Sverre Spoelstra
Biographic Data
| ID | 1006966 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sverre Spoelstra |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sverre |
| FAMILY NAME | Spoelstra |
| SIGNATURE | SPOELSTRA S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Lund University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2965-1937 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 31 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
The leadership dynamics of systems change
Algorithmic leadership and the game of business
Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have renewed debates about the future of leadership, in particular the nature of the relationship between human leaders and intelligent machines. The literature tends to portrays human-machine relations in complementary terms: the machine does the data analysis and the number crunching while the leader makes the decisions, guided by their unique vision, gut-feeling, and inner moral compass. Drawing …
Redemption Through Play? Exploring the Ethics of Workplace Gamification
Today, it is becoming increasingly common for companies to harness the spirit of play in order to increase worker engagement and improve organizational performance. This paper examines the ethics of play in a business context, focusing specifically on the phenomenon of workplace gamification. While critics highlight ethical problems with gamification, they also advocate for more positive, transformative, and life-affirming modes of organizational…
“You just earned 10 points!”
This short paper explores the gamification of an online academic conference. At the conference, digital gamification was meant to stimulate increased levels of participation among attendees. Instead, it resulted in a series of unintended consequences. Precisely because it was all too easy to score points and ascend the virtual leaderboard by means of machine-like grinding, the “Conference Challenge” posed a moral dilemma for its players: each par…
Flow as an ideology
Book review of: Against Flow: Video Games and the Flowing Subject, by Braxton Soderman. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2021. 315 pp. ISBN 9780262045506
Special issue proposal for leadership
Special issue
Special issue
What is the point of method sections
There are plenty of books and articles on research methods, but few discuss the nature and purpose of method sections in academic journals. Based on interviews with critical and interpretivist researchers, this short paper examines the nature and purpose of method sections in management and organization studies. We show how researchers make sense of, and struggle with, positivist expectations about the form and content of method sections. Ultimat…
The (not so) new corporation
Book review of: The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel (2020, documentary), directed by Jennifer Abbott and Joel Bakan, Grant Street Productions
The truths and falsehoods of post-truth leaders
Over the last three years, the idea of a ‘post-truth society’ has become a common talking point. Politicians from around the world, from Europe to South America to the United States, have been labelled as ‘post-truth leaders’, with Donald Trump being portrayed as the standard bearer for this new kind of political discourse. This article suggests that post-truth leadership is nothing new. Ever since Max Weber developed his notion of charismatic le…
The paradigm of the charismatic leader
This invited contribution is a reflection on my motivation for writing the book Leadership and Organization: A Philosophical Introduction (Spoelstra, 2018). The premise of the book is that popular leadership adjectives, e.g. ‘transformational’, ‘authentic’ and ‘servant’, are much more interesting than the corresponding leadership constructs suggest. The book claims that these popular leadership concepts are still shaped by the figure of the chari…
Risky business
Critical scholars in the business school are becoming increasingly concerned about the impact of their research beyond the confines of academia. This has been articulated most prominently around the concept of ‘critical performativity’. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with critical leadership scholars, this article explores how academics engage with practitioners at the same time as they seek to maintain a critical ethos in relation to thei…
Jeffrey Pfeffer, Leadership BS
Never let an academic crisis go to waste
In 2014, leadership studies saw the retraction of a number of journal articles written by prominent researchers who are closely associated with popular concepts such as transformational leadership, authentic leadership, ethical leadership and spiritual leadership. In response, The Leadership Quarterly published a lengthy editorial that presented these retractions as a sign of health in a mature scientific field. For the editors of The Leadership …
Fictional Leaders
In Book III of the Laws, Plato (1997) lays out a series of qualifications that make a leader fit to rule. The first four of these relate to traditional forms of authority through birth and social status: the right of the noble to rule the serf, the parent the child, the master the slave and the old the young. The fifth relates to the authority of those with a superior nature, over the weak. This indeterminate, ‘superior nature’ parallels the traj…
Profaning the sacred in leadership studies
The leadership literature is full of stories of heroic self-sacrifice. Sacrificial leadership behaviour, some scholars conclude, is to be recommended. In this article we follow Keith Grint’s conceptualization of leadership as necessarily pertaining to the sacred, but—drawing on Giorgio Agamben’s notion of profanation—we highlight the need for organization scholars to profane the sacralizations embedded in leadership thinking. One example of this,…
Your Excellency
The idea of ‘excellence’ has become widespread in the modern university, in part due to UK assessment exercises such as the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) and the Research Excellence Framework (REF). As a result, academic careers are becoming increasingly oriented around publications in highly ranked journals. For critical management scholars, this poses a particular difficulty: how to negotiate the demand for excellence at the same time as m…
