Embracing the symbolic interactionist view of the notion of self, applying dramaturgical theories of self-presentation, this study unpacks the linkage between leaders’ lifestyle behaviours (in athletic endeavours) and the formation of their sense of self as occupants of the leadership role from a self-expressive perspective.  I conducted a study of a group of sporty top managers in Sweden. With interviews and observations, I anchored the research focus in verbal expressions within storytelling and in performative expressions of the top managers. Drawing on social interpretations of sport and athleticism and with a dramaturgical analytical frame, I examine how the sporty top managers interpret their athletic endeavours to express important values, beliefs and concerns to express ‘whom they want to become’ as occupants of the leadership role.

The analysis shows that lifestyle behaviours in athletic endeavours serve as a new source of self-meanings with which the sporty top managers create and express wishful notions about themselves as occupants of the leadership role. By incorporating athletic values with their distinctive understanding of a ‘good leader’, the top managers seek to present themselves with an idealized image of ‘athletic leaders’. In this process, the top managers outline a role-script that is mainly characterized with self-disciplinary qualities and masculine values, they define the leadership context with athleticism in the centre, and they express an overt intent to elevate some people and exclude others in organizational processes based on athletic values in which they personally believe. Hence, the process of formation of self as ‘athletic leaders’ is not only ‘self-relevant’, but it is personally, interpersonally and socially (organizationally) meaningful. The analysis also shows that the top managers seek to give legitimacy and an elitist status to the idealized view of self by using expressive strategies to appropriate their appearances, regulate emotions and bodily senses, and mould a gendered self-image.  

This thesis contributes to leadership studies in several ways. First, the study expands on extant literature theorizing the linkage between lifestyle behaviours and the formation of sense of self as occupants of the leadership role from a new angle. It contends that lifestyle behaviours such as athletic endeavours have become a prime site where business leaders express creative narratives regarding an idealized view of themselves. Second, this study further advocates that the formation of sense of self of leaders is not a simple outcome of different forms of regulative discursive regime.  Rather, this process involves creative self-reflexive activities that address individuals’ personally held values, their distinctive pursuits in becoming an idealized leader, relations with others, and some prevailing leadership notions that they believe to be closely associated with the nature of lifestyle behaviours in which they engage and commit. Third, this study confirms the notion that the formation of the understanding of self of leaders is not only a function of verbal expressive devices, but that it also involves individuals’ performative strategies in ‘expressive control’ (e.g. Down & Reveley, 2009; Goffman, 1959). This thesis adds to understanding this point of view through a discussion of self-presentational practices in non-work related activities. Finally and most importantly, this study suggests that the process of formation of the sense of self of business leaders is expressive of meanings on personal, interpersonal and social dimensions in its own right. That is, through creating new self-meanings in micro-level practices in lifestyle behaviours, the occupants of the leadership role define the situational characteristics (the leadership context), express intentions to enact the power feature of inclusion and exclusion of others; generate new understanding of the leadership role, and they reproduce and strengthen some prevailing leadership ideals.

We argue that the healthy, fit and athletic body plays an essential role in the way contemporary managerial identities are construed. Drawing on insights from Judith Butler, we study these bodily identities as a form of regulation in organizations. We identify the cultural basis of regulation, show how it operates through specific norms, and detail how it implies gender. Based on an empirical study of men and women in management who are passionate about their healthy and fit bodies and athletic lifestyles, we demonstrate how norms set by managerial athleticism - understood as a particular regulative regime - operate through three discursive practices: perfecting the body, advocating against non-fit bodies, and becoming a role model. We show how the norms operate in both explicit and abject fashion and how they are implied in masculine language and materialized in physical (athletic) bodies. We offer new insights on how bodily identity regulation occurs and elucidate the gendered complexity and contradictions inscribed in managerial athleticism.

This study examines one athletic Swedish CEO’s body work. Through the management of the visible body image, regulating embodied experiences and emotion work, the CEO incorporates athleticism in his leadership philosophy, and infusing the body work in ‘healthy’ organizational culture. Adapting a symbolic interactionist embodiment notion, drawing on Goffman’s dramaturgical notion of self-presenting technique, this work anchors the analytical unit in the CEO’s reflexive, embodied self-making process, examines how the “front stage” self-image is being managed, controlled, maintained and modified through the ‘gaze of others’. Led by the idea of becoming the role model in all domains of others’ lives, through diligent bodily work, the leader instills the ideal of body perfection into managerialism. Firstly, the study argues that the body is simultaneously the expression of the power status and the demonstration of new aesthetics of leadership. The object and subject of body, “are emergent from one another”. With this, secondly, the study sheds light on the understanding about how individualized body work is a power laden and political process; it prepares and conducts the actor’s social self for his public actions. Thirdly, the corporeal aspect of leadership uncovers the forging of the dominant body norm in the organization. Through scrutinizing how the CEO defines the distinctions between ‘fit’ and ‘unfit’, ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’, ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’, it is found that the CEO, with his body work, intends to create embodied organizational identity categories which may enact the power feature of inclusion and exclusion. The micro-level practices embedded in the normative social network relations attend to sustain uphold and even intensify the existing social injustices and inequalities. Hence, there is a risk that the body norm initiated by the corporate CEO may bring the rise to some ‘bodies’ and excludes the different others.