Gosling, Jonathan; Ian Sutherland & Stephanie Jones – Key Concepts in Leadership


  • tropes/ continuums/ constructs. Jonathan Gosling and his collaborators of the handbook “Key concepts in Leadership” (2012) are presenting dichotomies, not oppositions, along a continuum, concerning the construct of “leadership”. In fact, from this construct, the authors were drawing 33 continuums with two ends (the ends not being contradictories or mutual exclusives, but rather in a relation of opposition or friendly difference). In fact, Gosling and his collaborators were characterizing those continuums like “a railway track, side by side, held together and also held apart, not destined to blend into one, but useful precisely because they are laid out like this” (p. 156). Therefore, these 33 continuums could be organized according to three master tropes: synecdoche (namely, the “self” axis and the “causality” relationship), metonymy (or the relationship of “teleology” between “team/ organization/ environment”) and metaphor (according to “change” axis and “reflexivity” relationship). The fourth master trope – i.e. the irony – is missing altogether from this handbook.  And it could be made justice only with further addition of continuums discussing such axes as: “gender”, “profession”, “age”, etc, axes that are in a “transformation” relationship. Putting them all together, we could imagine a treasure map where the four master tropes are like four paths tightly enmeshed in the same net. Every path is leading to a certain number of continuums; and all those continuums are forming the construct of leadership.

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Resources:

  • Jonathan Gosling, Stephanie Jones, Ian Sutherland & Joost Dijkstra (2012): “Key concepts in leadership”, SAGE Publications Ltd
  • Jonathan Gosling & Henry Mintzberg (2003): “The five minds of a manager”, Harvard Business Review, November, pp. 1-9
  • Stephanie Jones (2008): “Leadership. Evolution and tradition” in Joop Remmé, Stephanie Jones, Beatrice van der Heijden & Silvio de Bono (eds): “Leadership, change and responsibility”, Meyer & Meyer (UK) Ltd, pp. 15-38
  • Stephanie Jones (2008): “Leadership. New challenges and realities” in Joop Remmé, Stephanie Jones, Beatrice van der Heijden & Silvio de Bono (eds): “Leadership, change and responsibility”, Meyer & Meyer (UK) Ltd, pp. 39-61

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