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As early as 1966, social psychologists Katz and Kahn (1966) proposed that 'when people are influenced to engage in organizationally relevant behavior, leadership has occurred' (p. 309), with leadership understood as an outcome of organisation-wide activities through a 'distribution of leadership acts' (p. 310). There are three elements to this idea: the relational quality between leaders and the workforce, the context in which relational dynamics exist and the distribution of leadership. The importance of these three elements has until recently remained relatively dormant, with the man at the top, the leader as hero, dominating leadership discourse. The trend towards more relational (Uhl-Bien and Ospina, 2012; Fitzsimons et al., 2011; Fletcher, 2011; Uhl-Bien, 2006; Popper, 2004; Russell, 2003) and distributed leadership (Gosling et al., 2009; Bolden, 2007; Spillane, 2006) suggests a greater appreciation is growing of leadership as a social process, where organisational leadership is greater than the leader role.

With four distinct models in mind, Fitzsimons et al. (ibid.) have expanded the way that we think about relational leadership. In line with Drath, they propose that the dominant paradigm can be understood as a 'relational-entity' approach. Entities being commonly understood aspects of leadership such as leaders, followers, traits,

competencies, and can be studied within the social context of the system. They particularly note that, in entity-based approaches, ontologically the language of relationships is not recognised: as Fletcher showed (Fletcher and Käufer, 2003; Fletcher, 1999), 'it disappears'.

Fitzsimons et al. called the second approach 'relational-structural'. Focusing on 'systems of relations', this approach recognises the contribution to leadership of social networks and social life within the organisation, whilst at the same time retaining some aspects of entities that exist within the organisation. It recognises that networks are both cognitive structures and actual structures, which shape leadership. The key difference here is that the social structure is not within the control of individual leaders, even though entity thinking is retained. This idea is consistent with Drath (ibid.), who particularly noted the importance of 'shared meaning-making' in leadership where 'all leadership is a shared process of relational sense- and meaning- making' (p. 149).

Referring to the work of Uhl-Bien (2006), the third approach, relational- processual, 'reflects a commitment to leadership as a distributed practice embedded within ongoing social processes in which what constitutes leadership practice is emerging and changing over time' (Fitzsimons et al., 2011, p. 322). The core principle of this idea lies in process, rather than entity. Fitzsimons et al. propose that this approach avoids the disappearing of relational qualities in entity-based thinking.

Finally, Fitzsimons et al propose the notion of a 'relational-systemic' approach, taking into account the psychological, social and contextual nature of leadership. They particularly draw on the idea of 'self-in-relation' (Fletcher and Käufer, 2003), integrating relational psychoanalytic concepts with what they describe as the 'systems thinking' of Kurt Lewin (see Section: 3.1 for a detailed discussion of Lewin's ideas on field theory) and von Bertalanffy’s (1950) 'open systems theory'. Through this approach, they link the 'intra-psychic experience of individuals, to inter-personal, group, inter-group and organizational phenomena', in context (p. 323). Unlike early writing on shared leadership that explored the role of system psychodynamics through an entity-based approach, Fitzsimmons et al. position the relational-systemic approach within an interdependent frame of thinking in which the unconscious, tacit and symbolic play a part. They explain how relational-systemic leadership is:

… a function of a collective and involves conscious and unconscious psycho-social processes that are systemic in nature and particular to a specific context. Thus leadership is always shared or distributed. (p. 320)

This recent work by Fitzsimons et al. advances an important level of detail and thinking of a relational leadership epistemology and ontology: one that takes context into consideration at a level of meaning-making.

What is yet to be investigated in more depth in relational leadership practices is at the heart of this thesis—that is, underlying and unconscious social and cultural forces that influence the way leadership is enacted. The intention is to develop a better understanding of such forces on the assumption that common patterns exist beneath the broad spectrum of perspectives, from conventional leader-follower practices to the range of relational leadership models within distributed leadership, defined above. The reason for holding this broad spectrum is in the first instance, that organisations by definition are social systems which, it is assumed, carry unconscious social and cultural forces. Second, a theory that relational behaviour is implicit in conventional leadership practices but is neither understood nor valued in the same way as it is in distributed leadership models of practice. Intention or concerted action is critical to understanding this difference, distinguishing between organisations that establish models of leadership practice that are relational, shared and/or distributed, compared to organisational practices where relational acts occur but 'disappear'—as discovered by Fletcher (1999). It is appreciated that there is not a pronounced line between these positions, but an expanding body of knowledge in which divergent perspectives exist. With that in mind, the notion of organisations being 'relational- systemic' carries a number of parallels with the term 'community' in this thesis, particularly that the body of people that make up an organisational system all participate in leadership through relational activities. Although the relational-systemic concept is positioned within a distributed leadership study of the literature, an

organisational community in this thesis is not limited to distributed leadership

practices, but includes leadership that is hierarchical, distributed, shared, collaborative, relational or a combination of all.

As in relational-systemic theory, this thesis takes into consideration the systems thinking of Kurt Lewin (field theory) and the idea that people are linked to one another through symbolic, tacit, and unconscious connections. The notion of 'self-in-relation' (Fletcher, 2004), defined as a quality in the relational-systemic approach, has commonalities with the one and the many, discussed below, where people are linked through, and live out, unconscious social and cultural practices. The intention of this thesis is to go further. It will seek to understand in greater depth how people become dynamically organised around constellating patterns of leadership in the system, and how social and cultural patterns from outside the system influence this process.