Leadership through the Lens

Interrogating Production, Presentation, and Power

Edited by Creshema R. Murray - Contributions by Mia L. Anderson; Raymond Blanton; Kristen L. Cole; Loren Saxton Coleman; Joseph M. Deye; Donna M. Elkins; Gail T. Fairhurst; Sharmila Pixy Ferris; Maxine Gesualdi; Creshema R. Murray; Leah M. Omilion-Hodges; Alexis Pulos and Mark Ward Sr.

Television informs our perceptions and expectations of leaders and offers a guide to understanding how we, as organizational actors, should communicate, act, and relate. Because of its pervasiveness as a medium and the impact it can have in influencing expectations of leadership and related behavior within organizational life, television can be understood an important pedagogical tool. Leadership through the Lens: Interrogating Production, Presentation, and Power is an edited collection of 11 chapters that address representations of leadership in scripted and unscripted workplace settings, showcasing the innovative ways in which diverse leadership styles are illustrated in a variety of contexts on television. With a unique approach at the intersection of leadership and mass media studies, this book shows how the two disciplines coexist to inform how leadership culture is produced and transformed via presentation and representations on television.

Lexington Books

Pages: 200 • Trim: 6¼ x 9½

978-1-4985-6151-8 • Hardback • December 2017 • $111.00 • (£85.00)

978-1-4985-6153-2 • Paperback • February 2020 • $43.99 • (£35.00)

978-1-4985-6152-5 • eBook • December 2017 • $41.50 • (£35.00)

Subjects: Language Arts & Disciplines / Communication Studies, Business & Economics / Leadership, Performing Arts / Television / General

Leadership through the Lens

Interrogating Production, Presentation, and Power

Hardback

Paperback

eBook

Summary

Television informs our perceptions and expectations of leaders and offers a guide to understanding how we, as organizational actors, should communicate, act, and relate. Because of its pervasiveness as a medium and the impact it can have in influencing expectations of leadership and related behavior within organizational life, television can be understood an important pedagogical tool. Leadership through the Lens: Interrogating Production, Presentation, and Power is an edited collection of 11 chapters that address representations of leadership in scripted and unscripted workplace settings, showcasing the innovative ways in which diverse leadership styles are illustrated in a variety of contexts on television. With a unique approach at the intersection of leadership and mass media studies, this book shows how the two disciplines coexist to inform how leadership culture is produced and transformed via presentation and representations on television.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 200 • Trim: 6¼ x 9½

978-1-4985-6151-8 • Hardback • December 2017 • $111.00 • (£85.00)

978-1-4985-6153-2 • Paperback • February 2020 • $43.99 • (£35.00)

978-1-4985-6152-5 • eBook • December 2017 • $41.50 • (£35.00)

Subjects: Language Arts & Disciplines / Communication Studies, Business & Economics / Leadership, Performing Arts / Television / General

Author

Creshema R. Murray is assistant professor of corporate communication at the University of Houston-Downtown.

Table of Contents

Preface by Creshema R. Murray

Part 1: Production of Knowledge
1. Teaching Leadership Through Television By Gail T. Fairhurst and Joseph M. Deye
2. Thank God It’s Thursday: The power of Shondaland, gender and leadership by Creshema Murray
3. Loyalty Leadership: Learning/Performing Leadership in The Americans by Raymond Blanton
4. Politics, Race, Gender and Leadership: An Analysis of Media Representation of Government Agency Training By Mia Long Anderson

Part 2: Presentation of Identity
5. ‘Boy bye’: A textual analysis of Angela Rye and the politics of representation of Black women in cable television news by Loren Saxton Coleman
6. Pinned Down by Profit: Leadership and the Branded Body in Total Divas By Kristen Cole and Alexis Pulos
7. Younger and Discursive Leadership: Representations of Gender and Generational Distinctions by Maxine Gesualdi
8. Gender and Transformational Leadership in “New Tricks” By Sharmila Pixy Ferris

Part 3: Power of Opportunity
9. Television Transcendent: How the Electronic Church Constructs Charismatic Leadership as a Norm of American Religious Life by Mark Ward, Sr.
10. Self-disclosure and Leadership Exploring Rules and Boundaries for Leaders’ Management of Private Information By Donna M. Elkins
11. The contextualized workgroup: Examining the presentation and practice of leader, peer, and team relationships in television by Leah Omilion-Hodges

Reviews

An ideal book for those interested in understanding the intersections among leadership, media, and communication. This collection explores how entertainment media portrayals of leadership, power, teamwork, control, and resistance shape widely-held norms and expectations about how leadership should be performed in the world. This work catalogs how stereotypes involving the body, race, religion, age, and gender are positioned in new media and then influence notions of leadership recursively.
— Ryan S. Bisel, University of Oklahoma