Why leadership fails without governance: rethinking coordination, accountability and participation in organisations

Organizations frequently struggle with persistent coordination failures, unclear accountability and limited participation in decision-making. Teams may align temporarily, responsibilities may be formally assigned, and leadership may be widely discussed, yet collective action often remains fragmented or difficult to sustain over time. These challenges are not simply the result of ineffective leadership behaviour, but reflect how leadership is organised within everyday organisational activity.

Leadership research has undergone a sustained reorientation over the past two decades, moving away from leader-centric models towards relational, distributed and practice-based perspectives that foreground interaction, shared activity and collective processes (Crevani, Lindgren, & Packendorff, 2010; Denis, Langley, & Sergi, 2012; Raelin, 2016). This shift reflects a broader recognition that organising is accomplished through ongoing social processes rather than the actions of individual actors alone. Leadership is increasingly understood as emerging through situated practices enacted across multiple actors in everyday organisational activity.

At the same time, a parallel body of research has examined leadership within governance contexts, focusing on how coordination, accountability and authority are structured through organisational and institutional arrangements (Ansell & Gash, 2008; Pierre & Peters, 2000; Sørensen & Torfing, 2011). Although this work recognises the importance of leadership within governance processes, it typically conceptualises leadership as a role or capability operating within governance systems, rather than as something constituted through the practices that organise coordination, accountability and participation (Torfing, Sørensen, & Røiseland, 2019). In doing so, it brings attention to the structural and institutional conditions through which organised action becomes possible.

Despite these advances, the relationship between leadership and governance remains insufficiently integrated. Existing research has tended to develop along separate analytical trajectories. Relational and practice-based perspectives provide detailed accounts of how leadership is enacted in interaction but often treat organisational arrangements as contextual rather than constitutive of leadership processes (Crevani et al., 2010; Denis et al., 2012). Conversely, governance-oriented research examines systems of coordination, accountability and authority but frequently positions leadership as a role-based or capability-driven phenomenon operating within these systems, rather than as something constituted through them (Pierre & Peters, 2000; Sørensen & Torfing, 2011). As a result, leadership is either analysed as emergent process without sufficient organisational grounding, or as embedded within structures without sustained attention to its enactment in practice.

This separation produces a fragmented understanding of how collective action is organised. Questions central to leadership, including how coordination is achieved across dispersed activities, how responsibility is structured and made accountable, and how participation is enabled or constrained, are often addressed in partial and disconnected ways. While relational perspectives illuminate the dynamics of interaction and shared activity, they provide less clarity on how these processes are stabilised and extended across time and space (Endrissat & von Arx, 2013; Kellogg, Orlikowski, & Yates, 2006). Similarly, governance perspectives address the organisation of authority and accountability but tend to under-specify how these arrangements are enacted and reproduced through everyday practice (Suchman, 1995).

Addressing this limitation requires a reorientation in how leadership is conceptualised. Rather than treating leadership and governance as distinct domains, it becomes necessary to examine how leadership is constituted through the practices that organise coordination, accountability and participation within organisational settings. Existing research provides important insights into both the relational dynamics of leadership and the structural organisation of governance. However, without integrating these perspectives at the level of practice, it remains difficult to explain how coordination is sustained across dispersed activities, how accountability is translated into actionable responsibility, and how participation is organised in ways that shape organisational outcomes. The issue, therefore, is not the absence of research on leadership or governance, but the lack of a conceptual account that explains how these processes are enacted together within ongoing organisational activity.

This paper addresses this gap by developing a conceptualisation of leadership as governance practice. From this perspective, governance is not a contextual backdrop within which leadership occurs, but the medium through which leadership is constituted. Leadership is understood as emerging through the organisational work of aligning action, translating responsibility and structuring participation across time and space. By advancing this conceptualisation, the paper makes three contributions. Firstly, it refines relational and practice-based perspectives by specifying the organisational conditions through which leadership becomes stabilised and rendered accountable. Secondly, it reconnects leadership and governance by conceptualising them as mutually constitutive, thereby bridging a persistent divide between process-oriented and structure-oriented approaches to organising. Thirdly, it provides a framework for analysing how participation in leadership is structured, distributed and made consequential within organisational processes, including its implications for power, voice and the experience of meaningful work.

In doing so, the paper repositions leadership as an organised accomplishment and offers a more integrated account of how collective action is coordinated, made accountable and experienced within contemporary organisations.

