Aesthetic leadership

Available online at www.sciencedirect.com The Leadership Quarterly 18 (2007) 544–560 www.elsevier.com/locate/leaqua Aesthetic leadership Hans Hansen a,⁎, Arja Ropo b, Erika Sauer b a College of Business Administration, Texas Tech University, MS2101, Lubbock, TX 79409, USA b University of Tampere, Finland Abstract We introduce aesthetic leadership as a promising approach in leadership studies. Two current movements in leadership research, the inclusion of followers in leadership models and the exploration of subjective leadership qualities, make taking an aesthetic perspective in leadership especially attractive and timely. Aesthetics relates to felt meaning generated from sensory perceptions, and involves subjective, tacit knowledge rooted in feeling and emotion. We believe the aesthetics of leadership is an important, but little understood, aspect of organizational life. For example, while we know followers must attribute leadership qualities such as charisma and authenticity to leaders to allow for social influence, we know little about how these processes operate. We propose that followers use their aesthetic senses in making these assessments. We relate aesthetic leadership to several current topics in leadership research, and outline the assumptions and methods of aesthetic leadership. © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Aesthetics; Follower-centric; Charisma; Authenticity; Attribution 1. Introduction Leadership research has been watering down the rich phenomena of leadership. Jerry Hunt (1999) was not subtle about the irony when he picked the representative quote: “If leadership is bright orange, then leadership research is slate grey”(Lombardo & McCall, 1978). Part of our enduring romance with leadership comes from its attractive explanatory power in the absence of rational, objective explanations of extraordinary organizational performance. “Leadership”has become the perfect pat response to “the ill-structured problem of comprehending the causal structure of complex, organized systems” (Meindl, Ehrlich, & Dukerich, 1985, p. 79). Somewhere along the way, “leadership” became a shorthand answer when positive organizational outcomes could not be causally determined. Leadership became the great dumping ground for unexplained variance. The lofty status to which leadership was elevated, in the stark absence of empirical findings, was Meindl`s premise of the romance of leadership (Meindl, 1995, Meindl et al., 1985). The “romanticized conception of leadership results from a biased preference to understand important but causally indeterminant and ambiguous organizational events and occurrences in terms of leadership”(Meindl et al., 1985, p. 80). Bresnen (1995) also describes how leadership has been socially constructed to explain superior or poor leadership performance. ⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 806 742 2304. E-mail address: hans.hansen@ttu.edu (H. Hansen). 1048-9843/$ - see front matter © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.leaqua.2007.09.003 H. Hansen et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 18 (2007) 544–560 545 We were not in search of excellence as much as we were in search of a way to calm our collective anxiety to explain everything in organizations via scientific realism1 — a complex we acquired from modeling the social sciences after the natural sciences. If things went from good to great and we were unable to correlate antecedents with outcomes, our catch-all antecedent became “leadership.”We brushed much under this rug. We then pulled a fast one on ourselves. We began looking for antecedents and consequences to leadership. Never mind that leadership itself was ambiguous (Pfeffer, 1977), just so long as we could suggest that anything good in organizations was the result of it. We got so giddy about leadership that we forgot it was our pat answer for the unexplainable, and went about looking for rational, objective, causal explanations, making great efforts to quantify aquality we used to explain what we could not quantify. Kafka would have found this sort of insanity all very delightful, and we might add “leadership tomfoolery” as a symptom of “academic amnesia” (Hunt & Dodge, 2000). But before one begins to think we are taking leadership to task, we want to make sure we say that we find leadership refers to phenomena we find magically creative, inspirational, and life-full. Our plea is that we might treat it as such. Leadership is a vibrant bright orange, and we are amazed at its resilience in the face of leadership studies hammering it into a shapeless, hapless, colorless, life-less condition. Meindl (1995) was remorseful that so many people took the romance of leadership as a call to abandon leadership studies. Rather, we should take leadership`s larger-than-life role as a demonstration of just how important and significant leadership is for organizational participants as they make sense of their experience. It also denotes a welcomed departure from leader-centric approaches toward more