Peer Reviewed Academic Journal Article

Background to the topic

The peer reviewed academic journal article examined the growth of situated leadership practice through an autoethnographic study of the first three months of being a chief operating officer. James Stewart (second co-author) is being nominated as a chief operating officer in the research, to investigate the complicated situated process connected to the development of leadership practice through an examination of situated curriculum.

Situated curriculum can be defined as "an order or pattern of activities that enable a 'novice' to becoming a fully participating member practicing a particular role" (Gherardi et al. 1998, 279). Gherardi et al. (1998) have declared there are some methodological difficulties between situated learning and associated situated curriculum. In order to get rid of those obstacles, they have explored James's incipient period as beginner of chief operating officer through an autoethnographic approach. This kind of approach has been used in a range of contexts. For example: teaching, research, parental relationships and career development. (Kempster and Stewart, 2010).

Research aims

The article contribute a lot to the management learning by researching aspects of situated curriculum within a manager's legitimate participation influencing the development of situated leadership practice. The traditional positivistic epistemological tenets of reliability, validity and generalization are treated very differently within autoethnography. The autoethnographic account seeks to illuminate the experience of history through a narrative. Examining autoethnography along a continuum of science, looking at facts at one end, and art as the exploration of the meaning behind the experience at the other end, we will position the story in the middle--building out from a detailed diary towards a thematic co-constructed story. (Kempster and Stewart, 2010).

Methodology

The authors briefly describe the method of co-constructed autoethnography used in this research, the focus of the study, the ethno, is James within a specific culture. The approach places emphasis on the writing and describing, the graphy of the three months from December 2006 to February 2007. The spirit of this ethno-graphy, in the form of reflecting critically on the self within a social context, leads to a creative aesthetic narrative.

Back and forth auto-ethnographers gaze. First they look through an ethnographic wide angle lens, focusing outward on social and cultural aspects of their personal experience and then they look inward, exposing a vulnerable self that is moved by and may move through, refract, and resist cultural inter-pretations (Ellis, C. 2004, 37).

The story of James examines his journey of legitimate peripheral participation and the activities of the situated curriculum that he learnt in order to become a full member of the senior leadership team.

Results

At the beginning of January, James has gained a new experience as expressed with his novel discomfort that such expectations brought. A further and connected aspect of the situated curriculum is the different nature of the leader-led relationship. There are two people have been working together for three years with an established structure of relationships and identities. However, the promotion of James triggers a restructuring of the nature of their relationship. The discomfort of this change is recognized by the 'novice'. The discussion in regard to privileged access to information confirms acceptance of James into the community. Such acceptance appears to allow him to experiment in the discourse to confirm the rebalancing of identities.