Aesthetic Leadership

Jonathan E. Schroeder

University of Exeter

Ian Fillis

Stirling University

Forthcoming (2010) in

Research Handbook on Political and Civic Leadership Richard Couto, ed. London: Sage.

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Aesthetic Leadership

Jonathan E. Schroeder

Ian Fillis

D R A F T

Aesthetic leadership is an important, but little understood, aspect of leadership.

This chapter briefly examines the literature on aesthetics and considers what can be

learned from the various interfaces aesthetics has with other domains, such as art,

philosophy and leadership. It begins with brief discussions of aesthetics, art and

management studies. Several exemplars of aesthetic leaders are presented. Applications

to organizations are discussed, and the creative industries, an American artist, and an

Arab-Israeli orchestra are used as applied case studies of managerial, civic, and political

forms of aesthetic leadership. The chapter concludes with future directions for research,

and provides a list of additional entries in the encyclopedia, and well as references and

further readings.

Several approaches to aesthetic leadership can be identified, each drawing upon

slightly different conceptions of leaders and how aesthetics interacts with leadership..

Generally, these approaches share common assumptions that aesthetic leadership is

distinct from traditional forms of leadership, and agree that it is a necessary complement

to those forms. In addition, they suggest that aesthetic leadership is closely connected to

creativity and/or artistic insights. Aesthetic leadership refers to leadership in a broader,

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civic, cultural and political arena than many models of leadership. However, no one

approach has emerged as definitive.

Hansen, Ropo and Sauer’s concept of aesthetic leadership emphasizes how

followers utilize aesthetic sense and judgment in working with leaders. They identify

transformational and visionary leadership, charismatic leadership, and authentic

leadership as aspects of aesthetic leadership, as well as conceptual precursors to the

current aesthetic turn in leadership studies. They provide a comprehensive model of

aesthetic leadership and outline its’ ontological and epistemological assumptions, which

hew toward social construction and the importance of embodiment. Aesthetic

leadership, in their view, requires two enduring components: engagement of the senses,

and a focus on the experiential (Hansen, Ropo, and Sauer, 2007). In this approach,

aesthetic leadership emphasizes leader-follower relations within established frameworks

of leadership in organizations.

Guillet de Monthoux and his colleagues represent another approach to aesthetic

leadership. They argue that leaders in business and art benefit by listening to each

other, and present research-based cases demonstrate how software programmers and art

curators, financial analysts and orchestra conductors, construction engineers and chefs,

share aesthetic leadership talents that hold the key to transforming the ordinary into the

extraordinary (Guillet de Monthoux, 2004; Ropo and Koivunen, 2002; Sjöstrand,

Guillet de Monthoux and Gustafsson, 2007). This perspective focuses largely on the

interaction between aesthetics and management, and between artists and managers, and

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argues for a vision of aesthetic leadership that promotes more effective and inspiring

leadership.

Schroeder has suggested that aesthetic leadership concerns the manner in which

artists, and other aesthetic workers, perform leadership functions within groups,

communities and culture, often outside established positions of authority (Schroeder,

2005). This approach emphasizes non-traditional leadership positions, and highlights

leadership from a civic, cultural and political dimension, turning to cultural producers

such as writers and artists as exemplars, and works within an expanded conception of

leadership, beyond the bounds of traditional models of leadership within organizations

or business.

This essay relates aesthetic leadership to several current topics in leadership

research, and outlines the assumptions and possibilities of aesthetic leadership. The

creative industries provides a case study where substantial evidence can be drawn about

the use of creativity as a form of leadership, which can be used to overcome resource

barriers and establish competitive advantage. Research and thinking about aesthetic

leadership spans several disciplines, and often encompasses management studies, art

history and sociology – aesthetic leadership represents one strand within the growing

field of aesthetics and management.

