This article explores how the relational social constructionist leadership (RSCL) ontology and epistemology, as well as the practice approach, could be employed to reconceptualise the responsible leadership theory.
This paper presents a literature review on the responsible leadership and relational leadership theories. It also reviews literature on the RSCL onto-epistemology as its theoretical framework and the practice approach as its methodology. The empirical analysis that is underlined by the abductive mode of enquiry is based on nine interviews with leaders from the Twende Mbele (TM) African Partnership for Monitoring and Evaluation.
The findings comprise one main theme (relational leadership practice of interest) called identifying. Identifying constitutes five sub-themes (intersecting relational leadership practices): context identity, gender identity, government identity, language identity and champions identity. Recommendations to reconceptualise responsible leadership theory are based on the discussion of the findings.
The findings could enhance the quality, intentionality and practicality of inter-organisational leadership stakeholder engagement strategies. The social construction of leaders as role models, in the form of cultivating their identity as champions beyond the internal positional leaders, could be practiced by business leaders in other organisational settings to champion social-relationality and ethics-orientation in society in line with the core tenets of responsible leadership theory.
The RSCL onto-epistemology and the practice approach methodology provide conceptual tools to advance responsible leadership theory from a leader-centric focus to the collective domain of leadership research by using leadership practices as the unit of analysis.
From an ethical and moral perspective, business leaders have an obligation to reframe their ‘social contract with stakeholders’ (Pless et al.,
Furthermore, at a theoretical level, the responsible leadership scholarship has advanced our understanding of what it means to be a responsible leader in a global environment facing many socio-economic and environmental risks (Miska & Mendenhall,
Consequently, this paper draws from the post-heroic discourse in leadership studies, particularly the ‘relationality’ and ‘practice’ turns accentuated by social constructionism and practice theory (Wolfram Cox & Hassard,
This paper explores how the relational social constructionist leadership (RSCL) onto-epistemology and the practice approach could be used to reconceptualise responsible leadership theory.
In terms of scope, this paper reviews literature on responsible leadership theory, relational leadership theory, the RSCL theoretical framework and the practice approach. The empirical findings are based on the case study of an international inter-organisational partnership known as the Twende Mbele (TM) African Partnership for Monitoring and Evaluation. As an inter-organisational partnership, TM comprises six countries, two evaluation capacity development agencies and a South African university. TM serves as a community of practice on monitoring and evaluation in relation to its effective use for public sector performance and accountability (see Goldman et al.,
This paper presents the literature review in two parts. The first part reviews responsible leadership and relational leadership theories. The second part reviews literature that deals with the elements of the RSCL lens and the practice approach.
Review of literature on responsible leadership and relational leadership theories.
Aspect | Responsible leadership theory | Relational leadership theory |
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Main arguments | This study highlights the reviews of responsible leadership theory undertaken by Pless and Maak ( |
Relational leadership concentrates on the relational processes and dynamics of the leadership phenomenon within organisations and in society (Endres & Weibler, |
The social constructionist paradigm focuses on the processes of leadership emergence and enactment, particularly in collective settings (Cunliffe, |
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Criticism | The first criticism of responsible leadership theory emanates from the fact that it is leader-centric and individualistic since its starting point is individual leaders and organisations (Pless & Maak, |
The entity paradigm of relational leadership is criticised for its emphasis on the relationality of individual leaders with followers. The risk of equating all interactional and relational processes to the leadership processes could dilute the understanding of leadership as a distinct construct (Endres & Weibler, |
Application in this paper | This study employs the core tenets of responsible leadership theory (Ketola, |
This study compares the entity form of relational leadership with responsible leadership and makes recommendations for how each could help strengthen the weaknesses of the other. The review below employs RSCL form as a lens and articulates its principles. Relational social constructionist leadership is further operationalised using the practice approach as a fairly new methodology for leadership research (Ospina & Foldy, |
RSCL, relational social constructionist leadership.
