Author Identifier
Edward Wray-Bliss: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5575-7754
Irene E. de Pater: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9578-9638
Document Type
Journal Article
Publication Title
Journal of Business Ethics
Publisher
Springer
School
School of Business and Law
Abstract
This paper examines love as a concept for advancing our understanding of the ethics of leadership. We draw upon writings that consider love to be at the heart of modern subjects’ search for meaning and affective attachment to organisation – necessitating, we argue, an exploration of leadership too in these terms. Existing works on leaders’ supposed love for those they lead are considered. These serve as a springboard from which to undertake a philosophical examination of two dominant formulations of an ethics of love in Western culture: neighbour and agapeic love. Neither of these conceptualisations, we argue, suffice as an understanding of leadership. We draw upon Kierkegaard to highlight the category error of conceptualising leadership in terms of neighbour love, and feminist writings to highlight the deeply problematic sacrificial demand at the heart of agapeic love. Drawing attention to the plenitude of other loves yet to be explored by business ethics scholarship, we propose two organising foci for advancing our understandings: a focus on humanising love by leaders, and a focus on problematising love of leaders.
DOI
10.1007/s10551-024-05867-w
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Comments
This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of: Wray-Bliss, E., & de Pater, I. E. (2024). Examining love as a central ethic of leadership: A Kierkegaardian and feminist reading. Journal of Business Ethics. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-024-05867-w
This version of the article has been accepted for publication, after peer review (when applicable) and is subject to Springer Nature’s AM terms of use, but is not the Version of Record and does not reflect post-acceptance improvements, or any corrections. The Version of Record is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10551-024-05867-w