Aesthetics

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The concept of aesthetics originates from the Greek verb aisth (to feel) and relates to

the knowledge yielded by the sensory organs. Thus, aesthetics has particular

implications for the notion of aesthetic leadership where, rather than following a pre-

determined path of cognitive decision-making, the leader senses which appropriate

paths of action should be taken. There are also close connections here with

entrepreneurial behavior and decision-making. The term “aesthetics” was first used to

describe the area of philosophy relating to art and beauty in Germany in the 18th century

(White, 1996). Early evidence of thinking aesthetically can be found in the

philosophical writings of Giambattisto Vico (1744) and Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten

(1750) who promoted the value of poetic wisdom, or non-rational sensing, over the

worth of logico-deductive thinking. Many owner/managers in the creative industries, for

example, think, behave and lead in non-rational ways as they sense opportunities and

exploit them. Baumgarten saw logic as the study of intellectual knowledge while

aesthetics was concerned with the study of sensory knowledge. Cultivating aesthetic

knowledge can result in fresh insight and awareness, irrespective of whether or not we

can actually express what we experience.

Aesthetic experience can be understood in three ways: firstly, as a form of tacit or

unconscious sensory knowledge as opposed to intellectual knowledge; secondly, as a

form of expressive, disinterested action shaped by impulse and feeling; thirdly, as a

form of communication which passes on and shares particular ways of feeling

(Gagliardi, 1996). Consideration of the intellectual grounding around art, artistry and

beauty, or aesthetics, can help leaders to understand in a clearer way the complex nature

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of today’s business arena (Ottensmeyer, 1996). On a basic level, it can be proposed that

those aesthetic values comprise an important subset of human values. For example,

organizations are comprised of people and therefore by extension, aesthetics must

therefore comprise part of the fabric of organizational experience and reality. Even if

most organizations do not emphasize aesthetic aspects or encourage aesthetic leadership

– and many leaders reveal an absence of aesthetic insight – aesthetics are always

present. Aesthetic perspectives in management generally emphasize sensation,

embodiment, and emotion over perception, abstraction, and cognition.

Early twentieth century philosophers such as John Dewey and Irwin Edman noted

that the field of aesthetics should include everyday experiences and activities. Edman

believed that there is little difference between the realms of art and everyday lived

experiences such as constructing a hut or a skyscraper (Edman, 1928). Art has been

viewed as a form of craftsmanship, which involves the creation of expressive forms,

which promote the nature of human feeling. The notion of making aesthetic experience

“come alive” is transferable to the organizational setting where culture, interpretation

and emotion can be used to understand organizational processes. Long before the recent

spate of writing on organizational aesthetics, the executive processes of management

were described as involving feeling, judgment, sense, proportion and balance and that

they were a matter of art rather than science, involving aesthetic rather than logical

thinking (Barnard, 1938). Mahoney (2002) considers the relevance of Barnard’s

influential views for present day management education from an aesthetic perspective

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through his ability to stimulate our thinking from both scientific and artistic

perspectives in order to achieve an authentic sense of organization.

To hold a particular ‘aesthetic’ refers to possessing a specific set of criteria for

judgment, and hence for leadership decisions. Aesthetic experience is manifested either

as a form of tacit or unconscious sensory knowledge as opposed to intellectual

knowledge, or as a form of expressive, disinterested action shaped by impulse and

feeling or as a form of communication which passes on and shares particular ways of

feeling. Strati (1999) believes that aesthetics now encapsulates the ways in which the

life of an organization is understood and studied rather than serving as an organizational

artifact for the organization as a whole. An aesthetic approach in an organizational sense

has become increasingly grounded within an epistemology concerned with feeling,

intuition and immersion. Aesthetics can then also be used to consider how these

constructs impact on leadership decisions, and how intuition relates to aesthetics. Three

levels of leadership intuition have been identified: 1) there are those individuals to

whom intuition comes naturally; 2) those who need training in order to acquire it; and 3)

those who are not able to make effective intuitive decisions.

Art, Aesthetics and Organization

In order to review the potential contribution of aesthetics to the study of

leadership, material must be drawn from a wide range of disciplines including

philosophy, cultural anthropology, perceptual psychology, and art history, to name a

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few. The aesthetic aspect of organizational life has slowly become part of accepted

organizational theory, from its initial exclusion from the study of organizations to a

gradual acceptance of its legitimacy as an appropriate aspect of organizational study

(e.g., Guillet de Monthoux and Strati, 2002). Aesthetics are used to study and

understand the organization, rather than merely adding value to organizational output.

Moreover, aesthetics offers more than mere inspiration or “creative” insight – aesthetic

leadership provides an important, complementary approach to organizational research

and leadership studies. Although thinking aesthetically offers the researcher and

practitioner alternatives to the mainstream thinking of a single organizational truth, it

can be cryptic and difficult to grasp.

