Foundations

Take the following elaborate theatrical metaphor as a way of describing what I’m trying to do here: this blog is attempting to catch a glimpse of leadership education from behind, as it were; off guard, and engrossed in the global political contexts of its ethically-adrift practices. Creeping up on a leadership education conducting its business oblivious to scrutiny provides a thrilling chance to spy on its consorts, associates and fellow conspirators whom I have long suspected of helping enshrine an ethically inert leadership education hegemony, but who retain an independent and aloof legitimacy seemingly beyond question. Not surprisingly, then, with my suspicion raised, this piece of snooping reveals an assortment of unusual and seemingly upright confederates, bolstering leadership education in the maintenance of its paradigm. My difficult task then is, firstly, to connect an apparently disparate band of suspects together into a meaningful whole associated with the leadership educative process: secondly, to convince the reader of the suspect status of those identified: and thirdly to concoct a compelling motive that incriminates these suspects in sustaining an ethically uninspiring hegemony.

Theatrical metaphor aside, far from reifying the concept of leadership education into a singular entity, these jottings represents a heady condensation of thought and reading concerning the role that chauvinism, hegemony, instrumentalism, neoliberalism, and, principally, politics, play in the contemporary and socially constructed institutionalized leadership education movement. I range among this disparate band of interlocutors the countervailing forces of poststructuralism, anarchism and activism as the methodological means of escape from a sadly delegitimized moral authority [1] of the leader – the espoused product of leadership education. This blog, and the manner of its eclectic gathering from diverse sources of inspiration, is an attempt to distract attention away from standard psychological conceptions of leadership education, towards a base of influences that lay a stronger and more relevant claim on the field in which I operate. As a result the paper will appear doubly disjointed from more standard treatments of leadership education: firstly because I attempt to employ the language of politics; and secondly because my style is overtly antagonistic. My intention with this paper is to raise new issues for the field of leadership education in an innovative and creative way, distinct from closing off debate.

[1] Rakesh Khurana, “From Higher Aims to Hired Hands”, Princeton, 2007