This study examines the phenomenon of ‘liberating leadership’, an emerging trend promising self-mastery and collective unity, resonating with the literature on post-heroic leadership. We evaluate the claims of liberating leadership from a psychodynamic perspective, using a Lacanian approach. We examine how post-heroic forms of leadership reconfigure symbolic and imaginary aspects of follower identification, with ambivalent effects. Drawing empirically on the case of a Belgian banking department, we trace how a ‘liberating’ leader was able to garner intense psychological attachment among followers, accompanied by the ‘dark sides’ of personal exhaustion and breakdown, normative pressure to be overly happy, and the scapegoating of contrarian managers representing symbolic prohibition.
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En réaction aux multiples crises qui affectent les sociétés et les organisations contemporaines, de nombreux acteurs expérimentent des modes alternatifs de management, d’entrepreneuriat ou de leadership. Dans cet article, les auteurs avancent que ces démarches s’inscrivent dans la filiation des utopies sociales. Ils présentent une revue historique des dimensions organisationnelles de l’utopie, puis introduisent la notion post-structuraliste d’hétérotopies pour éclairer l’émergence de démarches localisées créatrices d’alternatives dans les contextes contemporains.
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