Reading leadership through Hegel’s master/slave dialectic: Towards a theory of the powerlessness of the powerful

Abstract

Reading leadership through Hegel's Master/Slave dialectic:Towards a theory of the powerlessness of the powerful Abstract This paper develops a theory of the subjectivity of the leader through the philosophical lens of Hegel's Master/Slave dialectic and its recent interpretation by the philosopher Judith Butler. This is used to analyse the working life history of a man who rose from poverty to a leadership position in a large company and eventually to running his own successful business. Hegel's dialectic is foundational to much Western thought, but in this paper I rashly update it by inserting a leader in between the master, whose approval the leader needs if s/he is to sustain self-hood, and the follower, who becomes a tool that the leader uses when trying to gain that elusive approval. The analysis follows the structure of Butler's reading of the Dialectic, and develops understanding of the norms that govern how leaders should act and the persons they should be. Hard work has become for leaders an ethical endeavour, but they grieve the sacrifice of leisure. They enjoy a frisson of erotic pleasure at their power over others but feel guilt as a result. They must prove their leadership skills by ensuring their followers are perfect employees but at the same time must prove their followers are poor workers who need their continued leadership. This leads to the conclusion that the leader is someone who is both powerful and powerless. This analysis is intended not to demonise leaders, but to show the harm that follows the emphasis on leadership as a desirable and necessary organizational function.

“Grace Under Pressure”: How CEOs Use Serious Leisure to Cope With the Demands of Their Job

“…The interview protocol cast a wider net, starting from the initial broad question: “Why do some top CEOs engage in serious leisure?” After a set of questions intended to assess the “seriousness” of their leisure interest, I continued with open questions such as “What does this activity do for you?” and “What does it bring you?” While I did not ask direct questions about stress management nor about the demands of the top job, I believe that this approach elicited more genuine insights into the CEOs’ struggles with their role demands (as the CEOs offered them unsolicited) than a more direct approach would have done [see Harding (2014) , for an example of positive managerial talk obstructing the usefulness of research interviews]. The protocol was followed loosely, allowing and encouraging the CEOs to engage in storytelling and to freely associate starting from the topic of their passionate non-work interest.…”

“…and "What does it bring you?" While I did not ask direct questions about stress management nor about the demands of the top job, I believe that this approach elicited more genuine insights into the CEOs' struggles with their role demands (as the CEOs offered them unsolicited) than a more direct approach would have done [see Harding (2014), for an example of positive managerial talk obstructing the usefulness of research interviews]. The protocol was followed loosely, allowing and encouraging the CEOs to engage in storytelling and to freely associate starting from the topic of their passionate non-work interest.…”

The leadership shadow: How to recognise and avoid derailment, hubris and overdrive

“…From a deep exploration of one leader's subjectivity, Harding (2014) concludes that 'becoming a leader requires repudiating everything that is other to the requirement of hard work', e.g. 'one's secret, guilty desires, which are then projected into followers' (p. 407), which is in itself an 'ungrievable loss which must be defended against' (p. 408).…”

Leadership in organisational change: A post-structuralist research agenda

“…Thus, they have sought to challenge the role of conflict in formulating and implementing OC, seeing struggle not as a 'barrier', as is often the case in mainstream accounts, but as the highlighting of alternatives (Knights and Murray, 1994; see also Alvesson and Sveningsson, 2003;Collinson, 2011). They have even begun to problematise the 'heroic leader' (Alvesson and Spicer, 2012;Collinson, 2011;Fairhurst, 2010;Harding, 2014;Van Knippenberg and Hogg, 2003), suggesting that 'leadership can exist without leaders' (Sutherland et al, 2014: 764), and interrogating how leaders come to occupy a symbolic role in organisations and change (Ford, 2006). Such perspectives delve into what appeals to 'followers' within change discourses, analysing how individuals are brought into hoping for the leader's 'vision' to become true, that s/he will protect the organisation against threats, or that they will themselves develop 'leadership' practices.…”

“…This requires documenting how leadership was mobilised (or not) to build a wide chain of equivalence and emphasise multiple possibilities. By (tendentially) emptying leadership of specific meaning, this signifier may become synonymous with demands as diverse as cooperation, performance, excellence or organisational pride (Gagnon and Collinson, 2014;Harding, 2005Harding, , 2014Spicer and Alvesson, 2011). Such an analysis should investigate the diverse and contradictory demands assembled under the guise of leadership and 'taught' during widespread leadership training programmes, and how/whether such demands grip the senior managers and other stakeholders.…”