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An Ethnographic Account Of Leadership, Power And Change, Ray Gordon
An Ethnographic Account Of Leadership, Power And Change, Ray Gordon
Ray Gordon
The paper provides a genealogical account of a police organization’s attempt to implement what senior officers in its behavioural change division described as a dispersed leadership (Bryman, 1996; Gordon, 2002) strategy. I describe the organization and provide a detailed account of the dynamics that emerge as groups and individuals who historically held positions of power found themselves reporting to one of many designated leaders. The account depicts how the organization’s dispersion of leadership, while on the surface represents a new and successful endeavour, is rendered problematic by the organization’s historical constitution of power.
Dispersed Leadership: Exploring The Impact Of Antecedent Forms Of Power Using A Communicative Framework, Ray Gordon
Dispersed Leadership: Exploring The Impact Of Antecedent Forms Of Power Using A Communicative Framework, Ray Gordon
Ray Gordon
This article presents an account of a police organization's attempt to implement what senior officers described as a dispersed leadership initiative. A communicative framework is used to show how a particular historically constituted discourse is embedded in the communicative actions of those officers who participated in the study. Analysis of the effects of this discourse reveals how the organization's dispersion of leadership, although on the surface representing a new and successful endeavor, is rendered problematic by what the article terms antecedent forms of power.
Embedded Ethics: Discourse And Power In The New South Wales Police Service, Ray Gordon, Stewart Clegg, Martin Kornberger
Embedded Ethics: Discourse And Power In The New South Wales Police Service, Ray Gordon, Stewart Clegg, Martin Kornberger
Ray Gordon
In this paper we report an ethnographic research study conducted in one of the world's largest police organizations, the New South Wales Police Service. Our research question was, `How do forms of power shape organizational members' ethical practices?' We look at existing theories that propose the deployment of two interrelated arguments: that ethics are embedded in organizational practices and discourse at a micro-level of everyday organizational life, which is contrasted with a focus on the macro-organizational, institutional forces that are seen to have an impact on ethics. Resisting this distinction between the `micro' and the `macro', we build on these …
Power, Rationality And Legitimacy In Public Organizations, Ray Gordon, Martin Kornberger, Stewart Clegg
Power, Rationality And Legitimacy In Public Organizations, Ray Gordon, Martin Kornberger, Stewart Clegg
Ray Gordon
In this paper we propose answers to the research question: how does power shape the construction of legitimacy in the context of public organizations? We suggest that while organizational structures of dominancy will be embedded, not all structures of dominancy align with those that are normatively presented as legitimate and authoritative. Such situations make the creation and sustenance of legitimacy problematic for organizational action. This paper advances our understanding of the relation between power, rationality and legitimacy by showing how structures of domination recursively constitute, and are constituted by, legitimacy that may not be authoritative. We show, empirically, how these …
Power And Legitimacy: From Weber To Contemporary Theory, Ray Gordon
Power And Legitimacy: From Weber To Contemporary Theory, Ray Gordon
Ray Gordon
The chapter provides a comparative review of literature pertinent to power and legitimacy in social systems. The review will trace a specific path from the work of Max Weber to contemporary times. A comprehensive assessment of all contributions to the literature is outside the scope of the review. Instead, the focus is restricted to the comparison of three key bodies of literature, namely, mainstream functionalist approaches, critical approaches, and pragmatic approaches. A small sample of contemporary work that specifically centres on power and the construction of legitimacy in organizations will also be reviewed.