Conclusion
Besides focusing on the content of leadership (e.g., meaning of leadership, significance of leadership, the actions of leaders), the study of leadership discourse should analyze the multiple ways people construct leadership. This study is an effort in that direction, and its contribution needs to be seen in the context of the interdisciplinary nature of leadership.
Various societies engage in various discursive practices of portraying leadership and leaders through arts, texts, media, and rhetoric. While doing so, thy use discourse strategies to represent meanings of leadership in ways that fit their perception, amplify certain aspects, and r minimizing other aspects. This study looked at how business oriented publications portray leadership by focusing on five leading business e-publications. It found six discourse strategies, namely simplification, amplification, enumeration, imperative, typification, and metaphor. The strategies fulfil two main functions. One is to emphasize a certain meaning of leadership. Amplification and imperatives fulfil the function of emphasizing. The second is to simplify a process or a phenomenon, which is attempted by simplification, enumeration, typification, and metaphor.
The basis of the writers’ claims to knowledge about leadership is rarely stated. However, they occasionally premise their statements on prior leader observations, scholarly sources, or authoritative sources.