Thinking differently about leadership: a critical history of the form and formation of leadership studies

<p>We have come to live in an age where leadership is the solution, regardless of the problem. Today, managers are called on to provide leadership which is ‘visionary’, ‘charismatic’, ‘transformational’ and ‘authentic’ in nature. This is what ‘followers’ are said to need to perform to their potential. The efforts of the academy in promoting these ideas means they are typically understood as modern, enlightened and grounded in scientific research. Taking a critical step back, this study examines why we have come to understand leadership in this way. Adopting a Foucauldian methodology, the study comprises three case studies which examine Classical Greek, 16th century European and modern scholarly discourses on leadership. The analysis foregrounds change and continuity in leadership thought and examines the underpinning assumptions, problematizations and processes of formation which gave rise to these truth claims. The relationship and subjectivity effects produced by these discourses along with their wider social function are also considered. What the study reveals is that our current understanding of leadership is not grounded in an approach more enlightened and truthful than anything that has come before. Rather, just as at other times in the past, it is contemporary problematizations, politically-informed processes of formation and the epistemological and methodological preferences of our age which profoundly shape what is understood to constitute the truth about leadership. Through showing how leadership has been thought of at different points in time, this thesis argues that far from being a stable enduring fact of human nature now revealed to us by modern science, as is typically assumed, leadership is most usefully understood as an unstable social invention, morphing in form, function and effect in response to changing norms, values and circumstances. Consistent with this understanding, a new approach to theory-building for organizational leadership studies is offered. This study shows, then, why we ought to think differently about leadership and offers a means by which this can occur.</p>

Thinking differently about leadership: a critical history of the form and formation of leadership studies

<p>We have come to live in an age where leadership is the solution, regardless of the problem. Today, managers are called on to provide leadership which is ‘visionary’, ‘charismatic’, ‘transformational’ and ‘authentic’ in nature. This is what ‘followers’ are said to need to perform to their potential. The efforts of the academy in promoting these ideas means they are typically understood as modern, enlightened and grounded in scientific research. Taking a critical step back, this study examines why we have come to understand leadership in this way. Adopting a Foucauldian methodology, the study comprises three case studies which examine Classical Greek, 16th century European and modern scholarly discourses on leadership. The analysis foregrounds change and continuity in leadership thought and examines the underpinning assumptions, problematizations and processes of formation which gave rise to these truth claims. The relationship and subjectivity effects produced by these discourses along with their wider social function are also considered. What the study reveals is that our current understanding of leadership is not grounded in an approach more enlightened and truthful than anything that has come before. Rather, just as at other times in the past, it is contemporary problematizations, politically-informed processes of formation and the epistemological and methodological preferences of our age which profoundly shape what is understood to constitute the truth about leadership. Through showing how leadership has been thought of at different points in time, this thesis argues that far from being a stable enduring fact of human nature now revealed to us by modern science, as is typically assumed, leadership is most usefully understood as an unstable social invention, morphing in form, function and effect in response to changing norms, values and circumstances. Consistent with this understanding, a new approach to theory-building for organizational leadership studies is offered. This study shows, then, why we ought to think differently about leadership and offers a means by which this can occur.</p>

Nowhere Men and Divine I’s: Feminist Epistemology, Perfect Being Theism, and the God’s-Eye View

This paper employs tools and critiques from analytic feminist scholarship in order to show how particular values commonly on display in analytic theology have served both to marginalize certain voices from the realm of analytic theological debate and to reinforce a particular conception of the divine—one which, despite its historical roots, is not inevitable. I claim that a particular conception of what constitutes a “rational, objective, analytic thinker” often displays certain affinities with those infinite or maximal properties that analytic theologians have taken to be most relevant or essential to their theological conceptions of the divine, and I explore what thinking differently about the former might mean for how we think about the latter and vice versa.

Children’s and adolescents’ experiences with functional abdominal pain: a qualitative study in Norway

ObjectiveFunctional gastrointestinal disorders (FGIDs) are common during childhood and adolescence. When a somatic diagnosis is excluded, the healthcare system often terminates contact with the patient. The aim of the present study was to learn more about children’s and adolescents’ experiences with, and reflections on, the causes of their abdominal pain and what could possibly help them.DesignThe study has a qualitative design. Interviews with open questions were carried out by the first author. The conversations were audiotaped, transcribed and analysed by means of qualitative content analysis.SettingChildren and adolescents referred from general practitioners located in urban and rural regions in two municipals in Norway. In 2016 and 2019, we had interviewed these children’s parents about their child’s abdominal pain. In spring 2020, the children and adolescents were interviewed.ParticipantsTwelve children and adolescents aged 10–18 years with FGIDs.ResultsEight of the children and adolescents had recovered from their abdominal pain, while four still had symptoms. They felt frustrated by not having a diagnosis and by the lack of available treatment. Some who had been absent from school for weeks to months felt isolated and depressed. Focusing on positive thoughts and activities was reported to improve the pain. The abdominal pain could be considered a manifestation of mental problems.ConclusionsThinking differently about the symptoms reduced the FGIDs for the children and adolescents. The treating physicians as well as parents and teachers need to help the child focus on changing the mindset of pain.

Computational Thinking Through an Empirical Lens: A Systematic Review of Literature

This article provides an overview of the diverse ways in which computational thinking has been operationalised in the literature. Computational thinking has attracted much interest and debatably ranks in importance with the time-honoured literacy skills of reading, writing, and arithmetic. However, learning interventions in this subject have modelled computational thinking differently. We conducted a systematic review of 81 empirical studies to examine the nature, explicitness, and patterns of definitions of computational thinking. Data analysis revealed that most of the reviewed studies operationalised computational thinking as a composite of programming concepts and preferred definitions from assessment-based frameworks. On the other hand, a substantial number of the studies did not establish the meaning of computational thinking when theorising their interventions nor clearly distinguish between computational thinking and programming. Based on these findings, this article proposes a model of computational thinking that focuses on algorithmic solutions supported by programming concepts which advances the conceptual clarity between computational thinking and programming.

Examining 4th Grade Gifted and Non-Gifted Students Understanding Levels of Place Value

The aim of this research is to reveal the understanding of dimensions and sub-dimensions of the place value in natural numbers of gifted and non-gifted students attending fourth grade. A mixed approach was adopted in the research. The research is quantitative in terms of revealing the levels of place value, counting, representing, naming, renaming, comparing and calculating the dimensions of the students and comparing the general mean score of both groups with the mean score for each dimension, and it is qualitative in terms of revealing the mistakes made in these dimensions. The study group of the research consists of 76 students diagnosed as gifted who attend four different SACs and 90 non-gifted fourth grade students attending in a regular school in town in the Central Anatolia Region. According to the findings obtained in the research, it was revealed that students with a diagnosis of giftedness could not reach the desired learning level in the count by 10 forward sub-dimension of the counting dimension of the place value. It was also revealed that they could not reach the desired learning level in the non-standard representation sub-dimension of the representation dimension. On the other hand the non-gifted students could not reach the desired learning level also in the division sub-dimension of the calculation dimension. It was concluded that students that are diagnosed as gifted had high success in terms of understanding the place value of natural numbers. For both groups of students, it can be said that they have difficulties in operations with non-standard representations, and they have difficulty in thinking differently because they are used to doing the questions by memorization and rules. Experimental studies can be carried out on the dimensions of the place value.