The Aesthetics of Leadership:Beau Gesteas Critical Behaviour

Abstract

This paper focuses on the role of beau geste in organizations, showing that it is endowed with a specifically critical dimension as it challenges both the established order and customary practices. We also scrutinize its unique role that consists in critically resisting economic norms. Analysing the beau geste actually offers an opportunity to broaden the scope of our vision of leadership by relying on aesthetics rather than conventionally viewing the leader as an artist. In the first part, we thus concentrate on the way leadership scholars have so far dealt with aesthetics. In the second part, through a series of examples and by adopting a historical perspective, we describe the defining features of the beau geste in organizations: gratuity effect, impact on the common good, size effect and surprise effect. We then analyse how beau geste indeed constitutes a form of provocation against an 'organized' world in which economic rationality seems to prevail. In the conclusion, we outline future prospects for research. Keywordsaesthetic leadership, beau geste, common good, critical leadership, noble gesture, Søren Kierkegaard With beau geste, individuals marginalize themselves for a moment, while catching the attention of an audience, in order to assert immediately thereafter the prevalence of a personal vision of things; be it an act of rebellion or a break-up act, it does nonetheless create a new world, a personal and self-avowed one.Greimas, 1993, p. 21

Dancing in the office: A study of gestures as resistance

“…Organisation studies lately have focused on political, aesthetic and ethical aspects of gesture (ten Bos, 2011;Bazin, 2013;Bouilloud & Deslandes, 2015). Through the 'analogy' of dance (Chandler, 2012), we argue that experiments with gestures can provide 'post-recognition' resistance (Fleming, 2016) through moving away from organisational control with either an aesthetic of arrest or an aesthetic of flow.…”

“…Furthermore, an individual gesture can become a bodily engagement and sometimes even a political action, as Willy Brandt's genuflexion in Warsaw in 1970 shows (ten Bos, 2011), but also Rosa Parks' refusal to give her seat to a white man (Clarke, 2000). Uncommon actions of generosity in the business world have been labelled beaux gestes, underlying a close relation between ethics and aesthetics and thus linking the medieval knightly tales to stories about our leaders' outstanding actions (Bouilloud & Deslandes, 2015). However, these political gestures or beaux gestes have a much more clearly communicative purpose than the gestures we will analyse.…”

Weak Theology and Organization Studies

“…… We expect a manager to be something other than this caricature: that he be truly effective while remaining himself, effective because he is true and present in what he does, demonstrating discernment, capable of listening, paying attention to weak signals, knowing how to make a decision at the right time, in synergy with other decisions and other actors, not just engaging in empty talk. (Michaud, 2013, p. 209) Each of the elements mentioned here is important since they tally with the concern we evoke with Caputo of a way of living that pays attention to nuances, to 'underlying and evanescent things', that maintains a sense of ambiguity, or opens the possibility of doing 'beaux gestes' (Bouilloud and Deslandes, 2015). The term 'weak signal' is interesting in this regard.…”

Love and Organization Studies: Moving beyond the Perspective of Avoidance

“…This is, for example, the meaning of the beau geste, by which 'individuals marginalize themselves for a moment, while catching the attention of an audience' (Greimas & Fontanille, 1993, p. 21). Or, in other words, the deliberate act of 'provocation against an "organized" world in which economic rationality seems to prevail' (Bouilloud & Deslandes, 2015, p. 1095. Sociologists have recently started to investigate this phenomenon from a structural perspective by looking at cyclic configurations, i.e.…”