Companion site to the book
Rethinking Leadership
“Kevin Morrell's book is a marvellous review of the importance of narrative to our understanding of leadership. Through a combination of sophisticated theoretical grounding and intriguing empirical cases he challenges many of the traditional conceptual frameworks and poses some intriguing and destabilising questions for leaders and leadership scholars alike.” Professor Keith GrintCo-founder of the journal Leadership
“What a fascinating tour de force. Professor Morrell not only covers all the key elements of a narrative and literary approach to leadership, but does so in a delightfully narrative and storied way. The result is a very lively and engaging read, very rich, approachable, and informative. It's also a great resource for leaders and would-be leaders who want to adopt a narrative approach, as well as for those teaching leadership. Highly recommended!” Professor Daved BarryEmeritus Professor, Clarkson University · co-author of “Strategy Retold”
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Rethinking Leadership
Kevin Morrell
Edward Elgar Publishing
Cover artwork will replace this placeholder once the publisher's approved design is available.
How the book is built
Seven chapters, one argument
The Introduction previews the shape of the whole book. Below is that preview, chapter by chapter, summarised for this site.
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Introduction
The constitutive claim
Leadership and strategy are narrative in character.
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Chapter One
Rhetoric
How persuasion constitutes leadership, from aphorism to enthymeme.
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Chapter Two
Character
Character in two senses: a capacity cultivated through action over time, and the role a person occupies in a story.
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Chapter Three
Naming
What the language of leadership does, and why the choice of word is political.
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Chapter Four
Figure-Ground
Figuration and the production of space, and why leader and context cannot be separated.
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Chapter Five
Method
Four stances for studying leadership when narrative is treated as primary.
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Chapter Six
Ethics
The question of what leaders ‘should’ do, argued through Aristotelian virtue ethics.
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Chapter Seven
Application
Three positions: telling the story, helping someone else tell theirs, and reading the story you are being told.
Tell — the storyteller, constructing and stabilising a transformational narrativeReplot — the coach, helping someone find the story they're stuck inside and reshape itRead — the follower, board member or investor, interpreting the story they're being told
Chapter Seven's three positions — telling, replotting, reading — are also how this site is organised. Wherever you sit in relation to the book, that's where to start.
The argument
From the IntroductionThe one big thing that runs through twenty years of research, is that strategy and leadership are fundamentally narrative in character. Far from being just one of many tools available to leaders, narrative is the medium through which strategy becomes shared and change becomes intelligible. Narrative is how leadership becomes real both to those enacting leadership and to their followers.
Chapter Seven, as three doors in
Where are you standing?
Go deeper
Six lenses
Put it to work
Four diagnostic tools
Is this change incremental, or transformational?
Narrative Landscape MapperMap the stories already circulating.
Enthymeme AnalyserFind what a statement leaves for you to assume.
Critical Narrative ReviewInterrogate a narrative you're being told.
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The book
Publication
- Author
- Professor Kevin Morrell, Rowlands Chair in Transformational Strategy, Cranfield School of Management
- Publisher
- Edward Elgar Publishing
Publication date, ISBN, format, price and purchase links will appear here once confirmed with the publisher.