The Ethics of Affective Leadership: Organizing Good Encounters Without Leaders

Abstract

ABSTRACT:This article addresses the fundamental question of what is ethical leadership by rearticulating relations between leaders and followers in terms of “affective leadership.” The article develops a Spinozian conception of ethics which is underpinned by a deep suspicion of ethical systems that hold obedience as a primary virtue. We argue that the existing research into ethical leadership tends to underplay the ethical capacities of followers by presuming that they are in need of direction or care by morally superior leaders. In contrast, affective leadership advocates a profoundly political version of ethics, which involves people in the pursuit of joyful encounters that augment our capacity to affect and be affected by others. Instead of being led by people in leadership positions, we are led by active affections that enhance our capacity for moral action.

Feminist Ethics and Women Leaders: From Difference to Intercorporeality

“…Critical research on leadership ethics has discussed the role of an ethics of care, trust, responsibility and duty (Borgerson 2018;Ciulla et al 2013;Knights and O'Leary 2006;Munro and Thanem 2018;Rhodes and Badham 2018) where the ethical archetype of a caring leader looms large (Gabriel 2015). Within this frame, however, care has been very much generalised so as to not pay attention to the importance of political categories of difference such as gender and race.…”

“…Recent critical writers raise issues of responsibility for the other (Rhodes and Badham 2018) and the nature of affective leadership (Munro and Thanem 2018) demonstrating that relational and embodied approaches have been called for in leadership ethics. Uhl-Bien (2006) and Fletcher (2012) conceptualised relational leadership where leadership surfaces in the relations between leaders and follows and effects social change.…”

“…Such ethics are infused with and informed by affect characterised by encounters with others and otherness made in and through the body. Leadership too is a relational phenomenon characterised by 'affective openness and response to difference' (Pullen and Rhodes 2010, p. 246), and political potential emerges from affective leadership (Munro and Thanem 2018). For Diprose, politics are founded in an ethics of radical generosity that opens up difference manifest neither in the 'self-serving collection of debts nor in an expectation of unconditional self-sacrifice in the service of the other but in the indeterminacy of generous acts that lie somewhere in between' (Diprose 2002, p. 187;cf.…”

Guest Editors’ Introduction: Philosophical Contributions to Leadership Ethics

“…59 In the next article, Iain Munro and Torkild Thanem present an ethics based on joyful encounters between people, regardless of hierarchy, status, or position. 60 We assume that leaders are supposed to care for their followers but Munro and Thanem argue that care can also be oppressive. Drawing on Spinoza, they argue that care reinforces inequality and unfairness in organizational practice, because an ethics of care is based on the assumption that the people who are in need or receipt of care are lacking or inadequate in some way.…”

A Stakeholder Perspective on Ethical Leadership in Sport: Bridging the Gap Between the Normative and Descriptive Lines of Inquiry

“…Such stakeholder perspective not only honours the active nature of ethical leadership as a relational phenomenon that is not merely implemented in a top-down way, but it also re-integrates the perspective of the leaders themselves in ethical leadership research ( Maak & Pless, 2006 ). Acknowledging ethical leadership as a collective and relational phenomenon is required to counteract the idea that followers/stakeholders are just passive and little capacitated followers who are in need of guidance of their leader(s) ( Munro & Thanem, 2018 ). Furthermore, such stakeholder perspective acknowledges both the direct and indirect impact of stakeholders on leadership.…”