There is a history of incorporating art and its artistic forms within organizational

research, for example, within areas of organization as theatre (Mangham and

Overington, 1987), the manager as artist (Hatch, Kostera and Kozminski, 2004) and the

artist as brand manager (Schroeder, 2005). Guillet de Monthoux suggests that if

managers want to learn lessons from theatrical managing, then they should dismiss the

doctrine of logical management thinking and embrace the process of making art. The

literature on strategic vision and leadership has tended to adopt what has been called a

“logico-rational Anglo-Saxon” perspective, which, by definition, omits the more

intuitive, phenomenological perspective of the “philosophy of the eye”. Guillet de

Monthoux adopts an understanding of strategy, with strong links to art and aesthetics. In

this way, aesthetics can be used to ‘see’ in a way that is missed by conventional

managerialist perception. In his view, this is the true value of aesthetic leadership.

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Recently, there has been a growth in the consideration of business management

as a form of art, while creative artistry is now viewed as a form of business activity

(Guillet de Monthoux, 2004). Discourses, rather than decisions, seem to matter more for

today’s innovative leaders who focus more on management as a process of social

construction involving small talk, conversation and storytelling. The narrative paradigm

in management studies has caused serious cracks to appear on the façade of managerial

rationality. From this perspective, rationality remains as only one of many social

constructs resulting from discursive practices.

A distinction needs to be made between the notions of “rational” and

“reasonable”. In managerial terms, there are four kinds of rationality: cognitive,

intuitive, emotional and aesthetics. Cognitive rationality is concerned with analytical

information processing where individuals are able to distinguish, define and link

through syllogisms. But when the situation is linked with genuine uncertainty, bounded

calculative reasoning is found to have shortcomings. Having an aesthetic rationality

relates to the generation of an impression and experience, which is connected to an

individual’s inner state.

Noting that aesthetics are broadly concerned with knowledge created from

sensory experiences, thoughts and feelings, Taylor and Hansen (2005) carried out a

comprehensive review of the organizational aesthetic literature, categorizing it into the

four areas of intellectual analysis of instrumental action, using artistic form to examine

instrumental issues, intellectual analysis of aesthetics and the adoption of artistic form

to understanding aesthetic issues. They note that during the Enlightenment period of the

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18th century, it was common to divide the world in an analytical sense into the three

areas of instrumental, moral and aesthetic existence. In their view, organizational

theorizing has tended to focus largely on efficiency and effectiveness, rather than

noneconomic aspects. Taylor and Hansen categorize the various subdivisions of

organizational aesthetics research using the dimensions of method (artistic versus

intellectual) and content (instrumental versus aesthetic).

Much prior to the current debate on rational versus irrational ways of knowing in

management studies, Vico (1744) and Baumgarten (1750) promoted poetic wisdom, or

non-rational sensing over logico-deductive thinking. According to Baumgarten, logic is

the study of intellectual knowledge while aesthetics involves the study of sensory

knowledge. At that time, of course, the rational doctrine of the Enlightenment tended to

dominate over other perspectives. Over a quarter of a millennium later, a linear/rational

perspective still dominates, despite increasing evidence to the contrary. So, having

aesthetic knowledge can result in fresh insight and awareness; irrespective of whether or

not we can actually express what we experience. Scientific management still has an

influence as a particular form of organizational aesthetic which equates beauty with

efficiency.

Watkins and King (2002) utilize the arts in order to gain understanding of

organizational performance, drawing on visual art and literature. They note that the

majority of interpretations of successful organizational performance are concerned with

the adoption of set rules which are to be followed. In the same way that much marketing

management research is still concerned with attempting to represent the world using

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frameworks initially constructed some time ago, so too do organizations which insist on

a linear/rational perspective. Watkins and King note that areas such as the arts have long

moved on from this position and therefore suggest that we should analyze successful

artistic performance in order to draw both inspiration and direct comparison with

today’s organization generally.

