- Title
- Paradoxes of authentic leadership: leader identity struggles
- Creator
- Nyberg, Daniel; Sveningsson, Stefan
- Relation
- Leadership Vol. 10, Issue 4, p. 437-455
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1742715013504425
- Publisher
- Sage
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2014
- Description
- Using in-depth interview material, this article explores the socially constructed and locally mediated nature of authentic leadership. The findings illustrate an irony of authentic leadership: while leaders claim that it is their true and natural selves that make them good leaders; simultaneously, they must restrain their claimed authenticity in order to be perceived as good leaders. This generates tensions that undermine the construction of a more stable and coherent leader identity. The study finds that in order to resolve these tensions, the managers develop metaphorical selves—Mother Teresa, messiah and coach—as a way of trying to accommodate conflicting identity claims while remaining true to the idea of themselves as authentic leaders exercising good leadership. These findings contribute to a constructed, situational and contested notion of leadership by showing how authenticity is an existential project of ‘essentialising’ fragmented and conflicting selves.
- Subject
- authentic leadership; metaphors; discourse; identity; social construction
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1420825
- Identifier
- uon:37642
- Identifier
- ISSN:1742-7150
- Rights
- © 2014. Reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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