Cultural Dynamics and Leadership
An Interpretive Approach

This Element looks behind titles in leadership from anthropology, sociology, and history to gain a more nuanced understanding of culture.

Nathan W. Harter (Author)

9781009009874, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 19 May 2022

75 pages
22.8 x 15.1 x 0.5 cm, 0.144 kg

The intersection of leadership and culture is undertheorized. This Element looks behind familiar titles in leadership at materials from anthropology, sociology, and history to gain a more nuanced understanding of culture. Of particular relevance is an interpretive approach, elaborated in the works of Simmel, Cassirer, Ortega y Gasset, and Gadamer. A ?ve-part schema examines permutations pertaining to the relationship between culture and leadership – as separate, con?icting, derivative, or engaged – with the most attractive being the possibility that leadership and culture are mutually constituting. To explain cultural change, Ortega y Gasset suggested as a unit of analysis the idea of a generation, illustrated in a historical account of translating the Bible. Archer proposed as a mechanism for cultural change the idea of social morphogenesis, which this Element applies to evolving issues of race in the civic order. This process illustrated in the thinking of pundit William F. Buckley, Jr.

1. What Is Culture?
2. An Interpretive Approach to Culture
3. The Relationship between Leadership and Culture
4. The Cultural Phenomenon of the King James Bible, 1611
5. Cultural Elaboration on Issues of Race
6. Closing.

Subject Areas: Management & management techniques [KJM]