Spacing leadership with Greta Thunberg: A materialising ‘story-so-far’

Smolović Jones, Owain; Smolović Jones, Nela and Carroll, Brigid (2024). Spacing leadership with Greta Thunberg: A materialising ‘story-so-far’. Organization Studies (In press).

Abstract

How should we interpret the figure of Greta Thunberg and the leadership constituted through and around her? This question drives an inquiry that enhances knowledge of the materialising of leadership through a spatial analysis rooted conceptually in critical geography and the communicative constitution of organizations (CCO). Building from the insights of geographer Doreen Massey and CCO scholar Consuelo Vásquez, the inquiry contributes by surfacing the spatial relations and communicative practices that co-constitutively knit together bodies and their objects in leadership, enabling a rich inquiry that illuminates mobilisations around the most complex issue of the day – climate change. Building multimodally with data derived from media and speeches, we posit four communicated ‘stories-so-far’ of Thunberg, decentred and communicated figures who merge and co-exist to constitute a composite Thunberg-the-Leader: the Child, Traveller, Activist and Learner. We then offer a model theorising the underlying spacing leadership practices that act across and between figured stories-so-far, drawing them together, making certain constitutions of leadership (im)possible: shrinking, naturalising, struggling and clearing. Concluding, we assert that this approach holds the possibility of making abstracted aspects of leadership materially present, while drawing together conceptual resources that have to date not been placed in productive dialogue.

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