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Poetry and Leadership in Light of Ambiguity and Logic of Appropriateness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2015

Yijun Xing  and
Yipeng Liu
Yijun Xing
Affiliation:
Beijing Jiao Tong University, China
Yipeng Liu
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham, United Kingdom
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Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between poetry and leadership – in particular, how business leaders might leverage poetry in practice. Drawing on the theoretical lenses of logic of appropriateness and ambiguity, we suggest a conceptual model to understand the multilayered meaning of poetry, noting that poetry has four layers of meaning: the superficial meaning, the poet's evocative meaning, the reader's recasting into a modern situation, and the recipient's interpretation. Using the storytelling research method, we collected leadership narrative stories that indicate poetry as an effective communication tool in practicing leadership. From these data, we identify four approaches that leaders use to apply the multilayered meaning of poetry in contemporary business practice: drawing lessons from poets' experience through critical interpretation of the poem, inspiring leaders' heroic spirits, guiding leaders' rules of behavior, and adopting poetry as a tactic to influence others. Our study contributes to the argument of ambiguity as a source of intelligence and illuminates how poetry as an artistic form of story facilitates contemporary leadership practice in light of the logic of appropriateness framework.

Keywords

ambiguityChinaleadershiplogic of appropriatenessmultilayered meaningpoetry
Type
Articles
Information
Management and Organization Review , Volume 11 , Issue 4: Special Issue Expanding Research on Family Business in China , December 2015 , pp. 763 - 793
Copyright
Copyright © The International Association for Chinese Management Research 2015 

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