Critical leadership

Leaders play a crucial role in helping organisations navigate and solve some of society’s most pressing issues and challenges. Truly understanding modern leadership requires radically re-examining what it means to be an effective leader today, plus “taken-for-granted” assumptions about the nature of leadership and followership, by revisiting ideas such as collective leadership, emergent leadership and authentic leadership.

We combine theory, practice and lived experiences of leadership with the aim of broadening intellectual and organisational understandings of what constitutes effective leadership in an increasingly complex global context of diversity, climate change and poverty.

Our work disrupts long-standing perceptions of power relations by, for example, identifying leadership practices across all levels of organisations and economies, not just at the top of organisations or in highly remunerated professions, and foregrounding leadership expressions that have otherwise been marginalised because of gendered, racial or heteronormative assumptions.
We address implications for new ways of thinking about leadership for research and organisational interventions as a way to prepare scholars and leaders more effectively to address the questions and practical challenges in our increasingly complex world.

Our researchers

Collaborators

External

Our partners

Our team collaborates with various organisations to provide recommendations on how organisations can better prepare leaders to better cope with, manage and address contemporary issues and challenges. We have worked with executive leaders in global banking, finance, accounting, hospitality, retail, and sport.

Featured publications

Baker, D. T., & Rumens, N. (2025). Men’s anxieties and defences regarding gender (in)equality in the workplace: An object-relations psychoanalysis of organisational masculinities. Human Relations, 78(7), 905-933.
Gibson, A. M., Greenwood, M., Cox, J. W., & Oakley, J. (2024). What Heidegger can offer critical leadership studies: An ontological approach. In The Routledge Critical Companion to Leadership Studies (pp. 17-30). Routledge.
Fry, L. W., & Vu, M. C. (2024). Leading without a self: Implications of Buddhist practices for pseudo-spiritual leadership. Journal of Business Ethics, 190(1), 41-57.
Vu, M. C., & Gill, R. (2023). Are Leaders Responsible for Meaningful Work? Perspectives from Buddhist-Enacted Leaders and Buddhist Ethics. Journal of Business Ethics, 187(2), 347-370.
Gibson, A. McCance, Greenwood, M., Wolfram Cox, J., & Oakley, J. (Forthcoming 2023). What Heidegger can offer critical leadership studies: An Ontological Approach. In D. Knights, O. Smolovic-Jones, H. Liu, & S.E Wilson (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Critical Leadership Studies.
Wolfram Cox, J., Madison, K., & Eva, N. (2022). Revisiting emergence in emergent leadership: An integrative, multi-perspective review. The Leadership Quarterly, 33(1), article 101579.
Eva, N., Wolfram Cox, J., Tse, H., & Lowe, K. (2021). From competency to conversation: A multi-perspective approach to collective leadership development. The Leadership Quarterly, 32(5), 101346.
Vu, M. C. (2021). Tensions and Struggles in Tackling Bribery at the Firm Level: Perspectives from Buddhist-Enacted Organizational Leaders. Journal of Business Ethics, 168(3), 517-537.
Wolfram Cox, J., & Hassard, J.(2018). From relational to relationist leadership in critical management education: Recasting leadership work after the practice turn. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 17(4): 532-556.

Ongoing projects

Delivering Rugby Australia’s “From Green to Gold”: The Role of Coach–Referee Dynamics in Strategy Success (or Failure). The project was undertaken by Darren Thomas Baker, in partnership with Rugby Australia, with funding from the Monash Business School Industry Research Incentive Scheme (IRIS).
Stepping into leadership: Understanding the career mobility and leadership practices of women and men in precarious occupations in Australia. The project was undertaken by Darren Thomas Baker.