14th May 2024, at 15:00-16:30, Kilen 3.54.

PAPER 1

The Craft Imaginary in Leadership Studies - towards slow leadership

Marta Gasparin & Steven Brown.

In this paper, we will discuss how craft, often associated with tangible skills and artistic expression, can become an interesting process for understanding leadership in a world in crisis, in fears of planetary demise, looking for aspirations for a utopian future to instigate positive change, or political resistance in a dystopian setting. These visions are driven by numerous contemporary crises that disrupt our existence: pandemics, conflicts leading to mass displacement, natural disasters such as earthquakes and wildfires, financial instability, and the escalating climate emergency driven by the rapid pace of life, enduring social injustices, sexism, and racism, along with the perils associated with the Anthropocene. Craft has already been discussed as an alternative form of organizing to address the challenges and opportunities presented by society and the economy that is increasingly influenced by digitalization and creativity. However, it has not been fully developed in relation to leadership, emphasizing its potential to challenge dominant paradigms and offer alternative perspectives. In the presentation, we will present crafting leadership in relation to political expression, societal transformation, and developing what we call “slow leadership”.

PAPER 2

Realists of a larger reality?: Science fiction, the utopian imagination and the speculative experimentations with future better worlds in robotics

Ana Alacovska.

The article argues the importance of popular culture genres, defined as autonomously and internally patterned formal and structural systems of narration, plots, meaning and symbols that are publicly available via television, film and books, for shaping beliefs about, and the imagination of, possible futures in organisational and entrepreneurial contexts. In particular, the article investigates how science fiction, a sub-genre of utopian literature, influences and facilitates robotic entrepreneurs’ imaginings of the future. Adopting the research design of a ‘strong program’ of cultural analysis, I first specify the formal, structural and pragmatic autonomy of science fiction as a non-mimetic genre envisioning future possible worlds, and then trace its concretization in entrepreneurial endeavours through a qualitative study of robotic entrepreneurs. On the basis of the analysis of data, I propose that the basic mechanism in which science fiction operates in robotic entrepreneurship is through enabling of speculative experimentations with future possibilities. I elucidate the empirical dynamics of two dominant modes of speculative experimentation: eutopian and dystopian. Through speculative experimentations, I argue, robotic entrepreneurs exercise their utopian imagination and dare to dream as possible and feasible what from the vantage point of the present seemed unrealistic and impossible: a better future world free from drudgery and suffering for everyone, every time. Drawing on studies of speculative pragmatism and the philosophy of imagination, I theorize the cultural function of science fiction in robotics as one of inducing entrepreneurs to estrange themselves from present deficient realties and to imaginatively explore the possibilities of better and more desirable worlds emerging in the future.

ABOUT THE SERIES

The CBS Leadership Centre wants to bring together researchers across CBS to inspire and nurture cross-disciplinary thinking on leadership. The Leadership Paper Series are a forum for doing exactly this. We invite junior and senior colleagues, as well as visiting and guest scholars, to present and discuss leadership research in progress from a variety of disciplinary perspectives and theoretical traditions. Presenters will receive constructive feedback from discussants and attendees with the aim of developing their papers and arguments for eventual publication.

Papers will be sent out to registered attendees on 10th May. If you would like to receive a draft of the papers, or if you are interested to speak at one of our upcoming events, please e-mail Minna Paunova mp.msc@cbs.dk. Our next meeting will take place in September.