The RSCL lens adopted for this paper aligns closely with the notion of ‘leadership as essentially a question of interpersonal influence’ (Clifton et al.,
Relational social constructionist leadership onto-epistemology focuses on social relations where leadership is known from within as a micro-level process through which meaning-making is socially constructed through narration, dialogue and reflection in an intersubjective way, taking into consideration the impact of context in a relational manner (Cunliffe,
The three-component model for relational social constructionist leadership.
According to
Ospina and Foldy (
Alpenberg and Scarbrough (
The dispersed practices ‘are shared patterns of how to carry out and perform an action, or how to explain something appropriately … such as describing, reporting and examining’ (Alpenberg & Scarbrough,
… the term ‘leadership’ is largely tied to the view of an individual leader, whilst ‘relational leading’ refers to the ability of persons in relationship to move with engagement and efficacy into the future. (p. 30)
As such, in this study, the notion of ‘relational leadership practices’ shares similar meaning to ‘relational leading’ (Hersted & Gergen,
Themes from existing literature, such as the relational leadership practices identified by Ospina and Foldy (
Data analysis was done in a stepwise manner that adapted the Grounded Theory (GT) coding approach put forward by Charmaz (
In the Atlas.ti 22 Windows software, each quotation is accompanied by three index numbers, namely two identification numbers and a reference number. In this research, such numbers are put in brackets as follows [9:36, 12]. In this example, the identification numbers 9:36 mean that the quotation was taken from document number 9, and it is the 36th quotation that was generated in that document. The reference number 12 refers to the location of the quotation within the document, namely paragraph 12. These indices are put before each quotation in the presentation of the research findings.
The next section discusses the mode of enquiry employed by this research.
Hesse-Biber and Leavy (
Cunliffe (
Ethical clearance to conduct the study was obtained from the Research Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences of the University of Pretoria (Protocol Number: EMS053/21).
This paper is based on a broader research project that contains many themes and sub-themes as its findings. The findings that are presented below focus on ‘identifying’ as the relational leadership practice of interest (main theme) and its five intersecting relational leadership practices (sub-themes), as depicted in
The relational leadership practices of identifying.
Relational leadership practices of identifying refer to those situations in which research participants talked about how leadership identities emerged and were formed in the context of TM as an inter-organisational partnership. The relational leadership practices of identifying had the following intersecting relational leadership practices: context identity, gender identity, government identity, language identity and champions identity.
The relational leadership practice of the context identity refers to instances in which the participants emphasised uniqueness of the partnership context and its brand. A first participant’s account stated:
‘[8:30, 26] TM’s identity is on its name, which means “moving forward together” as Africans. It’s about promoting greatness and pride amongst Africans. It’s about building Africa as Africans. The recognition of Africanness is what defines TM for me and building each other as Africans.’ (Respondent 4, Female, 18 January 2022)
A second participant’s account indicated:
‘[5:16, 22] The collective identity of TM is that, if Africans can own their own development agenda and work through their challenges, and learn along the way, and make corrective actions, then Africa can achieve its own development results.’ (Respondent 6, Male, 19 January 2022)
A third participant’s account observed: ‘[4:25, 53] The whole peer-learning approach in TM is very unique’ (Respondent 7, Male, 20 January 2022).
The relational leadership practice of gender identity refers to instances in which participants mentioned gender as an identity issue. One participant’s account noted:
‘[2:26, 58] Unintentionally, there is an identity around African men, and it is very manly.’
