Simon Kelly

University of Huddersfield · Department of Management

Drawing on our experiences of parenting during the global Covid-19 pandemic of 2020, we explore the potential for a feminist parental ethics through which parenting can be rethought, reclaimed and so brought forth as an vital and valuable assemblage of collective articulation work (Star, 1991), shared 'motherings' (Ruddick, 1983; 1990; 2009; 2016)...

This article examines the relationship between organizational ethics, the uncanny and the annual celebration of Halloween. We begin by exploring the traditional and contemporary organizational function of Halloween as 'tension-management ritual' (Etzioni, 2000) through which collective fears, anxieties, and fantasies are played out and given materi...

While ‘charisma’ can be found in dramatic and theatrical parlance, the term enjoys only minimal critical attention in theatre and performance studies, with scholarly work on presence and actor training methods taking the lead in defining charisma’s supposed ‘undefinable’ quality. Within this context, the article examines the appearance of the term...

The authors, an international team of experts, guide students on an entertaining journey through key concepts, contemporary issues and debates in leadership studies. Students can: Understand how theory comes to life through a fascinating selection of case studies, ranging from political leaders such as Tony Blair to business leaders such as Steve...

Drawing on recent critical debates concerning the ontology of leadership, this article outlines a radical rethinking of the concept - not as the study of heroic individuals, skilled practitioners, collaborators or discursive actors - but as the marker of a fundamental and productive lack; a space of absent presence through which individual and coll...

This article presents a new perspective for analysing organizational death through the concept of reanimation. Mobilizing recent discussions of the monstrous in organization theory, we draw on the figure of the reanimated monster to analyse an apparent case of organizational dying in the UK financial services sector. Through this, we explore how or...

This article argues that older age inequality within and across working life is the result of vampiric forms and structures constitutive of contemporary organizing. Rather than assuming ageism occurs against a backdrop of neutral organizational processes and practices, the article denaturalizes (and in the process super-naturalizes) organizational...

This article draws on insights taken from Lacanian psychoanalysis to rethink and resituate notions of the self and subjectivity within the theory and practice of experiential leadership development. Adopting an autoethnographic approach, it describes the author's own experience as a participant in a program of equine-assisted learning or "horse whi...

As growing numbers of scholars become disaffected by the research traditions laid down by leadership psychology, there is a steady turn towards treating leadership as a discursive phenomenon. In response, leadership researchers are increasingly adopting interpretive and observational methods in the search for the practices of leadership in everyday...

This article considers issues of leadership and leadership development by reflecting on the notion of the refrain as pattern. Drawing on our research of leadership within UK further education (FE) we examine how tracing ‘patterns of leadership’ can provide an insight into the practical accomplishment of leadership in FE as everyday ‘ordinary’ work....

Boden (1994) highlights meetings as 'where organizations come together'-as 'the very stuff of management'. This paper uses findings from a study of 'leaders' and 'leadership' in the post-compulsory education sector in the United Kingdom. Drawing upon ethnographic data in which college Principals were 'shadowed' as they went about their everyday wor...

This paper describes early findings from an ethnographic study of leadership work in the U.K. learning and skills sector. Focusing in particular on what might be characterised as 'technologies of leadership', the paper examines the use of management information systems (MIS) and the extent to which they are effective in supporting the work of leade...

meetings remain the essential mechanism through which organizations create and maintain the practical activity of organizing. They are, in other words, the interaction order of management, the occasioned expression of management in action..." (Boden 1994: 81) Boden (1994) highlights meetings as 'where organizations come together' – as 'the very stu...

This paper presents some early findings from a research project on 'leadership' in the post-compulsory education sector that uses an eclectic mix of broadly 'ethnographic' methods in order to obtain some insight into the real time, real world, everyday, mundane business of 'doing' (Garfinkel 1967) 'leadership' in an educational setting. While leade...

This paper documents early research findings concerning the organization and daily accomplishment of leadership work within further education colleges across the United Kingdom. By analysing the accounts and experiences, or 'war stories' (Orr, 1996), provided by college Principals we seek to describe both what leaders actually do and what counts as...

Stories provide a good first pass at what is important, from the point of view of the users; they provide the designer with a glimpse of what the user's terrain feels like, and thus provide a starting point for further exploration." (Erickson, 1996: 3) This paper treats leadership essentially as a design problem. Taking Thomas Erickson's study of t...

For over 50 years the study of 'leadership-in-action' has been advocated by many leadership researchers, yet in this time few have attempted such a study. Those that have tend to produce findings that, rather than bolstering the field, seem to call into question the very usefulness of 'leadership' as an object of inquiry. In the wake of recent call...

1. ABSTRACT This paper considers issues of responsibility, leadership and leadership development through drawing on prolonged periods of observational, ethnographic research of educational leaders 'at work'. In an era of a supposed crisis in leadership, we use our rich data and interdisciplinary backgrounds to consider leadership development as ess...

This paper provides a critical commentary on the horse listening, or "horse whispering", method as it is used in the promotion and delivery of corporate leadership training programmes. Reflecting upon the relationship between the animal, notions of authenticity and new and influential trends in leadership thinking, the paper asks whether such novel...

This paper is interested in the extraordinary topic of leadership and its relationship with some pretty mundane or ordinary technologies. The social interaction it documents is 'leadership work', outlining some of the complexities involved in the provision of management information, and the utilisation of that information in support of decision-mak...