The book is a research-based manual for a CXO as well as an organisation to transform into an Aesthetic Leader. This book aims at understanding the origin and scope of aesthetic leadership and includes my lectures delivered in the United Kingdom. The book explores the uniqueness of businesses that are dependent on beauty, art, design and why these need unique leadership acumen wherein the leader himself or herself has to be an integral part of generating the competitive advantage – aesthetics. It also explores the strategic perspective of leading luxury brands with a certain finesse that only aesthetics can provide, especially while handling multi-billion-dollar ‘Quite Luxury’ with Aesthetes and Connoisseurs. It explains how an organisation needs to restructure itself towards creative- and aesthetic-centricity in luxury. The book explains the role of disruptors from technology space like Apple wherein design and aesthetic-obsessive behaviour of a true aesthetic leader Steve Jobs is the core competency for charging super premium, behaving just like a luxury brand. The book is a comprehensive narration of the story of aesthetic leadership in luxury along the various strategy contours of art, beauty, design, creativity and of course, aesthetics.

The question of aesthetics as a theoretical framework for thinking about modern leadership issues in educational settings is an emergent area of inquiry that is receiving considerable attention. There is a growing sense that the mechanistic approach to leadership, which has been widely encouraged over the last ten years, is sterile and that a more philosophical approach is now required. This approach is covered here, taking into account the importance of aesthetics on all aspects of the administrative and leadership world: the ways ideas and ideals are created, how their expression is conveyed, the impact they have on interpersonal relationships and the organisational environment that carries and reinforces them and the moral boundaries or limits that can be established or exceeded. While presenting a significant departure from conventional studies in the field, the international contributors reflect a continuity of thought on administrative and leadership authority, from the writings of Plato through to current theory.

Leaders in business and art stand to gain a great deal by listening to each other. In this book thirteen research-based cases demonstrate how software programmers and art curators, financial analysts and orchestra conductors, construction engineers and chefs, share aesthetic leadership talents that hold the key to transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary. Each chapter explores aesthetic leadership in a different setting and profession illuminating its universal capacity to create an economy mindful of human needs and desires. By focusing passion, playfulness, improvisation, intuitive judgement, beauty, and sensuality beyond deadlocking dualisms, this new type of leadership opens up a third aesthetic way contributing quality, meaning and value to projects and enterprises.

This is an indispensable and authoritative guide to the most crucial ideas, concepts and debates surrounding the study and exercise of leadership. Bringing together entries written by a wide range of international experts, this is an essential desktop resource for managers and leaders in all kinds of institutions and organizations, as well as students of business, sociology and politics. Topics covered in this guide include: authority creativity cross-cultural leadership motivation emotional intelligence group dynamics.

Leading with Aesthetics: The Transformational Leadership of Charles M. Vest at MIT examines the role of aesthetics, design, and architecture in organizational transformation and leadership, particularly in the context of academic institutions. Leadership has been thus far predominantly examined from the perspective of function (performance) and position in the organizational structure (such as a CEO or a president). Relatively little work has been done in studying leadership of academic institutions, let alone from the perspective of aesthetics, both of which this book aims to rectify. Although aesthetic dimension is important in any organizational context, it is particularly important for academic institutions. Leading with aesthetics would empower leaders in any organizational setting. Daas examines the aesthetic dimension of transformational leadership through an eclectic blend of lenses drawn from the fields of architecture, political science, organizational aesthetics, and organizational psychoanalysis. A detailed case study of the leadership of Charles Marstiller Vest (1941–2013), who served as the president of Massachusetts Institute of Technology for fourteen years between 1990 and 2004, illustrates the importance of the aesthetic dimension in leadership and organizational change.

This book focuses on leadership as a visual discourse and explores the construction of this discourse within the context of Bedouin Arabia, and the Middle East more broadly. In it, the author considers business and organisational leadership from an aesthetic perspective and in the context of various geographical and historical settings. The book examines the work of a variety of artists, and examines how public representations of business and political figures are used as a tool of leadership. Using a Foucauldian perspective, the book explores the interconnected concepts of power and knowledge, examining how visual images are used in the Middle Eastern context for leaders to communicate with their followers and the public. The Bedouin business world provides a unique opportunity for the researcher to examine the interplay between culture, management and politics. The book will be of interest to academics working in the fields of aesthetics, leadership, management, culture, and the Middle East more broadly.

Leadership pervades every aspect of organizational and social life, and its study has never been more diverse, nor more fertile. With contributions from those who have defined that territory, this volume is not only a key point of reference for researchers, students and practitioners, but also an agenda-setting prospective and retrospective look at the state of leadership in the twenty-first century. It evaluates the domain and stretches it further by considering leadership scholarship from every angle, concluding with an optimistic look at the future of leaders, followers and their place in organizations and society at large. Each section represents a distinctive slant on leadership: - Macro perspectives - including strategic leadership, organization theory, charismatic leadership, complexity leadership, and networks. - Political and philosophical perspectives - including distributed leadership, critical leadership, ethics, the military and cults. - Psychological perspectives - including personality, leadership style and contingency theories, transformational leadership, exchange relationships, shared leadership, cognition, leadership development, gender, trust, identity and the ′dark side′ of leadership. - Cultural perspectives - including spirituality, aesthetics, and creativity. - Contemporary and emergent perspectives - followership, historical methods, virtual leadership, emotions, image, celebrity, and the quest for a general theory of leadership