Fantasies of leadership - identity work

In this paper we investigate and explore middle managerial talk and practice connected to expectations of leadership in a planned corporate cultural change. In the paper we follow how a middle manager positions himself in relation to the contemporary discourse on leadership. In particular we discuss how managerial claims of leadership in practice seem inconsistent with the actual practice. Based on these findings we suggest that leadership ideas could be seen as a kind of fantasy related to identity work more than actual practice. We investigate this fantasy in terms of its various sources and try to relate the fantasy construction to management education and to the planned cultural change in particular.Leadership; managerial work; identity work; identity process; fantasy