The paradigm of the charismatic leader

This invited contribution is a reflection on my motivation for writing the book Leadership and Organization: A Philosophical Introduction (Spoelstra, 2018). The premise of the book is that popular leadership adjectives, e.g. ‘transformational’, ‘authentic’ and ‘servant’, are much more interesting than the corresponding leadership constructs suggest. The book claims that these popular leadership concepts are still shaped by the figure of the charismatic leader, even though the concept of charisma in leadership studies has lost much of its appeal. In this paper,I further suggest that popular leadership concepts, including the ones mentioned, create a followership that deserves to be critically interrogated

Leadership and the stings of command

In business discourse, the leader is often portrayed as the one who changes the current order. Leaders stand above the organization, and from that elevated position they can bring about the necessary change that offers a way out of whatever crisis afflicts the business. In this paper, I consider the paradoxical fact that leaders, in our popular understanding at least, do not use orders when creating order: leadership is generally thought to exclude the coercive force that we associate with the giving of orders or commands. I explore this distinction between leading and commanding through a reading of Elias Canetti’s chapter on ‘The command’ in his book Crowds and power. My overall argument is that the violence of the command (its ‘sting’, in Canetti’s terms) can also make itself felt in seemingly benign models of leadership that challenge various forms of authoritarianism. My suggestion is therefore to put the sting back into leadership research by giving up on the idea that it is possible to conceive of leadership as operating without any coercive force

Taking credit for stupidity: On being a student in the performative university

Stupidity is generally thought of as a hindrance to learning: an epistemic vice that stands in the way of knowledge and understanding. In this article, I challenge this idea by exploring some of the meanings of stupidity that place it in a positive relation to learning. In this light, the article discusses two notions of stupidity: stupidity as unfinished thought and stupefaction through study. I show how these forms of stupidity, rather than indicating a lack of learning, can be considered as a crucial part of the learning process. These types of desirable stupidity have come under increasing threat in academic cultures that are dominated by performance criteria. On the basis of this analysis, the article argues for the importance of academic practices that make room for these positive forms of stupidity and thereby facilitate what it means to be a student

Is leadership a visible phenomenon? On the (im)possibility of studying leadership

This paper draws on Jean–Luc Marion's notion of non–objective phenomena to discuss the difficulty of studying leadership. Marion conceptualises non–objective phenomena as phenomena that cannot be captured by scientific methods. Attempts to do so result in a poor understanding of the phenomenon as it gives itself. Put differently: non–objective phenomena remain invisible to the gaze of the researcher. The paper shows how leadership scholars are indecisive about the question of whether leadership is to be understood as an objective or as a non–objective phenomenon. Or more precisely they tend to understand leadership as a non–objective phenomenon, but study leadership as if it were objective. This mismatch, the paper suggests, explains why leadership studies tends to oscillate between objectivist science and (pseudo) religious image making and why it struggles to find a foothold in either sphere. In light of this problem, the paper suggests 'leadership image studies' as a possible way forward

Theory's best practice

Why is theorizing important? What does it do? This note reflects on the broad question of what we do when we theorize, taking its starting point from the Greek notion of theoria. The argument is that theorizing as an uncertain journey, i.e. as a form of travelling along a path towards the unknown or unfamiliar, has unjustly fallen into disrepute. The notion of ‘theory’ is today primarily associated with methodology and the ideas of a fixed path or a stable position. But this is not the only type of theory that critical organization studies needs. In this paper I consider how the notions of ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ theory can help us understand the role of theorizing in organization. Theory’s best practice involves making us see and think differently, and this, in a sense, is as practical as it gets

The truths and falsehoods of post-truth leaders

Over the last three years, the idea of a ‘post-truth society’ has become a common talking point. Politicians from around the world, from Europe to South America to the United States, have been labelled as ‘post-truth leaders’, with Donald Trump being portrayed as the standard bearer for this new kind of political discourse. This article suggests that post-truth leadership is nothing new. Ever since Max Weber developed his notion of charismatic leadership in the early 20th century, Western societies have been infatuated with the idea that leaders ought not concern themselves too much with factual reality. In a sense, leadership has been post-truth all along