Inside the leadership discourse : discursive leadership effectiveness as applied in Germinal of Zola -

Abstract

The analysis of leadership has generated a great wealth of investigations and approaches related to trait theories, behavioral, contingent and exchange lead theories. In the course of our analysis, we purport to elucidate the source of the leadership influence and the effectiveness of the leadership construct by deconstructing its composition. A special focus on the discursiveness of leadership will be emphasized with a comparison as to the psychological lead approach and the discursive approach. Leadership as “thought” is analyzed, studied and evaluated based on the leader’s mental world, his personality, biography, traits and temperaments. The discursive approach emphasizes the outward, the spoken, the externally constructed social phenomenon in the fluidity of the speech and in the in medias res fabrication of the discourse. The example of discursive leadership as highlighted in the novel Germinal of Zola is used as a basis model for the illustration of our conclusions. In Germinal, Zola depicts the vices of capitalism and the greed of the bourgeoisie all the while emphasizing the discrepancies of socialism and Darwinism as substitutes. We investigate the discursive relationship as constituted in the fiction whilst analyzing the extent to which the influence exerted by the leader on the followers is a sole function of the discourse and its strategies or the non-discursive aspect of the leader as correlated to the psychology. The spontaneity and the premeditation of the discourse as fluidly created in the fiction as well as the leadership constituencies’ interaction in the formulation of the influential durable model between the leader and the followers will be dissected. Utilizing a plethora of leadership theories and lenses, such as critical discourse analysis, semiological, narratological, stylistic, linguistic and interactional analysis, we extract and identify a leadership model emphasizing the interaction existing between the different leadership constituencies and highlightin