Art and aesthetics can be used to inform and create a discourse which can then

result in the construction of an epistemological framework with which to position more

critical leadership research. Carr and Hancock (2003) believe that investigating the

relationship between art and aesthetics can help us to shape alternative ways of

knowing, while also allowing us to reconsider what may have been missed by the

adoption of logico-rational method alone. Although their work refers to the study of the

organization, it can be readily adapted for wider studies of leadership. This view fits

comfortably with the Fillis and Rentschler (2006) paradigm of creative marketing where

artistic, situation specific solutions are seen as the most appropriate for the smaller firm

and a creative marketing philosophy is instilled throughout the organization.

Aesthetics are a form of knowledge, which have their own truth, since each

organizational context is specific and special. There are links between aesthetics and

intuition and, by extension, entrepreneurship and creativity. An aesthetic analysis of an

organization can focus a number of issues – including cultural values, identity and

image and style. Aesthetics as style can therefore relate to instilling and practicing a

creative, entrepreneurial form of marketing. Björkman (2002) notes that the nature of

markets throughout the world is changing, with product overload and consumer

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alienation. A response to this is to introduce products, which convey feelings as well as

the core product benefits. The adoption of the notion of the aura helps consumers to

tangibilize product values, which suggests a particular form of aesthetic customer

feeling and emotion as response to creative marketing efforts. Being able to ‘see’ the

aura means that the customer must have experienced the beauty of the product, service

or brand. Björkman proposed that a company could evolve into an aura-company via its

inherent ability to create its own ways of communication with its customers, as well as

to attract them in the first place through to purchasing its products and services.

Darso and Dawids (2002) develop a theoretical framework of arts in business,

and note that the fact that the arts are being applied in business settings in new ways.

This could potentially mean the evolution of a new research field and a new trend of

aesthetic thinking and learning. A variety of terms have been adopted to describe more

artistic ways of knowing, including aesthetic epistemology, aesthetic modes of learning,

art as a way of knowing, and creative learning. Being able to manage requires a variety

of types of knowledge, and not just the linear rational form. Nissley, for example,

identifies how aesthetic epistemology, or aesthetic ways of knowing, is now being used

to inform the practice of management education, drawing from a variety of art forms

including music, drama and art (Nissley, 2002). Duke provides a model of aesthetic-

based leadership within education, focused on how leaders manifest aesthetic properties

(Duke, 1986).

However, in general, non-rational factors have been largely omitted from

discussion on organizational aesthetics, not because they have not been acknowledged

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as legitimate inputs into the organizational process, but rather that they are difficult to

study using accepted mainstream scientific methods. Warren and others are beginning

to offer ways around this by presenting creative methodological problem solving

perspectives based on aesthetics and sensuality (Warren, 2008). There has been some

growth in alternative, non-traditional aesthetic-related management research topics but

which still result in relevant and interesting data, such as sex and eroticism in

organizations (Brewis and Linstead, 2000), or humor and fun. It is hoped that these

more revealing avenues of exploration will complement aesthetic perspectives of

leadership. Importantly, Warren comments that people display the same capacity for

emotional and aesthetic experience, irrespective of whether they are inside or outside

the organization, at work or at play.

Toward a Concept of Aesthetic Leadership

Aesthetics has generally been concerned with questions of beauty and the notion

of universal tastes. The philosopher Immanuel Kant argued that human response to art

is disinterested, which led to an ongoing debate about the relationship with visual

culture. Others have argued that there is a distinct aesthetic realm, which allows people

to respond to beauty in terms of color and form. Recently, artists have been called upon

for aesthetic leadership in management – as leaders, practitioners, visionaries, and

inspirers (e.g., Austin and Devin, 2003; Hatch, Kostera and Kozminski, 2004;

Schroeder, 2006; Taylor and Ladkin, 2009, for a review). Thus, aesthetic leadership

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need not refer merely to creativity or vision; rather aesthetic leadership may emerge

from insight into cultural, political, or interpersonal issues, aesthetic statements on

social injustice or crucial cultural concerns, or, at a more general level, providing

alternative ways of seeing problems, history, or received wisdom. In this way, aesthetic

leadership may either complement or contradict more traditional leadership forms, such

as politics, religion or management. It may be that aesthetic leadership draws some of

its power from the position of the aesthetic producer outside conventional leadership

positions.

