Abstract
Leadership studies has been criticised for its lack of theoretical precision. Alvesson argued that leadership conceptualisation is ‘often substandard, both methodologically and theoretically’ (2019: 27). One of the reasons could be found in the propensity of leadership studies to create adjectival forms of definitions, without emphasizing the need for precision in conceptualization. Over the last 50 years, we have seen many popular adjectival new additions to leadership, including transformational leadership, authentic leadership, ethical leadership, distributed leadership, collective leadership etc. Inclusive leadership is one of the latest additions and has been gaining in popularity since 2006 – both in conceptual and practical terms. It is often linked to EDI agendas in organisations and is sometimes a core part of organisational leadership competency frameworks. Yet, like many other leadership adjectives, inclusive leadership is criticised for not being a different conceptualisation of leadership itself, but an exercise of adjectivisation with the intention to create a syntagma (“inclusion” + “leadership”) that is empirically and conceptually under-developed (Korkmaz et al., 2022). Again, like many other exercises of leadership adjectivisation, it assumes that both elements of the syntagma are semantically universally recognised. It further carries assumptions of transformative power, positivity (as a leadership phenomenon, in terms of promoting diversity and producing superior employee outcomes) and has been praised as superior above other types of leadership for being ethical and leading to improved employee wellbeing. Yet, there are also deep concerns that so far inclusive leadership is an overly westernised notion, that we lack adequate translation within and across cultural contexts and that we have no idea of the dark side of inclusive leadership (Korkmaz et al., 2022). With this developmental paper, we do not intend to add to the long list of studies on inclusive leadership that offer universally applicable characteristics or behaviours that define inclusive leadership. Instead, we offer insights from a SAMS/BAM funded project that sheds light on the socio-cultural and linguistically situated nature of the concept of inclusivity, its complex translatability across languages and its impact when associated with leadership. We start this developmental paper with a brief overview of existing insights and trends within this burgeoning area of inclusive leadership studies. We then provide a critical analysis of the missing link: cultural understandings and attention paid to translation. Finally, we introduce our empirical study. When presenting this developmental paper at the conference, we will also be able to share empirical insights.