Towards a Geography of Leadership
Professor Brad Jackson
Donna Ladkin
Today I am joined by Professor Brad Jackson who is from the
University Auckland Business School in New Zealand. And Brad has
been giving a lunchtime seminar today about a topic of research that
he has been pursuing into the geography of leadership.
I just wondered if you would like to speak a little bit about where
that idea came from, the idea of the geography of leadership?
Brad Jackson
Well thank you Donna. Two places really; when you look at the
definitions of leadership – and there are literally thousands of
definitions of leadership – there is generally some acknowledgment
about context; that leadership has to take place in a context. And
actually context shapes leadership processes. But when you start to
drill down into the research, it is funny no one ever really sits down
and says well what do we mean by context and how does it actually
influence? So it is one of those things that people acknowledge it is
important, but they won’t necessarily focus on that, they will focus
on leader characteristics, follower characteristics or mission or
purpose or whatever.
So that was curious to me, being a leadership scholar. But the other
part was the fact that I have been in New Zealand for the past ten
years and certainly my encounter specifically with Maori leaders and
the challenges that they face in terms of creating business,
competitive business in a global context is how critical place is to
their whole philosophy of leadership and their whole engagement
with the followers etc which is something that I, I suppose, being
what we would call Pakeha – in other words of European descent – is
the place is different, its less focused in terms of leadership
practices. So basically a combination of seeing, going to literature,
realising that context wasn’t being problematised and being in a
country where we are quite remote from the rest of the world. And
it is quite a distinctive environment with its challenges, but
particularly engaging with Maori basically said, you know what, we
have to theorise the role of place and understanding the role of
place in terms of contributing and shaping leadership.
Donna Ladkin
It is really interesting to think about the way that actually might help
us to think about leadership. Do you have any examples of ways in
which you think this might expand how we think about leadership?
Brad Jackson
Well it is interesting that if you look at the work that is being done on
leadership research and the work that is being done on
sustainability, environmental, and the extent to which they are two
separate lines of debate, of research. The sustainability research is
Knowledge Interchange Online© Cranfield University
March 2010
1
Professor Brad Jackson
focusing very much on environmental, environmental conditions, but
I think may be a little weaker in terms of understanding the dynamics
of persuasion that influence trying to mobilise disparate groups
around the sustainability cause. Whereas, leadership funnily
enough has acknowledged the environment as a key issue, but it has
tried to keep this kind of well there are these generic processes and
they can be used anywhere basically. And so I sensed that might be
a powerful area where both areas could actually be mutually
enriched by taking more of a place based perspective on leadership.
Donna Ladkin
You mentioned in the seminar how in many ways this line of
research is quite counter to our preoccupation in business schools,
for instance, to sort of sanitise business education so we can place it
anywhere. Do you want to say anything about that?
Brad Jackson
Yeah, that is interesting because I mentioned the course that I am
teaching – it is called the Geography of Leadership and the Urban
Context. The students are finding it quite interesting because we
are saying difference matters; place is something that is not only
something you have got to deal with, it is actually something that
you should celebrate and engage with. And you should be willing to
shape and change your practice based on your experience. They
want to know which model to use, which will be the right model.
And this notion of being able to develop a more agile, more
contextualised approach to leadership, I think, is quite counter to the
way a lot of business schools have been saying part of our mandate
is to create an international cadet force of global leaders who have
been trained pretty well with very similar materials, have the same
language etc in a way to almost conquer place and conquer space
through technology – information technology, etc – through business
models etc.
So in some respects we are doing a lot to defeat and overcome
place, but I think that is a very select partial view of the world and I
think we have to keep reminding ourselves that there are many
others who are very much rooted – and their parents and their
grandparents etc – there is one place that is central to them, it’s a
critical part of who they are. So it is important, I think, to
counterbalance that. And who makes the decisions about what
places there will be and the dominant understandings – there are
some really serious, I think, ethical, moral, but also business
implications about taking the homogenised view or placeless view of
business.
Donna Ladkin
© Cranfield University
Great; thank you very much. It has been a very stimulating seminar
today and I will be interested to see how your work develops.
March 2010
2