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In
Diffracting Collaborative Leadership, Barbara Simpson proposes that leadership in organizations may be understood as a complementary duality of 'leaders' and 'leading' and explores this as a creative, collaborative process of future-making that arises from uncertainties.
List of contents
- Authorial Note
- Prelude
- First Movement - Associating
- Second Movement - Experimenting
- Third Movement - Making
- Fourth Movement - Feeling
- Fifth Movement - Caring
- Coda
- References
About the author
Barbara Simpson is Professor in Leadership and Organisation Dynamics at Strathclyde Business School. Her professional life began in New Zealand, where she worked as a physicist studying the fluid dynamics of geothermal systems. Now, decades later, having moved to Scotland to pursue an academic career in organization and management studies, her interest in dynamics, movement, and flow still endures, although her focus has shifted from the natural environment to the subtleties of social and organizational experience. In this, she is deeply informed by Pragmatist philosophy and its intersection with the processual ontology underpinning recent developments in posthuman scholarship.
Summary
In Diffracting Collaborative Leadership, Barbara Simpson proposes that leadership in organizations may be understood as a complementary duality of 'leaders' and 'leading' and explores this as a creative, collaborative process of future-making that arises from uncertainties.
Additional text
Barbara Simpson challenges the fundamental assumption that leadership is something that individual leaders do, while followers follow. Drawing on Pragmatist and process philosophy, music, and various strands of literature, she weaves a compelling argument that leading is movement, emerging in the ebbs and flows, the chords and discords, and the unexpectedness of life. Beautifully written around five movements, we are encouraged to rethink traditional approaches to leadership and engage with the much-needed idea of leading as future-making together.
