Hi
Everyone,
Nancy
Adler just came out with a lovely, uplifting piece on Art and Leadership in the
Academy of Management Learning and Education (2006:
5/4: 486-499). Given David Atkinson’s and Mary Jo Hatch’s recent posts (leader
as artist literature), I think the paper is quite relevant and well worth
reading. I’m attaching it here (hope that’s okay Nancy!—and Ken, sorry, I know attachments
screw up the digest format, but bear with me this time).
Thanks
for writing this one Nancy—you’ve
managed to pull a lot of important threads together. Very importantly, I think
the paper legitimizes and mainstreams artistic perspectives much more (which is
certainly a boon for those of us trying to bring these perspectives into MBA
land). In some ways, I think the paper itself is a piece of art—you’ve taken
the ethereal, esoteric perspective of art and upended it into a solid foundational
platform, not just for the business world, but for the political and
human-kindness world. It’s peppery prose reads as a kind of call-to-arms (arms
that paint and play), and I for one feel quite inspired by it. Daved