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Communicating Leadership: Putting Organizational Discourse at the Forefront

In this relatively short but engaging volume, Fairhurst examines discursive leadership and takes an important step in putting organizational discourse at the forefront of leadership inquiry. She begins by contrasting the discursive approach to leadership studies with that of leadership psychology. Although juxtaposing these two approaches throughout the text and making the case for a discursive approach, Fairhurst takes care to acknowledge the many contributions of leadership psychologists while simultaneously pointing out the limitations of this approach. Early in the volume, Fairhurst notes that leadership psychologists have privileged psychological and individual concerns and, by doing so, overlooked cultural and social factors. Of course, any approach to study foregrounds particular foci and backgrounds others. Fairhurst believes, however, that examinations from both leadership psychology and discursive leadership have contributions to make. She maintains that ultimately an intertwining of knowledge produced in these areas will strengthen our overall understanding of leadership*and her goal in this book is to trigger a conversation between scholars in each of these areas. In her consideration of discursive leadership, Fairhurst discusses two approaches. One approach centers on language use in interactions, which she refers to as ‘‘little d’’ discourse. The second approach is based on Foucault’s work, which regards Discourse as ‘‘a system of thought and a way of talking about a subject that together supplies the necessary linguistic resources for communicating actors’’ (p. ix), and is referred to as ‘‘big D’’ discourse.