Leadership research has undergone a significant shift from leader-centric approaches towards relational, distributed and practice-based perspectives that emphasise interaction, shared activity and situated practice (Crevani et al., 2010; Denis et al., 2012; Raelin, 2016). This body of work has been instrumental in challenging the assumption that leadership resides in individual actors or formal roles, instead conceptualising leadership as an emergent and collective accomplishment embedded in the flow of everyday organisational activity. Leadership-as-practice, in particular, has demonstrated how leadership is enacted through ongoing processes of organising, highlighting the importance of interaction, meaning-making and shared engagement in producing coordinated action (Raelin, 2011; Raelin, 2016).

At the same time, a parallel stream of research has examined leadership within governance contexts, focusing on how collective action is coordinated across organisational and institutional boundaries. Work on collaborative and interactive governance has emphasised the role of leadership in facilitating cooperation, managing interdependencies and sustaining participation among diverse actors (Ansell & Gash, 2008; Sørensen & Torfing, 2011). This literature highlights how leadership contributes to the organisation of coordination and the maintenance of accountability within complex governance systems. More broadly, governance scholarship has developed extensive accounts of how authority, control and coordination are structured through institutional arrangements and organisational mechanisms (Ouchi, 1979; Pierre & Peters, 2000).

More recent work has begun to examine leadership more explicitly within governance processes, particularly in relation to collaborative and networked forms of organising (Ansell & Gash, 2008; Sørensen & Torfing, 2011; Torfing et al., 2019). This research highlights the role of leadership in facilitating interaction, enabling collaboration and supporting collective problem-solving across organisational boundaries. However, these accounts tend to conceptualise leadership as a capability or function within governance systems, rather than as something constituted through the practices that organise coordination, accountability and participation.

Despite these advances, leadership and governance research have largely evolved along separate analytical trajectories. Relational and practice-based perspectives have generated detailed insights into how leadership is enacted in interaction but have tended to treat organisational arrangements as contextual rather than constitutive of leadership processes (Endrissat & von Arx, 2013). While these approaches acknowledge that leadership is embedded within organisational settings, they often leave under-specified how leadership is stabilised across time, coordinated across dispersed activities and rendered accountable within institutional frameworks. As a result, leadership is frequently analysed at the level of situated practice, with limited attention to the organisational conditions that enable it to endure and extend beyond immediate interaction.

Conversely, governance-oriented research has focused on the structural organisation of coordination, accountability and authority but has often treated leadership as a role-based phenomenon or as a set of capabilities required to manage governance processes. In this literature, leadership is typically positioned as something that operates within governance systems rather than as something constituted through them. This creates a conceptual separation in which governance is associated with structure and leadership with agency, without fully accounting for how these dimensions are intertwined in practice.

Related insights emerge from institutional and organisational scholarship, which has examined how action is embedded within broader systems of norms, rules and meaning structures. Research on institutional work highlights how actors contribute to the creation, maintenance and transformation of institutions, thereby shaping organisational practices and arrangements (Lawrence, Suddaby, & Leca, 2009; Suddaby, Elsbach, Greenwood, Meyer, & Zilber, 2010). This work moves beyond individualistic accounts of leadership by situating action within wider institutional contexts. However, while it provides a strong account of how institutions shape organisational life, it offers less detailed specification of how coordination, accountability and participation are organised in ongoing practice.

Further contributions can be found in strategy-as-practice and process-oriented organisation studies, which emphasise the interplay between situated activity and structural arrangements. Scholars have shown that organisational outcomes are produced through the interaction of practices, practitioners and institutionalised structures, highlighting the recursive relationship between action and organisation (Jarzabkowski, 2005; Orlikowski, 2007; Whittington, 2006). These perspectives provide valuable tools for understanding how organising unfolds through practice while remaining shaped by broader structural conditions. However, they have not been fully mobilised within leadership research to explain how leadership itself is organised through such arrangements.

Taken together, these bodies of work suggest that leadership is neither reducible to individual actors nor fully explained through interaction alone. At the same time, they reveal a persistent fragmentation in how leadership is theorised in relation to organisation. Relational and practice-based perspectives foreground interaction but under-specify the organisational arrangements through which leadership is stabilised and made accountable. Governance and institutional perspectives foreground structure but tend to background the enactment of leadership in practice. As a result, existing research provides partial but incomplete accounts of how coordination is achieved, how responsibility is structured and how participation is organised within contemporary organisations.

