‘Should I Stay or Should I Go?’ Exploring Leadership-as-Practice in the Middle Management Role

This article explores dilemmas in middle manager work through the perspective of leadershipas-practice. An autoethnographic account is outlined of how a dilemma is addressed by a middle manager. The account shows how a dilemma faced by a middle manager needs to be understood as situated within the flow of activity that is itself nested in a context of roles and relationships as well as the strategic context. The authors show how the outcome of the dilemma became accommodated within the emergent practice in the organisation with no sense of recognition of the dilemma’s impact. The notion of middle manager agency within leadership-as-practice is explored through aspects of moral disengagement. The article problematizes two aspects: firstly, that normative ethical theorizing that has been unable to cater for the complexity of middle manager work seen through the practice lens; second, that traditional notions of leadership as ’leader’ appears absent from the narrative, yet seen through the lens of leadership-as-practice, with attention to context, agency, activity and outcomes, a very different perspective can be seen. Finally, the article gives insight and structure to researching leadership-as-practice