The participant further argued:
‘[2:30, 61] I think within masculine identities, I do think there is a role for how leadership is practised …’
Another participant’s account stated:
‘[3:49, 40] In the first instance, I think it is about the values that are held by the individual leaders in the partner organisations. The partnership consists of people who are professionals, people who have worked in development, people who understand issues around race and power and class and gender dynamics, who will speak up in defence of those issues in their workplaces. For example, TM has done a lot of work on gender equity and has done some knowledge production around that subject. So, it is part of its DNA in terms of what it seeks to change in the evaluation capacity development space.’ (Respondent 5, Female, 18 January 2022)
The relational practice of government identity refers to instances in which participants emphasised the importance of governmental stakeholders within the partnership as well as governments being the main clients for the partnership projects. A first participant’s account stated:
‘[2:87, 121] TM needed to prove its value and to help governments step outside the bureaucracy and be able to try things and get going and move the ball a little bit.’ (Respondent 7, Male, 20 January 2022).
A second participant said: ‘[7:105, 104] It is critical that the TM is experienced as country-driven in terms of setting the agenda’. A third participant reported:
‘[2:85, 121] TM is set up to be able to help country governments perhaps to experiment, innovate, or run projects that they cannot be able to set up themselves, such as proof-of-concepts.’ (Respondent 1, Female, 11 January 2022)
The relational leadership practice of language identity was about instances in which language was mentioned as a significant identity issue. A first participant’s account: ‘[6:30, 37] There are language differences. There are Francophone and Anglophone countries within the TM partnership’ (Respondent 3, Female, 14 January 2022). A second participant said:
‘[9:47, 43] We have had training on French and English in respective countries. TM supported participation of members at each other’s evaluation events.’ (Respondent 9, Male, 05 February 2022)
A third participant’s account stated:
‘[2:47, 70] We try to operate bilingually as much as we can.’ (Respondent 1, Female, 11 January 2022)
The relational leadership practice of champions identity denotes a situation in which the participants highlighted the use of champions to achieve common objectives of the partnership or identified certain people explicitly as the champions. One participant’s account argued: ‘[2:56, 82] In the TM theory of change, implicitly and explicitly, there is this idea of champions’ (Respondent 1, Female, 11 January). Another participant’s account defined champions as:
‘[2:62, 85] In my conversations with people, champions are regarded as leaders of a sort. They can be positional such as the Prime Minister of Uganda as a champion for evaluations.’ (Respondent 1, Female, 11 January)
Another participant’s account stated:
‘[7:31, 28] Champions would be like individuals who were movers and shakers within their countries and were in the limelight of their own media and were a thorn on the backside of the legislature in terms of wanting to see better legislation being put in place to make use of evaluation evidence in law. Not just a nice to have, but a legal requirement. They were pushing the drafting of legislation to advance their countries’ laws around this. So that it was not just depending on the political whims of who was in power at the time.’ (Respondent 8, Female, 21 January 2022)
The discussion of the findings is based on the sub-themes determined from the interviews. The discussion is presented in two parts. The first part uses the core tenets of responsible leadership theory to explore the purpose of leadership in terms of moral values and ethics and incorporation of external stakeholders. The second part discusses social construction of leadership in inter-organisational partnership contexts based on the three elements of the RSCL model presented in
The context identity of the partnership,
The gender identity came more as a concern for lack of consideration for women leaders as most of the representatives from the member countries were males. While the examination of gender is not common in responsible leadership theory, it is implicit in the notion of consideration of multiple stakeholder interests (Doh & Quigley,
[
The recognition of the ‘masculine identities’ that are ‘very manly’ is a gendered view that seeks to challenge the often taken-for-granted lack of gender diversity in terms of representation of various partners in inter-organisational partnerships. One research participant’s free expression of such views could be enabled by the fact that ‘TM has done a lot of work on gender equity and has done some knowledge production around that subject’.