This fragmentation points to the need for a more integrated conceptualisation. Rather than treating leadership and governance as distinct domains, there is a need to examine how leadership is constituted through the practices that organise coordination, accountability and participation. It is this gap, understood not as an absence of research but as a lack of integration across existing perspectives, that the present paper addresses by developing the concept of leadership as governance practice.

The limitations identified in existing leadership research do not arise solely from an incomplete shift away from leader-centric models. Rather, they reflect a more fundamental issue concerning how leadership is conceptualised in relation to organisation. If leadership is neither adequately located in individual actors nor fully explained through interaction alone, then the central question becomes not where leadership resides, but how it is organised. Addressing this question requires moving beyond the analysis of leadership as situated activity towards an examination of the organisational arrangements through which coordination is sustained, responsibility is structured, and authority is rendered legitimate (Kellogg et al., 2006; Suchman, 1995).

It is at this point that governance becomes analytically central. Governance has typically been understood as the set of structures, systems and institutional arrangements through which organisations are directed and controlled (Ouchi, 1979; Pierre & Peters, 2000). It is often positioned as a context within which leadership operates, associated with formal mechanisms of oversight, accountability and decision-making. Such a separation, however, obscures a more fundamental relationship. The processes through which organisations achieve coordination, structure responsibility and legitimise authority are not external to leadership; they are the very processes through which leadership is constituted. What is frequently attributed to leadership, including direction, alignment and accountability, is accomplished through governance arrangements that organise how action is coordinated and how responsibility is defined and sustained (Kellogg et al., 2006; Suchman, 1995).

From this perspective, leadership cannot be understood as preceding governance or as operating independently of it. Nor can it be reduced to relational dynamics alone. Leadership is constituted through the practices that organise governance itself. This requires a reconceptualisation of leadership not as an attribute, role or solely as an emergent process, but as a governance practice. Leadership, in this sense, refers to the ongoing organisational work through which coordination is achieved, accountability is structured and collective direction is maintained across time and space. It is located not in individuals or interaction alone, but in the arrangements that organise how these processes are enacted and sustained (Crevani et al., 2010; Denis et al., 2012).

Conceptualising leadership as governance practice enables a more precise specification of how leadership is accomplished. Three interrelated dimensions are central to this account: coordination, accountability translation and trust-building. These dimensions are not additional variables to be incorporated into existing models of leadership; they are constitutive processes through which leadership comes into existence within organisational settings.

Coordination refers to the organisation of action across individuals, groups and organisational levels. It involves the alignment of activities, the integration of decisions and the maintenance of direction over time. While often attributed to leadership influence or shared understanding, coordination depends on structured arrangements that connect dispersed activities and sustain continuity beyond immediate interaction (Kellogg et al., 2006; Weick, 1995). Without such arrangements, leadership remains episodic and localised, unable to extend across organisational contexts or maintain collective direction in the absence of continuous interaction.

Accountability translation refers to the processes through which responsibilities are defined, interpreted and made actionable within organisational settings. Accountability is not simply imposed through formal structures; it is continuously translated through practices that connect institutional expectations with situated action. This includes the articulation of responsibilities, the interpretation of obligations and the justification of decisions and outcomes. Leadership, from this perspective, involves the ongoing work of making responsibility meaningful, traceable and consequential within governance arrangements (Suchman, 1995). Without such work, coordination lacks consequence and organisational action lacks legitimacy.

Trust-building refers to the relational conditions that sustain coordination and accountability over time. Trust is often treated as an outcome of effective leadership, yet it is also shaped through governance practices that organise transparency, consistency and recognition within organisational processes. These practices contribute to the production of legitimacy, through which actions and decisions become acceptable and credible within organisational settings (Suchman, 1995). Where governance arrangements enable clarity and mutual recognition, trust can be sustained; where they produce ambiguity or inconsistency, coordination becomes fragile and accountability contested (Kellogg et al., 2006).

Taken together, these dimensions shift the analysis of leadership in a fundamental way. Leadership is no longer understood as something that actors possess or enact independently, nor as something that emerges solely through interaction. It is constituted through the practices that organise how action is coordinated, how responsibility is structured and how relational conditions are sustained within organisations. This reframing makes it possible to analyse leadership as both relational and structural, without reducing it to either dimension (Denis et al., 2012; Endrissat & von Arx, 2013).

