Inclusive Leadership

The invisible dominance of white elite class masculinity remains a defining feature of leadership theory and practice. This chapter draws on the work of Black feminist, Patricia Hill Collins, to theorise on inclusive forms of leadership that are practised by those on the periphery of organisations and society. Specifically, I draw on Collins’ concept of ‘outsiders within’ to interpret the leadership of a biracial multigenerational Chinese Australian woman chief executive officer (CEO) who attempted to support gender and racial diversity in her company. I suggest that we can look towards people who are traditionally denied the title of ‘leadership’ for an ethico-politics of inclusion that resists the normalised power structures of leadership.

The non-profit sector is one of the most female dominated sectors in Australia, especially at the senior levels, with more than 60% of senior managers being women. Whilst leadership is a topic that has long been studied, little is known about the leadership of the non-profit sector in Australia. Given that it accounts for 8.3% of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP), understanding leadership practices in this sector is timely. This research aimed to explore the leadership profiles of ten chief executive officers (CEOs) from health and community services organisations in Australia. Using Kouzes and Posner’s (1987) Leadership Challenge Framework to analyse the key practices exhibited by both men and women leaders, the study revealed that leaders are motivated by a strong set of values to work in the sector. The most common practice engaged in by leaders relates to their ability to inspire staff, or to ‘create a story’ about the vision of their organisation, which aligns with the focus on empowerment and collaboration emphasised in inclusive leadership. A key theme to emerge was that many of the male leaders demonstrated traits more associated with the communal or feminine orientation to leadership, again in line with inclusive leadership principles. This raises the question whether the values-based nature of the non-profit sector lends itself to more inclusive leadership styles. Despite the limited sample size, the research provides valuable insight into the Australian context, an area that has, to date, received little attention.

Approximately one third of senior management positions across government departments in the UK are held by women. One exception to this pattern is the military arm of the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) where the figure drops to below two per cent. To gain greater insight into what might account for this high variation relative to other departments, an exploratory case study was conducted in the UK’s MoD. The study investigated the structural and individual impediments faced by women seeking access to the highest organisational leadership echelons. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 52 high-ranked female officers drawn from all three military services. Because changes occurring within the UK government departments are informed primarily by neoliberalism and this ideology strongly values entrepreneurship, the specific leadership lens used for analysis drew heavily on entrepreneurial theories. The findings revealed a complex, dynamic interrelationship involving context, structure, agency and networks. The recursive relationship among these four components at the level of the individual represented a rich mixture of cognitive interpretation, risk taking, opportunity recognition and the use of scarce resources. Evidence was found which demonstrated that female institutional leaders could increase their career progression chances by minimising institutional deviation, thereby allowing individuals to benefit from increased leadership legitimacy. However, the evidence also suggested that women still faced many impediments which were inhibiting their chances of reaching the very top leadership roles.

This chapter explores leadership practices undertaken by owner-managers of small and medium-sized accounting firms in India. The overarching aim of the study is to identify whether or not owner-managers of accounting firms in India undertake inclusive leadership practices as a strategic orientation for their employees in the small and medium-sized firms. As the contemporary business demands an inclusive work environment to create a competitive advantage for firms on a long-term basis, it is important to study firms’ inclusive leadership practices. Data from 20 in-depth qualitative interviews is analysed to explore thematic categories of importance relevant to the Indian accounting context. The results indicate that the owner-managers of small and medium-sized accounting firms encourage or create exclusively gendered spaces in the organisation of work practices and lack core competencies associated with inclusive leadership.

Corporate boards are gendered spaces where norms of masculine leadership approaches prevail. Using publicly available data, this chapter analyses and compares the commentary about profiles and career pathways of newly appointed female and male directors. Our analysis finds much similarity in the human capital of men and women included on boards of ASX 200 companies, in the context of a public discourse that dwells on the novelty of female directors in Australia, and does not equally recognize their business skills, networks and qualifications. Such similarity suggests little change in either the public discourse or board dynamics at a macro-level. Nevertheless, our study finds a glimmer of light in terms of change as we see references in our analysis regarding the contribution that women can potentially make to board dynamics.

