2nd Call for Papers: The End of Leadership?
4th Annual ILE Conference (8th-9th May 2015)
(We are readvertising our Call for Papers, particularly for papers that investigate ‘the end of leadership’ in business and/or civic society (politics, education, or other public domain sectors). Please submit the papers to peirong.lin@etf.edu as soon as possible, before the 13th February 2015)
Introduction
At the Institute of Leadership and Ethics (ILE), we want to explore the changing dynamics of leadership. Since the turn of the millennium, there seems to be a shift of power from the individual leader to the team, the group, and the network – at times even to broad social movements in our societies. Instead of established authorities, social networks have taken an increasing role in leading change and innovation across business, politics, as well as other segments of civil society.
Call for Papers
For this two-day conference, we invite academic and practitioner submissions from different disciplines regarding the topic “the end of leadership?”. This phrase signals the end of an era in leadership studies, which focused exclusively or mostly on the leader; and it marks an end to the sometimes uncritical and unlimited confidence in the ‘Leader.’ However, leadership processes continue, but they take different and sometimes surprising shapes, which in turn require different ways to study and analyze.
Questions that may generate interesting presentation topics include, but are not limited to:
- What is the impact of ‘the end of leadership’ on established authorities, societal dynamics, and the role of tradition?
- What is the impact of ‘the end of leadership’ on ethics in a leadership context?
- How does growing awareness of the relational and contextual nature of leadership influence the corporate/ business/ political/ educational/ religious/non-profit practice of leadership?
- Can one still speak of leadership in an era where transparency, authenticity and accountability dominate discussions of ‘leadership’?
- How do different contexts influence the nature of leadership? Contexts like:
o the nature of the group as business, NGO, charity, religious organization, political party, etc.
o the social context of the group (socially influential, main stream, marginal or opposed)
o the particular stage of group life/development (founding, growth, stability, decline)
- How has technology in the digital age of social media changed leadership?
- In what way can we still speak of a leader identity in an age of fluid leadership?
- What leadership practices in the Bible or the Christian tradition shed light on the relational, contextual and constructed nature of leadership?
- What is necessary to develop a vigorous (public) theology of ministry that supports Christians in places of civic leadership next to other civic leaders in serving the common good, while working in a fluid network with shifting leadership structures?
- Which biblical-theological principles can provide a framework for an ethical and spiritual evaluation of new forms of leadership?
Submission
Please submit your abstracts (150-200 words) by the 13th February 2015. Authors will be notified about the acceptance of their proposed contribution by the end of January. The selected papers will be presented during ILE’s annual leadership conference on May 8-9, 2015 at the ETF in Leuven, Belgium. Conference proceedings will be peer reviewed for publication in the series Christian Perspectives on Leadership and Social Ethics with Peeters in Leuven (plannedfor May 2016).
