Ralph Bathurst

Leading aesthetically in uncertain times

‘Leading Aesthetically’ highlights the processes by which leaders can inspire and motivate using sense perceptions that go beyond rational, objective, communication. In this article, we contribute to the theoretical development of aesthetic leadership by drawing on phenomenologist Roman Ingarden’s notions of presencing and concretization; backward reflexivity; attention to both form and content; and myth-making. We illustrate the particular relevance of these theoretical concepts to leadership in conditions of uncertainty and crisis by discussing the case of Hurricane Katrina’s impacts on New Orleans in 2005. The article concludes that aesthetically-aware leaders are able to deploy a range of intellectual and emotional skills that can complement more conventional rational-instrumental decision-making approaches in ways that can have considerable benefits in times of uncertainty, and most especially in crisis situations.

Embodied leadership: The aesthetics of gesture

This paper proposes that leadership is an embodied process which occurs among those who are in community together. This implies that the dualities between the leader and the follower morph into a set of relationships where bodies move and gesture to one another by inviting and responding to each other in open co-creative spaces. To work through our ideas, we offer an exemplar of Richard Strauss’s song Morgen! as it is rendered in performance. We locate our study within the theory of relational leadership and suggest that effective leadership draws on the abilities of organisational members to offer and respond to gestures as they occur moment-by-moment.

Shaping Leadership for Today: Mary Parker Follett’s Aesthetic

In this article we explore a view of Mary Parker Follett’s leadership writings that adopting an aesthetic lens un folds. Our approach leads us to images of circularity as experienced in both our own sensory response to her arguments as paradoxical, and as an image of her intellectual abstractions. This aesthetic inquiry values a paradoxical both-and over a bipolar either-or approach, and demonstrates that Follett’s pragmatism stems from her notion of integration and her use of circularity as a recurring leitmotif. Follett argues that leadership integration is contingent on a continual review of the total situation in all its complexity and fluidity. This leads to paradoxical notions of the subordinate role of the leader in organisational processes and the pre-eminence of leadership as an activity that concerns all actors regardless of their place within a hierarchy.

Finding Myth and Motive in Language: A Narrative of Organizational Change:

Our article defines myth as “ideology in narrative form” and explores the role of myth in an organizational change story. Following Roland Barthes we show that when word meaning shifts from first- to second-order semiology the myth that develops within the second-order semiology of a discourse may become a determinant of change outcomes. Here we tell a story of a symphony orchestra that operated as a self-governing co-operative for its first 25 years but, influenced by the storying of second-order semiology, it undertook a radical change: it adopted a corporate style of governance. We explore this change as an example of a restructuring that was assumed to be managed rationally but was in part mythologically driven.

Finding Beauty in the Banal: An Exploration of Service Work in the Artful Classroom

Artists derive inspiration from daily life. According to John Dewey (1934), common experiences are transformed into works of art through a process of compression and expression. Our paper adopts Deweys frame to demonstrate that experience in the artful classroom plays a valuable role in management education. We asked students to reflect on their work experience and then to provide an artful expression of their reflections. For this exercise we defined artfulness as a process which relies on the discursive practices of satire, and in particular irony and parody. Offering a service management class as an exemplar we demonstrate the use of these rhetorical techniques as reflective learning tools. A class of students were first prompted to consider their common experiences as both customers and service providers, and were then asked to create an ironic artefact. Our paper, which analyses a cartoon sequence produced by students in response to this assignment and in which they parody the fast-food service experience, illustrates how a business studies classroom can be transformed into an artful space.

Managing Musically How Acoustic Space Informs Management Practice

This article explores the notion of management as an acoustic phenomenon and approaches this through examining musical performance, especially how symphony orchestra musicians develop musicianship, achieve ensemble, and work together in relationship with the conductor. We explore these ideas under the rubric of “managing musically” and offer as a comparison Captain Holly Graf being relieved of her position commanding the U.S.S. Cowpens. Managing musically implies becoming sensitized to gestural nuances within the environment and among team members.

Montage: A Method for Developing Leadership Practice

The ProblemAdaptive leadership calls for leaders to open up conflicts and differences and to help others engage with them. However, this sets up some tension with organizational priorities such as ...

One size does not fit all: Organisational diversity in New Zealand tertiary sector ethics committees

New Zealand tertiary ethics committees may work from similar ethical principles but this article demonstrates that the way in which they operate is idiosyncratic. The paper builds on commentaries offered by current or former members of five New Zealand ethics committees on the organisation and practices of their committees. It examines differences among the committees with the aim of initiating an ongoing conversation about the work of ethics committees in the New Zealand context. It argues for the merits of diversity, transparency and openness as core principles for the work of ethics committees and as a platform for dealing with critique.

Avoiding the Somnolent Zone: Lessons from Singapore.

Culture and Languages, Norwegian School of Management BI, Oslo, Norway. He teaches and does research on cross-cultural communication and negotiation with special emphasis on international negotiation and negotiation pedagogy. He is also a visiting professor at ISM University of management and economics in Vilnius, Lithuania. Address correspondence to Brian Ibbotson Groth, Norwegian School of Management, Department of Communication, Culture, and Language, Postboks 580, Sandvika 1302a, Oslo, Norway; email: brian.groth@bi.no.

Hunting the ‘play’: A leadership suite in 12 movements

This article has been crafted to evoke the sound of leadership. It represents the hum and sigh and pounding of leadership as it appeared, disappeared and reappeared each time looking and sounding different in an extraordinary undertaking where senior citizens, many with no acting experience performed T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. The metaphor of a hunt and an episodic form represents our experience and we have sought to suggest sound by using principles of montage, Gestalt theory, and the poetic devise of enjambment that leave one reaching after meaning rather than being comforted by end points. This article represents research that we very nearly abandoned, because it simply did not ring true when we wrote in conventional ways. As a result, we advocate different ways of writing not only because we love good writing but because for us, different writing was the only way that we could do justice to this story.