Getting your message across? The evolution of leader vision and managed pluralisation of leadership

Abstract

Whereas vision is central to understanding leadership influence in organisations, it has mostly been explored either in predominantly hierarchical or predominantly pluralistic contexts. We know relatively little about how the processual dynamics, content and sources of vision evolve when senior teams are undergoing a transition from hierarchical to collective leadership. Drawing upon a qualitative longitudinal study undertaken within a UK-based academic–practitioner partnership in the healthcare sector, we examine the transitions and transformations in leader vision triggered by deliberate attempts to pluralise leadership arrangements in its senior team. We develop a process model that highlights three stages in the evolution of vision (‘problematising’, ‘debating’ and ‘accepting’) and accounts for variation in how different components of vision develop over time. Our contribution lies in underscoring the heterogeneous, temporally fluid and contested nature of vision; its continuous shaping as a result of the dynamic interplay between individualistic and collectivistic forces; and the multifocal and multidirectional agentic influences involved in its evolution. We argue that managed pluralisation, viewed as an interplay between hierarchical and collective forms of control, leads to accommodation and incorporation of divergent views within the evolving shared vision, facilitating acceptance but diluting the potential of the resulting vision to stimulate change.