Well-known examples include Jacques-Louis David, whose famous painting The

Death of Marat (1793) catalyzed support for the French revolution by shrewdly mixing

fine art with propaganda. During the bloody 18th century uprising, David reorganized

the Académie, an important national institution – critical for authenticating and

disseminating cultural and political opinions and trends – and he produced many

spectacular propagandistic events, eventually being imprisoned for his political views.

Another iconic aesthetic leader, writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, drew attention to

repression in the former Soviet Union, and helped make the wider world aware of the

gulag, the forced labor system, and spent a writing career pointing out injustices, for

which he won the Nobel prize in literature in 1970.

Another example concerns the Asian-American sculptor and architect Maya Lin,

whose haunting Vietnam Veteran’s memorial in Washington D.C. helped a nation –

especially Vietnam veterans and their families – begin to come to terms with a

tremendously debilitating and divisive epoch in American history. Lin, who, an

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undergraduate university student at the time, steadfastly refused to compromise her

aesthetic principles during a bitter battle over her minimalist design, held to her strong,

clear vision, as described in the Academy Award winning documentary of the rancorous

debates about how the war should be memorialized (Mock, 1995).

In a broader sense, aesthetic leadership also appears in civic and political

campaigns, as artistic and cultural production is readily harnessed for persuasive ends

(see Schroeder, 2005). For example, Couto has argued that ‘third sector’ organizations,

such as voluntary associations and political action groups, play important roles in civil

society (Couto, 2001), and moreover, often capitalize on what might be called aesthetic

leadership. He invokes the controversial “YES” campaign in Northern Ireland,

organized by a consortium of political groups intent on ratifying the Good Friday Peace

Accord of 1998, which was aimed at halting the long-standing “troubles” of Northern

Ireland. The campaign utilized the Saatchi and Saatchi advertising agency to present a

unified message, based around a simple image that resembled a traffic sign: voting yes

was associated with an arrow suggesting free flowing traffic, voting no was represented

by a red ‘T’ sign – a dead end (Couto, 2001). In this case, civic issues intersect with

aesthetic leadership via third sector organizations, political issues, and advertising

professionals.

Aesthetic leadership may rest in leadership qualities of charisma, interpersonal

skill or vision, yet remains elusive, and difficult to categorize or contain (see Ladkin,

2008). Often, aesthetic leaders have trained in areas somewhat distant from typical

leadership or management disciplines – literature, art, or theatre, for example – and this

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training may offer a capacity for innovative insight. However, insight or vision alone

remains insufficient; aesthetic leadership requires a rare combination of desire,

determination, and drive, along with a prodigious aesthetic gift. This is not to suggest

that aesthetic leadership need recapitulate a trait-based model of leadership (cf. Wood,

2006), rather, in pointing to aesthetics as a potential realm and practice of leadership,

the relational aesthetics of leaders, followers and an ‘audience’ is reinforced. Artists

create mainly to express their subjective conceptions of beauty, emotion or some other

aesthetic ideal.

Thus, artists, often excluded from the canon of leadership, perform leadership

functions. Although aesthetic producers ultimately contribute value to society, the

nature of what they do and how they do it means that their actions cannot be

meaningfully understood using the conventional leadership paradigm. For example,

Smith and Wright (2000) distinguish between those who create and those who lead

through their ability to transform the world by their deeds rather than by their ideas or

emotional expressions. However, true aesthetic leadership must involve an element of

both through the development of creative philosophies which result in insight, change or

understanding.

Applications of Aesthetic Leadership

The Creative Industries

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The creative industries emerged over the last thirty years as an important and

dynamic industrial sector. Creativity is not just applicable to the arts and the artistic

product but should also be viewed in a wider sense where it embraces entrepreneurship

and innovative leadership within the context of the wider social environment. It

contributes to the unconventional behavior of a leader and has most impact in today’s

knowledge based societies.

The leader of a creative industries organization encourages the use of creativity

in new product development processes and creates an environment where self-

constructed, rather than textbook replication forms of planning and strategy are often

the norm. In today’s environment of heightened globalization forces and sometimes

chaotic market conditions, strong leadership is needed in order to create new customer

bases and establish creative solutions to perceptual and physical barriers. Given these

circumstances, creative leadership is deemed more appropriate than conventional

linear/rational approaches. In this respect, creative managerial judgment can be just as

relevant to decision-making as conventional managerial skills. Intuitive decision-

making is an appropriate response to the contemporary business environment, where the

generation of a range of options can be constructed through appropriate visionary

leadership and entrepreneurial behavior.

