Wilson in LSE Business Review on Leadership Lessons from Philosophy
June 01, 2017
The London School of Economics Business Review featured an article by David Carl Wilson, dean emeritus and professor of philosophy, on the lessons philosophy can teach about leadership and management. Wilson addresses two recent books on philosophy in management and leadership that missed the mark.
"Philosophy can teach us much about leadership and management, but you would not guess it from the two recent books by Robert Spillane and Jean-Etienne Joullié, Philosophy of Leadership (Palgrave Macmillan) and The Philosophical Foundations of Management Thought (Lexington)," Wilson begins.
Further, he explains:
"The authors are contemptuous of leaders and managers. Leaders, they darkly complain, have a “consistent history of mystical propaganda, widespread corruption, arrogant stupidity, and mass homicide;” and managers, for their part, “have bad tempers, do not like their colleagues, and do not care about their anxieties or aspirations.” They preach that both can receive salvation only by baptism in philosophy.
"I am not a convert, but I do find an opportunity here to reflect upon how to do better what they do so poorly."
Read Wilson's review, which was featured on the banner slot on the publication's site, here: "Can Philosophy Teach Us Anything about Leadership and Management?"