Leah Tomkins

The Open University (UK)

Polkinghorne suggests that “[d]espite the problems involved in transforming human life experiences into language, language is our primary access to people’s experiences” (Polkinghorne 2005: 139). In this chapter, we discuss some of the relevant issues and examine how qualitative methods address them. We utilize Yancher’s (2015) distinction of peopl...

This paper considers why and how evidence-based practice (EBP) has become distorted in practice, and what to do about it. We present qualitative data from an action research project in policing to highlight tensions between the rhetoric and reality of EBP, and the ways in which EBP’s seductive catchphrase ‘what works’ is being understood and applie...

In this paper we develop a dialectical approach to the organizational politics of learning, exploring complexity, tensions and asymmetries. Turning this kaleidoscopic lens on our empirical setting, a major city police organization, we mix the blue light of police vehicles into Driver’s (2002) ‘fluorescent’ light of office workplaces, fragmenting th...

In this paper, I respond to calls for more critical reflection on the power dynamics of caring leadership. I consider how a combination of care and impotence might unfold as Nietzsche’s ‘slave morality’, crystallised in the phenomenon of ressentiment. At the heart of slave morality is an inversion of values in which everything represented by the Ot...

‘Twitter is not a technology, it’s a conversation. And it’s happening with or without you.’ ¹ As Leadership takes its first steps into the realm of social media, we should think about why we are doing this and what we might hope to achieve. Far from being merely a decision about which platforms and tools to use to advertise our work, the establishm...

Now, more than at any time in our recent history, we will be judged by our capacity for compassion. (Rishi Sunak, UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, 20 March 2020). ¹ In this piece, I draw on an ethics of care and compassion to address a question that has been asked almost daily in UK politics over the past weeks and months, namely: Where is Boris Joh...

Drawing on empirical data from an action research project in policing, we propose that the power relations of leadership unfold in asymmetries of agency, response and reason: Leaders both expect and experience more responsibility than control; more blame than praise; and interpretations of failure – both their own and others’ – based more on person...

This article connects with debates about the use of surveillance technology to detect, report and prevent abuse in care settings. Grounded in a Heideggerian theorisation of care as intervention, it argues that care unfolds in people’s deliberations and decisions about whether and how to intercede when abuse is suspected. Such reflections reveal the...

This article introduces the second of two special issues on philosophical approaches to leadership ethics. In this issue, the articles draw on the works of Plato, Niccolò Machiavelli, Michel Foucault, and Jürgen Habermas to explore questions in leadership ethics concerning leaders’ self-knowledge and self-constitution and their responsibilities to...

This article introduces the first of two special issues on philosophical approaches to leadership ethics. In it, we show some of the ways that philosophy contributes to the study of leadership and leadership ethics. We begin with an overview of how philosophers have treated some of the ethical aspects and challenges of leadership. These include dis...

Gadamer (1989: xxxiii) describes hermeneutics as ‘a theory of the real experience that thinking is’. In this chapter, we explore two main aspects of this experience of thinking - interpretation and understanding. We draw on the work of Schleiermacher (1768-1834) to review the origins of modern hermeneutics as an activity of interpretation, and on H...

This article presents a reflexive auto-ethnography of the experience of teaching authentic leadership to MBA students. It traces parallels between the challenges of authentic leadership and the challenges of academic identity work, grounded specifically in the experience of having to teach something one does not fully endorse. Both authentic leader...

We share findings from empirical research into Kolb’s experiential learning approach, using our reflections as teachers and data from our undergraduate management students. The experiential learning experience emerges as a space where bodies, feelings and ideas move and develop in intimate relationship with one another. This is a space where teache...

This paper develops the idea of caring leadership based on Heidegger’s philosophy of care. From this perspective, caring leadership is grounded in the practices of ‘leaping-in’ and ‘leaping-ahead’ as modes of intervention in the affairs of the world and the efforts of others. This involves gauging and taking responsibility for the ramifications of...

In this paper, we connect with claims that our students are struggling with critical reflection. We propose that hampering critical reflection is a form of narcissism, which we define using Ovid's classical myth. Narcissus' errors highlight the risks of noncritical reflection, involving the deceptions of familiarity and the appropriation of meaning...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to look at how phenomenology can be used to explore the meaning and experience of organizational life. It argues that phenomenology provides more than just themes or leitmotifs for post hoc analysis of narrative data; in its basic formulation, phenomenology is a way of thinking – a method – which illuminates t...

This article presents an interpretative phenomenological analysis of care, specifically the relationship between carer and care recipient, and the ways in which this is experienced and interpreted by carers themselves. Results reveal multiple manifestations of care, including intervention, anticipation, advocacy, and intersubjectivity. These are ex...

This article explores what it is like to be a 'working carer'-that increasingly common category of employee who combines paid work with unpaid care.1 We draw on phenomenology for our initial motivation, epistemological assumptions and method of data analysis, and on critical sensemaking as a template for interpretation and theorization. In line wit...

This article discusses an engagement between the worlds of classical poetry and contemporary empirical psychology. What starts with a return to a classical text through the lens of psychology turns into a review of psychology through the lens of the Classics, inspiring some fresh ideas about subjectivity and how to handle it in psychological resear...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to offer a more integrative and inclusive conceptualisation of reflexivity as a way of identifying, understanding and managing some of the risks associated with reflexivity's potentially solipsistic “inward turn”. Design/methodology/approach The paper draws on the authors' experience of empirical qualitative re...

Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) is a phenomenological, hermeneutic method for analysing semi-structured interview data, supported by a robust theoretical foundation and detailed practical procedures. The use of IPA with focus group data does not yet have the same status, and it should not be assumed that either theory or practice can...