follower-inclusive and social constructionist approaches to leadership. “…the romance of leadership is about the thoughts of followers: how leaders are constructed and represented in their thought systems (Meindl, 1995, p. 330).” The purpose of this article is to introduce aesthetic leadership as a unique, distinct, and valuable approach within leadership studies. We set out to build a case describing why leadership studies needed to move towards aesthetics, but as we reflected on recent trends in leadership research, it became clear to us that leadership was already moving toward an aesthetic approach. The question then became: Is leadership ready for the place it is already heading? We think it can be, and taking an aesthetic perspective will help leadership studies thrive in the areas it has just begun to venture into. We will explain why we think an aesthetic perspective can benefit leadership studies, and lay out what an aesthetic approach to leadership entails. We define aesthetics and review the quickly building steam of organizational aesthetics. We will then discuss how aesthetics can complement and offer valuable insights to leadership given current trends in leadership studies. We think leadership is just beginning to grapple with some issues that organizational aesthetics is particularly suited for. In fact, given the combination of current movements in leadership, ones that continue to inch closer and closer to aesthetic issues, it is time that leadership embrace an aesthetic approach. More than demonstrate what aesthetics has to offer some current leadership topics, we hope to introduce a distinct approach within leadership studies — aesthetic leadership. 2. Aesthetics We should start by saying that aesthetics is not synonymous with art or beauty. When we talk about the aesthetics of leadership we want to avoid any superficial reference to “the art of leadership.” By aesthetics, we refer to sensory knowledge and felt meaning of objects and experiences. Reason and logic has often been contrasted with emotion and feeling, but what they both have in common is that they are sources of knowledge and generate meanings we rely and act on. Aesthetics involves meanings we construct based on feelings about what we experience via our senses, as opposed to the meanings we can deduce in the absence of experience, such as mathematics or other realist ways of knowing. The Greek word aisthesis refers to any kind of sensory experience regardless of whether it is sensuous or artistic. Philosopher Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten is considered the father of aesthetics. Along with Vico (1744, reprinted in 1948), he contended that knowledge was as much about feelings as it was cognition (Baumgarten, 1750). Aesthetic knowledge involves sensuous perception in and through the body (Merleau-Ponty, 1962) and is inseparable from our direct experience of being in the world (Dewey, 1958; Gagliardi, 1996). The contention that the felt meaning based on 1 Boal, Hunt, & Jaros (2003) contrast realist ontologies with subjectivism, symbolic/interpretive interactionism, social construction and post-modernism. They further distinguish positivism and scientific realism, which can attend to unobservable phenomena, such as charisma, by making inferences from its effects. 546 H. Hansen et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 18 (2007) 544–560 experience was just as important as cognitive understandings was made in contrast to Descartes` detached intellectual epistemology. Cartesian thinking did not so much separate the mind/body as simply ditch the body. As a result, the mind (cognitions, intellect, logic) was privileged as a source of knowledge and our sensory-based and embodied ways of knowing were marginalized. This marginalization is ironic because aesthetic experience shapes and precedes all other forms of knowledge (Husserl, 1960; Langer, 1942). We might find a touch-point for those unfamiliar with aesthetics in Polanyi`s idea of tacit knowledge. Polanyi (1958, reprinted in1978) contrasted explicit, objective knowing with more implicit, subjective, tacit ways of knowing. Leaders are said to rely on this tacit knowledge when they rely on “theirgut feelings”or instincts. Knowledge at the tacit level is often described as deeply ingrained, inexpressible know-how that resists clear, logical explication. For our purposes, the embodied, tacit knowing corresponds roughly to sensory/aesthetic knowing, particularly as opposed to intellectual/ explicit knowing. Robert J. Sternberg and colleagues (Hedlund et al., 2003; Sternberg & Horvath, 1999) have used tacit knowledge to explain leader success. They note that tacit knowledge is drawn from everyday experience, guides action, and is commonly understood in terms like professional intuition. Though much of the tacit knowledge relevant to perform successfully is not easily expressed, it does increase with experience in a particular domain, and will be relied upon and instrumental in pursuing goals more that knowledge based on someone else`s experience. Aesthetic