This page intentionally left blank

Fictional Leaders

This page intentionally left blank

Fictional Leaders Heroes, Villains and Absent Friends Jonathan Gosling Director, Centre for Leadership Studies, University of Exeter, UK Peter Villiers

Jonathan Gosling & Peter Villiers 2013 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2013 978-1-137-27274-4 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6 10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2013 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-44498-4 ISBN 978-1-137-27275-1 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9781137272751 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13

Contents Notes on Contributors vii Introduction 1 1 Xenophon and the Pursuit of Willing Obedience by Cyrus the Great 7 Lynette Mitchell 2 Sharing the Secret: Joseph Conrad on Leadership at Sea 18 Peter Villiers 3 The Isolation of the Spirit: Captain Horatio Hornblower, RN 37 Stephanie Jones 4 Leadership and Monomania: Herman Melville s Moby-Dick 50 Burkard Sievers 5 Nevil Shute: Pastoral 87 David Weir 6 Things Fall Apart: Chinua Achebe 99 Jonathan Gosling 7 Leadership and Improvisation: A Bell for Adano, by John Hersey 113 Norman W Provizer 8 The Silhouette of Leadership: James Bond and Miss Moneypenny 125 Beverley Hawkins 9 A Wild Sheep Chase: Haruki Murakami 139 Chris Land, Martyna Śliwa and Sverre Spoelstra 10 Leadership and Expectation: Thomas Pynchon 155 Peter Pelzer and Peter Case 11 Leadership: The Madness of the Day by Maurice Blanchot 166 Hugo Letiche and Jean-Luc Moriceau v

vi Contents 12 Leadership and Dharma: The Indian Epics Ramayana and Mahabharata and Their Significance for Leadership Today 182 Harsh Verma 13 The Leader as Poet: Tennyson, Whitman and Dickinson 202 Barbara Mossberg 14 Leadership and Tradition: Rabindranath Tagore 215 Satish Kumar 15 Leadership and Acceptability: Plato and the Odium of Truth 223 Nathan Harter 16 Ten Great Works for Leadership Development 234 Robert Adlam Index 259

Contributors Robert Adlam retired from the National Police Staff College at Bramshill in Hampshire, UK, as a reader in leadership studies, having previously directed the Special Course for many years. (This Home Office course identifies and develops police officers chosen for their outstanding leadership potential, from the 140,000 police officers in the UK.) He has a PhD in police ethics from the University of Surrey and is co-author of two books with Peter Villiers: Police Leadership in the 21 st Century (2003) and Policing a Safe, Just and Tolerant Society (2004). He edits and publishes on art, literature, philosophy and aesthetics. Peter Case is Professor of Management and Organization Studies at James Cook University, Australia. He is also Acting Director of the Bristol Centre for Leadership and Organizational Ethics, Bristol Business School, UK, and has taught the core executive MBA module Business ethics and CSR for London Business School. He served as general editor of Culture and Organization (2007 10) and is currently a member of the editorial boards of Leadership, Leadership and Organizational Development Journal, Business and Society Review and Journal of Management, Spirituality and Religion. His research interests encompass corporate social and environmental responsibility, leadership ethics and organization theory. His publications include The Speed of Organization (with S. Lilley and T. Owens, 2006) and John Adair: the Fundamentals of Leadership (with J. Gosling and M. Witzel, 2007). Jonathan Gosling is Director of the University of Exeter s Centre for Leadership Studies. He was previously Director of the Strategic Leaders Unit at Lancaster University, and he remains Chair of the International Masters in Practicing Management, a collaboration of seven business schools around the world that share in the delivery of taught modules for experienced managers in multinational companies. The group launched the Advanced Leadership Programme in 2002. His research focuses on leadership and ethics in current strategic changes, and on contemporary innovations in leadership development. His research into vii

viii Notes on Contributors how leaders learn from each other led to the formation of Lead2Lead, which provides opportunities for senior directors to learn from their peers in other companies. He is a trustee of the Fintry Trust and the J H Levy Trust, a visiting professor at Lancaster University and an adviser on leadership to the Defence Academy, in effect the United Services Staff College of the armed forces of the UK. Nathan Harter has published a range of articles on leadership, ethics and bureaucracy, and is the author of Clearings in the Forest (2006). In 2006 7 he chaired the section on scholarship of the International Leadership Association, and in 2011 he became Professor of Leadership Studies at Christopher Newport University, Virginia. Beverley Hawkins is a lecturer in the Centre for Leadership Studies, University of Exeter Business School. When not watching James Bond films she is particularly interested in exploring the processes of interaction, both formal and informal, through which people accomplish their work in organizations. She has published research on teamwork and corporate culture as well in the field of leadership studies. Stephanie Jones is Associate Professor of Organizational Behaviour at Maastricht School of Management, teaching leadership to MBA and doctoral students. She is particularly interested in the juxtaposition of history and leadership, hence her book with Jonathan Gosling, Nelson s Way leadership lessons from the great commander. She named her sailing boat after the first Hornblower novel, The Happy Return. Satish Kumar has been a Jain monk and nuclear disarmament advocate, and he is the current editor of Resurgence magazine. He is the founder and Director of Programmes of the Schumacher College International Centre for Ecological Studies, and of the Small School in Hartland, North Devon. He organised a centenary festival in honour of Rabindranath Tagore in 2012, at which all the arts to which Tagore contributed were featured, and performances included poetry, dance, song and theatre. He continues to have a wide interest in ecology and insists that reverence for nature should be at the heart of every political and social debate. Chris Land following a childhood in which his summers were spent tending sheep on the Cumbrian moors, Chris Land retired from the wilful companionship of his ovine wards to the cloistered groves of academe to mix his metaphors and set down in writing what he had

