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Peter Case

James Cook University, Management, Faculty Member

University of the West of England, Department of Business and Management, Faculty Member

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My research encompasses leadership studies, organizational development and international development. For the past four years I have acted as a programme management consultant for Malaria Elimination Initiative (MEI) at the University of California San Francisco, funded by the Bill

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University of the West of England

University of the West of England

University of Exeter

Roger Friedland

University of California, Santa Barbara

California State University, Bakersfield

Université de Montréal

Nanyang Technological University

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Papers by Peter Case

Of tropes, totems, and taboos: Reflections on using Morgan’s Images as a training resource in international settings

by Peter Case, Jonathan Gosling, and Mikael Holmgren Caicedo

There can be little doubt that Images of Organization (hereafter Images) is one of the most impor... more There can be little doubt that Images of Organization (hereafter Images) is one of the most important and iconic contributions to organization theory in recent decades. Several generations of organization studies academics, students and practitioners owe a great debt to Gareth Morgan for the intellectual work presented in Images and it is entirely apposite to take this opportunity, some thirty years after the first edition (Morgan, 1986) to acknowledge and celebrate this volume. As scholars who favour social constructionist and interpretative approaches to the study of organization, the present authors can testify personally to the impact that the emergence of Images had intellectually, pedagogically and practically. Here was a volume that, at once:
• served to consolidate and summarise social scientific thinking about organizations;
• gave due emphasis to the relativity of perspective;
• offered new ways of seeing and interpreting organizational conduct through a series of highly suggestive metaphors;
• enabled new forms of social and organizational critique;
• served as an impressively comprehensive yet accessible and student-friendly teaching resource.

Climate change, the Great Barrier Reef, and the response of Australians

by Peter Case and Nadine Marshall

Inspiration, aspirations, attitudes, and perception of threats play a pivotal role in the way tha... more Inspiration, aspirations, attitudes, and perception of threats play a pivotal role in the way that individuals associate themselves with natural environments. These sentiments affect how people connect to natural places, including their behaviours, perceived responsibility, and the management interventions they support. World Heritage Areas hold an important place in the lives of people who visit, aspire to visit, or derive a sense of security and wellbeing from their existence. Yet, the connection between people and special places is rarely quantified and policymakers find it difficult to incorporate these human dimensions into decision-making processes. Here we describe the personal concern and connection that Australians have with the Great Barrier Reef and discuss how the results may help with its management. We utilise a statistically representative sample of Australian residents (n= 2,002) and show empirically that climate change is perceived to be the biggest threat to the Great Barrier Reef, and that the Great Barrier Reef inspires Australians, promotes pride, and instills a sense of individual identity and collective responsibility to protect it. An increased understanding of the high levels of personal connection to iconic natural resources may help managers to enhance public support for protecting climate-sensitive systems within Australia and around the world.

Italo Calvino and the organizational imagination: reading social organization through urban metaphors

This article explores the way in which uses or abuses of urban metaphors can inform differing pol... more This article explores the way in which uses or abuses of urban metaphors can inform differing polities and ethics of human organization. From its earliest inception, the city has taken on a metaphorical significance for human communities; being, at one and the same time, a discursive textual product of culture and, reciprocally, provider of artefacts and architecture that produces culture and meaning. The city can be interpreted as a trope that operates bi-directionally in cultural terms. It is a sign that can be worked to serve the principles of both metonymy and synecdoche. In metonymical or reductive form, the city has the propensity to become weighty and deadening. The work of Michael Porter on competitive strategy is invoked to illustrate this effect. In the guise of synecdoche, on the other hand, the city offers imaginative potential. Drawing inspiration from the literary works of Italo Calvino (in particular, his novel Invisible Cities) the article attempts to reveal the fecundity of the city for interpreting technologically-mediated organizational life. Calvino's emphasis on the principle of 'lightness' provides a link to the social theoretical writing of Boltanski and Chiapello on the 'projective city'. A synthesis of these two stylistically different literatures yields a novel way of critically approaching and understanding the reticular form and emerging ethics of contemporary human organization.

