Leadership in alternative organisations: exploring Quaker organising
This project explores leadership and power dynamics in alternative organisations which are not capitalist, managerialist or hierarchical.
Project overview
Leadership tends to be studied from a heroic perspective, i.e. relating to an individual positional leader in hierarchical organisations. This project takes a post-heroic and critical leadership perspective to explore leadership and power dynamics in alternative organisations which are not capitalist, managerialist or hierarchical. These organisations tend to be pursuing democratic and participative ways of working such as: co-operative, social enterprise and non-for profit organisations, and religious, spiritual, utopian-inspired communities, as well as social movements. Through conducting interviews and completing workshops, Quaker organising is being studied.
Outputs
No Leaders Here an open-access audio play produced for the ESRC Festival of Social Science 2021 which explores leaderless organisations and the dynamics of power and influence within them. The conversation in the podcast is a fictional dialogue that aims to prompt listeners to reflect on the issues considered in relation to their own work in grassroots, activist and community organising. which explores leadership and influence in grassroots and community organising.
Written outputs
Allen, S., & O’Reilly, D. (2023). Leadership within ‘alternatives’. In D. Schedlitzki, M. Larsson, B. Carroll, M. C. Bligh, & E. Olga (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Leadership (pp. 371–382). SAGE.
Allen, S. (2022). Exploring relations of power in Quakers alternative forms of organizing. In M. Godwyn (Ed.), Research Handbook on the Sociology of Organizations (pp. 491–508). Edward Elgar Publishing.
Allen, S. (2019). Exploring Quaker organising to consider the possibilities for relational leadership, Quaker Studies, 24 (2), pp. 249-269
