Leadership as a material-discursive phenomena: a diffractive analysis in organization

Abstract

This theoretical dissertation will be of interest for researchers concerned with developing robust theoretical and methodological approaches to better observe, capture, understand, and develop leadership as process(es). Researchers who study processual ontologies of leadership call for further theoretical and methodological approaches to capture leadership as an emergent, relational, and ongoing process (Alvehus et al., 2022; Raelin et al., 2025; Raelin, 2020; Robinson & Riddell, 2022). Addressing this call, the current dissertation brings feminist new materialism to a processual ontology of leadership, specifically Karen Barad’s (2007) theory of agential realism, and adopts a diffractive methodology to attend to how leadership is produced through ongoing relations, process, and material-discursive practices. The methodological orientation of the study builds on Simpson’s (2024) work using diffractive methodology for collaborative leadership and furthers the contributions of Harding et al. (2022) and Harding (2024), who built a theoretical foundation which brings diffractive methodology to organization studies and calls for more research to be done in new contexts that leverage diffractive methodology. By closely associating and leveraging these fields of scholarship, this dissertation: (1) further builds theoretical foundations to study emerging leadership phenomena, (2) expands opportunities for leadership observation and analysis by accounting for the materiality of technologically produced spaces, and (3) further develops a diffractive methodology that enables opportunities for observation and analysis closer to the emergent phenomena of study. In laying this groundwork, the current study makes a case to consider extending an onto-epistem-ology (Barad, 2007; Barad, 2014) of leadership as a material-discursive phenomena that emerges in process and through material-discursive practices.