The Language of Leadership in Laos

This paper responds to recent calls in the leadership studies literature for anthropologically-in... more This paper responds to recent calls in the leadership studies literature for anthropologically-informed empirical research on leadership phenomena in non-Western and non-Anglophone settings. The authors have worked extensively on rural development projects in Laos and draw on ethnographic ‘observant-participation’ and interview data to explore how leadership is construed in contexts where traditional language usage is influenced by official government and international development terminologies. A theoretical discussion of linguistic relatively and the socially constitutive nature of language in general is offered as background justification for studying the language of leadership in context. The anthropological distinction between etic and emic operations is also introduced to differentiate between different interpretative positions that can be taken in relation to the fieldwork and data discussed in this paper. The study shows how difficult it can be for native Lao speakers to find words to describe leadership or give designations to ‘leaders’ outside of officially sanctioned semantic and social fields. A key finding of the study is that, viewed from the perspective of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party, authority and leadership are coextensive. This social fact is reflected in the linguistic restrictions on what can and cannot be described as leadership in Laos.

Rethinking environmental leadership: the social construction of leaders and leadership in discourses of ecological crisis, development and conservation

by Peter Case, David Mills, and Michael Fabinyi

Leadership is heralded as being critical to addressing the ‘crisis of governance’ facing the Eart... more Leadership is heralded as being critical to addressing the ‘crisis of governance’ facing the Earth’s natural systems. While political, economic and corporate discourses of leadership have been widely and critically interrogated, narratives of environmental leadership remain relatively neglected in the academic literature. The aims of this paper are twofold. Firstly, to highlight the centrality and importance of environmental science’s construction and mobilization of leadership discourse. Secondly, to offer a critical analysis of environmental sciences’ deployment of leadership theory and constructs. The authors build on a review of leadership research in environmental science that reveals how leadership is conceptualised and analysed in this field of study. It is argued that environmental leadership research reflects rather narrow framings of leadership. An analytical typology proposed by Grint is employed to demonstrate how any singular framing of environmental leadership as person, position, process, result or purpose is problematic and needs to be supplanted by a pluralistic view. The paper concludes by highlighting key areas for improvement in environmental leadership research, with emphasis on how a political ecology of environmental crisis narratives contributes to a more critical body of research on leadership in environmental science.

A Simple Decision Market Model

by Peter Case and Daniel Grainger

Economic modeling of decision markets has mainly considered the market scoring rule setup. Litera... more Economic modeling of decision markets has mainly considered the market scoring rule setup. Literature has made reference to the alternative, joint elicitation type decision market, but no in depth analysis of it appears to have been published. This paper develops a simple decision market model of the joint elicitation type, that provides a specific decision market nomenclature on which to base future analysis.

A generally accepted prediction market model is modified, by introducing two additional concepts: “proper information market” and “relevant information”. Our work then provides original contributions to the theoretical discourse on information markets, including finding the sufficient and necessary condition for convergence to the best possible prediction. It is shown in our new prediction market model that “all agents express relevant information” is a sufficient and necessary condition for convergence to the direct communication equilibrium in a proper information (prediction) market.

Our new prediction market model is used to formulate a simple decision market model of the joint elicitation market type. It is shown that our decision market will select the best decision if a specific selection and payout rule is defined. Importantly, our decision market model does not need to delay payment of any contracts to the observation of the desired outcome. Therefore, when dealing with long-term outcome projects, our decision market does not need to be a long running market.

Future work will test for the statistical significance of relevant information (identified as important in our idealized decision market model) in laboratory and real world settings.

Understanding leadership in the environmental sciences

by Peter Case, Philippa Cohen, and David Mills

Ecology and Society, 2015

Leadership is often assumed, intuitively, to be an important driver of sustainable development. T... more Leadership is often assumed, intuitively, to be an important driver of sustainable development. To understand how leadership is conceptualised and analysed in the environmental sciences and to discover what this research says about leadership outcomes, we conducted a review of environmental leadership research over the last ten years. We find that much of the environmental leadership literature we reviewed focuses on a few key individuals and desirable leadership competencies. It also reports that leadership is one of the most important of a number of factors contributing to effective management. Only a sub-set of the literature highlights interacting sources of leadership, disaggregates leadership outcomes or evaluates leadership processes in detail. We argue that the literature on environmental leadership is highly normative. Leadership is typically depicted as an unequivocal good and its importance is often asserted rather than tested. We trace how leadership studies in the management sciences are evolving and argue that, taking into account the state-of-the-art in environmental leadership research, there is still significant potential to progress more critical approaches to leadership research in environmental science.