Notes on Contributors ix learned out on the fells. His contribution to this collection is one in a series of works reflecting on transhumanism and conceptions of subjectivity in the organization of social collectivities. He is paid by the University of Essex to give senior lectures in work and organization. They are often like senior moments. Hugo Letiche is Professor of Organization of Health and Social Care at Leicester University, UK. Previously he was Research Professor of Meaning in Organization at the Universiteit voor Humanistiek Utrecht, the Netherlands, where he was a director of the part-time PhD programme. His current interests centre on the politics and ethics of research, and the turn to affect. All of these concern Blanchot, whom he (co-)writes about here. Lynette Mitchell is Associate Professor of Greek History and Politics in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Exeter. She is interested in Greek political history and the development of Greek political thought, especially in the archaic and classical periods. She has published two monographs and three edited volumes, the last of which is on kingship in the ancient and medieval worlds. She is currently completing a third monograph on ruling ideology in the ancient Greek world: The Heroic Rulers of Archaic and Classical Greece. Jean-Luc Moriceau is Professor of Accountability at Telecom Business School, France, where he is in charge of doctoral education. He was core tutor of the part-time PhD programme of the Universiteit voor Humanistiek Utrecht, the Netherlands. His research interests mainly revolve around aesthetics, literature and critical management studies. Barbara Mossberg is President Emerita, Goddard College, Vermont; Director and Professor of Integrated Studies at California State University, Monterey Bay, California; and Host of the Poetry Showdown KRXA 540 AM. She is currently poet in residence at Poet s Perch, Monterey Bay, California. Peter Pelzer studied economics and philosophy. He is working as an independent consultant for banks and as a visiting professor at the University for Humanistics, Utrecht, the Netherlands. He is interested in understanding the processes he experiences during his projects beyond the textbook knowledge of organisation and management theory. His

x Notes on Contributors book Risk, Risk Management and Regulation in the Banking Industry: The Risk to Come has recently been published. Norman W. Provizer obtained his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and is Professor of Political Science, as well as founder and Director of the Golda Meir Center for Political Leadership at Metropolitan State University of Denver. His most recent publications include chapters in Leadership Studies: The Dialogue of Disciplines; A Companion to Franklin D. Roosevelt; andlincoln s Enduring Legacy. He is also co-editor of three books on the United States Supreme Court. Burkard Sievers is Professor of Organization Development, Bergische Universität Wuppertal, and Co-editor of Freie Assoziation. Hewasformerly President-Elect (2005 6) of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations. He has published widely on the psychotic organization and is a life-long devotee of Herman Melville. Martyna Śliwa is a senior lecturer in international management at the University of Newcastle Business School, UK, where she obtained her MA and PhD after graduating in economics from the University of Krakow in Poland, and where she recently co-authored a book on international management. Sverre Spoelstra is a lecturer in business administration, Lund University, Sweden. He received MAs in philosophy and in management at the University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and a PhD in management at Leicester School of Management. He is a member of the editorial collective of the journal Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization, an editor of the Dutch journal Filosofie in Bedrijf and a founding member of the Centre for Philosophy and Political Economy, Leicester. His research interests include leadership, contemporary social and political philosophy, theology and organization, literature and organization, critical management studies, customer orientation, business ethics, strategy, Spinoza, self-improvement and miracles. Harsh Verma is a development professional working in the non-profit sector in India. He is interested in understanding the influence of dharma on leadership as enshrined in the Hindu epics, and evolving perspectives on leadership relevant to the Indian context. He is the author of The Avatar Way of Leadership (2006), which analyses Indian archetypes

Notes on Contributors xi of leadership based on ancient Indian literature and contemporary leadership theory. Peter Villiers served in the British army in Northern Ireland, Cyprus and Hong Kong, and then returned to university to take an MA. He retired from the national police staff college at Bramshill in 2006 as head of human rights and is a freelance writer who has published many books and articles on leadership, ethics and human rights, as well as a marine biography of Joseph Conrad and a study of Gavrilo Princip, the assassin who started the First World War. David Weir is Professor of Management at CERAM Sophia Antipolis, France. He has a special interest in inter-cultural management, and he is a Companion of the Chartered Institute of Management and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He is a member of the Academy of Management, the British Academy of Management and the American Association of Anthropologists. He is an emeritus professor at the University of Northumbria, Visiting Professor in Management Development at Lancaster University and Visiting Professor in Management at Bristol Business School, University of West of England.