Chapter 3: Developing a Narrative Between Leadership and Organisation

In Chapter 2, we began to explore two contrasting ways of understanding the nature of leadership. Core to these contrasting views are the relational characteristics which exist between leaders and others within an organisation. Here, we expand this discussion by exploring some facets of organisation and how these relate to three contrasting theories of leadership. Educational research into leadership has tended to focus on outlining and exploring an expanding spectrum of typologies, which has led to narrow considerations of characteristics, definitions and potential shortcomings all while treating ‘followers’ in two dimensional, relatively homogenous ways and making only passing references to the organisations in which they are embedded. Here, we begin by further developing the idea of the relationality of leadership to organisation by outlining aspects of organisational processes, including culture and politics, and how these might relate to different models of leadership. By doing this, we are able to show that leadership is embedded within organisation and that to treat it as a process in its own right, almost in isolation, is problematic; we aim to outline the need for leadership to be understood within the context of, and within relation to, organisation.