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Citius, Altius, Fortius : managers’ quest for heroic leader identities

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Bardon_2021_Organization_Citius_CC.pdf (232.9Kb)
Date
16/07/2021
Author
Bardon, Thibaut
Brown, Andrew
Puyou, François-Régis
Keywords
Enterprising selves
Foucault
Governmentality
Healthism
Heroic leader identity
Neoliberalism
HD28 Management. Industrial Management
T-NDAS
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Abstract
In this paper, we draw on Foucault’s concept “governmentality” to show how a cohort of middle-aged senior managers who engaged in competitive endurance sports fabricated (avowed) “heroic” leader identities drawing on this repertoire of discursive resources. Neoliberalism constitutes a form of governmentality which encourages people to regard themselves as autonomous and to aspire to personal fulfillment by investing entrepreneurially in themselves as “human capital.” Healthism, which requires individuals be responsible for their own health and wellbeing, is one program by which this is accomplished. We analyze managers’ talk about themselves as people who self-examined, and sought continually to transform (improve) themselves, to avow identities as superior (heroic) leaders. Our study contributes to the literature on governmentality by showing how in neoliberalism “healthism” constructs managers as enterprising selves.
Citation
Bardon , T , Brown , A & Puyou , F-R 2021 , ' Citius , Altius , Fortius : managers’ quest for heroic leader identities ' , Organization , vol. OnlineFirst . https://doi.org/10.1177/13505084211030644
Publication
Organization
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1177/13505084211030644
ISSN
1350-5084
Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © The Author(s) 2021. Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
Description
Authors are grateful to the Fondation Audencia for the support provided in order to transcribe empirical material.
Collections
  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/23591

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