Professor Brigid Carroll – The Governmentality of Hope: Retheorising Hope in Leadership

Abstract

The existence and exercise of hope has been largely assumed as required for leaders and leading in leadership studies to date; something this inquiry brings critical scrutiny to given a contemporary world which appears to be questioning hope per se amidst widespread discourses of risk, uncertainty, crisis and unease.

The focus of this inquiry is on sustainability leaders given they occupy a new ‘frontline’ where ‘hard truths’ from science appear to increasingly erode the rational and pragmatic basis for hope-both for themselves and others. A large interview-based study found such actors crafting complex and often precarious performances between having/not having and mobilising/not mobilising hope in their leadership.

The analysis is framed through a governmentality approach to explore new leadership subjectivities emerging across societal institutions where a new theorisation of hope would appear essential.

This work is co-authored with Professor Marjo Lips-Wiersma and Dr Peter Skilling.

About the Speaker

Professor Brigid Carroll is a Professor in the Department of Management and International Business and holds the Fletcher Building Employee Educational Fund Chair in Leadership at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.

She teaches broadly in the area of leadership, organizational theory and qualitative research methods at undergraduate, postgraduate and executive level and does extensive cross-sector leadership development work with corporate, community, professional, and youth organisations.

Ongoing research themes revolve around identity work, power, responsibility and resistance, leadership development, distributed and collective leadership, cross system governance and discursive/narrative approaches.

Ultimately, Brigid is interested in leadership as a discourse, identity, and practice and in exploring how it is constructed and shaped between people, spaces, and artefacts in different organisational contexts. She has published in Organization Studies, Human Relations, AMLE, Management Learning and Leadership and has co-edited three books on Leadership.

This seminar promises to be an enlightening experience, offering fresh perspectives on the role of hope in leadership.