The stories we tell about our origins can shape how we think and act–helping us make
sense of and communicate who we have “become” over time. To better understand the role …

Identity has emerged as a potent force in understanding leadership. This chapter reviews
the contributions of role identity, social identity, and social construction theories toward …

Purpose Leadership theories have moved from viewing leadership as an innate trait,
towards models that recognise leadership as a social construction. Alongside this …

This article explores a new approach to researching leadership in organizations through
drawing on psychosocial accounts of the lives of managers as leaders. This study of …

Identity has been a central concern of social theorising for several decades, making
appearances in the work of sociologists (Berger and Luckmann, 1966; Giddens, 1991) …

Career stories of 50 female executives from major corporations and high-growth
entrepreneurial ventures suggest two alternative accounts of how women legitimize their …

Leadership and related phenomena—such as power, authority and influence—have been
the subject of much theorizing, research, and certainly practice. While numerous models of …

This article examines elite business careers through the dual lens of sensemaking and
storytelling as recounted in life-history interviews with business leaders. It explores how they …

This qualitative study explored ten women leaders' perspectives about the processes
associated with constructing their leadership and purpose stories or narratives. The study …

We conceptualize leadership development as identity work and show how subtle forms of
gender bias in the culture and in organizations interfere with the identity work of women …