Title:  THE AESTHETICS OF LEADERSHIP SUCCESS AND FAILURE

Type: Talk with Q&A

Language: English

Facilitator: Hans HANSEN
 

Abstract. This paper explores the aesthetics of leadership success and failure. We conducted a qualitative study where we analyzed 64 leadership narratives and asked leaders to reflect on their feelings relating to personal accounts of leadership success and failure. Our data revealed that it is not any set of emotions that determined perceived leadership success or failure, but whether or not the leader managed to act when faced with a leadership challenge. From our data, we infer that taking action, or not, was associated with leader’s sensory perceptions in applying their aesthetic schema when making sense of their experience, a consideration of others in the leadership situation, and the quality of their connection to those others. We develop an inductive model of the aesthetics of leadership success and failure. 

Speaker. Hans Hansen is an associate professor at Texas Tech University (Rawls College of Business). He has received his PhD at the university of Texas. His areas of expertise include organizational theory, organizational aesthetics, and qualitative methods. He is the author of countless journal articles in the field of management studies. He won several AOM awards (e.g. Best Paper Award Critical Management Studies, Best Paper Research Methods). He is well known for his work on compassionate research methods. He serves as a reviewer for Academy of Management Review, Journal of Management Studies, Journal of Management Inquiry, Human Relations, Management Learning, and Organization Studies, among others.