Leadership and Learning in-between Politics and Practice

• This article reports on a study of leadership and learning processes in a complex environment. It concerns the interspaces where politics meets administration, towards the “flows and interaction in multi-organisational contexts”. A study of processes in the overlap between the political intentions and their practical realisation, between political actions and everyday leadership. In this case the relationship between politicians, board administration and principals i. e. a triad.An ethnography of a structure in a municipal within the educational/school area, primary and secondary level. Participant observation in two such triads in a larger municipal in southern Sweden over a year every week, most of the days in each week. And interviews during the process and at the end.The study is composed of an active engagement from the participants in the study, being perceived as co-constructors in the research process. An interview does not merely become a “collection of data” with feed-back, but informants are parties in a knowledge-creation conversation, to a certain extent a reciprocal process.This way of “seeing” leadership has not been studied frequently. Yet some researchers, have studied aspects of these triads and contributed with interpretations of use for this study. I make the assumption that it can be productive to see an actor’s learning and creation of meaning in terms of “hard data and evaluations” and/or “interactions and encounters”. In the triad, this actor is part of a system that comprises the other actors in the triad. A complex system of meaning-making processes is created, and research shows that it is the “interaction”-dimension that dominates the work of leaders. This system can be understood in terms of relations, negotiations and loose-couplings as a manifestation of cultures. I suggest that leadership can be understood as “The Art of Leading Others who Lead Themselves”. It is in that “relationships” politics and leadership are enacted.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap -- Systemvetenskap, informationssystem och informatik med samhällsvetenskaplig inriktning (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Media and Communications -- Information Systems, Social aspects (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Leadership

Municipal cultures

Politics

Zoning

Triads

ethnography

Everyday leadership

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

ovr (ämneskategori)