Rethinking environmental leadership: The social construction of leaders and leadership in discourses of ecological crisis, development, and conservation

by Peter Case, Philippa Cohen, and David Mills

Leadership, 2015

Climate change, the Great Barrier Reef, and the response of Australians

Inspiration, aspirations, attitudes, and perception of threats play a pivotal role in the way tha... more Inspiration, aspirations, attitudes, and perception of threats play a pivotal role in the way that individuals associate themselves with natural environments. These sentiments affect how people connect to natural places, including their behaviours, perceived responsibility, and the management interventions they support. World Heritage Areas hold an important place in the lives of people who visit, aspire to visit, or derive a sense of security and wellbeing from their existence. Yet, the connection between people and special places is rarely quantified and policymakers find it difficult to incorporate these human dimensions into decision-making processes. Here we describe the personal concern and connection that Australians have with the Great Barrier Reef and discuss how the results may help with its management. We utilise a statistically representative sample of Australian residents (n= 2,002) and show empirically that climate change is perceived to be the biggest threat to the Great Barrier Reef, and that the Great Barrier Reef inspires Australians, promotes pride, and instills a sense of individual identity and collective responsibility to protect it. An increased understanding of the high levels of personal connection to iconic natural resources may help managers to enhance public support for protecting climate-sensitive systems within Australia and around the world.

Understanding Leadership in the Environmental Sciences

Leadership is often assumed, intuitively, to be an important driver of sustainable development. T... more Leadership is often assumed, intuitively, to be an important driver of sustainable development. To understand how leadership is conceptualised and analysed in the environmental sciences and to discover what this research says about leadership outcomes, we conducted a review of environmental leadership research over the last ten years. We find that much of the environmental leadership literature we reviewed focuses on a few key individuals and desirable leadership competencies. It also reports that leadership is one of the most important of a number of factors contributing to effective management. Only a sub-set of the literature highlights interacting sources of leadership, disaggregates leadership outcomes or evaluates leadership processes in detail. We argue that the literature on environmental leadership is highly normative. Leadership is typically depicted as an unequivocal good and its importance is often asserted rather than tested. We trace how leadership studies in the management sciences are evolving and argue that, taking into account the state-of-the-art in environmental leadership research, there is still significant potential to progress more critical approaches to leadership research in environmental science.

Rethinking environmental leadership: the social construction of leaders and leadership in discourses of ecological crisis, development and conservation

Leadership is heralded as being critical to addressing the ‘crisis of governance’ facing the Eart... more Leadership is heralded as being critical to addressing the ‘crisis of governance’ facing the Earth’s natural systems. While political, economic and corporate discourses of leadership have been widely and critically interrogated, narratives of environmental leadership remain relatively neglected in the academic literature. The aims of this paper are twofold. Firstly, to highlight the centrality and importance of environmental science’s construction and mobilization of leadership discourse. Secondly, to offer a critical analysis of environmental sciences’ deployment of leadership theory and constructs. The authors build on a review of leadership research in environmental science that reveals how leadership is conceptualised and analysed in this field of study. It is argued that environmental leadership research reflects rather narrow framings of leadership. An analytical typology proposed by Grint is employed to demonstrate how any singular framing of environmental leadership as person, position, process, result or purpose is problematic and needs to be supplanted by a pluralistic view. The paper concludes by highlighting key areas for improvement in environmental leadership research, with emphasis on how a political ecology of environmental crisis narratives contributes to a more critical body of research on leadership in environmental science.