Government identity comes from the view that this inter-organisational partnership sought to ‘help governments step outside the bureaucracy and … try things and get going’, which is about innovation and exploration of new frontiers. The notion of the partnership being ‘country-driven’ was clearly a call for governmental stakeholders to prioritise how the partnership operates in the implicit sense that governments represent their countries in international relations terms. Most responsible leadership studies focus on business enterprises, and the issue of government identity is an unchartered terrain in so far as existing responsible leadership literature is concerned. The extent to which government identity is used to assert one stakeholder role above others is also something worth exploring in responsible leadership theory from the multiple levels of analysis perspective (Miska & Mendenhall,
Language identity was intentionally recognised as an important stakeholder management issue within the inter-organisational partnership. The fact that training is conducted in both Anglophone and Francophone African countries demonstrates proactive consideration of stakeholder interests. Similarly, the fact that the partnership also ‘operates bilingually as much [
The idea of leaders-as-champions is clearly something that was socially constructed as an important issue in the context of this inter-organisational partnership as part of its ‘theory of change’ (Morra Imas & Rist,
Responsible leadership theory started by conceptualising ‘role identity’ of responsible leaders, as demonstrated in studies conducted by Maak and Pless (
Furthermore, in terms of the body of research known as identity theory, leadership researchers are beginning to appreciate the value of ‘identity-based processes for leadership-related outcomes’, as one study found that ‘individuals who see themselves as leaders are more likely to obtain central positions’ and consequently ‘emerge as leaders’ (Kwok et al.,
The three elements of the RSCL model (leadership mechanism, content and manifestation), as per
The relational leadership practice of champions identity was the only practice that was categorised as leadership content as it was about ‘high-quality relating and communicating’ by leaders (Endres & Weibler,
The next sections present the conclusions and recommendations for future research.
Responsible leadership (Miska & Mendenhall,
This paper makes a number of theoretical and practical contributions. Firstly, the RSCL onto-epistemology is still developing as a theoretical framework and therefore, by applying this philosophical perspective to leadership studies, this paper helps to deepen the conversation in this regard. Secondly, the methodological choices made in terms of the application of the practice approach methodology have contributed to a limited number of studies that have incorporated such a methodology in leadership studies to operationalise RSCL. The practice approach as a methodology could be employed in responsible leadership research to strengthen its action-orientation by means of investigating ‘shared patterns of how to carry out and perform’ responsible leadership practices as ‘dispersed practices’ (Alpenberg & Scarbrough,
The findings of this research present an opportunity for more empirical research to be conducted at the intersection between (responsible and relational) leadership theories and identity theory, as the practice approach made the empirical findings on the relational leadership practices of ‘identifying’ to be intelligible and practical. Contextual and meaningful branding is an important consideration for inter-organisational partnerships to collectively drive a common agenda that stakeholders understand upfront. Gender and language are significant dimensions of diversity management in a multi-cultural global environment. In inter-organisational settings, it is important to be conscious of how various stakeholders perceive their role and how their importance could be recognised and leveraged better for the success of the common agenda. The social construction of leaders as role models in the form of cultivating leaders-as-champions beyond the internal positional leaders could be practiced by business leaders in other organisational settings to champion social-relationality and ethics orientation in society in line with responsible leadership theory.
Practical implications include the opportunity to translate the leadership mechanisms and relational leadership practices into practical guidelines for how leaders could be empowered via training and similar measures to strengthen the operation of their inter-organisational partnerships. Such a recommendation is made with the caveat that the RSCL perspective does not aim to generalise beyond the particular context of the research because of the understanding of social reality and meaning as fluid and in a constant process of emergence. The paper recommends empirical application of the RSCL perspective in future research in order to advance responsible leadership theorising.
The empirical aspect of this leadership research is based on a case study of an international inter-organisational partnership, which serves as a community of practice for monitoring and evaluation. This limits the extent to which its findings could be applied to strategic alliances in the for-profit-making business environments. The implications are that other professional communities of practice, public-private partnerships and not-for-profit business chambers might find its results useful.
The authors have declared that no competing interest exists.
S.S.N, doctoral student who conducted the research and wrote the article, as well as addressing comments from the reviewers and editors. D. de. J, academic supervisor for the research project who contributed to the writing, review and editing of the article.
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Transcripts are confidential and are kept with the University of Pretoria because of ethical commitments made to the interviewees.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the authors.