CfP Workshop on Reintegrating History & Leadership Studies
Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Switzerland, January 2025
Conveners: Paul Sanders (NEOMA BS, France), Martin Gutmann (HSLU & ETH Zurich, Switzerland)
Objective
We aim to host a 3-day workshop for international scholars who bring a historical perspective to leadership studies. This approach to understanding leadership and management has the potential to advance the field of leadership studies past current conceptual ruts. To do so, however, we believe that better coordination, exchange, and publication output among the disparate history-inclined leadership scholars is necessary. Our proposed workshop aims to facilitate exactly this.
Conceptual framing
The conveners of this workshop believe that a LS serving particularistic interests, in a narrow contextual perspective, is not the last word in the matter. Leadership has a role to play in tackling planetary problems that affect humankind as a whole. And one way in which it can be made to perform that same role consists in returning to the roots of LS and rehabilitating the historical approach. This denotes another paradox: how well we deal with the problems of the immediate future is not determined by how well we zoom in on present needs, but on gaining a sense of perspective.
We believe that it is critical to develop reflection on leadership beyond the corporate sector. The workshop ventures to gather – for the first time - the flock of scholars who have shaped the field of historical LS. The first question they will address is a simple one: how much ‘mileage’ is there in taking a historical approach to leadership?
Secondly, history-inclined LS are already a feature of US academia, where pockets of heterodoxy have always complemented the mainstream. This makes for a more differentiated, but also a more fragmented landscape; ‘hard-science’ and humanities-based LS coexist, but they often lead separate lives. The other objective of the workshop then is to engage in groundwork for the introduction of humanities-based LS into mainstream academia, including international business and management schools. Statistics, the various branches of psychology and other quants-based science should not have an agenda-setting monopoly over what happens in as important a field as LS; and humanities-based LS should be more than an academic niche that leads a wallflower existence.
The workshop debate and format groups around a number of postulates:
History is sometimes perceived as a purveyor of instructive case studies that allow to draw analogies. This can be useful in the presence of institutional blockades (or challenges). But history can do more than that. Historical LS contributes to a culture of developing long-term and sustainable perspective. It is interested in a holistic bird's-eye view, instead of fragmentary views that focus on details that appear important now, but fade out of significance in hindsight. The ability of history to achieve this is linked to one of its core disciplinary precepts: objective analysis is a function of taking a step back from the ‘sound and fury’ of the immediate present. Passage of time (or historical distance) reduces the fires of passion and, in conjunction with the rising availability of more and better sources, sharpens the viewpoint. This then improves the quality of analysis and creates perspective. In this sense, a grounding in history partakes in essential skill-building.
Going beyond the focus on case studies is also necessary in order to bolster the scientific credibility of historical LS and have an impact on the disposition of the field of LS. This calls for a combination of programmatic approach with theory engagement, mainly in the form of subjecting ‘hard science’ leadership theory to empirical tests. Historical LS offers an opportunity to address the replication and description problem in LS, two components of the scientific process that are marginalized by the b-school’s emphasis on theory development or - as some critics argue - ‘theory fetish’.
Historical LS provides an excellent vantage point from which to reflect on contextuality and complexity in LS. Context is an undervalued property in LS (which is problematic), whereas it is central in history. As regards complex problems, Keith Grint has suggested that these are the domain of leadership (whereas complicated problems are the domain of management). Dealing with complexity requires a departure from the Action Fallacy or Prozac Leadership, and ties in with a wicked versus tame problems & elegant versus clumsy solutions approach. Complex problems also resonate with collective rather than personalist, agentic or semi-agentic decision making, and they inform a deconstructive ethos with regard to leadership legends or the romance of leadership.
Historical LS plays an integral part in the ambitious program of management-humanities integration. At a time when subjects like history are being rendered increasingly unappealing by the triple onslaught of decreasing public funding, rising tuition fees (and student debt) and pressure to conform to an ideologically-driven new or critical humanities agenda, history could make a new ‘home’ in business/management schools. In this context we think that it is counterproductive to bolster historical LS as a critical interdisciplinary niche, as this has only limited impact on a scientific mainstream that is itself in need of reorientation. Instead we subscribe to the view that historical LS should enter the mainstream business school.
Which brings us to the relationship between humanities- and social science-driven LS. As Joanne B. Ciulla writes in Leadership, it is more common for humanities scholars to draw on the work of social scientists, than the other way around. And when social scientists use the humanities, and in particular history, they do so ‘badly’ – meaning: they adopt a literalist approach that ignores standards for using, treating and interpreting sources; and they apply a template approach, where history is treated as a data-pool from which linear (leadership) lessons can be extracted. The conclusions drawn from the historical material are driven by a quest for positives that does not befit the humanities. It overlooks that, as the historian Wilhelm Dilthey found, the knowledge of the humanities is ‘broader and fuzzier’; and that it is geared toward ‘understanding’ (Verstehen), whereas the knowledge produced by the natural sciences is geared toward ‘explaining’ (Erklären). We draw the following conclusion from this: the correct methodological handling of the humanities has to be introduced into the b-school curriculum. And history has to be taught there as it is taught in history faculties.
Finally, we strongly believe that a field of study as crucial as leadership should be underpinned by a democratic ethos. At a time when democracy is in retreat (with some political scientists even arguing a threat similar in nature to the onslaught of the 1930s and ‘40s), scholars, like everyone else, need to make a choice: they can continue to dedicate their time and resources to the narrow utilitarian goals of organizational effectiveness and profitability, and watch passively from the sidelines as ‘events’ unfold (hopefully ‘elsewhere’); or they can become engaged and shape those same events.
Next steps
Our aim is to host the workshop in January of 2025 at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Switzerland. We plan on applying for funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation, which would cover a good portion of participants’ travel and lodging costs, as well as the event hosting costs.
With the aim of submitting a grant application to the SNSF by the third week of April 2024, we would like to solicit a preliminary statement of interest from scholars who would like to participate (please send 1. email with a brief statement of their record, contributions, or plans for bringing a historical perspective to leadership studies, and 2. academic CV, to paul.sanders@neoma-bs.fr and martin.gutmann@hslu.ch, by April 15). We are particularly interested in inviting emerging/junior scholars to the workshop.
We will receive feedback on our application for funding from the SNSF by the end of August, 2024. At this point, if the workshop will proceed, we would formalize the workshop date and ask for confirmations of participation by October 15 and ask for a 2-page concept note from each participant by November 30.