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Embodied leadership through place and space

Arja Ropo, Perttu Salovaara, Erika Sauer

University of Tampere

and

Donatella De Paoli

Norwegian School of Management BI

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Research on embodiment of leadership is scarce

• Ropo & Parviainen, 2001• Ropo, Parviainen & Koivunen, 2002• Koivunen, 2003• Guthey & Jackson, 2005 • Sinclair, 2005• Sauer, 2005• Hansen, Ropo & Sauer, 2007• Ropo & Sauer, 2008• Ladkin, 2008• Ladkin & Taylor, 2010• Schroeder, 2010

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Purpose of the study and research question

• to explore how leadership and space are related to each other

• to discuss how leadership constructions and practices are embodied in different spatial conditions

• to contribute to an aesthetic embodied leadership theory

• HOW DO SPACES AND PLACES CONSTRUCT AND PERFORM LEADERSHIP?

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Research on place and space in organizations: three streams

• Traditional, objective approach: physical environment from architectural and managerial perspective (Elsbach & Pratt, 2007)

• Subjectively oriented research on social space (Lefebvre, 1991; Hatch, 1997; Martin, 2002)

• Critical, post-stucturalist approach focusing on power and politics that space forms (Foucault, 1977; Dale & Burrell, 2008)

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Shift of interest

FROM

an objective, managerial, and architectural

approach, such as ”this is how it is planned and

determined to work”

TOWARD

understanding the symbolic meaning of physical spaces to social interaction, such as ”this is how it affects people, how people use and interpret it”

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Relationship of leadership and space

• Leadership has been studied in various empirical settings and contxts, but space as such has not been conceptually treated.

• The same physical conditions produce different responses (Elsbach & Pratt, 2007)

• Different spaces carry and maintain different constructions of leadership.

• Leadership is seen here as felt experience rather than as cognitive and rational influence between the leader and the followers

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Three notions of leadership

1. Distinction between the concepts of leader and leadership

1. Leadership as a relationally constructed phenomenon (Hosking, 2006) and as management of meaning (Smircich & Morgan, 1982)

1. Leadership as an aesthetic, bodily phenomenon, as a sensing activity: Leadership occurs and is constructed not only in the intellectual minds, but also in and through the sensing and experiencing bodies (e.g., Hansen, Ropo, & Sauer, 2007; Ladkin, 2008; Ladkin & Taylor, 2010; Ropo & Parviainen, 2001; Sinclair, 2005)

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• The aesthetic orientation to leadership and space explores felt experiences, symbolic meanings and inherent power issues which spaces and places reflect and produce.

• Relationship between leadership and space is twofold: physical places form and shape leadership constructions and acted upon leadership produces social, experienced spaces.

• Physical places allow, enable, encourage, and constraint or hinder various leadership constructions and acted upon leadership practice.

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Methodology and data

• Aesthetic epistemology legitimizes sense-based data, such as emotions, bodily sensations, intuitions,and mental representations (Strati, 2007)

• Data: photographs on organizational spaces, written and oral descriptions of organisation members on how they feel the physical space as a place to work, interact, and as a place for leadership

• Narrative analysis

• Traditionally built university department and an open flexible office space as empirical foci

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Narrating leadership in a university department

• Shiny floors in a steel building

• Dynamic, modern, effective?

• Sterile, clean, pure?• Two floors, symbolic

hierarchies

Egos

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”Face book” of some, but not of all

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Where is leadership lurking?Can you see it, feel it, smell it?

• Behind the close doors?• In the hallways?• In faculty meetings?• In the coffee room?• In the department head’s

office?

Egos

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Aquarium – coffee room surrounded by windows

• The furniture, colors, and the overall style resemble the clinical atmosphere of the building

• Young researchers gather in the coffee room regularly

• The department chair never visits the upper level coffee room uninvited

Egos

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There are rooms and there are ROOMS

Egos

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People have different attachment to the their office space

Egos

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Some preliminary observations of leadership and space in a traditional office building

• Leadership seems to be simultaneously hidden and obvious.

• Leadership is performed in paradoxical ways.

• The same space provides different affordances. (Gibson, 1966)

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Leaders and leadership in an alternative office architecture

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Concluding thoughts on leadership and space:

Different spatial solutions give space (sic!) to different emphases on leadership interaction

•Hierarchy, Power and Control

•Interaction, Communication and Influence

•Leader-centricity, Collaboration