There's no such thing as a journal paper

Ford, Harding, Gilmore and Richardson’s ‘Becoming the leader: leadership as material presence’, was accepted for publication in Organization Studies in late 2016. The paper conforms with the dominant format for academic journal papers. It: outlines how the idea for the study on which the paper is based was arrived at, lists its aims and objectives, discusses its methodology and methods, has a long section labelled ‘data analysis’, a discussion that develops a theory arising out of the data analysis, and a short conclusion looking forward to future work. It gives the impression of a smooth passage from inception of an idea about a topic that needs to be researched through the fieldwork to the paper’s publication. Because Organization Studies is listed as 4* in the Chartered Association of Business Schools (CABS) journal rankings list, a considerable proportion of the paper is devoted to the methodology of the study, and to its theoretical location. We are quite proud of these – we developed a method for interviewing people that helps them articulate abstract ideas, and we brought together new materialities theory, notably the work of Karen Barad, with psychoanalytical theory, through the work of Christopher Bollas.