Modeling Leadership in Tolkien’s Fiction: Craft and Wisdom, Gift and Task

Journal of Business Ethics 163 (3):401-415 (2020)
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Abstract

This article contributes to conversations about the “Hitler problem” in leadership ethics and the use of literary narratives in leadership studies by proposing Tolkien’s fiction as a model of leadership. Resonating with Aristotelian and Thomistic themes, these narratives present leadership as more a matter of practical wisdom than of morally neutral craft, or, more precisely, they model leadership as a matter of using craft for the sake of wisdom’s ends. Those ends become intelligible in terms of a triadic account of human action that depicts it as a response to a gift or call. I argue that this model of leadership suggests that Hitler-type leaders are corrupted leaders, rather than partially excellent leaders or no leaders at all. I also maintain that these insights demonstrate the fruitfulness for leadership studies of approaching literary narratives in something like the way scientists treat their models.

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Confessions.R. S. Augustine & Pine-Coffin - 2019 - Hackett Publishing Company.
True Enough.Catherine Z. Elgin - 2017 - Cambridge: MIT Press.
Summa Theologica.Thomasn D. Aquinas - 1273 - Hayes Barton Press. Edited by Steven M. Cahn.
Summa Contra Gentiles.Thomas Aquinas - 1975 - University of Notre Dame Press.
True enough.Catherine Z. Elgin - 2004 - Philosophical Issues 14 (1):113–131.

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