Nonetheless, the admission in popular management book Management in 10 Words Leahy’s that is a common fault and one I hope to 2013, p.3) was, in the light “hubris avoid” (Leahy, of events, a telling observation. self-exhortation further bolsters the imperative for Leahy’s developing viable means for recognizing and researching hubris in both its extant and nascent forms (see below). Hubris as a process The shortcomings of traditional approaches whereby leadership is viewed as something possessed or done by have led researchers to conceptualise leadership couched in ‘the leader’ terms of a processual view (see: Hernes, 2014; Langley, Smallman, Tsoukas and Van de Ven, 2013). Tourish (2014) mooted a processual and communicatively-oriented view of leadership as a process of co-orientation and co-construction between myriad “fluid organisational actors, whose between each occasion of its ‘essence’ varies occurrence” (p.88). Likewise, building on complexity theory of process rather than state, of ,“a science becoming rather than et al (2007) argued that leadership is an emergent being” , Uhl-Bien event comprised of the interactions of heterogenous agents and numerous forces. From a processual view leadership is not a process that is caused by different ‘things’ (social entities or substances) with indicative attributes, rather it is a process that evolves creatively through time as a result of intersecting activities and events. Processual research has the potential to illuminate how phenomena such as leadership achieve stabilities and form patterns through time (Langley et al, 2013). As such processually-informed hubris research offers the possibility for novel insights into how various forces and flows produce the temporal patterning commonly associated with hubristic leadership. Such an approach would not focus entirely on the formally assigned leader (e.g. a CEO) or their attributes; instead it would focus on all those involved in the process of leadership. Theorising hubristic leadership as a processual phenomenon obviates the
Nonetheless, the admission in Leahy’s popular management book Management in 10 Words that “hubris is a common fault and one I hope to avoid” (Leahy, 2013, p.3) was, in the light of events, a telling observation. Leahy’s self-exhortation further bolsters the imperative for developing viable means for recognizing and researching hubris in both its extant and nascent forms (see below). Hubris as a process The shortcomings of traditional approaches whereby leadership is viewed as something possessed or done by ‘the leader’ have led researchers to conceptualise leadership couched in terms of a processual view (see: Hernes, 2014; Langley, Smallman, Tsoukas and Van de Ven, 2013). Tourish (2014) mooted a processual and communicatively-oriented view of leadership as a “fluid process of co-orientation and co-construction between myriad organisational actors, whose ‘essence’ varies between each occasion of its occurrence” (p.88). Likewise, building on complexity theory ,“a science of process rather than state, of becoming rather than being” , Uhl-Bien et al (2007) argued that leadership is an emergent event comprised of the interactions of heterogenous agents and numerous forces. From a processual view leadership is not a process that is caused by different ‘things’ (social entities or substances) with indicative attributes, rather it is a process that evolves creatively through time as a result of intersecting activities and events. Processual research has the potential to illuminate how phenomena such as leadership achieve stabilities and form patterns through time (Langley et al, 2013). As such processually-informed hubris research offers the possibility for novel insights into how various forces and flows produce the temporal patterning commonly associated with hubristic leadership. Such an approach would not focus entirely on the formally assigned leader (e.g. a CEO) or their attributes; instead it would focus on all those involved in the process of leadership. Theorising hubristic leadership as a processual phenomenon obviates the
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