Description: This interactive roundtable discusses how leadership is represented in science fiction novels, and how critical examination of those novels can help us think more carefully about the practice of leadership in times of radical change.
Towards a Better Society?: Representations of Leadership in Atwood’s The Year of the Flood and Oryx and Crake
Description: This presentation examines representations of leadership in Margaret Atwood’s novels Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood, exploring how these novels estrange readers from their assumptions about how leadership—here understood as social maintenance or social change—should or might be practiced.
Abstract: Adam One, the leader of a spiritual-environmentalist group in Margaret Atwood's novel The Year of the Flood makes a public pronouncement in which he lies to his followers. Knowing that Toby, a recent initiate into his inner circle, is likely to recognize the lie, Adam One pulls her aside and says, "I must sometimes say things that are not transparently honest. But it is for the greater good" (184). Atwood's novel and its predecessor Oryx and Crake are science fiction. Science fiction estranges. It presents, even confronts, readers with an alternative reality that requires explanation. As the reader seeks to explain--in a rational, cognitive, scientific way--the unusual happenings of the science fiction tale, her own lived reality is made strange. That is, science fiction seeks to de-familiarize readers from their own assumptions, beliefs, and expectations.
In this case, Atwood's novels work to estrange readers from their assumptions about leadership and its core practices of social change and social maintenance. Atwood's novels explore and examine the tactics one might employ to bring about a better society or to maintain the status quo. Atwood's main technique of estrangement is to embody leadership practice in individual characters and groups: the charismatic religious leader Adam One, the dissident and violent MaddAddam, the social engineer Crake, the storyteller Snowman, the empathic and skeptical Toby, and the simple and innocent Crakers.
Atwood's novels are valuable for the study of leadership because such science-fictional representations help us see more clearly how our own practices and beliefs about leadership are bound to other social, political, religious, and scientific practices. In so doing, they allow us to move beyond those assumptions and to imagine new possibilities. As leadership theorists Wilfred Drath and Keith Grint have argued, leadership is collectively constructed and made meaningful by the groups who practice it. What better to way to understand that construction than to see it made strange in a science fiction tale.
Kent Andersen, Birmingham-Southern College
Bio: Kent Andersen is an instructor of English at Birmingham-Southern College. In addition to courses in leadership studies, he teaches courses is science fiction, writing, and creativity.
Case Studies from the Future: Science Fiction’s Contribution to Creating Transformational Leaders Today
Description: Many business case studies tend to be thin, predictable, and about the past. Using science fiction provides the basis for a future orientation with sufficient narrative depth from which to draw reliable answers to deeper questions that tap into higher levels of evaluative or synthesizing thought.
Abstract: Learning through allegory and the lives of others has been a staple of knowledge transmission throughout the ages. However, business case studies tend to be thin, predictable, limited, and about the past. Traditional business case studies frequently call for expected, fairly obvious answers, thus after writing a few such papers, composing well-received ones becomes formulaic for astute learners. How we craft case studies to better challenge the intellect and more importantly, inform learners who are managers or executives? How can case studies evoke the more interesting or important questions that can potentially be answered? First, cases must have sufficient narrative depth from which to draw reliable answers to deeper questions. Second, case questions must focus both on the application of theory and tap into higher levels of evaluative or synthesizing thought. Third, case studies must overcome the drawback of time because the economic turmoil of the last few decades in particular has called into sharp question the wisdom of studying historic business solutions as the “gold standard” for learning how to lead in the future. If shining stars are of such limited utility and lifetime in practice, how are we to prepare leaders for a non-predictable future? The “future” aspect of this dilemma literally holds the key to providing intellectually stimulating and memorable case study assignments through the use of science fiction. When carefully paired with core and reflective texts, science fiction adds depth and breadth to graduate-level leadership courses.
Fictional narratives—including science fiction—have been used for some time in management education (Huczynski & Buchanan, 2004), and there is growing interest today in using popular genre to add relevance to adult learning situations (Wright & Sandlin, 2009). Both film and textual fiction can add bounded complexity with suitable depth in a wide variety of disciplines. Using Ender’s Game in the classroom is, in actuality, surprisingly common—both in secondary school classrooms (Card, 2009) as well as in post-secondary and military academy settings (Card, 1991). However, this work has its shortcomings as well as its benefits. The book: a) glorifies the prowess of youth, thus perpetuating ageist stereotypes; b) venerates militaristic definitions of leadership, thus perpetuating male-dominated views of leadership, especially positional leadership; c) typifies matrixed and networked structures, thus underestimating (and possibly discouraging) application of needful internal controls; d) relies heavily on intuition and (in the case of the faceless enemy) esoteric “mind-to-mind” linkages in communicating outside the organization, thus offering few practical templates for reaching out to diverse others; e) ends in the hero’s thorough sacrifice of self, thus reifying the penchant to kill one’s self for the job.
Creative balance can be attained by adding a less well-known, yet award-winning book of science fiction. Remnant Population (Moon, 1996) fills the gaps cited above a) as a human grandmother saves the planet through communicating with an indigenous species; b) by demonstrating non-positional leadership with gender sensitivity; c) through exhibiting and acknowledging the benefit of needful control; and d) in moving from a life of perpetual sacrifice to one of healthy interrelationship. Very much an adult novel, Remnant Population is less accessible than Ender’s Game (Card, 1991); yet in many ways becomes even more gratifying when juxtaposed with it.
These works of fiction can be integrated into a full-term graduate leadership course by mindfully pairing of core and reflective texts to demonstrably help students transform themselves into future transformational leaders. By juxtaposing each novel with specific material from Resonant Leadership (Boyatzis & McKee, 2005) and The Leadership Challenge (Kouzes & Posner, 2007) it is possible to stimulate hard, critical analysis and incisive, interpretive thinking. This paper provides complete rubrics and teaching aids for these assignments.
Elizabeth Jones, Loyola University Maryland
Bio: Dr. Jones is a seasoned leader and manager. She managed an award-winning technical division from 2002 until 2010 for the Department of Defense, where she worked for more than thirty years. She has often been recognized as a powerful organizational leader. Most recently, in 2010 Dr. Jones received the National Security Agency’s Medal for Exceptional Civilian Service, the highest career award given by the Director, NSA, for her creation and sustained leadership of a multi-disciplined organization that provides advanced technological approaches to supply chain assurance of microelectronics components.
Dr. Jones is a dedicated teacher of leadership. She is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Management for the 2010-2011 academic year at the Sellinger School of Business and Management, Loyola University Maryland. She is interested in the interplay between leadership context and leadership expression and is dedicated to facilitating deep understanding of the leader within each person. For the past decade she has taught, on a part-time basis, undergraduate and graduate management and leadership classes for the business department of the College of Notre Dame of Maryland. Melding scholarship with her practical leadership experience, she has written or refined much of the college’s leadership curriculum; several of her courses are key to the school’s new graduate certificate in leadership.