‘The smell of the place’: Managerialist culture in contemporary UK business schools

by Peter Case and Glauco De Vita

By introducing an intentionally provocative critique of managerialist regimes which typify contem... more By introducing an intentionally provocative critique of managerialist regimes which typify contemporary UK business school culture, we argue that current business school management practices generate a climate of mistrust and alienation amongst academics. Such a climate is not conducive to a reformative agenda that business schools should be pursuing if they are to improve staff morale and the educational environment. Drawing on Ghoshal’s ‘smell of the place’ metaphor to structure this argument, we court deliberate irony and paradox. Rather than draw on heterodox theory to inform our critique we, instead, turn relatively mainstream management and organization theory against itself. Our argument is that even when examined through orthodox lenses, managerialist practices are found wanting and contradict the precepts of much mainstream normative theory.

Italo Calvino and the organizational imagination: reading social organization through urban metaphors

This article explores the way in which uses or abuses of urban metaphors can inform differing pol... more This article explores the way in which uses or abuses of urban metaphors can inform differing polities and ethics of human organization. From its earliest inception, the city has taken on a metaphorical significance for human communities; being, at one and the same time, a discursive textual product of culture and, reciprocally, provider of artefacts and architecture that produces culture and meaning. The city can be interpreted as a trope that operates bi-directionally in cultural terms. It is a sign that can be worked to serve the principles of both metonymy and synecdoche. In metonymical or reductive form, the city has the propensity to become weighty and deadening. The work of Michael Porter on competitive strategy is invoked to illustrate this effect. In the guise of synecdoche, on the other hand, the city offers imaginative potential. Drawing inspiration from the literary works of Italo Calvino (in particular, his novel Invisible Cities) the article attempts to reveal the fecundity of the city for interpreting technologically-mediated organizational life. Calvino's emphasis on the principle of 'lightness' provides a link to the social theoretical writing of Boltanski and Chiapello on the 'projective city'. A synthesis of these two stylistically different literatures yields a novel way of critically approaching and understanding the reticular form and emerging ethics of contemporary human organization.

EFFECTIVE PROGRAM MANAGEMENT: A CORNERSTONE OF MALARIA ELIMINATION

by Peter Case and Jonathan Gosling

Effective program management is essential for successful elimination of malaria. In this perspect... more Effective program management is essential for successful elimination of malaria. In this perspective article, evidence surrounding malaria program management is reviewed by management science and malaria experts through a literature search of published and unpublished grey documents and key informant interviews. Program management in a malaria elimination setting differs from that in a malaria control setting in a number of ways, although knowledge and understanding of these distinctions are lacking. Several core features of successful health program management are critical to achieve elimination, including effective leadership and supervision at all levels, sustained political and financial commitment, reliable supply and control of physical resources, effective management of data and information, appropriate incentives, and consistent accountability. Adding to the complexity, the requirements of an elimination program may conflict with those of a control regime. Thus, an additional challenge is successfully managing program transitions along the continuum from control to elimination to prevention of reintroduction. This paper identifies potential solutions to these challenges by exploring managerial approaches that are flexible, relevant and sustainable in various cultural and health system contexts.

Please Show You're Working: A critical assessment of the impact of OFSTED inspection on primary teachers

by Simon Catling and Peter Case

British Journal of Sociology of Education, 2000

Education policies introduced in the past two decades necessitated the adoption of a managerialis... more Education policies introduced in the past two decades necessitated the adoption of a managerialist discourse in the restructuring, running and inspection of schools. In this paper, we critically review the nature of such discourse and outline the historical conditions that contributed to the establishment of OFSTED. Having set the scene, we report on the experiential impact of managerialist discourse on the lives of primary school teachers in the period running up to, including, and in the year following OFSTED inspections. Exploring ...

