Intersectional Leadership in the Organization: A Systematic Literature Review and Conceptual Model

Intersectional leadership (IL) is an emancipatory, transformative form of leadership, which appreciates intersectionality in its enactment. IL promises to confront inequity and injustice and provides a useful tool to understand the complexity in subordinated leadership experiences of multiply-marginalized, historically excluded (MMHE) groups stemming from interlocking systems of oppression. The purpose of this study is to explore how IL is enacted in organizations. We systematically reviewed 55 empirical studies on IL in the organization and classified the literature using Choo and Ferree’s (2010) framework that proposed three types of practicing intersectionality research—group, process, and system-centered. We found that IL studies have been dominated by a group-centered approach, which focused on the leadership experiences of individuals from MMHE groups and contributing factors impacting their leadership experiences. We also identified the tension between “fixing the oppressed self” and “fixing the oppressive system” in the studies from the group-centered approach. A few IL studies from the process-centered approach illuminated structural, relational, and dynamic processes in IL. The emergence of intersecting identities as a double-edged sword and ongoing negotiation, navigation, and (trans)formation were the characteristics of IL. Based on the results, we proposed a conceptual model for the enactment of IL in the organization. We concluded with a call for illuminating leadership as a promising process to achieve organizational social justice from an intersectional perspective.