‘Masters of the Universe’: Demystifying Leadership in the Context of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis
通过研究英国一家建房互助协会领导者的主体性，揭示领导力话语与金融危机如何共同强化“领导者能预测未来”的假设，并指出这种假设助长了危机且可能催生新泡沫。
There have been numerous explanations of the 2008 global financial crisis, ranging from the greed of the bankers to excessive deregulation due to neoliberalism and the financialization of everything. This paper argues that a discussion of parallels between the crisis and leadership discourses can generate new insights into both. Through an empirical study of the subjectivity of leaders in a UK building society, discourses around both leadership and the crisis are argued to reflect and reproduce similar taken‐for‐granted assumptions about subjectivity and representations of organizational and economic life. These are grounded in the belief that leaders are ‘Masters of the Universe’, who are able to predict and secure the future. The authors believe that these assumptions and representations contributed to the crisis and are now in danger of producing yet another bubble.