knowledge is similarly drawn from experience, guides action, and is difficult to codify. But distinct from tacit knowledge, the focus of aesthetic knowledge is skewed toward knowledge drawn from more aesthetic experiences or knowledge used to construct, represent, and interpret the felt meanings and sensory experiences related to organizational life. Just as we do not want to confine aesthetics to art, we want to avoid relegating aesthetics to being only about beauty. When we do associate aesthetics with art, it is probably because art communicates in paralogical ways, giving meaning through expressions other than the logical, such as emotional. Because of its representational form and its experiential nature, art involves our aesthetic senses and generates a different type of knowledge. However, we make aesthetic judgments about many things we experience besides art. Art has an aesthetic, but so do places and interactions, such as an office and how a factory is laid out, or a job interview. A conversation with our boss might leave us with a bad taste in our mouth or feeling inspired in ways that go beyond any content of the conversation. Likewise, the association with beauty is too confining. We often think of aesthetics as referring to beautiful things, as when we find something aesthetically pleasing. Aesthetics do involve judgment, but beauty is only one of several aesthetic categories. There is also the aesthetically ugly, sublime, comic, or grotesque (Strati, 1992). And while we often think of aesthetic judgments as those we make toward art, aesthetics involves sensory assessments of how we feel about anything. We can also consider what an event, object, or interaction evokes in us emotionally. It might be beautiful, ugly, inspiring, creepy, funny, warm, ironic, etc., as opposed to what it might mean for us objectively (our market share will increase, my office will be larger, I`ll have more free time, my sales commission will decrease, our division will be split in two, my budget will be cut, etc.). There are many feelings and emotions that sensory experiences give rise to, and many types of aesthetics to describe those felt meanings. Our focus is on that felt meaning and the implications it has for leadership studies, as opposed to rational, instrumental, intellectual or logical meanings. 3. Organizational aesthetics Seminal organizational theorist Chester Barnard (1938, p. 235; and cited in Vaill, 1989) said management was “aesthetic rather than logical” and better described by terms such as “feeling, judgment, and sense,” but organizational studies has taken a scientific realist approach in search of effectiveness. Ottensmeyer (1996) pointed out that though we consistently experience and refer to organizations in aesthetic terms, we have not approached them that way academically. Once we recognize that aesthetic meaning is all around us in everyday life, and we rely on aesthetic meaning to guide our behaviors, thoughts, and actions just as much as we rely on rational, logical, instrumental reasoning, then we must also recognize that aesthetic meanings are just as pervasive in work settings as they are in everyday life. We generate all kinds of meaning based on the sensory experience of our work lives, and aesthetics abound in organizations, but are greatly underrepresented in organizational studies (Strati, 1999, 2000a,b,c). For example, we have not approached decision-makingaesthetically,even though we know we make important decisions using aesthetic judgment as opposed to rationality. Leaders have “gut feelings” that they trust in spite of objective reports and data models that draw different logical conclusions. H. Hansen et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 18 (2007) 544–560 547 It might be more correct to say one of our aims is to introduce a new aesthetics of organizing, because organizational research itself has a particular aesthetic already. For example, Guillen (1997) has argued that Taylorization and Scientific Management presents an aesthetic which equates beauty with efficiency. This aesthetic dominates organizational thinking, and is represented in statements like “it`s working beautifully” (White, 1996), which means that it is working smoothly, efficiently, exactly as planned — the realization of the modernist management ideals. Given that this aesthetic has directed our conceptualization of organizing, Strati (1995) suggests alternative aesthetics can help redefine what organization is, and new criteria, besides efficiency, by which organizations might be judged. This is really more forgotten than uncharted territory. Strati (1999) reminds us that empathic knowledge, feelings and intuition, the stuff of aesthetics, once had a prominent place in management science (Weber, 1922). Strati (1992, 1996, 1999) is most responsible for introducing an aesthetic approach to organizational studies. Aesthetics provides a philosophical point to develop an alternative to the mainstream paradigm that emphasized the logical, rational, and linear nature of organizational