Studying leadership-as-practice : a process perspective

Leadership-as-practice (LAP) is one of a suite of new theories subsumed under the term ‘collective leadership’. We develop LAP as a dynamic theory of practice by drawing on Pragmatist philosophy and the recent literature on the communicative constitution of organization (CCO). In parallel with this theoretical development, we propose a mobile methodology that takes a novel approach to shadowing situations as they emerge in practice. We illustrate the interplay between theory and method using an empirical case set in a Scottish health and social care organization as it seeks transformative change through collaborative leadership. The paper contributes an integration of theory and method for exploring the processual dynamics of LAP