Rethinking Leadership

Topic:

Leadership and the uses that are made of it have an undeniable claim to be one of the socially consequential areas of political, moral, and economic philosophy that traditional philosophy journals tend to focus on.  Leadership, we feel, remains a field of inquiry that is (still) ready and waiting for careful conceptual analysis.

Format:

This will be a small two-day workshop on the philosophy of leadership, in Vienna, for late July. Following on from the first workshop in 2025, the format will be a small group with longer than usual round table sessions for in depth discussions. Full papers will be required 4 weeks before the workshop to allow for in depth commentary. 

Papers will each have a dedicated reader, with author response and group discussions. 

The focus is on exploring leadership through the lens of analytic philosophy.  Anyone with any training can participate, as long as you’re ready to use that lens for two days.  No papers will be presented; all materials will be distributed and read in advance.

We plan to have up to ten sessions.  If you want us to discuss your work, please email us an abstract for approval before April 30th. 

Graduate students with relevant background are welcome and encouraged, please email us for more information. 

Deadlines:

Abstracts should be emailed to us by 15th of March 2026.

Outcomes and acceptance of abstracts: 31st of March 2026

Full papers (after acceptance of abstracts): 1st June 2026

Potential Questions for Focus:

There is no shortage of unresolved questions about the connection between leadership and ethics.  Questions relating to the definition of leadership include:

·         How is leadership to be defined when we take it to be a mere socially descriptive role, independent of socially created rights and responsibilities?

·         How is leadership to be defined when we take it to be an individual quality, virtue, or characteristic, rather than either a social function or description?

·         Are followers a necessary reciprocal to any of these concepts of leadership (the functional role, the descriptive role, the individual quality)? 

·         How can we be sure that the concept of leadership is being applied univocally when applied across times and cultures?

·         What is the conceptual difference between leadership and management?

Another major area of philosophical inquiry concerns the connection between leadership and ethics.  Significant questions remain:

·         What is the conceptual relationship between good leadership, effective leadership, and ethical leadership?

·         What are the ethical implications of a leader’s efforts to occupy the leadership role, as opposed to executing it?

·         How do we distinguish between the leader’s organizational responsibility to advance the group’s purpose and the leader’s moral responsibility to benefit humankind?

·         To what extent is the leader, as the agent of the principals (whether shareholders, citizens, or other constituencies), ethically bound to advance the interests of those principals? 

·         Is respect for human dignity essential to the concept of good leadership, or is it—at most—an instrumental means to organizational success?

·         Does leadership necessarily introduce limitations upon the autonomy of organization members, or can the leadership function be carried out even while enhancing their capacity and autonomy?