practices such as management and leadership (Ropo, Parviainen & Koivunen, 2002). Since then, the empirical and theoretical analysis of the relations between aesthetics and organization has been well-established. There are even several reviews of the organizational literature on aesthetics and various codifications of the field of organizational aesthetics (Dean, Ottensmeyer, & Ramirez, 1997; Gagliardi, 1996; Ramírez, 2005; Strati, 1999; Taylor & Hansen, 2005). In general, an organizational aesthetics perspective seeks to explore the everyday experience of organizing in terms of its aesthetic construction. Strati (1992) makes a detailed epistemological argument for aesthetic inquiry as the way to get at experience and aesthetic/symbolic organizational forms, and highlights areas where aesthetic understanding is particularly appropriate but analytical understanding is not. Strati (1999) wants to centralize these aesthetic elements of organizational life, and further distinguish aesthetics as a way of knowing in contrast to intellectual–rational knowing. Dean, Ottensmeyer, & Ramirez (1997) point out that an aesthetic perspective addresses questions and issues that are fundamentally different from instrumental or ethical concerns. The approach is not only unique but important. For instance, people are attracted to things they see as beautiful and are repulsed by the ugly. We want to be involved with organizations that appeal to us on aesthetic dimensions. Wal-mart might ask: ‘What aesthetics are associated with our company? How do people feel about us?’ While stock price may have done well, people form their judgments about companies based on more than stock price. Even just asking aesthetic questions will shift the perspective of organizations and point to a broader set of actions. Inquiry into the aesthetic dimension of organizations entails several forms and methods (Carr & Hancock, 2003; Gagliardi, 1996; Guillet de Monthoux, 2004; Jones, Moore, & Snyder, 1988; Linstead & Hopfl, 2000; Strati, 1999; Taylor, 2002; Watkins, King, & Linstead, 2006), but most common elements include analysis of the day-to-day feel of the organization, questions of what is considered beautiful or ugly, and other aesthetic content that has not been part of much of mainstream organizational research. For example, Ramírez (1991) describes how empirical research can grasp the beauty of the organization as a whole, and others have argued that organizational processes should be grasped as aesthetic phenomenon, because organizational participants are “craftspersons and aesthetes” (Jones, Moore, Snyder, 1988, p. 160). Gagliardi (1996) explores feelings of/toward organizational artifacts that constitute the organization`s symbolic landscape which are exercised at the emotional and aesthetic level rather than the normative and cognitive one. Instead of favoring either the cognitive or aesthetic, Pierre Guillet de Monthoux (2004) encourages us to foster the tension between the rational and the artistic as a source of creative potential in organizations. Looking at art and aesthetics inside organizations, Dobson (1999) classifies managers as technicians, moral managers, and aesthetic managers. The emergence of the aesthetic management paradigm places the aesthetic manager as an artisan in an aesthetic firm, seeking excellence in craft instead of an exclusive pursuit of profit. Similarly, Dickinson & Svensen (2000) outline what will constitute a beautiful corporation in the coming aesthetic age. At the managerial level, Austin & Devin (2003) contrast artful making with industrial making in comparing artful managers to theatre directors. Guillet De Monthoux, Gustafsson, & Sjostrand (2007) provide an array of cases that explores aesthetic leadership in different contexts. Organizational aesthetics certainly has more roots in Europe (Ramírez, 2005), but as the field has gotten larger,it has begun to transcend geographic boundaries. Recent literature points us to ways aesthetics might be approached across various topics. Linstead & Hopfl (2000) made feeling and emotion central to the aesthetics of organizing. Ramírez (2005) developed a theory to empirically examine why some aesthetics appeal to us (“it is working beautifully”) more than others (“it is working effectively”), emphasizing the importance of symbols that are used in experiencing and sharing aesthetic dimensions (1987). Chua & Degeling (1993) add aesthetics as another lens for critically assessing 548 H. Hansen et al. / The Leadership Quarterly 18 (2007) 544–560 managerial actions and others draw on aesthetics to continue the critical project in management studies (Cairns, 2002; Dale & Burrell, 2002; Hancock, 2002). Finally, Pelzer (2002) takes an aesthetic perspective in exploring disgust that comes from an organizational change. 