Learning to stay ahead of time: moving leadership experiences experimentally

Abstract

In the context of an ongoing change, management is required to take the form of a leadership that must be reignited over and over again. The article examines a new art of leadership that may be viewed as an attempt to keep up with these challenges and stay ahead of time. It emerges from a pilgrimage leadership learning laboratory on the road to Santiago de la Compostela. This moving lab creates situations of extraordinary intensity that border on hyperreality and force the leader to find him/herself anew on the verge of him/herself. Conceived as pilgrimage, leadership moves ahead of time as it reaches into and anticipates a future still unknown. In this setting, anticipatory affects and the virtual take up a predominant role. As it emerges here, leadership distinguishes itself not only from leadership in the traditional sense, but also from management and governmentality.

Keywords::

• management
• governmentality
• diffractive analysis
• dispositive
• the virtual
• mirror of princes
• the human
• Otherness

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sverre Raffnsøe

Sverre Raffnsøe holds a doctoral degree in philosophy and a position as Professor of Philosophy with the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy at Copenhagen Business School. He is editor-in-chief of Foucault Studies and Research Director of the cross-disciplinary research programme called The Human Turn. He is the author of books and articles on philosophical aesthetics, management philosophy, social philosophy, and recent French and German philosophy. Recent and forthcoming publications include The Human Turn: The Makings of a Contemporary Relational Topography and Michel Foucault: A Research Companion. His academic home page is found at http://www.cbs.dk/en/research/departments-and-centres/department-of-management-politics-and-philosophy/staff/srampp and his personal home page at http://www.xnraffnse-v1a.com/.

Dorthe Staunæs

Dorthe Staunæs is Professor of Psy-Management and Diversity at the Department of Education, Aarhus University. Her research interests evolve around norm-critical methodologies towards intersectionality and subjectification. Recently these methodologies have been vitalized due to encounters with affect and assemblages.