Dissent and the Failure of LeadershipStephen P. Banks Edward Elgar, 2008 - 239 pages This timely collection of original papers explores the vital but largely unrecognized connections between leadership and dissent. In an era when leadership failures can mean homelessness and even death for countless flood victims, losses of life savings for employees of bankrupt corporations, civilian deaths and ravaged societies in the Middle East and incalculable suffering among refugees in central Africa, the studies presented here offer analysis and correctives based on new understandings of the dissent-leadership relationship. The book examines how dissent is implicated in problems plaguing theory development in leadership studies. Topics explored within this framework include dissent in corporate discourses of control, real and manufactured crises, cross-generational perceptions, women leaders' personal and work lives, the professionalization of journalism, religious institutions, activist public relations and fear-based cultures. It concludes with new proposals for legitimating dissent as a unique instrument for advancing social development and avoiding failures of leadership. Examining dissent as the critical factor that differentiates leadership failures and successes from interdisciplinary perspectives, this illuminating book will be of great interest to advanced students and teachers of leadership studies, as well as corporate executives, policymakers and other leaders aware of the need to improve leadership practices. |
Contents
Varieties of dissent | 22 |
Dissent in times of crisis | 37 |
Dissent and the generational divide 333 | 53 |
Organizational totalitarianism and the voices of dissent | 75 |
Leading dissenting and public relations | 97 |
Women leadership and dissent | 119 |
Resistance dissent and leadership in practice | 135 |
Press professionalization corporate rationalization and | 149 |
The sanctity of dissent | 169 |
Elevating dissent and transcending fearbased culture at | 182 |
Making a place for the practice of dissenting | 208 |
the promise of dissent for leaders | 228 |
Copyright | |