Abstract
This book is a very welcome addition to the still small, but now rapidly growing literature which offers substantive and detailed challenges to the grandiose and heroic notions of leadership which have been so heavily promoted over last few decades (e.g. Alvesson and Spicer, 2011; Ford et al., 2008; Sinclair, 2008). Professor Dennis Tourish, who is a Professor of Leadership and Organization Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London, is well placed to offer an insightful critique, having previously published extensively on issues such as leadership in cults, leadership development and the barriers to critical upwards communication in organizations (see, for example, Tourish et al., 2010; Tourish an Pinnington, 2002; Tourish and Robson 2003). He has also published a number of case studies which foreground connections between dominant ideas about leadership, cultism, conformity and poor decision making or abuse of power by leaders (e.g. Tourish, 1998; Tourish and Hargie, 2012; Tourish and Vatcha, 2005).
The focus here, as the title clearly indicates, is on the problematic values, assumptions and practical effects of transformational leadership theory, issues which have largely been ignored in the mainstream, functionalist leadership literature. The core proposition of this theory is that leaders can—and indeed should—have a transformative effect on followers’ performance, worldview, sense of self and morality. These effects are said to arise through the leader’s charisma and the inspiring vision, individualized consideration and intellectual stimulation they give to followers (see, for key works Bass, 1985; Burns, 1978). It is these expectations which have been extensively promoted to managers over the last few decades, encouraging them to work on the self of the follower as if this were just another resource at their disposal. Notably in this account, followers are positioned as passive, malleable beings whose role it is to respond to leaders.
Contrasting the normal rosy view of leadership that dominates most of the literature, Tourish argues that transformational leadership actually incentivizes leaders toward hubris, narcissism and poor decision making, with often disastrous and even lethal effects for followers in cases such as the Jonestown or Heaven’s Gate cults. He argues this is because transformational leadership grants an excess of power to leaders to determine unilaterally both the ends and means of the collective action to which followers are expected to commit themselves without demur. Conformity to the leader’s view is implicitly encouraged by this approach in which it is assumed that, by definition, leaders are better equipped than their followers to know and to decide what is right and best. However, ultimately this over-reliance on, and subservience to, the leader distorts their decision making, which is dangerous for both leaders and followers, Tourish argues.
The book is clearly organized for the reader into three parts. The first part offers a sustained and multi-dimensional critique of what Tourish presents as the key danger embedded in the very notion of transformational leadership, namely the excess of agency it attributes to leaders. Drawing on a broad range of empirical studies and theories from psychology, organizational communication and cult studies literatures, Tourish begins by highlighting problematic assumptions embedded in the notion of transformational leadership and how these facilitate undesirable effects.
While for critically-oriented scholars leadership quite evidently involves an unequal power relationship and thus warrants caution, in the mainstream of the literature leader power is commonly assumed as having been legitimated (and hence properly constrained) through laws or organizational rules and policies. To challenge and undermine this legitimacy, Tourish points to studies which show how a sense of being powerful inclines people to hypocrisy, cheating, risky behaviour and a sense of entitlement. He then links this to the power which transformational leadership theory implicitly credits to leaders, showing how ‘it is a model which can too easily see a kindly uncle morph into an angry god’ should followers seek to challenge leaders.
Drawing from Schein’s study of the manipulation of Korean war POW’s, he then focusses attention on a range of techniques commonly deployed by contemporary organizational leaders to persuade followers to conform to their wishes and framing of reality. This analysis of the subtle but invidious means by which organizational members can become mentally entrapped could easily be used to contribute to teaching on organizational culture and behaviour more generally. The same is true of the chapter on the multitude of factors which inhibit open and honest upwards communication from followers to leaders, which Tourish argues are critical to enabling poor decision making by leaders.
In this first part Tourish also examines the dark side of the ‘spirituality at work’ discourse and the problematic approach to leadership education in business schools, with its heavy focus on leader agency and its unquestioning legitimation of managerial power. By the end of the first part, then, what has been laid out is a multi-faceted critique of the inherent problems with the very idea of transformational leadership.
The second part of the book comprises four ‘dark side’ case studies: Enron, a UK Trotskyist organization, the CWI, the Jonestown and Heaven’s Gate cults and the UK banking crisis of 2008. In each of these cases, Tourish is able to bring to light the very dynamics and effects which he has foreshadowed in the first part of the book to great effect.
Not satisfied with merely offering critique, in the final part of his book Tourish offers the reader his own ideas about how we might best ‘re-imagine’ the leader-follower relationship by drawing on process and communication-based theories of organization. In this view, ‘leadership’ ‘emerges though the interaction of organizational actors and has a contested, fluid meaning for all of them’ (p. 205). It involves ‘a process whereby leaders and non-leaders accomplish each other through dynamics of interaction in which mutual influence is always present’ (p. 210). For those seeking an emancipatory effect, Tourish advocates that greater emphasis needs to be placed on ‘the promotion of dissent, difference and the facilitation of alternative viewpoints’ (p. 212) as key defences against the inherent dangers of leader power.
Here, then, Tourish sketches an alternative way forward that doesn’t promise us a ‘silver bullet’ but does offer hope for the development of leadership theory and practice which can avoid many of the pitfalls which transformational leadership presently gives rise to. The approach proposed is one that is ‘rooted in a profound appreciation of context, an understanding of the limitations inherent to leader agency and an acknowledgement of the agency of others’ (p. 213). With this, not only is there no one correct or enduring approach to leadership waiting out there to be discovered, the problematic of power is always acknowledged, never hidden, never denied. This conclusion would, if accepted, demand a radical rethinking of their most cherished assumptions by many leadership scholars. In terms of practice, it would encourage the joint development of leadership models tailored to the needs and values of individual teams and organizations, moving us all away from ‘off the shelf’ pre-packaged leadership ‘solutions’. Given where the prescriptions offered in recent years have taken us, such a shift seems worthy of encouragement.
Tourish’s method of drawing on empirical studies as the main basis for his critique renders this work highly accessible to both practitioner and student audiences who might otherwise find more theoretically oriented critical work too far outside their normal frame of reference. The body of evidence he offers in support of his claims is persuasive and will likely challenge those who have only been exposed to more conventional accounts of leadership to seriously reconsider their position. The book is clearly intended as a teaching aide, with thoughtful discussion points at the end of each chapter. It is also the case that each chapter could be used as a standalone reading. For those more familiar with Tourish’s body of work, there may be a degree of disappointment that so much of the book is a revision of earlier journal articles, however for me the real power of this work does lie in its cumulative revelation of the dark side of transformational leadership in a manner that is readily accessible to a broad audience. I certainly hope it is successful in reaching that audience.