It’s Not All About the Self: Exploring the Interplay Between Self-leadership and the Social Work Environment

Bracht, Eva M.; Nieberle, Karolina W.; van Dick, Rolf

Abstract

Self-leadership has traditionally been positioned as an individual-level phenomenon, putting strong emphasis on individuals’ responsibility to influence themselves in order to achieve positive outcomes. However, this perspective may oversee that individuals are embedded in a social system, and that self-leadership may be best achieved as a collective endeavor that involves the individual and their interaction with the social environment. The present research thus aims to understand how individuals and their social environment at work (i.e., managers, co-workers) play together in order to enable self-leadership. The question was addressed using an inductive coding approach to qualitative data that stem from 73 semi-structured interviews with job newcomers from one organization in Germany. The findings showed that newcomers’ self-led behavior could be enabled by two key aspects of their social environment (i.e., individualized support for learning; team members acting as partners), which shaped and were shaped by newcomers’ internal process of becoming aware of their task and relations-oriented contributions at work. Overall, our findings point to the role that the social environment plays for self-leadership. We discuss implications for self-leadership theory.

Citation

Bracht, E. M., Nieberle, K. W., & van Dick, R. (2024). It’s Not All About the Self: Exploring the Interplay Between Self-leadership and the Social Work Environment. Journal of Change Management, https://doi.org/10.1080/14697017.2024.2367454

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jun 11, 2024
• Online Publication Date: Jun 25, 2024
• Publication Date: Jun 25, 2024
• Deposit Date: Jun 19, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 12, 2024
• Journal: Journal of Change Management
• Print ISSN: 1469-7017
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis Group
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14697017.2024.2367454
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/2486619