The persistence of kinship in understanding leadership: Reflections on practice in a community, volunteer-led organisation

This paper explores anthropological kinship theory as the forgotten dimension of the theory of leadership within organisations. Illustrated with data from seven club leaders, who tell the story of their long engagement with club management, the paper explores how leadership is produced and reproduced by those at the centre of club life.
Taking a distinctly, inductive interpretivist approach, data collection uses the storytelling method described by Gabriel (2001), Boje (1991) and Sims (2003) and analysis was undertaken using the insightful method of Culler (1982). As the GAA has grown and become more institutionalised its organising practices have adopted the rhetoric and techniques of other institutions.
Despite this, encoded in GAA life is the rhythms of family and community; no longer feudal and pre-modern, but not quite a Weberian bureaucracy. This data and analysis is framed by a discussion on kinship in contemporary organisation studies of leadership. What emerges is the dominant significance of family and kinship in understanding how leadership works in these organisations. As such, this paper is an early attempt at theorising the nature of kinship in GAA club leadership; one of use to those with a broader interest in organisational leadership.