Practicing leadership in Greenlandic organizations

Developing the business society and strengthening the private sector plays a major role in the Greenlandic independence debate. Leadership is known to have an important role to play in the development of organizations. Despite this, there is a scarceness of research on leadership and organizing that seeks to explain how organizational development takes place in Greenland, and in Artic in general. This article aims to fill this void by addressing how leadership unfolds in Greenlandic organizations.
The study is based on a theoretical understanding of leadership as a collective and dynamic action, taking place among several actors in organizations. By studying processes of everyday leadership practices, the research contributes with knowledge about how activities of leadership engage with complexity and uncertainty that characterize the organizational setting.
The research is based on a purposive sampling of 20 in-depth interviews and conversations with senior management in various Greenlandic organizations. Through empirical examples grasping the ongoing, daily interactions as an interplay between various organizational actors, the article qualifies understandings about leadership in Greenland.
The analysis of the qualitative data focuses on key issues regarding leadership in Greenlandic organizations and addresses how Greenlandic leaders develop and deal with opportunities and difficulties in their daily activities. The findings demonstrate how Greenlandic leaders emerges themselves in problematization to find relevant and useful descriptions of the significant aspects in complex situations, and how to structure a reflection upon these challenges.