This perspective also repositions the role of formal leaders. Formal leaders do not stand outside governance arrangements as the primary source of leadership; rather, they participate in shaping the conditions under which coordination, accountability and trust are enacted. Their influence lies in configuring governance arrangements, defining responsibilities and shaping how participation is organised and recognised. At the same time, organisational actors contribute to the enactment of leadership through their engagement with governance practices, as they interpret, negotiate and reproduce the arrangements that organise collective action (Crevani et al., 2010; Raelin, 2011). Leadership therefore emerges through the interplay between governance structures and situated action, rather than being reducible to either.

Understanding leadership as governance practice addresses the limitations identified in relational and practice-based perspectives by providing a clearer account of how leadership is stabilised across time, extended across organisational contexts and rendered accountable within institutional settings. It shifts the analysis from episodic interaction to ongoing organisational accomplishment and provides a basis for rethinking collective leadership not as an emergent property of interaction alone, but as an outcome of governance arrangements that structure participation, authority and responsibility (Denis et al., 2012; Kellogg et al., 2006).

Finally, this reframing introduces a more explicit engagement with power. Governance arrangements do not simply enable coordination and participation; they also regulate them. They define whose actions count, whose responsibilities are recognised, and whose contributions are rendered visible or remain marginal (Collinson, 2005; Foucault, 1977). Leadership, understood as governance practice, is therefore inseparable from the ways in which power operates through organisational arrangements, shaping both participation in leadership processes and the distribution of authority within them.

Reframing leadership as governance practice requires a corresponding reconsideration of collective and distributed forms of leadership. Within existing research, concepts such as shared, distributed and collective leadership are often presented as alternatives to hierarchical and leader-centric models (Denis et al., 2012; Raelin, 2016). These perspectives emphasise collaboration, participation and the diffusion of influence across multiple actors, suggesting that leadership can be enacted more broadly across organisational settings. While this represents an important departure from individualistic conceptions of leadership, it also introduces a tendency to treat collective leadership as emerging primarily through interaction itself.

From the perspective advanced in this paper, such an understanding remains incomplete. Collective leadership cannot be understood solely as the distribution of influence or the presence of collaborative interaction. Rather, it must be examined in relation to the governance arrangements that structure how participation in leadership processes becomes possible. Leadership is not shared simply because actors interact, contribute or engage in joint activity; it is shared insofar as organisational arrangements create the conditions under which participation in coordination, decision-making and accountability is enabled, recognised and sustained (Kellogg et al., 2006; Suchman, 1995).

This shift redirects attention from the presence of participation to the organisation of participation. Governance practices define who is able to participate, under what conditions, and with what degree of influence. They structure how responsibilities are distributed, how contributions are recognised and how decisions are justified and made legitimate within organisational settings (Foucault, 1977; Collinson, 2005). Leaderful organising, from this perspective, is not a spontaneous outcome of relational engagement but an organised accomplishment shaped by the arrangements through which coordination, accountability and authority are structured.

This has important implications for how collective leadership is understood. Much of the literature associates collective leadership with inclusivity, collaboration and the broadening of organisational voice. However, these outcomes cannot be assumed. Governance arrangements may expand participation in appearance while maintaining existing concentrations of authority in practice (Collinson, 2014). Responsibility may be distributed without a corresponding redistribution of influence, and actors may be involved in processes of coordination without having the capacity to shape their direction. Participation, in this sense, may function symbolically, serving to legitimise decisions that are substantively determined elsewhere (Suchman, 1995).

Bringing governance to the centre of analysis therefore enables a more critical examination of collective leadership. It becomes possible to ask not only whether leadership is shared, but how participation is structured, whose contributions are recognised, and how authority is distributed within organisational processes. Leaderful organising is thus understood as a structured and contested process in which participation is enabled for some actors, limited for others, and always mediated by governance arrangements.

This perspective also clarifies the role of formal leaders within collective leadership contexts. Rather than acting as the sole source of leadership, formal leaders play a key role in shaping the governance arrangements through which leadership is enacted. Their influence lies in configuring the conditions under which coordination, accountability and participation are organised, including defining procedures, allocating responsibilities and determining how decisions are interpreted and justified (Raelin, 2011). Recognising this does not reintroduce leader-centric assumptions but highlights that governance arrangements are rarely neutral and are often shaped by those occupying positions of institutional authority.