Play at work
The interest in organizational play is growing, both in popular business discourse and organization studies. As the presumption that play is dysfunctional for organizations is increasingly discarded, the existing positions may be divided into two camps; one proposes ‘serious play’ as an engine for business and the other insists that work and play are largely indistinguishable in the postindustrial organization. Our field study of a design and com…
Theology and organization
This Introduction argues for the importance of theology for the study of organization. It also draws the contours of a possible 'theology of organization'. Theology of organization, as we use it here, does not refer to a study of organization that is rooted in faith, nor does it refer to a study of religious practices in organizations. Instead, theology of organization recognizes that the way we think about and act in organizations is profoundly …
Wonders without wounds
This paper consists of two parts. The first provides a philosophical history of the concept of wonder, taking Heidegger's reading of the Greek verb thaumazein (‘to wonder') as its point of departure. It shows how the Greek sense of wonder, understood as a dwelling in the everyday, has changed over time. Wonder becomes understood as curiosity and amazement, and gradually turns into something suspicious in the modern age. The second part illustrate…
Business miracles
Drawing on the concepts of the miraculous in theology and philosophy, this paper makes a distinction between transcendent miracles, human miracles, and immanent miracles. The first find their origin in a deity that resides above our world, the second arise from the interactions of people, and the third emerge from an earth that constantly reinvents itself against its own laws. The paper starts off by showing how these three concepts of the miracu…
Robert Cooper
Theology and organization
This Introduction argues for the importance of theology for the study of organization. It also draws the contours of a possible 'theology of organization'. Theology of organization, as we use it here, does not refer to a study of organization that is rooted in faith, nor does it refer to a study of religious practices in organizations. Instead, theology of organization recognizes that the way we think about and act in organizations is profoundly …
Business miracles
Drawing on the concepts of the miraculous in theology and philosophy, this paper makes a distinction between transcendent miracles, human miracles, and immanent miracles. The first find their origin in a deity that resides above our world, the second arise from the interactions of people, and the third emerge from an earth that constantly reinvents itself against its own laws. The paper starts off by showing how these three concepts of the miracu…
Never let an academic crisis go to waste
In 2014, leadership studies saw the retraction of a number of journal articles written by prominent researchers who are closely associated with popular concepts such as transformational leadership, authentic leadership, ethical leadership and spiritual leadership. In response, The Leadership Quarterly published a lengthy editorial that presented these retractions as a sign of health in a mature scientific field. For the editors of The Leadership …
The paradigm of the charismatic leader
This invited contribution is a reflection on my motivation for writing the book Leadership and Organization: A Philosophical Introduction (Spoelstra, 2018). The premise of the book is that popular leadership adjectives, e.g. ‘transformational’, ‘authentic’ and ‘servant’, are much more interesting than the corresponding leadership constructs suggest. The book claims that these popular leadership concepts are still shaped by the figure of the chari…
Robert Cooper
The truths and falsehoods of post-truth leaders
Over the last three years, the idea of a ‘post-truth society’ has become a common talking point. Politicians from around the world, from Europe to South America to the United States, have been labelled as ‘post-truth leaders’, with Donald Trump being portrayed as the standard bearer for this new kind of political discourse. This article suggests that post-truth leadership is nothing new. Ever since Max Weber developed his notion of charismatic le…
Robert Cooper
Business miracles
Drawing on the concepts of the miraculous in theology and philosophy, this paper makes a distinction between transcendent miracles, human miracles, and immanent miracles. The first find their origin in a deity that resides above our world, the second arise from the interactions of people, and the third emerge from an earth that constantly reinvents itself against its own laws. The paper starts off by showing how these three concepts of the miracu…
Wonders without wounds
This paper consists of two parts. The first provides a philosophical history of the concept of wonder, taking Heidegger's reading of the Greek verb thaumazein (‘to wonder') as its point of departure. It shows how the Greek sense of wonder, understood as a dwelling in the everyday, has changed over time. Wonder becomes understood as curiosity and amazement, and gradually turns into something suspicious in the modern age. The second part illustrate…
Your Excellency
The idea of ‘excellence’ has become widespread in the modern university, in part due to UK assessment exercises such as the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) and the Research Excellence Framework (REF). As a result, academic careers are becoming increasingly oriented around publications in highly ranked journals. For critical management scholars, this poses a particular difficulty: how to negotiate the demand for excellence at the same time as m…
Play at work
The interest in organizational play is growing, both in popular business discourse and organization studies. As the presumption that play is dysfunctional for organizations is increasingly discarded, the existing positions may be divided into two camps; one proposes ‘serious play’ as an engine for business and the other insists that work and play are largely indistinguishable in the postindustrial organization. Our field study of a design and com…
