Profaning the sacred in leadership studies: A reading of Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase

The leadership literature is full of stories of heroic self-sacrifice. Sacrificial leadership behaviour, some scholars conclude, is to be recommended. In this article we follow Keith Grint's conceptualization of leadership as necessarily pertaining to the sacred, but-drawing on Giorgio Agamben's notion of profanation-we highlight the need for organization scholars to profane the sacralizations embedded in leadership thinking. One example of this, which guides us throughout the article, is the novel A Wild Sheep Chase, by the Japanese author Haruki Murakami. By means of a thematic reading of the novel, we discuss how it contributes to profaning particular notions of sacrifice and the sacred in leadership thinking. In the novel, self-sacrifice does not function as a way of establishing a leadership position, but as a way to avoid the dangers associated with leadership, and possibly redeem humans from their current collective urge to become leaders. Inspired by Murakami's fictional example, we call organization scholars to engage in profanation of leadership studies and, in doing so, open new vistas for leadership theory and practice. © The Author(s) 2012

Restating the Case: How Revisiting the Development of the Case Method Can Help Us Think Differently About the Future of the Business School

© Academy of Management Learning & Education. Although supportive of calls for business schools to learn the lessons of history to address contemporary challenges about their legitimacy and impact, we argue that our ability to learn is limited by the histories we have created. Through contrasting the contested development of the case method of teaching at Harvard Business School and the conventional history of its rise, we argue that this history, which promotes a smooth linear evolution, works against reconceptualizing the role of the business school. To illustrate this, we develop a "counterhistory" of the case method-one that reveals a contested and circuitous path of development-and discuss how recognizing this would encourage us to think differently. This counterhistory provides ameans of stimulating debate and innovative thinking about how business schools can address their legitimacy challenges, and, in doing so, have a more positive impact on society

Identification of the Most Active Sites and Surface Water Species: A Comparative Study of CO and Methanol Oxidation Reactions on Core-Shell M@Pt (M = Ru, Au) Nanoparticles by in Situ IR Spectroscopy

This paper reports a detailed electrochemical in situ surface-enhanced infrared reflection absorption spectroscopic (SEIRAS) investigation of two different core-shell, Ru@Pt and Au@Pt/C, metal nanoparticles (NPs). We were able to identify the most active sites and surface water species involved in the carbon monoxide oxidation reaction (COR) and methanol oxidation reaction (MOR) on these NPs. We discovered that exposing the as-synthesized Ru@Pt NPs to air could turn them into largely surface-ruthenated NPs whose structure was rather stable under multiple potential cyclings between -0.2 and 0.7 V (vs Ag/AgCl, 3 M) and reduction at -0.3 V but could be annealed by the COR. The SEIRAS data enabled the identification of the Ru-coordinated-to-Ru, Ru-coordinated-to-Pt, and Pt-islands-on-Ru-core sites on the COR-annealed Ru@Pt NPs among which the most active sites were the Pt-islands-on-Ru-core sites for the COR and MOR, as evidenced by an onset potential as low as -0.1 V for the COIL For the Au@Pt/C NPs, the SEIRAS data showed a much higher onset potential (0.45 V) for the COR that accounted for their much lower activity observed as compared to that of the Ru@Pt in terms of COR and MOR. Among the three different surface water species, namely the water monomer, the weakly hydrogen-bonded water, and the strongly hydrogen-bonded water, the SEIRAS data pointed to the weakly hydrogen-bonded water as the dominant source that provided oxygen for the COR and MOR. Furthermore, the SEIRAS data showed that the surface water structure was very different in reaction media, i.e., with preadsorbed CO or methanol, from that in pure supporting electrolyte, an observation that strongly cautions the practice of using the latter to identify the active water species.CSC (Chinese Scholar Council)[2009631048]; NSFC[20921120405, 21021002]; NSF[CHE-0923910]; DOE[DE-FG02-07ER15895