At the same time, organisational actors are not simply positioned by governance arrangements in passive ways. They engage with these arrangements in practice, interpreting, negotiating, reproducing and sometimes contesting them through everyday activity (Crevani et al., 2010; Alvesson & Sveningsson, 2003). Leadership emerges through this ongoing interplay between structured conditions and situated action. Governance arrangements are enacted, adapted and occasionally transformed as actors engage with them, contributing to the ongoing accomplishment of organising.

Understanding leaderful organising in this way strengthens the analysis of collective leadership in two respects. Firstly, it makes visible the organisational work required for collective leadership to exist. Shared leadership is not simply a descriptive feature of interaction but an organised accomplishment dependent on governance practices (Denis et al., 2012; Kellogg et al., 2006). Secondly, it brings questions of power to the centre of analysis. Participation is not evenly available, authority is not evenly distributed, and recognition is not evenly granted. Governance arrangements shape all three, making collective leadership a site not only of collaboration but also of boundary-setting, inclusion and exclusion (Foucault, 1977; Collinson, 2005).

This argument also directs attention to the consequences of governance practice for how leadership is experienced. If participation, accountability and recognition are organised through governance arrangements, then these arrangements also shape how actors experience their role, their contribution and their relation to others. It is to this relationship between governance practice and the experience of work that the paper now turns.

Reframing leadership as governance practice also requires a reconsideration of how work is experienced within organisations. If leadership is constituted through arrangements that organise coordination, accountability and participation, then the experience of work cannot be treated as separate from these arrangements. Existing research often approaches meaningful work as a matter of individual perception, shaped by values, motivation or identity (Lips-Wiersma & Wright, 2012). While such perspectives have been important in highlighting the subjective dimensions of work, they tend to underplay the organisational conditions through which such experiences are made possible or constrained. From the perspective developed in this paper, meaningful work is not simply experienced; it is organised.

This shift relocates the source of meaningfulness from individual interpretation to structured participation in collective activity. The extent to which work is experienced as purposeful, coherent or worthwhile depends on how organisational practices connect individual action to wider processes of coordination and decision-making (Kellogg et al., 2006; Weick, 1995). Where these connections are weak, fragmented or obscured, work may be experienced as disconnected from any broader sense of contribution. Conversely, where governance practices render these connections visible and sustained, individuals are more likely to recognise how their actions matter within the organisation. Meaning, in this sense, is not an intrinsic property of work but an outcome of how work is organised in relation to others.

Participation is central to this process. The experience of autonomy, often treated as a key component of meaningful work, cannot be reduced to discretion in task execution alone. It depends on whether individuals are able to engage with the processes through which decisions are shaped and directions are set (Raelin, 2016; Crevani et al., 2010). Governance arrangements determine whether such engagement is substantive, limited or symbolic. Where participation enables actors to influence coordination and decision-making, autonomy becomes a practical condition of involvement. Where participation is restricted or tightly managed, autonomy remains formal rather than substantive. This suggests that autonomy is not simply granted or perceived but organised through the terms under which participation occurs.

A similar dynamic applies to the experience of contribution. Work is more likely to be experienced as meaningful when individuals can locate their actions within a wider organisational purpose. This requires more than shared narratives or communicated goals; it depends on coordination practices that connect dispersed activities and make these connections intelligible (Kellogg et al., 2006). Where such practices are absent or weak, individuals may carry out tasks without a clear sense of how those tasks relate to collective outcomes. Where coordination is organised in ways that render these relationships visible, work becomes more readily experienced as contributive. Meaningfulness, therefore, depends on whether governance practices make the organisation of work legible to those who participate in it.

Accountability further shapes how work is experienced. It defines how responsibility is assigned, how actions are evaluated and how outcomes are justified (Suchman, 1995). When accountability is clear, consistent and proportionate, individuals are better able to understand their role within organisational processes and how their actions are recognised. When accountability is diffuse, uneven or opaque, work can become uncertain and contested. Individuals may be held responsible without having had the capacity to influence outcomes, or may contribute without receiving recognition. In such conditions, the experience of work is shaped not only by what is done but by how responsibility is structured and interpreted within governance arrangements.

Recognition is closely tied to these processes. The extent to which work is experienced as meaningful depends in part on whether contributions are acknowledged within organisational practices. Governance arrangements influence whose work is made visible, whose contributions are valued, and whose efforts remain unrecognised (Collinson, 2005; Fleming, 2017). Recognition is not simply an interpersonal dynamic but is structured through processes that determine what counts as contribution and how it is assessed. Where these processes are narrow or uneven, meaningful work becomes unevenly distributed across organisational actors.