Betrayal and friendship

by Jonathan Gosling and Peter Case

Society and Business Review, Jan 1, 2009

Introduction and acknowledgments.

by Jonathan Gosling and Peter Case

Wisdom in the Slow Fix: Management development and the maturation of insight

by Peter Case and Jonathan Gosling

organizzazione.unina.it

Friendship and betrayal

by Peter Case and Jonathan Gosling

Organizational Culture and Identity

The Sociological Review, 2002

Of tropes, totems, and taboos: Reflections on using Morgan’s Images as a training resource in international settings

by Peter Case, Jonathan Gosling, and Mikael Holmgren Caicedo

There can be little doubt that Images of Organization (hereafter Images) is one of the most impor... more There can be little doubt that Images of Organization (hereafter Images) is one of the most important and iconic contributions to organization theory in recent decades. Several generations of organization studies academics, students and practitioners owe a great debt to Gareth Morgan for the intellectual work presented in Images and it is entirely apposite to take this opportunity, some thirty years after the first edition (Morgan, 1986) to acknowledge and celebrate this volume. As scholars who favour social constructionist and interpretative approaches to the study of organization, the present authors can testify personally to the impact that the emergence of Images had intellectually, pedagogically and practically. Here was a volume that, at once:
• served to consolidate and summarise social scientific thinking about organizations;
• gave due emphasis to the relativity of perspective;
• offered new ways of seeing and interpreting organizational conduct through a series of highly suggestive metaphors;
• enabled new forms of social and organizational critique;
• served as an impressively comprehensive yet accessible and student-friendly teaching resource.

Climate change, the Great Barrier Reef, and the response of Australians

by Peter Case and Nadine Marshall

Inspiration, aspirations, attitudes, and perception of threats play a pivotal role in the way tha... more Inspiration, aspirations, attitudes, and perception of threats play a pivotal role in the way that individuals associate themselves with natural environments. These sentiments affect how people connect to natural places, including their behaviours, perceived responsibility, and the management interventions they support. World Heritage Areas hold an important place in the lives of people who visit, aspire to visit, or derive a sense of security and wellbeing from their existence. Yet, the connection between people and special places is rarely quantified and policymakers find it difficult to incorporate these human dimensions into decision-making processes. Here we describe the personal concern and connection that Australians have with the Great Barrier Reef and discuss how the results may help with its management. We utilise a statistically representative sample of Australian residents (n= 2,002) and show empirically that climate change is perceived to be the biggest threat to the Great Barrier Reef, and that the Great Barrier Reef inspires Australians, promotes pride, and instills a sense of individual identity and collective responsibility to protect it. An increased understanding of the high levels of personal connection to iconic natural resources may help managers to enhance public support for protecting climate-sensitive systems within Australia and around the world.

Italo Calvino and the organizational imagination: reading social organization through urban metaphors

This article explores the way in which uses or abuses of urban metaphors can inform differing pol... more This article explores the way in which uses or abuses of urban metaphors can inform differing polities and ethics of human organization. From its earliest inception, the city has taken on a metaphorical significance for human communities; being, at one and the same time, a discursive textual product of culture and, reciprocally, provider of artefacts and architecture that produces culture and meaning. The city can be interpreted as a trope that operates bi-directionally in cultural terms. It is a sign that can be worked to serve the principles of both metonymy and synecdoche. In metonymical or reductive form, the city has the propensity to become weighty and deadening. The work of Michael Porter on competitive strategy is invoked to illustrate this effect. In the guise of synecdoche, on the other hand, the city offers imaginative potential. Drawing inspiration from the literary works of Italo Calvino (in particular, his novel Invisible Cities) the article attempts to reveal the fecundity of the city for interpreting technologically-mediated organizational life. Calvino's emphasis on the principle of 'lightness' provides a link to the social theoretical writing of Boltanski and Chiapello on the 'projective city'. A synthesis of these two stylistically different literatures yields a novel way of critically approaching and understanding the reticular form and emerging ethics of contemporary human organization.

