Week 4 of my journey through Critical Perspectives in Leadership
The biggest takeaway I had from this module was realizing that leadership is not as objective as we often assume it is. Before this course, I tended to think of leadership theories as practical tools that could simply be applied to solve organizational problems. This module’s readings challenged that assumption by showing that leadership theories also shape the way we think about organizations, authority, and success. Rather than asking which leadership style is best, the readings pushed me to ask where our ideas about leadership come from, who benefits from them, and what assumptions they reinforce.
Language builds the organization
The module opened with critical discourse analysis and the idea that language does more than describe organizations; it helps create them (Blommaert & Bulcaen, 2000; Alvesson & Kärreman, 2000). The way organizations talk about leaders, followers, effectiveness, and success shapes what people accept as normal. Discourse “sets the setting,” creating assumptions that go unquestioned. Once you recognize those assumptions, you start to see that leadership is not simply something people possess; it is something socially recognized and continually reinforced.
The later readings connected leadership to power. Alvesson and Spicer (2012) argued that leadership deserves critical scrutiny because it often functions as an ideology that reinforces existing organizational structures. Cabantous et al. (2016) and Fleming and Banerjee (2016) added a sobering reminder: changing the language alone does not change the organization. Real change requires examining the structures, relationships, and systems that give leadership its meaning in the first place.
Waiting for Godot
The reading that stood out most was Alvesson’s Waiting for Godot (2019). Rather than criticizing individual leaders, he questioned the entire field of leadership studies. He argued that leadership research often romanticizes leaders, exaggerates their influence, and overlooks the organizational systems and contexts that actually shape outcomes.
Looking back at my own professional experience, it is easy to recognize situations where organizations focused on finding stronger leaders while paying much less attention to staffing, communication, processes, or culture. This module challenged me to ask whether leadership was truly the root problem, or simply the most convenient explanation.
Zombie leadership in nursing
For this module’s précis, my peer mentor and I selected “Zombie Leadership in Nursing: A Critical Discursive Paper” by Berdida (2026). Building on the concept of zombie leadership introduced earlier in the course, Berdida argues that many leadership ideas persist in nursing not because they are strongly supported by evidence, but because they have become deeply embedded in professional education, organizational culture, and healthcare systems.
The connection to the module is striking. Berdida shows how nursing leadership is often framed around heroic individuals expected to solve complex organizational problems through personal qualities like resilience, authenticity, or emotional intelligence. Those qualities may be valuable, but focusing too heavily on individual leaders distracts organizations from structural issues like staffing shortages, resource limitations, and power dynamics. That is exactly the caution Alvesson, Spicer, and the other assigned authors raise about treating leadership as the primary explanation for organizational success or failure.
What I appreciated most is that the article doesn’t just reject existing theories or propose yet another model to replace them. It encourages reflexivity: asking how leadership knowledge is produced, circulated, and legitimized. That mirrors the central message of this module; question not only leadership practices, but the assumptions behind leadership research itself.
My advice: question the systems, not just the leaders
If you’re about to take this course, here’s my advice: rethink whatever your default beliefs are about why organizations succeed or fail, and never oversimplify an organization’s success or failure to leadership alone.
Frequently, organizations succeed because they have strong leadership, but more importantly, they have robust systems in place that support and work in partnership with leadership. You can also observe organizations with strong systems and weaker leadership; it’s possible.
When building an organization and planning with the end in mind, consider what systems and structural changes are needed to get an entity from point A to point B. Jim Collins said in Good to Great that you must get the right people on the bus, and get the wrong people off the bus (Collins, 2001). I would expand on that: you also have to get the right systems in place, and the wrong systems, habits, or practices out.
You can’t resolve understaffing, cultural toxicity, or severely constrained resources with leadership alone; remediation requires structural changes. I learned in a political psychology course that introducing structural changes makes reverting to old systems that fail impossible.
Question your leaders always. But also question the systems those leaders function under.
References
- Alvesson, M. (2019). Waiting for Godot: Eight major problems in the odd field of leadership studies. Leadership, 15(1), 27–43.
- Alvesson, M., & Kärreman, D. (2000). Varieties of discourse: On the study of organizations through discourse analysis. Human Relations, 53(9), 1125–1149.
- Alvesson, M., & Spicer, A. (2012). Critical leadership studies: The case for critical performativity. Human Relations, 65(3), 367–390.
- Berdida, D. J. E. (2026). Zombie leadership in nursing: A critical discursive paper. Journal of Advanced Nursing. https://doi.org/10.1111/jan.70667
- Blommaert, J., & Bulcaen, C. (2000). Critical discourse analysis. Annual Review of Anthropology, 29, 447–466.
- Cabantous, L., Gond, J.-P., Harding, N., & Learmonth, M. (2016). Critical essay: Reconsidering critical performativity. Human Relations, 69(2), 197–213.
- Collins, J. (2001). Good to great: Why some companies make the leap… and others don’t. HarperBusiness.
- Fleming, P., & Banerjee, S. B. (2016). When performativity fails: Implications for critical management studies. Human Relations, 69(2), 257–276.