These dynamics point to a more critical understanding of meaningful work. If meaningfulness is shaped through governance practices, then it cannot be assumed to be equally available to all organisational members. Access to participation, influence, accountability and recognition is structured through organisational arrangements that often reflect existing hierarchies and power relations (Foucault, 1977; Collinson, 2014). Some actors are positioned closer to decision-making processes and are therefore more able to experience their work as connected and consequential. Others are positioned at a distance from these processes, with limited capacity to influence outcomes or have their contributions recognised. Meaningful work, in this sense, is not only produced but distributed.

Understanding meaningful work in this way extends the argument of the paper beyond structure and process to their consequences in everyday organisational life. Leadership, as governance practice, is not only concerned with how coordination and accountability are achieved but also with how these arrangements shape the conditions under which individuals engage with their work and with others. The organisation of leadership influences whether work can be experienced as coherent, whether contributions can be recognised, and whether participation can be substantive rather than symbolic.

By locating meaningful work within governance practices, this perspective avoids treating experience as detached from organisation and instead situates it within the ongoing accomplishment of collective action. It highlights that meaningful work is not secured through individual perception or cultural intervention alone but through the organisation of participation, responsibility and recognition within governance arrangements.

While the framework developed in this paper is conceptual, its dimensions lend themselves to empirical investigation across organisational settings. Rather than treating leadership as an abstract or purely relational phenomenon, this perspective directs attention to the observable practices through which coordination, accountability and trust are organised in everyday activity. This makes it possible to examine leadership not only as interaction, but as an ongoing accomplishment structured through governance arrangements that extend across time and space.

Coordination can be examined through observable practices such as cross-functional meetings, decision-making routines and the integration of activities across organisational units, as reflected in studies of shared and distributed leadership (Bolden, 2011; Klasmeier & Rowold, 2020). This includes analysing how coordination is stabilised over time through formal and informal mechanisms, how responsibilities are distributed across roles and how interdependencies between tasks and actors are managed in practice. Attention may also be given to how coordination routines are standardised, adapted or contested in different organisational contexts, and how these processes enable or constrain the alignment of action across dispersed activities. In this sense, coordination can be studied as an ongoing organisational achievement rather than a temporary outcome of interaction, with particular emphasis on how continuity is maintained in the absence of direct oversight.

Accountability translation may be analysed through performance management systems, reporting structures and the framing of responsibility in organisational communication, particularly in research on governance and ethical leadership (Daily, McDougall, Covin, & Dalton, 2002; Sajjad, Eweje, & Raziq, 2023). This involves examining how formal expectations are interpreted, negotiated and enacted by organisational actors, and how responsibility becomes meaningful and actionable in situated contexts. It also includes analysing how decisions are justified, how outcomes are evaluated and how responsibility is attributed or contested across organisational levels. Such analysis can reveal how accountability is not merely imposed but actively constructed through organisational practices that connect institutional requirements with everyday action. This highlights the importance of examining not only formal systems, but also the informal processes through which responsibility is clarified, resisted or redefined in practice.

Trust-building can be studied through practices that shape perceptions of fairness, consistency and legitimacy, including transparency mechanisms and recognition processes, which have been widely examined in leadership and organisational behaviour studies (Saleem, Zhang, Gopinath, & Adeel, 2020; Mazzetti & Schaufeli, 2022). Such practices may include the communication of decisions, the consistency of organisational responses and the ways in which contributions are acknowledged within everyday work processes. Trust can therefore be examined both through formal governance mechanisms and through interactional dynamics that signal reliability, integrity and mutual recognition. Attention to these practices enables analysis of how trust is sustained, undermined or unevenly distributed across organisational settings, and how it supports or constrains ongoing coordination and accountability.

These dimensions may be explored using qualitative and interpretive approaches, including interviews, ethnographic observation and discourse analysis, as well as through organisational documents, performance reports and internal communications. Such methods allow for detailed examination of how governance practices are enacted, interpreted and reproduced in context, and how they shape the organisation of leadership across time and space. Multi-level and process-oriented research designs may be particularly useful in capturing how these practices operate across individual, group and organisational levels, and how they evolve over time. Combining different data sources may also provide a more comprehensive understanding of how formal structures and everyday practices interact in the production of leadership.

