Abstract

This chapter challenges the prevailing framing of inclusive leadership as an unequivocal remedy for organisational inequities. While widely celebrated as a progressive route towards more equitable and diverse workplaces, inclusive leadership remains under-examined as a managerial practice that may reproduce the very hierarchies it seeks to dismantle. We argue that the dark side of inclusive leadership can be traced to its leader-centric focus and business-case rationalities, which depoliticise inclusion, transforming it into a commodified, performative exercise. Drawing on critical diversity and organisation studies, the chapter examines the limitations of inclusive leadership’s ontological foundations and questions the legitimacy of its emancipatory claims. Cautioning against the co-option and depoliticisation of diversity, equity, and inclusion agendas, this chapter calls for a reorientation of the ontological grounding of inclusive leadership towards a relational ontology of interdependence, which offers a more radical possibility for advancing social justice.