Online company blogs as narrations of plural leadership

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine how companies that characterise their leadership style as plural, shared or distributed narrate their actions and practices in online blog texts.

Design/methodology/approach

The data consist of online blog texts published by seven Finnish IT companies. The analytical strategy draws on both thematic and structural approach to narrative analysis. The blog texts were analysed thematically to uncover different aspects of plural leadership. The analysis revealed a narrative pattern consisting of three categories that explain why and how companies implemented plural leadership.

Findings

The first category in the narrative pattern describes the motivation for engaging in plural leadership. The second category explains how the companies broke down existing hierarchies in order to create new flexible work roles. The third category describes how the organisations sought to create a communal culture and a strong sense of trust using symbols, material objects and spaces.

Research limitations/implications

The study contributes to leadership research that emphasises post-heroic leadership conceptualisations. The narrative pattern provides future empirical studies a framework for analysing plural leadership practices in different organisational settings. Whereas this study sheds light on the ways in which organisations and their leadership practices can be investigated using online data, traditional organisational ethnographies can make a further contribution to this line of research.

Practical implications

Implementing plural leadership in organisations can lead to informal power plays. Attention should be paid on to how plural leadership evolves in flat hierarchies and promotes community building.

Originality/value

Company webpages have rich information on how companies operate and perceive themselves. They provide yet another window for observing organisational activities. This study makes a novel contribution to how plural leadership is practiced and conceptualised in online blog texts.

Citation

Ropo, A., Mäkinen, E.I. and Seppä, I. (2020), "Online company blogs as narrations of plural leadership", Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 33 No. 4, pp. 609-621. https://doi.org/10.1108/JOCM-09-2018-0266