Contemporary literature locates the crafts industry as part of the greater cultural

industry, comprising designer trades, book publishing, the music industry, television

and radio broadcasting, independent film and video, the art trade and cinema. General

definitions of the creative industries include advertising, architecture, the art and

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antiques market, crafts, design, designer fashion, film and video, interactive leisure

software, music, the performing arts, publishing, software and computer services,

television and radio. These industries can be seen to embrace heritage and tradition,

contemporary entertainment and art and innovation or experiment.

In the United Kingdom, recent figures suggest that 1.4 million people are

employed in the creative industries and that the economic contribution is more than 90

billion pounds sterling per year. In the US, those working in the creative sector

comprise more than thirty percent of the overall workforce, with a collective income of

around $1.7 trillion per year (Florida, 2002). This growing creative base and its

associated alternative value system and aesthetic mean that we ignore the creative

industries and its innovative leadership at our peril. There are inherent difficulties in

considering those entities, which comprise the creative industries as being part of the

wider economy where enterprises follow the rules of market orientation and customer

wishes.

Through a synthesis of literature on sociology, art, marketing, creativity,

entrepreneurship, leadership and change management, Fillis and Rentschler (2006) add

to this understanding by evaluating how the development of a set of entrepreneurial

competencies can help shape leadership in the small and medium sized enterprise. The

arts and crafts firm is typically a small enterprise where the owner/manager leads

through creative, entrepreneurial thinking and practice. There is also a growing history

of research into the overlap between leadership and entrepreneurship; for example,

Cogliser and Brigham (2004) consider how leadership studies can inform the much

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younger discipline of entrepreneurship. They identify a number of conceptual overlaps,

including the constructs of vision, creative leadership and planning. Organizational

climate, leadership style, organizational culture, resources and skills and the structure

and systems of the organization are the most influential factors in enhancing creativity

in the work environment. A leadership style modeled on democracy and participation

facilitates creativity and a leader’s aesthetic vision is an important factor in managing

creative individuals.

Civic, Economic and Urban Development: WaterFire Providence

Barnaby Evans is a contemporary artist and sculptor who created WaterFire

Providence – a fire sculpture, mystical musical experience, and art installation – which

has been a powerful force in revitalizing Providence, Rhode Island

(http://www.waterfire.org/). WaterFire Providence celebrates the reclaiming of

Providence’s three rivers, completed in 1995 as part of a ten-year project. Staged every

two or three weeks, usually on Saturday nights, WaterFire draws thousands of people –

families, teenagers, tourists, convention-goers, and local residents – to downtown

Providence to experience this public event, steeped in the ancient elements of water,

fire, and music. Many local restaurants set up street side tables and a variety of food

and drink is available. But mostly WaterFire is about viewing dozens of ritual fires that

are stoked until midnight by volunteers who cruise the river dressed druid-like in black

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on a black boat to the sounds of an evocative and ethereal soundtrack of sacred and

secular music selected by Evans.

WaterFire Providence has been positively reviewed in such publications as

ARTnews, and has been hailed as the key to bringing people back to the once moribund

Providence downtown, and spurring economic and cultural development. One reviewer

concluded: “this cross-bred urban renaissance may be one of the most inventive uses of

public performance spectacle to appear in an American city in recent times” (Klein,

2001). WaterFire Providence succeeded in reclaiming the civic pride of Rhode

Islanders, and re-establishing a public place for contemplation, promenading and

socializing. Its innovative combination of basic elements such as fire, water and sound

in a civic setting, compelling spectators “to contemplate a range of aesthetic and

spiritual associations beyond mere material context” (Branham, 1999) offers leadership

lessons.

