Cultural Narratives of Academic Leadership at the Dawn of the 21st Century.
2012; Volume: 2012; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1938-9809
Autores Tópico(s)Leadership and Management in Organizations
ResumoIntroduction There's a certain hubris in out to chart the discourse of academic as we begin the second decade of this new century. My paper doesn't have the millennial scope that is, perhaps, implied by my title. My more modest intention is to focus instead on what's being written about at this moment--from the late 90s through the first decade of the 21st century. These narratives have a short shelf life, an appropriate metaphor because, like goods in a produce market, they spoil relatively quickly. And each appears to offer a definitive assessment of what makes a great leader; while in truth, most of us would probably agree with the three coauthors of Discovering Your Authentic who say that, despite thousands of analyses, none of these studies has produced a clear profile of the ideal leader. (1) interests me are two key terms in circulation: and management. I am going to explore the proposition that the terms are gendered: men lead and women manage. Aye, the rub. Leaders provide vision; managers implement a vision. Followers want leaders who can not only capture their hearts, minds and spirits, but who can also the way things get done--for the better (HBR On Point, advertising blurb for choosing the Right Style). In the words of John Kotter: Leadership and management are two distinctive and complementary systems of action ... Both are necessary for success (38). (2) He adds, is about coping with complexity ... Leadership, by contrast, is about coping with change (39-40) and setting (42). controls people by pushing them in the right direction; motivates them by satisfying basic human needs (47). How well the two mesh depends on the ability of both the and manager to negotiate, because all modern organizations are increasingly interdependent (43). Kotter notes that one often ends up with overmanaged and underled corporations. One could say the same of universities because, like other organizations, they frequently embrace 'long-term planning' as a panacea for their lack of direction and inability to adapt. (3) In their 2010 book, The Truth About Leadership, James Kouzes and Barry Posner--who have written for decades on the topic--argue that leadership is an affair of the heart informed by passion; whereas there's a prevailing myth that managers are supposed to divorce their emotions from a situation and approach things purely rationally. (4) We will return in a moment to the question of how a trait like passion may be received differently depending on whether a man or woman is displaying it. I'm looking through you, you're all the same. First, I want to look at who's writing these books and articles on leadership. In the summer of 2001, I attended the University of California Management Institute, an annual workshop the focus of which was Leadership Challenges During Economic Hard Times. We were provided with preparatory reading material, which included a recent article from the Harvard Business Review that asked, by way of title, Why Should Anyone be Led by You?, (5) an article from the Harvard Business Review on Leadership, What Leaders Really Do, (6) and excerpts from The Challenge: How To Keep Getting Extraordinary Things Done in Organizations. (7) Finally, Steven Sample, president of the University of Southern California, published one of the most recent books on in the academy: A Contrarian's Guide to Leadership. (8) Note that all of these essays and books have male authors. We also received a bibliography of works on leadership; of those many works with leader in the title, only one was written or edited by a woman, and this book, Leader to Leader, was co-edited by a woman and a man. (9) This summer, as I scanned the listings for new books on the topic, the same dominance of the market by men persisted. …
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