Special issue on Leadership: in search of resilience

Citation

(2013), "Special issue on Leadership: in search of resilience", Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 34 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/lodj.2013.02234caa.001

Special issue on Leadership: in search of resilience

Article Type: Call for papers From: Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Volume 34, Issue 3.

Guest Editors:

Steve Kempster and Marian Iszatt-White, Lancaster UniversityDavid Beech, Cambridge Leadership DevelopmentNathan Harter, Christopher Newport University

The unexpected challenges of the opening decade of the twenty-first century, including 9/11 and the great crash of 2008, have made salient the notion of resilience. Resilience impacts on individuals, teams, organizations, societies and the planet. Arguably the resilience of the planet, viewed over centuries rather than weeks or years, will respond to climate warming and find a new equilibrium. The same is not so predictable for us. Rather resilience within our relevant ecosystems is likely to be characterised by extremes of flux and change; interests and conflicts seeking to find an appropriate balance between short-term and medium- as well as long-term purposes. The importance of this debate is indicative with the theme for Davos, 2013 being ``Resilient dynamism''. It is in this context that we situate leadership and discussions on leadership and resilience. We suggest attention to this topic in terms of developing research and critical comment from leadership studies can provide an important contribution to the broader debate.

We therefore call for papers that seek to develop understanding of leadership resilience. We welcome papers from a wide range of perspectives that might encapsulate any of the following foci:

.Resilient ``leader'' and ``follower'' – addressing the demands of role responsibilities and expectations – their own and others (for example, performing emotional labour whilst remaining authentic).

.Resilient leadership relationship – addressing the demands of working in a ``VUCA'' world (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity)

.Resilient organizations and institutions – addressing the demands of responding to the ``VUCA'' world (for example strategic and institutional policies, priorities, and practices that sustain a positive balance across the ``yinyang'' requirements of implementation and innovation task processes and cooperation and competition relationship processes)

.Resilient responsibility and sustainability – addressing the demands of society (and the biosphere) in response to the creative and destructive notion of capitalism (for example, with current technologies and institutional arrangements, a growing population of more than 7 billion people is consuming earth's resources 1.5 times faster than earth's ecosystems can regenerate them)

The above foci are not exhaustive of possible areas of research; rather these are provided to be illustrative of possible directions of research. The call also encourages submissions that take a critical approach to reflecting on issues of ideology, diversity, power, ethics, and reflexivity in resilience and leadership.

To prepare their manuscript, authors are asked to closely follow the ``Instructions to Authors'' of the Leadership & Organization Development Journal (LODJ). Manuscripts will be refereed according to the standards of LODJ. Manuscripts should be submitted via LODJ's electronic submission system.

For further enquiries, please contact any of the guest editors. All submissions will be subject to the usual double-blind peer-review process of LODJ and should respect the general publication guidelines of the journal.

Deadline for submissions is 28 February 2014.