Histories of leadership in the Copenhagen Phil – A cultural view of narrativity in studies of leadership in symphony orchestras

The article offers a cultural view of narrativity in studies of leadership in addition to the mimetic, the structural and the communicative views to account for the role of culture in making sense of leadership. It proposes three interlinked aspects of narrativity: performativity, structure and cultural embeddedness as methodological considerations challenging the alleged innocence of narratives. It demonstrates the cultural propensity of certain understandings of leadership, and it suggests historical accounts of leadership constitute templates for future understandings of leadership. This is unfolded in the case of a symphony orchestra, and exemplified by two narratives producing different understandings of leadership.