impact employees. There seems to be little discussion of what
is meant by ethics and a blind acceptance that authentic means personal
awareness married to moral fortitude, despite blatant “real” evidence to the
contrary.
Therefore, it may be time to strike out in search of two key agendas. First, research
which examines the “lived” experience of ethical leadership and how and what this
means. Second, an European and Asian research agenda that extends a focus of
attention on multiple perspectives and research methodologies and recognises the
significance of groups such as, Critical Management Studies and emphasis on
philosophically competing views.
Getting to grips with authenticity and ethics
Gardner et al. (2011) examined 91 publications that focused on authentic leadership
commenting that as the notions of authentic and ethical leadership have developed
there have been a number of problems caused by “multiple practioner and scholarly
conceptions of AL that have created ambiguity”! Furthermore, “these problems are
compounded by a limited amount of empirical research, which makes it difficult to
assess the validity of assertions regarding the positive effects of AL.” (2011, p.1120).
By reviewing various definitions they finally settle on an authentic leader being
defined as someone with:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Self-awareness
Balanced processing
Relational transparency
Internalised moral perspective (Gardner et al., 2005).
However, there are problems with how these behaviours are arrived at. For example,
notions that an authentic leader should have a set of internal standards of morality
were gleaned from a content analysis of whom doctoral students thought were
authentic leaders! It is hardly surprising the research to date concludes that, “no one
general agreed-upon definition exists. In addition, the majority of the scholarly
publications seek to develop or extend theory, rather than to test it through empirical
research.” (Gardner et al., 2011).
A worrying concern was their finding that 82 per cent of the papers studied were
North American leading them to conclude that, “work by scholars with more diverse
disciplinary and cultural backgrounds might facilitate the application of alternative
theoretical perspectives for understanding how AL is manifest within and across
cultures.” (2011, p. 1127). Another revelation was the general conclusion that, “the
majority (59 out of 91) of AL publications to date have been conceptual Of these, 55
were identified as reflecting a positivist…tradition…..Given these shortcomings, it is
not surprising that none of the theoretical AL publications have appeared in journals
that would be considered top tier outlets for management research.” (2011, p.1140).
This harks back to Chia and Schekman criticisms. Only credible, positivist,
proposition-building models need apply!
Perhaps some of the problems of studying AL are in the way it is studied. The
overreliance on survey measures, cross-sectional designs and single source data
amongst quantitative empirical studies deny the richness of the subject. Indeed,
Gardner et al. do call for the encouragement of alternative forms of researching AL
including qualitative measures and it is here that we may see an opportunity to
counter-balance a headlong rush into quantitative studies such as, those by
Walumbwa et al. (2008) and an overreliance on North American research works.
Looking in the wrong place for the wrong people
Eisenbeiss (2012, p.791) argues that, “A review of the pertinent literature reveals that
current research on ethical leadership focuses on an empirical-descriptive Western
perspective. The widely shared definition of ethical leadership….appears to be rather
vague as it does not specify any particular norms ethical leaders can refer to.” This
seems to be at the heart of some of the complexity and confusion over notions of
authenticity and ethicality. The research to date directly tries to associate elements of
an authentic leader with their ethical/moral behaviour. Indeed a leader’s moral and/or
ethical codes are more or less explicitly seen as elements in leadership theories
(Eisenbeiss, 2012; Avolio and Gardner, 2005) and in particular authentic leaders are
assumed to consider the ethical consequences of their decisions. Similarly, as
Eisenbeiss points out, authors such as, Gini (1997) and Mclelland (1987) clearly
delineate that, “ethical leaders use their power in socially responsible ways that reflect
socialized – contrary to personalized – power motivation.” Eisenbeiss, (2012, p.792).
One could argue that the problem with studies of authentic and ethical leadership is
that these assumptions remain largely untested. We need to move away from
authenticity and towards ethicality as the subject of study. The authentic leader
behaving unethically doesn’t appear to compute at the moment nor does the question
of whose ethics we are propounding. Eisenbeiss (2012, p.791) succinctly sums this
up by arguing that, “For instance, in the financial crisis, there were banks or
investment institutes in which the – either explicit or implicit – norm prescribed shortterm generation of profit even at the expense of sustainability issues or fair treatment
of customers. Obviously, in such a case, ethical leadership would mean breaking these
norms rather than upholding them.” Isn’t the leader leading a group for short-term
gain behaving authentically if the group accepts those norms as genuine and
acceptable? Importantly, though, it is Eisenbeiss’s (2012) main contention that we
need to look beyond the west for fuller explanations of ethical leadership that
hopefully offers a significant pointer to where future research might go.
Looking for competing narratives in the political process of change
Dawson and Buchanan’s (2005) assertion that, “more critical studies draw attention to
political processes in the management, organization and social shaping of technology”
offers a hint to notions of, “competing versions of reality and in uncovering stories
that remain locked behind public view through the power plays of key actors, and the
embedded constraints of hierarchy and function, and the complicity of researchers”
(2005, p.846). In a related vein, Shamir and Eilam (2005) argue in favour of the lived
experience and by, “advancing their life stories approach to AL development, they
describe how leaders life stories can produce insight into the meanings they attach to
key life events and which, over time, facilitate positive self-development through
reflection.” As Dawson and Buchanan (2005, p.850) point out, “Narratives can thus
be regarded as theory-laden, expressing causal relationships and providing
explanations” yet, “the explicit contribution of narrative theory to processualcontextual perspectives has been largely unexplored.”
The future explored
It appears that time is ripe to begin to uncover the mask that prevents effective notions
of “good” leadership research from being undertaken and more widely exposed. If
we accept the notion that something has to be done about the preponderance of UScentric research, the inhibiting nature of journal “branding” and academic 4* bias,
then perhaps a focus of attention on more effective studies of competing narratives of
leadership might be forthcoming. Certainly, there is merit in developing a more
Asiatic/European research agenda and in focusing attention towards studies of how
ethical leadership is “done” might enhance leadership development itself.
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