A description of the relationships between leadership, self, and sensemaking: Emergent relationships viewed through a constructivist lens of social theory.

摘要

This study entails a multidisciplinary, multilevel, conceptual framework that recognizes the biological, psychological, and social nature of leadership, allowing individual consciousness to unfold while revealing relationships between leadership, self, and sensemaking. The purpose of the study is twofold. One, the study furthers our understanding of the relationship between leadership and sensemaking, reflecting the social nature of organizational life. Secondly, the study further clarifies the relationship between the concepts of leadership and self, reflecting the autopoietic nature of human systems.; This study found that leadership and sensemaking are autopoietic processes, self-referential and self-reproductive. Sensemaking as a basal element of communication is influential in the constitution and construction of self and leadership. Participation in this study, through communication and dialogue, illustrated the constructive nature of leadership, self, and sensemaking and revealed the constitutive quality inherent in all three, necessary for evolutionary purposes.; Three themes emerged from the combined phenomenology and case studies. The first theme addresses the self-referential nature of leadership expressed in the tension between personal achievement and control, and the resultant effect on choice and decisions within meaning systems. The second theme described the impact of roles, goals, and individuality on the functions of identity, participation, and time within meaning systems and specifically, the emergence of leadership and self. The third theme described the organizing influence of action and understanding on the leadership and social action.; Conclusions about leadership, sensemaking and self are explored in the final section of this study. Implications and recommendations for future research and practice are discussed.