Flexibilitet i mångsidighet och specialisering

In the current debate concerning the Swedish Schools of Music and Performing Arts (SMPAs) the concept of flexibility is frequently used. Here it mostly describes the necessity to take students’ requests and needs into account in teacher education and the institutions’ ability to adapt to changing demands for artistic activities among children and adolescents. In contrast to this view, this study examines flexibility as a central competency of the teaching profession and particularly in a curriculum-free environment such as the SMPAs. Resting on the assumption that teachers with a large toolkit have a certain advantage in practising flexibility, the study is based on interviews with three multi-instrumentalists, all of them experienced music teachers in SMPAs. The analysis suggests three forms of flexibility that are related to the teachers’ use of instrumental tools, each of them emerging in particular kinds of teaching activities: problem-solving flexibility in instrument-related counseling, method flexibility in ensemble leadership, and role flexibility in group music-making. The findings are discussed in relation to ideals of teacher specialization and versatility, and the notion of tool-based flexibility is distinguished from improvisation as a teaching skill.

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers Uses Ensemble Storytelling Processes to Overcome Enslavement in Corporate Supply Chains

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) has successfully combated modern-day slavery by transforming the ways that over a dozen major brands, including Taco Bell, Subway, and Wal-Mart, manage their supply chains. The CIW’s efforts over more than 20 years have effectively stopped enslavement practices, including abuses such as wage theft and peonage indebtedness. We conducted a field ethnography, interviews, and archival analyses to understand this success. We find that the CIW employs a decentered, egalitarian, and ensemble approach to their multiplicities of alliances by collectively “animating” themselves and their partners through ensemble leadership. This combination of alliances, along with worker-driven monitoring, brings life to the CIW motto “We are all leaders.” Translating this motto into daily practice is how the CIW virtually eradicates enslavement practices in corporate supply chains.

An Antenarrative Amendment to the Learning Organization: Theories to Avert the Sixth Extinction

Exploring “antenarrative” processes of storytelling reveals why corporations so often have overlooked the natural environment, to the extent that some scientists predict the “sixth extinction.” Senge and some pioneering others have promoted more encompassing frameworks as well as more inclusionary collaborative approaches to learning organizations, in ways which incorporate concern for the natural environment. In this chapter the authors extend that work by offering an antenarrative approach that is critical in questioning the “business as usual” status quo, is inclusive in recognizing the interconnectivity of persons and planet, and uses ensemble storytelling processes to incorporate diverse community voices. The collaborative approach of Ensemble Leadership Theory (ELT) uses ensemble storytelling to co-create a more encompassing and equitable approach to the learning organization’s relationship with the natural environment. These ensemble storytelling processes include: together-telling, materiality, economics, worker-to-worker participation, elicitation, authorship, and theatrical performances.

Ensemble leadership theory: Collectivist, relational, and heterarchical roots from indigenous contexts

We offer an “ensemble” theory of leadership that emerges from contemporary indigenous scholarship and also from the archeology of the prehispanic southwest. We see ensemble leadership theory as starting from a different origin: the indigenous world-view. It provides an emphasis in the leadership context, which is largely missing in traditional leadership literature. First, the ensemble leadership theory casts leadership as a collective phenomenon, and privileges the collective rather than the individual. This moves away from the “hero” leadership views and instead, connects with the recent “relationality” and “shared” views of leadership, breaking new ground in collective leadership. Second, the ensemble leadership theory is dynamic rather than static, as revealed using storytelling and “antenarrative” analysis. Third, the ensemble leadership theory assumes a social structure, which is decentered as well as multi-centered and nonhuman-centric. Fourth, the combination of dynamism and multi-centeredness yields a structure which storytelling scholars call “rhizomatic” and archeologists term “heterarchical.” These ensemble leadership theory qualities of collectivist, relational, dynamic, and heterarchic are all drawn from indigenous cultures. In particular, archeologists have found heterarchical leadership structures in the prehispanic southwest portions of North America. In sum, ensemble leadership theory offers a time-tested model of a more relational and collectivist view of leadership.

Adaptive leadership responses

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to posit a hierarchical classification of enactments, practices and virtues that comprise an emerging adaptive leadership response to the prevailing volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) conditions. Design/methodology/approach – Reports and discusses the findings of two neo-classical grounded theory research studies to theorise augmented leadership repertoires for VUCA worlds. The first study was conducted with eight large regional and multinational organisations in Australia. The second is an on going, longitudinal study undertaken with 18 regional, national and multinational organisations in New Zealand. Findings – The first neo-classical grounded theory study in Australia identifies a set of emerging leadership practices labelled, “Zeitgeist – Integrating Cognition, Conscience and Collective Spirit”, as part of such a repertoire. The preliminary results of the second neo-classical grounded theory research extension in New Zealand, results in the further grounded theorising of the ensemble leadership repertoire (ELR), which is an emerging and hierarchical classification of leadership enactments, practices and virtues for prevailing times. The classification is robust because of its methodological similarities and conceptual congruence with other emerging and well-accepted classifications like, for example, character strengths in positive psychology. Originality/value – The grounded theorising provides a core category of the ELR which has its origins in substantive context. It lists 93 enactments inducted from leaders’ key phrases. These enactments in turn aggregate in relational sets through the process of constant comparison to describe 14 practices, which in sets of dyads and triads describe the five zeitgeist leadership virtues of being present, being good, being in touch, being creative and being global.