Theology and organization
This Introduction argues for the importance of theology for the study of organization. It also draws the contours of a possible 'theology of organization'. Theology of organization, as we use it here, does not refer to a study of organization that is rooted in faith, nor does it refer to a study of religious practices in organizations. Instead, theology of organization recognizes that the way we think about and act in organizations is profoundly …
Fictional Leaders
In Book III of the Laws, Plato (1997) lays out a series of qualifications that make a leader fit to rule. The first four of these relate to traditional forms of authority through birth and social status: the right of the noble to rule the serf, the parent the child, the master the slave and the old the young. The fifth relates to the authority of those with a superior nature, over the weak. This indeterminate, ‘superior nature’ parallels the traj…
Profaning the sacred in leadership studies
The leadership literature is full of stories of heroic self-sacrifice. Sacrificial leadership behaviour, some scholars conclude, is to be recommended. In this article we follow Keith Grint’s conceptualization of leadership as necessarily pertaining to the sacred, but—drawing on Giorgio Agamben’s notion of profanation—we highlight the need for organization scholars to profane the sacralizations embedded in leadership thinking. One example of this,…
Never let an academic crisis go to waste
In 2014, leadership studies saw the retraction of a number of journal articles written by prominent researchers who are closely associated with popular concepts such as transformational leadership, authentic leadership, ethical leadership and spiritual leadership. In response, The Leadership Quarterly published a lengthy editorial that presented these retractions as a sign of health in a mature scientific field. For the editors of The Leadership …
Jeffrey Pfeffer, Leadership BS
Risky business
Critical scholars in the business school are becoming increasingly concerned about the impact of their research beyond the confines of academia. This has been articulated most prominently around the concept of ‘critical performativity’. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with critical leadership scholars, this article explores how academics engage with practitioners at the same time as they seek to maintain a critical ethos in relation to thei…
The paradigm of the charismatic leader
This invited contribution is a reflection on my motivation for writing the book Leadership and Organization: A Philosophical Introduction (Spoelstra, 2018). The premise of the book is that popular leadership adjectives, e.g. ‘transformational’, ‘authentic’ and ‘servant’, are much more interesting than the corresponding leadership constructs suggest. The book claims that these popular leadership concepts are still shaped by the figure of the chari…
The truths and falsehoods of post-truth leaders
Over the last three years, the idea of a ‘post-truth society’ has become a common talking point. Politicians from around the world, from Europe to South America to the United States, have been labelled as ‘post-truth leaders’, with Donald Trump being portrayed as the standard bearer for this new kind of political discourse. This article suggests that post-truth leadership is nothing new. Ever since Max Weber developed his notion of charismatic le…
The (not so) new corporation
Book review of: The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel (2020, documentary), directed by Jennifer Abbott and Joel Bakan, Grant Street Productions
What is the point of method sections
There are plenty of books and articles on research methods, but few discuss the nature and purpose of method sections in academic journals. Based on interviews with critical and interpretivist researchers, this short paper examines the nature and purpose of method sections in management and organization studies. We show how researchers make sense of, and struggle with, positivist expectations about the form and content of method sections. Ultimat…
Redemption Through Play? Exploring the Ethics of Workplace Gamification
Today, it is becoming increasingly common for companies to harness the spirit of play in order to increase worker engagement and improve organizational performance. This paper examines the ethics of play in a business context, focusing specifically on the phenomenon of workplace gamification. While critics highlight ethical problems with gamification, they also advocate for more positive, transformative, and life-affirming modes of organizational…
“You just earned 10 points!”
This short paper explores the gamification of an online academic conference. At the conference, digital gamification was meant to stimulate increased levels of participation among attendees. Instead, it resulted in a series of unintended consequences. Precisely because it was all too easy to score points and ascend the virtual leaderboard by means of machine-like grinding, the “Conference Challenge” posed a moral dilemma for its players: each par…
Flow as an ideology
Book review of: Against Flow: Video Games and the Flowing Subject, by Braxton Soderman. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2021. 315 pp. ISBN 9780262045506
Special issue proposal for leadership
Special issue
Special issue
The leadership dynamics of systems change
Algorithmic leadership and the game of business
Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have renewed debates about the future of leadership, in particular the nature of the relationship between human leaders and intelligent machines. The literature tends to portrays human-machine relations in complementary terms: the machine does the data analysis and the number crunching while the leader makes the decisions, guided by their unique vision, gut-feeling, and inner moral compass. Drawing …
Sociology (19 works) · Political science (14 works) · Epistemology (10 works) · Management and Organizational Studies (10 works) · Psychology (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Public relations (9 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · Economics (7 works) · Leadership (6 works)