4. Organizational aesthetics and leadership We believe leadership studies are already on a trajectory toward more aesthetic dimensions of leadership. The aesthetics of leadership lies at the conjunction of two current movements in leadership research. The first movement began with conceptualizations of leadership as the management of meaning (Calder, 1977; Smircich & Morgan, 1982) and continues to grow along with interest in social constructionist, subjective, and symbolic approaches to leadership. The qualities we highlight within these approaches are transformational/visionary leadership, charisma, and authenticity. The second movement is toward follower-centric models of leadership, such as those rooted in social influence models that take the basic premise that without followers in the picture, there is no one to be lead. Meindl (1990) and Lord & Maher (1991) were some of the first to explicitly state that one was not a leader until others saw one as a leader. This made others central to leadership. Previously, the focus was on individuals and essential traits or behaviors, and not the perceptions of others. It is at the point of convergence of these two movements, follower perspectives of leadership qualities, that we see the strongest contribution for aesthetic leadership. Abriefsketchofthehistoryofleadershiprevealssteadyprogressiontowardsleadershipqualitiesandtheinclusionof followers, as well as the convergence of these two movements. Early leadership studies attempted to identify, measure, and isolate universal traits successful leaders needed to possess to be effective or to be considered leaders. Following trait theory, the next broad phase of leadership studies sought to identify behaviors or styles that leaders should demonstrate (see House & Aditya, 1997 for a review of trait, behavior, and charismatic theories). The menu included selections of autocratic or democratic styles, task or relationship orientations, initiating structure or consideration, and the like. It was hard to isolate effective styles because results showed that all styles worked in some context. The field quickly decided that determining just which style leaders needed to exhibit was contingent upon the particular situation a leader faced (Fiedler, 1967). It was at this time that leadership models began to take followers into account, with follower-readiness determining just how much of a participative style a leader could exhibit (House, 1971). With followers entering the picture, other topics that explored social influence emerged (cf. Sussmann & Vecchio, 1982), and we think we are still in this mode today. We do not think the search for leadership qualities is a return to trait theory. While trait theory searched for objective, quantifiable characteristics that leaders had, measurable to variable degrees, the turn to leadership qualities has not only included more subjective qualities, but also recognized that these were qualities a leader could develop, as opposed to essential traits they had or they did not. The focus is on how those leadership qualities allowed for social influence over others. Transformational and visionary leadership, charismatic leadership, authentic leadership all imply social influence as a positive motivational aspect of these qualities. Charismatic leadership studies that take a follower-centric perspective demonstrate the turn to leadership qualities, a substantial shift from identifying and measuring proper proportions of explicit traits, behaviors, and styles. In those approaches, followership is central in charisma because no leaders have charisma unless followers bestow it upon them. Charisma might be a quality a leader can possess, but does not allow for social influence until recognized and attributed bythe followers. Hence, this highlights the now common contention that there is no leadership without followers. That brings us to the present day, where research is beginning to explore more and more tacit, implicit leadership qualities that are just as dependent on followers` judgment and recognition as the leader exhibiting these qualities. These leadership qualities and how they are judged based on followers sense and experience of them during the social influence process puts leadership squarely into the realm of aesthetics. The impressions and effect that visions have on followers, as well as what sense followers make of, or any judgment they make about, leadership qualities like charisma, authenticity, and credibility are all related to sensory-based knowledge based on their experience of those phenomena, or the aesthetics of leadership. As leadership pushes forward into these new territories, new approaches and new methods will provide new insights. Leadership studies have revealed much about leadership phenomena, but older approaches to leadership need to be complimented by new ones, especially as we reconceptualize the leadership process. Overall, a psychological approach has dominated leadership research (Parry, 1998). The psychological approach relied on instrumentalism, a strong but very narrow measure of the overall leadership experience. Leadership has rightly turned to social influence processes, which cannot be reduced to the measurement of psychological factors. People use more than rationality and ... - tailieumienphi.vn