The Language of Leadership in Laos

This paper responds to recent calls in the leadership studies literature for anthropologically-in... more This paper responds to recent calls in the leadership studies literature for anthropologically-informed empirical research on leadership phenomena in non-Western and non-Anglophone settings. The authors have worked extensively on rural development projects in Laos and draw on ethnographic ‘observant-participation’ and interview data to explore how leadership is construed in contexts where traditional language usage is influenced by official government and international development terminologies. A theoretical discussion of linguistic relatively and the socially constitutive nature of language in general is offered as background justification for studying the language of leadership in context. The anthropological distinction between etic and emic operations is also introduced to differentiate between different interpretative positions that can be taken in relation to the fieldwork and data discussed in this paper. The study shows how difficult it can be for native Lao speakers to find words to describe leadership or give designations to ‘leaders’ outside of officially sanctioned semantic and social fields. A key finding of the study is that, viewed from the perspective of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party, authority and leadership are coextensive. This social fact is reflected in the linguistic restrictions on what can and cannot be described as leadership in Laos.

Rethinking environmental leadership: the social construction of leaders and leadership in discourses of ecological crisis, development and conservation

by Peter Case, David Mills, and Michael Fabinyi

Leadership is heralded as being critical to addressing the ‘crisis of governance’ facing the Eart... more Leadership is heralded as being critical to addressing the ‘crisis of governance’ facing the Earth’s natural systems. While political, economic and corporate discourses of leadership have been widely and critically interrogated, narratives of environmental leadership remain relatively neglected in the academic literature. The aims of this paper are twofold. Firstly, to highlight the centrality and importance of environmental science’s construction and mobilization of leadership discourse. Secondly, to offer a critical analysis of environmental sciences’ deployment of leadership theory and constructs. The authors build on a review of leadership research in environmental science that reveals how leadership is conceptualised and analysed in this field of study. It is argued that environmental leadership research reflects rather narrow framings of leadership. An analytical typology proposed by Grint is employed to demonstrate how any singular framing of environmental leadership as person, position, process, result or purpose is problematic and needs to be supplanted by a pluralistic view. The paper concludes by highlighting key areas for improvement in environmental leadership research, with emphasis on how a political ecology of environmental crisis narratives contributes to a more critical body of research on leadership in environmental science.

A Simple Decision Market Model

by Peter Case and Daniel Grainger

Economic modeling of decision markets has mainly considered the market scoring rule setup. Litera... more Economic modeling of decision markets has mainly considered the market scoring rule setup. Literature has made reference to the alternative, joint elicitation type decision market, but no in depth analysis of it appears to have been published. This paper develops a simple decision market model of the joint elicitation type, that provides a specific decision market nomenclature on which to base future analysis.

A generally accepted prediction market model is modified, by introducing two additional concepts: “proper information market” and “relevant information”. Our work then provides original contributions to the theoretical discourse on information markets, including finding the sufficient and necessary condition for convergence to the best possible prediction. It is shown in our new prediction market model that “all agents express relevant information” is a sufficient and necessary condition for convergence to the direct communication equilibrium in a proper information (prediction) market.

Our new prediction market model is used to formulate a simple decision market model of the joint elicitation market type. It is shown that our decision market will select the best decision if a specific selection and payout rule is defined. Importantly, our decision market model does not need to delay payment of any contracts to the observation of the desired outcome. Therefore, when dealing with long-term outcome projects, our decision market does not need to be a long running market.

Future work will test for the statistical significance of relevant information (identified as important in our idealized decision market model) in laboratory and real world settings.

Understanding leadership in the environmental sciences

by Peter Case, Philippa Cohen, and David Mills

Ecology and Society, 2015

Leadership is often assumed, intuitively, to be an important driver of sustainable development. T... more Leadership is often assumed, intuitively, to be an important driver of sustainable development. To understand how leadership is conceptualised and analysed in the environmental sciences and to discover what this research says about leadership outcomes, we conducted a review of environmental leadership research over the last ten years. We find that much of the environmental leadership literature we reviewed focuses on a few key individuals and desirable leadership competencies. It also reports that leadership is one of the most important of a number of factors contributing to effective management. Only a sub-set of the literature highlights interacting sources of leadership, disaggregates leadership outcomes or evaluates leadership processes in detail. We argue that the literature on environmental leadership is highly normative. Leadership is typically depicted as an unequivocal good and its importance is often asserted rather than tested. We trace how leadership studies in the management sciences are evolving and argue that, taking into account the state-of-the-art in environmental leadership research, there is still significant potential to progress more critical approaches to leadership research in environmental science.

