The road to Ithaca: a mentee’s and mentor’s journey

In this article a teacher/researcher and an academic mentor explore the potency, possibilities and tensions of the mentoring relationship from personal perspectives. The concept of mentoring as described in this article uses the model of mentor/mentee relationship as portrayed in Homer's epic narrative the Odyssey. In the examination of the experience of the mentoring process, as it was interpreted and implemented by Genie Gabel-Dunk and Anna Craft, significant elements emerge as tools for professional development: Being a Teacher to a Teacher; Being a Role Model; Being a Counsellor; Being a Facilitator; Being a Supportive Protector; and Being a Guide. The concept of mentorship is critical to quality education in that it fosters the creativity, professional development and growth of individuals and is a facilitator in the passing on of skills and professional standards. The authors believe that if as educators we value individuality, then we must work diligently to preserve the concept and practice of mentorship within the current context of the economic rationalisation of teaching resources

Leading Through Social Distancing: The Future of Work, Corporations and Leadership from Home

At this critical juncture when the COVID‐19 health crisis has disrupted our ways of living, working and relating to each other, we are perforce to explore and cocreate the Future we want to be part of. Drawing upon feminist theory, we introduce the notion of ‘inclusiveness’ as a fresh conceptualization of the impact of meaning rendering from working, almost irrespective of where work takes place. The ‘new (ab)normal’ that is emerging, is challenging the future of corporations not only in fulfilling their purpose, but also in leading the future leadership necessary to restore the balance between economy and ecology. In this respect, the corporation is more than a workplace, and leadership is more than a relational process. Inclusive leadership as we will elaborated when ‘leading from home’, invites us to rethink social distancing and remote working as a platform for rebuilding the fundamentals of humanity. We propose an agenda for leading on leadership in cocreating the future of work and corporations by outlining themes as well as, an approach to connecting that no longer separates research and business practice

Ways of seeing : topographic and network representations in organisation theory

Organizations (and social systems more generally) have traditionally been represented topographically-as if they were landscapes. Such an image is limited. A network representation of organizations, redescribing the latter as locales over which constellations of relations are woven, is more appropriate to cope with transformation and change. Topographic representations, however, are not useless. To the extent that social life is carried out in institutions concerned with efficiency; and insofar as power, control, and accountability are inextricable features of social systems, network representations will be limited, and topographic representations will not vanish. Organizational representations tend to oscillate between conceiving organizations as objects vs. sets of relations. Neither of these images alone is sufficient to capture organizational functioning