Seeing with counterfactual lenses: Alternative assumptions at the intersection of leadership and identity

Abstract

Two increasingly popular domains of research have made great strides explaining leadership via an identity lens (Haslam et al., 2022). These domains focus either on a leader’s own identity or on a leader’s influence in representing and altering the identities of others. Our paper contributes to these areas by highlighting dominant assumptions underlying the literatures and generating counterfactual assumptions in need of systematic exploration. It is important to acknowledge and evaluate assumptions because of the role they play in what we study and how we interpret data. As such, our paper brings existing assumptions to light and generates counterfactuals that are in need of more sustained empirical work. Our work thus sets out to a) expose existing assumptions at the intersection of leadership and identity, b) generate theoretically plausible counterfactual assumptions and c) identify themes tying our counterfactual assumptions together. Together, this paper supports, challenges, and promotes the extension of research applying an identity lens to leadership.