Importantly, the framework also allows for the analysis of variation across organisational and institutional contexts. Different settings may prioritise particular forms of coordination, accountability or trust-building, leading to distinct configurations of governance practice. For example, highly regulated environments may emphasise formal accountability structures, while more fluid or project-based settings may rely more heavily on interactional coordination and relational trust. Examining such variation can provide insight into how governance arrangements shape not only the form but also the effectiveness of leadership in practice. It also enables comparison across contexts, highlighting how different organisational conditions produce different patterns of participation, authority and responsibility.

Examining how these practices vary across contexts would provide a basis for assessing how governance arrangements shape the enactment, distribution and consequences of leadership in practice. This includes understanding how different configurations of coordination, accountability and trust produce distinct forms of leadership, as well as how these arrangements influence participation, power and the experience of organisational life. By making these processes empirically observable, this approach provides a foundation for future research that connects conceptual development with the systematic analysis of leadership as it is organised and enacted in practice.

This paper set out to address a persistent fragmentation in leadership research concerning how leadership is conceptualised in relation to organisation. While relational and practice-based perspectives have moved the field beyond leader-centric models by foregrounding interaction and shared activity, and governance-oriented research has examined the structuring of coordination, accountability and authority, these bodies of work have remained only partially integrated. As a result, leadership has often been understood either as an emergent process without sufficient organisational grounding or as embedded within structures without sustained attention to its enactment in practice.

The central argument advanced in this paper is that this limitation cannot be resolved by further elaboration of interaction alone, nor by treating governance as a contextual backdrop. Instead, it requires a reconceptualisation of leadership as governance practice. From this perspective, leadership is constituted through the organisational practices that structure coordination, translate accountability and organise participation across time and space (Kellogg et al., 2006; Suchman, 1995). Leadership is therefore not an attribute of individuals or an outcome of interaction in isolation, but an ongoing organisational accomplishment produced through governance arrangements.

By advancing this reconceptualisation, the paper makes three primary theoretical contributions. Firstly, it refines relational and practice-based perspectives by specifying the organisational conditions through which leadership becomes stabilised and rendered accountable. While existing work has demonstrated how leadership is enacted in situated practice, this paper shows how such processes are sustained through arrangements that connect dispersed activities and make them consequential within organisational contexts (Crevani et al., 2010; Denis et al., 2012).

Secondly, the paper reconnects leadership and governance by conceptualising them as mutually constitutive rather than analytically separate domains. This integration bridges a long-standing divide between process-oriented and structure-oriented approaches to organising, demonstrating that the processes through which coordination, accountability and authority are structured are not external to leadership but constitutive of it (Pierre & Peters, 2000; Sørensen & Torfing, 2011).

Thirdly, the paper develops the concept of leadership as governance practice as a framework for analysing how participation in leadership is organised and distributed. This reframes collective leadership by showing that participation is not simply a property of interaction but an outcome of governance arrangements that define the conditions under which actors are able to contribute, exercise influence and have their work recognised (Collinson, 2005; Foucault, 1977). In doing so, the paper brings questions of power and inclusion to the centre of leadership analysis.

The paper also extends this argument to the experience of work. By linking governance practices to meaningful work, it shows that the organisation of coordination, accountability and participation shapes how individuals understand their role, their contribution and their relationship to others (Lips-Wiersma & Wright, 2012). Meaningful work, from this perspective, is not simply an individual experience but an outcome of how organisational arrangements structure participation, recognition and responsibility. This highlights the uneven distribution of meaningful work across organisational contexts and the role of governance in shaping these conditions.

Several directions for future research follow from this analysis. Empirical studies are needed to examine how different governance arrangements shape coordination, accountability and participation in practice, and how these processes vary across organisational and institutional contexts. Further research could also explore how governance practices reproduce or challenge existing power relations, particularly in relation to inclusion, voice and recognition within collective leadership processes. In addition, there is scope to refine and extend the conceptual dimensions of governance practice developed in this paper and to examine their implications across different forms of organising.

More broadly, this paper invites a reconsideration of leadership as a problem of organising rather than of individuals or interaction alone. By positioning leadership as governance practice, it provides a more integrated account of how collective action is coordinated, made accountable and experienced as meaningful within contemporary organisations. This perspective opens up new avenues for examining how different governance arrangements produce distinct forms of leadership across organisational and institutional contexts.

No funding was received for this research.