Providence created an art enterprise zone in 1994 to attract artists to live and

work in the downtown area. Like many U.S. cities in the 1970s and 1980s, Providence

was severely affected by suburban flight by both residents and businesses, highway

construction, and economic downturns. Along with many once proud industrial capitals

in the Northeast, Providence had fallen on hard times, shedding manufacturing jobs,

factories, and skilled workers, and its decaying downtown had lost much of its’ allure

and attraction. A major effort was initiated to recover and reclaim the three major rivers

that run through Providence, which were critical to its importance as a colonial port and

major industrial center through the early 20th century. The river restoration project was

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completed in 1995, and WaterFire Providence has been instrumental in bringing people

from around the state downtown in a unique public spectacle. Local businesses joined

the event by hosting outdoor dining and entertainment, increasing opening hours, and

advertising WaterFire night specials. Regional and national conventions held at the

Providence convention center also sponsor WaterFire. Several other U.S. cities,

including San Antonio, Texas have started similar events, advised by Evans.

WaterFire Providence has been hailed by the mayor of Providence as a key

ingredient in the revitalization of this well-preserved New England city. It has sparked

visits to Providence even on nights when it is not performed, and has become an icon of

Providence’s so-called renaissance (Evans, 2004). WaterFire has an uncanny effect on

people – who wonder aloud what it is, or what it means – and it remains a powerful

work of civic art that is profoundly changing Providence. Although he holds no official

title, and he had to create his own organization of volunteers and a small paid staff,

Evans’s vision provided an artistic and civic vision that spanned artistic, cultural and

economic realms, and cut across aesthetic genres of sculpture, installation and urban art.

His success illuminates the potential power of aesthetic leadership, working in

conjunction with traditional forms of power, such as civic leaders, businesses, and local

government officials.

Political Music-making: Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra

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The West-Eastern Divan orchestra was founded by musician Daniel Barenboim

and theorist Edward Said as an experiment in Arab-Israeli relations. Barenboim, a

piano prodigy and orchestral conductor with roots in Argentina and Israel, and Said –

who died in 2003 – a Palestinian and Professor at Columbia University in New York,

well known for his work on Orientalism, recruited young musicians from Israel and the

Arab world to play together. Barenboim “sees the orchestra as a model for dialog in the

Middle East – an example of how to break the wall of hatred between peoples” (Clark,

2009, p. 3). Via aesthetic experience, making music together, and interacting, this the

Divan orchestra goals include civic and political engagement between long standing

antagonists.

Named after a collection of poems by the German writer Goethe that imagines a

Western awareness of Eastern culture, the West-Eastern Divan orchestra has enjoyed

tremendous success and critical acclaim. The orchestra meets for a month every summer

near Seville, Spain, and tours around the world, members sharing accommodation, food,

and travel arrangements. The orchestra is often called upon to make statements about

events in the Middle East, and Barenboim has emerged as a kind of ambassador for the

troubled region. Their appearance in war-torn regions, contested territories, and highly

symbolic religious centers has fueled their fame. One member of the orchestra Nabeel

Abboud-Ashkar, asserts that “the miracle of the world that Daniel Barenboim and

Edward Said created–the world of the Divan–lay in the opportunity for individuals to

meet outside of their environments to find a new equilibrium, perhaps even a new

identity that went beyond their national identities” (in Cheah 2009, p. 46). Barenboim

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and Said’s vision of aesthetic encounter producing political change is of course, not

complete, but it remains a shining example of the possibilities and potential of aesthetic

leadership in the political realm.

Summary and Conclusion

Aesthetic leadership encompasses leaders, followers and culture, and can be

considered an important emerging perspective within leadership studies. Although

there are important differences between aesthetic leadership models, all emphasize the

aesthetic, sensory dimension, and all draw upon artistic or intuitive processes of

leadership. Further, the role of aesthetic insight, as distinct from rational thought

provide unites these perspectives. These disparate examples serve to illuminate how

aesthetics operates as a form of civic and political leadership. Aesthetic leadership may

be seen as only one aspect of a broader turn toward aesthetics and art within leadership,

management, and organization studies.

Investigation of aesthetics within organization studies, creative industries and in

wider society can help to develop an alternative approach to understanding leadership in

the organization where emotional expression, ethics and values are promoted over

rational thinking. Emotional expression is specifically heightened during aesthetic

experience and, more specifically, through the consumption of creative industries

outputs. It is important to realize that, as researchers, we need to understand the

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contribution of disciplines such as the humanities to understanding the aesthetic

dimension of leadership.