This chapter takes ‘female masculinity’ as a way of teasing out the tensions and contradictions implicit in current approaches to feminine leadership and the ways that they stress the competitive advantage of women in the workplace. Current approaches to feminine leadership run the risk that the entry of the feminine into leadership might actually attempt to control and serve to further oppress women’s subjectivity through its appropriation of the feminine. To advance leadership thinking, ‘feminine leadership’ requires being read as a contradictory site which promotes flexible and ambiguous portraits of gender and leadership. This notion of female competitive advantage obscures the problematic gender binaries on which the juxtaposition between feminine and masculine leadership is based. This construction and constriction of femininity negate a multiplicity of subjectivities and require closer examination especially in relation to how the re-appropriation of gendered binaries which demarcate sexual difference and mark femininity as under control or within ‘acceptable bounds’ may serve to promote inequality. Given this critique, we conclude that closer attention to feminist ethics, especially a turn to understanding femininity and leadership as relational, allows us to explore and promote the possibilities of an ethical openness to otherness.

By bringing together leadership and creativity in the development of a conceptual model, this chapter focuses on how leaders and followers co-construct the creative identity, which in turn impacts organisational outcomes. To explain the interactions between leaders and followers in the co-construction of creativity and the concomitant identity work, a conceptual model is presented which shows how leaders’ narratives can act as a regulator or enabler of followers’ identity work. Overlaying this is the concept that certain gendered behaviours are more likely to facilitate the co-construction of the creative identity. Thus, this chapter demonstrates how leaders and followers, on an ongoing basis, construct a subjectively meaningful workplace and then act accordingly.

For five decades literature and research has exposed the entrenched and enduring factors that reproduce inequality in workplaces and offered effective methods to address it. However, inequality in pay status and opportunity continues, most noticeably for the targeted equity groups of women, people from non-English-speaking backgrounds, people with disabilities and people with LGBT orientations. The complex structural factors that reproduce inequality in organizations are so entrenched that they have formed ‘inequality regimes’ (Acker, Gend Soc 20(4): 441–464, 2006) that are highly resistant to change. Leaders can negotiate and change these gendered spaces for the better, and a healthy leader–follower dynamic is part of that solution. More leaders need to have transformational leadership qualities in order to challenge stereotypical biases against women, the practice of ‘homo-sociability’ in management and the structures that reproduce ‘inequality regimes’ within organizations. Progress toward equity has stalled since the 1990s due to the strengthening of perceptual biases against women, the lack of government programs to address gender inequity and the practice of devolving responsibility for Equal Employment Opportunity programs to a ‘managing diversity’ process within human resources departments. Leaders and followers can either participate in the continuation of inequality by allowing inequality regimes to continue or work for change by adopting a more inclusive and transformational leadership style and implementing the recommendations for change to improve equity. The chapter will discuss the characteristics of a healthy leader–follower dynamic that is open and authentic and focuses on merit, fairness and transparency in order to foster and enhance workplace equality. Recommendations for a ‘Charter for Equity’ that leaders can follow to bring about workplace equality will also be discussed.

To make the case that gender inclusivity is a fundamental yet ignored aspect of the strategic leadership paradigm (SLP), I make four lines of argument. First, I outline the theoretical boundaries of the strategic leadership theory and demonstrate how inclusivity can significantly advance the boundaries of SLP. Second, I discuss the notion of gendered strategic leadership in which a gender orientation is incorporated into the underpinning theoretical architecture of inclusive SLP. This approach demonstrates how and why embedding gender inclusivity in SLP represents a meaningful way to advance our understanding of how leaders do strategy in today’s diverse world. Third, I discuss the merits of gender inclusive SLP and briefly explain pitfalls of studying strategic leadership not using this paradigm. Finally, I elaborate on the implications of the study, illuminate several research directions in this paradigm and argue the importance of having an open mind toward research methods when a gender inclusive paradigm is adopted.