Imagining aesthetic leadership

Abstract

The study of aesthetic leadership has recently gained importance in the organizational literature, wherein some authors focused on the perception and manipulation of “beautiful” artifacts and others focused on relational processes, “dwelling in the senses” (Ropo et al., 2017). In contrast to those views, we argue that aesthetic leadership highlights the role of imagination, beyond artifacts and sense perceptions. To give due consideration to imagination in aesthetic leadership, we show how Kant and Arendt’s philosophies can be transposed to organizational studies to formulate three roles for imagination in leadership: 1. Achieve representative thinking in leadership processes; 2. Allow leadership to create social commitment to put those representations into action; and 3. Sustain a capacity of projective agency as the capacity of inventing alternative but feasible futures.