Rethinking environmental leadership: The social construction of leaders and leadership in discourses of ecological crisis, development, and conservation

by Peter Case, Philippa Cohen, and David Mills

Leadership, 2015

Climate change, the Great Barrier Reef, and the response of Australians

Inspiration, aspirations, attitudes, and perception of threats play a pivotal role in the way tha... more Inspiration, aspirations, attitudes, and perception of threats play a pivotal role in the way that individuals associate themselves with natural environments. These sentiments affect how people connect to natural places, including their behaviours, perceived responsibility, and the management interventions they support. World Heritage Areas hold an important place in the lives of people who visit, aspire to visit, or derive a sense of security and wellbeing from their existence. Yet, the connection between people and special places is rarely quantified and policymakers find it difficult to incorporate these human dimensions into decision-making processes. Here we describe the personal concern and connection that Australians have with the Great Barrier Reef and discuss how the results may help with its management. We utilise a statistically representative sample of Australian residents (n= 2,002) and show empirically that climate change is perceived to be the biggest threat to the Great Barrier Reef, and that the Great Barrier Reef inspires Australians, promotes pride, and instills a sense of individual identity and collective responsibility to protect it. An increased understanding of the high levels of personal connection to iconic natural resources may help managers to enhance public support for protecting climate-sensitive systems within Australia and around the world.

Understanding Leadership in the Environmental Sciences

Leadership is often assumed, intuitively, to be an important driver of sustainable development. T... more Leadership is often assumed, intuitively, to be an important driver of sustainable development. To understand how leadership is conceptualised and analysed in the environmental sciences and to discover what this research says about leadership outcomes, we conducted a review of environmental leadership research over the last ten years. We find that much of the environmental leadership literature we reviewed focuses on a few key individuals and desirable leadership competencies. It also reports that leadership is one of the most important of a number of factors contributing to effective management. Only a sub-set of the literature highlights interacting sources of leadership, disaggregates leadership outcomes or evaluates leadership processes in detail. We argue that the literature on environmental leadership is highly normative. Leadership is typically depicted as an unequivocal good and its importance is often asserted rather than tested. We trace how leadership studies in the management sciences are evolving and argue that, taking into account the state-of-the-art in environmental leadership research, there is still significant potential to progress more critical approaches to leadership research in environmental science.

Rethinking environmental leadership: the social construction of leaders and leadership in discourses of ecological crisis, development and conservation

Leadership is heralded as being critical to addressing the ‘crisis of governance’ facing the Eart... more Leadership is heralded as being critical to addressing the ‘crisis of governance’ facing the Earth’s natural systems. While political, economic and corporate discourses of leadership have been widely and critically interrogated, narratives of environmental leadership remain relatively neglected in the academic literature. The aims of this paper are twofold. Firstly, to highlight the centrality and importance of environmental science’s construction and mobilization of leadership discourse. Secondly, to offer a critical analysis of environmental sciences’ deployment of leadership theory and constructs. The authors build on a review of leadership research in environmental science that reveals how leadership is conceptualised and analysed in this field of study. It is argued that environmental leadership research reflects rather narrow framings of leadership. An analytical typology proposed by Grint is employed to demonstrate how any singular framing of environmental leadership as person, position, process, result or purpose is problematic and needs to be supplanted by a pluralistic view. The paper concludes by highlighting key areas for improvement in environmental leadership research, with emphasis on how a political ecology of environmental crisis narratives contributes to a more critical body of research on leadership in environmental science.

‘The smell of the place’: Managerialist culture in contemporary UK business schools

by Peter Case and Glauco De Vita

By introducing an intentionally provocative critique of managerialist regimes which typify contem... more By introducing an intentionally provocative critique of managerialist regimes which typify contemporary UK business school culture, we argue that current business school management practices generate a climate of mistrust and alienation amongst academics. Such a climate is not conducive to a reformative agenda that business schools should be pursuing if they are to improve staff morale and the educational environment. Drawing on Ghoshal’s ‘smell of the place’ metaphor to structure this argument, we court deliberate irony and paradox. Rather than draw on heterodox theory to inform our critique we, instead, turn relatively mainstream management and organization theory against itself. Our argument is that even when examined through orthodox lenses, managerialist practices are found wanting and contradict the precepts of much mainstream normative theory.

