Metaphors in organizational studies

The arts as instruments of leadership

Leaders as writers: a model of organizational authorship

Writing nonsense, epics, black romance and historical novels

Nonsense Authored by Absentee Leadership

Epic Myth Authored by Charismatic Leadership

Black Romance Authored by Destructive Leadership

Historical Novel – Spiritual Leadership

Leadership is overrated: let’s talk followership

Concluding remarks

Selected bibliography

Introduction

If you are a leader in an organization, you are an author of organizational “stories”. The question is, what kind of story are you writing? Anyone who has led a team, unit or organization, knows that leaders and followers work together to produce organizational outputs. It is not easy to determine how much of the final work is the authorship of each specific individual. In this article we draw on the notion of metaphor as a tool to help you consider your role as an organizational writer. Specifically, we adopt the analogy of leadership as ‘authorship’, as considered within the domain of international copyright conventions, which provide a framework for relations between various stakeholders including the creators and consumers of intellectual property. Previous research on leadership metaphors has observed how leaders draw inspiration from poets, musicians or painters. Studies have also considered leaders as priests or artists. These analyses delineate what leaders can gain from the various artistic styles: as models, practices and techniques that help managers exercise their leadership. As yet, no one has discussed leadership as “authorship” of an organization’s identity and history. In this paper we aim to help you identify how your leadership style corresponds to authorship within a particular literary genre. We depart from the notion that organizational authorship extends merely from a leader’s linguistic style, their words shaping their follower’s behavioral responses. The language leaders use to communicate with followers is a common object of analysis, based on the assumption that it is through this communication that leaders shape their organizations. We go beyond analysis of the language used by leaders. Our focus instead is on the leader’s role in writing organizational “history”, in a manner similar to how book authors create fictional ‘stories’. The question we explore is: In what ways do leaders influence the writing of organizational history? We consider whetherthe authorship role is based on individual, collective or mixed contributions; as well as who plays the leading role in this writing; and what are the consequences of the plurality of contributors for future of an organization? Using the writing metaphor, we develop a model that represents relationships between leaders, followers, leadership styles and literary genres (or sub-genera). The article unfolds as follows. We begin by walking you through the concept of ‘authorship’, to make clear our analogy comparing the leader to an ‘organizational author’. We then draw on different literary genres to outline a model of leaders as writers. We conclude by outlining several practical authorship hints for you to apply in your own leadership, depending on the genre of organizational history you wish to write.