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Evidence suggests that the notion of diversity in employment has failed to meet expectations of increased inclusion and organizational competitiveness in an ever‐changing and globalizing economic context. This paper aims to consider the use of language of diversity in an organizational context.

Using discourse analysis, the paper examines data obtained from semi‐structured interviews conducted with human resources managers and personnel managers. Participants' descriptions of diversity in relation to one particular group of (potential) employees, namely older jobseekers, are analysed for their function and effects in relation to organizational knowledge and practices.

Diversity in employment provides organizational managers with a resource that can more usefully be viewed as linguistic than as knowledge based. Its use offers organizations a means of accounting for existing practices and should not be taken to signal commitment to organizational change.

Work that has treated discourse of diversity as evidence of efforts to promote inclusion and competitiveness has failed to consider fully the effects of language use. A focus on language as action in its own right shows how diversity in employment as used accomplished outcomes that are totally divergent from the usually assumed benefits of diversity.

The purpose of this study is to narratively explore the influence of leader narcissism on leader/follower social exchange. Moreover, while researchers acknowledge that narcissistic personality is a dimensional construct, the preponderance of extant literature approaches the concept of narcissistic leadership categorically by focusing on the reactive or constructive narcissistic extremes. This bimodal emphasis ignores self-deceptive forms of narcissistic leadership, where vision orientation and communication could differ from leaders with more reactive or constructive narcissistic personalities.

The authors argue that they encountered a compelling example of a communal, self-deceiving narcissist during archival research of Robert Owen’s collective experiment at New Harmony, Indiana. To explore Owen’s narcissistic leadership, they utilize an analytically structured history approach to interpret his leadership, as he conveyed his vision of social reform in America.

Approaching data from a ‘history to theory’ perspective and via a communicative lens, the authors use insights from their abductive analysis to advance a cross-paradigm, communication-centered process model of narcissistic leadership that accounts for the full dimensional nature of leader narcissism and the relational aspects of narcissistic leadership.

Scholars maintaining a positivist stance might consider this method a limitation, as historical case-based research places greater emphasis on reflexivity than replication. However, from a constructionist perspective, a focus on generalization might be considered inappropriate or premature, potentially hampering the revelation of insights.

Through a multi-paradigmatic analysis of the historical case of Robert Owen and his visionary communal experiment at New Harmony, the authors contribute to the extant literature by elaborating a comprehensive, dimensional and relational process framework of narcissistic leadership. In doing so, the authors have heeded calls to better delineate leader narcissism, embrace process and relational aspects of leadership and consider leader communication as constitutive of leadership.