Italo Calvino and the organizational imagination: reading social organization through urban metaphors

This article explores the way in which uses or abuses of urban metaphors can inform differing pol... more This article explores the way in which uses or abuses of urban metaphors can inform differing polities and ethics of human organization. From its earliest inception, the city has taken on a metaphorical significance for human communities; being, at one and the same time, a discursive textual product of culture and, reciprocally, provider of artefacts and architecture that produces culture and meaning. The city can be interpreted as a trope that operates bi-directionally in cultural terms. It is a sign that can be worked to serve the principles of both metonymy and synecdoche. In metonymical or reductive form, the city has the propensity to become weighty and deadening. The work of Michael Porter on competitive strategy is invoked to illustrate this effect. In the guise of synecdoche, on the other hand, the city offers imaginative potential. Drawing inspiration from the literary works of Italo Calvino (in particular, his novel Invisible Cities) the article attempts to reveal the fecundity of the city for interpreting technologically-mediated organizational life. Calvino's emphasis on the principle of 'lightness' provides a link to the social theoretical writing of Boltanski and Chiapello on the 'projective city'. A synthesis of these two stylistically different literatures yields a novel way of critically approaching and understanding the reticular form and emerging ethics of contemporary human organization.

EFFECTIVE PROGRAM MANAGEMENT: A CORNERSTONE OF MALARIA ELIMINATION

by Peter Case and Jonathan Gosling

Effective program management is essential for successful elimination of malaria. In this perspect... more Effective program management is essential for successful elimination of malaria. In this perspective article, evidence surrounding malaria program management is reviewed by management science and malaria experts through a literature search of published and unpublished grey documents and key informant interviews. Program management in a malaria elimination setting differs from that in a malaria control setting in a number of ways, although knowledge and understanding of these distinctions are lacking. Several core features of successful health program management are critical to achieve elimination, including effective leadership and supervision at all levels, sustained political and financial commitment, reliable supply and control of physical resources, effective management of data and information, appropriate incentives, and consistent accountability. Adding to the complexity, the requirements of an elimination program may conflict with those of a control regime. Thus, an additional challenge is successfully managing program transitions along the continuum from control to elimination to prevention of reintroduction. This paper identifies potential solutions to these challenges by exploring managerial approaches that are flexible, relevant and sustainable in various cultural and health system contexts.

Please Show You're Working: A critical assessment of the impact of OFSTED inspection on primary teachers

by Simon Catling and Peter Case

British Journal of Sociology of Education, 2000

Education policies introduced in the past two decades necessitated the adoption of a managerialis... more Education policies introduced in the past two decades necessitated the adoption of a managerialist discourse in the restructuring, running and inspection of schools. In this paper, we critically review the nature of such discourse and outline the historical conditions that contributed to the establishment of OFSTED. Having set the scene, we report on the experiential impact of managerialist discourse on the lives of primary school teachers in the period running up to, including, and in the year following OFSTED inspections. Exploring ...

Betrayal and friendship

by Jonathan Gosling and Peter Case

Society and Business Review, Jan 1, 2009

Introduction and acknowledgments.

by Jonathan Gosling and Peter Case

Wisdom in the Slow Fix: Management development and the maturation of insight

by Peter Case and Jonathan Gosling

organizzazione.unina.it

Friendship and betrayal

by Peter Case and Jonathan Gosling

Organizational Culture and Identity

The Sociological Review, 2002

Where is the Wisdom we Have Lost in Knowledge? A Stoical Perspective on Personal Knowledge Management

by Jonathan Gosling and Peter Case

We examine knowledge as a property that arises in relation as a person disciplines him or herself... more

Spatiotemporal registers of organizational liminality: Psychogeographic sketches of selves in-between

by Katie Beavan, Peter Case, and Margaret Page