Artists such as Maya Lin, Jacques-Louis David, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,

Barnaby Evans, and Daniel Barenboim provide vivid examples that leadership is not

confined to organizations or governments, and remind us that aesthetic leadership

transcends traditional categories of leadership studies. Aesthetic leaders like these often

succeed not from following rules and rational procedures, but by sharing an aesthetic

vision. In this way, they function as exemplars of leadership in their own right, and also

offer lessons for leaders in business, government and other organizations.

A number of areas have been identified in which aesthetics can make a

contribution to improved understanding of the aesthetic dimension of leadership. It can

be seen, then, that positioning research and practice within an aesthetic framework can

facilitate alternative ways of ways of knowing which both compliments and challenges

the traditional paradigm of leadership studies. In order to further develop our

understanding of aesthetic leadership, additional research is needed which builds on the

work of aesthetic leaders in the creative industries, the cultural sector, and the wider

civic arena in which aesthetic leadership makes key contributions.

25

References and Further Readings

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artists work. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Barenboim, D. and Said, E. W. (2004). Parallels and paradoxes: Explorations in music

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Barnard, C.I. (1938). The functions of the executive. Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press.

Baumgarten, A.G. (1750, reprinted in 1936). Aesthetica. Laterza: Bari.

Björkman, I. (2002). Aura: Aesthetic business creativity. Consumption, Markets and

Culture, 5, 69-78.

Branham, J. R. (1999). Barnaby Evans. Rhode Island School of Design Exhibition

Notes, 7, 1-4.

Brewis, J. & Linstead, S. (2000). Sex, work and sex-work: Eroticising organization,

London: Routledge.

Carr, A. & Hancock, P. (Eds.). (2003). Art and aesthetics at work. Basingstoke, UK:

Palgrave Macmillan.

Cheah, E. (2009). An orchestra beyond borders. London: Verso.

26

Clark, A. (2009). Peace and harmony: Daniel Barenboim on hip-hop, conducting, a

Jewish joke – and how an orchestra could be a model in the Middle East. The

Financial Times, August 15-16, Life and Arts 3

Cogliser, C.C., &. Brigham, K. H. (2004). The intersection of leadership and

entrepreneurship: mutual lessons to be learned. The Leadership Quarterly, 15,

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intuition to institution. Academy of Management Review, 24, 522-537.

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Learning Lab Denmark Quarterly, October, 6-7.

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Evans, B. (2004). Providence: The renaissance city. Boston: Northeastern University

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Fillis, I., & Rentschler, R. (2006). Creative marketing. An extended metaphor for

marketing in a new age. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

27

Florida, R. (2002). The rise of the creative class, and how it's transforming work,

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99.

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Strati, A. (1999). Organization and aesthetics. London: Sage.

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Warren, S. (2008). Empirical challenges in organizational aesthetics research: Towards

a sensual methodology. Organization Studies, 19, 559–580

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42, 1101-1121.

Jonathan E. Schroeder is Professor of Marketing at the University of Exeter Business

School. He is also a Visiting Professor in Marketing Semiotics at Bocconi University in

Milan. His Ph.D. is in Social Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley.

Schroeder’s research focuses on four intersecting areas: aesthetic leadership, brand

culture, business ethics, and visual consumption. He is the author of Visual

Consumption (Routledge, 2002) and co-editor of Brand Culture (Routledge, 2006). He

is co-editor in chief of the interdisciplinary journal Consumption Markets & Culture,

and serves on the editorial boards of Advertising and Society Review, Critical Studies in

Fashion and Beauty, European Journal of Marketing, Innovative Marketing,

International Journal of Indian Culture and Business Management, Journal of Business

Research, Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, Journal of Macromarketing,

31

and Marketing Theory. He is a founding member of the International Network of Visual

Studies in Organization (inVisio).

Ian Fillis is Senior Lecturer of Marketing at Stirling University. He received his BSc in

Civil Engineering at the University of Glasgow, his MA in Marketing from the

University of Ulster and a Ph.D. on the Internationalisation Process of the Smaller Firm

from the University of Stirling. He is editor of the Journal of Research in Marketing

and Entrepreneurship. As well as pursuing research interests in marketing and

entrepreneurship, his research focuses on cross-disciplinary problems beyond

conventional management studies. He has attracted research funding from a range of

external bodies including the ESRC, the Arts Council of England, Scottish Enterprise,

Scottish Arts Council and Crafts Northern Ireland.