Peter Case
James Cook University, Management, Faculty Member
- My research encompasses leadership studies, organizational development and international development. For the past fo... moreMy research encompasses leadership studies, organizational development and international development. For the past four years I have acted as a programme management consultant for Malaria Elimination Initiative (MEI) at the University of California San Francisco, funded by the Billedit
This article explores the way in which uses or abuses of urban metaphors can inform differing polities and ethics of human organization. From its earliest inception, the city has taken on a metaphorical significance for human communities;... more
This article explores the way in which uses or abuses of urban metaphors can inform differing polities and ethics of human organization. From its earliest inception, the city has taken on a metaphorical significance for human communities; being, at one and the same time, a discursive textual product of culture and, reciprocally, provider of artefacts and architecture that produces culture and meaning. The city can be interpreted as a trope that operates bi-directionally in cultural terms. It is a sign that can be worked to serve the principles of both metonymy and synecdoche. In metonymical or reductive form, the city has the propensity to become weighty and deadening. The work of Michael Porter on competitive strategy is invoked to illustrate this effect. In the guise of synecdoche, on the other hand, the city offers imaginative potential. Drawing inspiration from the literary works of Italo Calvino (in particular, his novel Invisible Cities) the article attempts to reveal the fecundity of the city for interpreting technologically-mediated organizational life. Calvino's emphasis on the principle of 'lightness' provides a link to the social theoretical writing of Boltanski and Chiapello on the 'projective city'. A synthesis of these two stylistically different literatures yields a novel way of critically approaching and understanding the reticular form and emerging ethics of contemporary human organization.
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This paper responds to recent calls in the leadership studies literature for anthropologically-informed empirical research on leadership phenomena in non-Western and non-Anglophone settings. The authors have worked extensively on rural... more
This paper responds to recent calls in the leadership studies literature for anthropologically-informed empirical research on leadership phenomena in non-Western and non-Anglophone settings. The authors have worked extensively on rural development projects in Laos and draw on ethnographic ‘observant-participation’ and interview data to explore how leadership is construed in contexts where traditional language usage is influenced by official government and international development terminologies. A theoretical discussion of linguistic relatively and the socially constitutive nature of language in general is offered as background justification for studying the language of leadership in context. The anthropological distinction between etic and emic operations is also introduced to differentiate between different interpretative positions that can be taken in relation to the fieldwork and data discussed in this paper. The study shows how difficult it can be for native Lao speakers to find words to describe leadership or give designations to ‘leaders’ outside of officially sanctioned semantic and social fields. A key finding of the study is that, viewed from the perspective of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party, authority and leadership are coextensive. This social fact is reflected in the linguistic restrictions on what can and cannot be described as leadership in Laos.
Research Interests: Management, Anthropology, Anthropological Linguistics, Social Anthropology, Development Studies, and 12 moreSoutheast Asian Studies, International Development, Linguistic Anthropology, Leadership, Community Development, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Sustainable Development, Human Resource Management, Southeast Asia, Laos (Lao PDR), Rural Development, and International Aid
Inspiration, aspirations, attitudes, and perception of threats play a pivotal role in the way that individuals associate themselves with natural environments. These sentiments affect how people connect to natural places, including their... more
Inspiration, aspirations, attitudes, and perception of threats play a pivotal role in the way that individuals associate themselves with natural environments. These sentiments affect how people connect to natural places, including their behaviours, perceived responsibility, and the management interventions they support. World Heritage Areas hold an important place in the lives of people who visit, aspire to visit, or derive a sense of security and wellbeing from their existence. Yet, the connection between people and special places is rarely quantified and policymakers find it difficult to incorporate these human dimensions into decision-making processes. Here we describe the personal concern and connection that Australians have with the Great Barrier Reef and discuss how the results may help with its management. We utilise a statistically representative sample of Australian residents (n= 2,002) and show empirically that climate change is perceived to be the biggest threat to the Great Barrier Reef, and that the Great Barrier Reef inspires Australians, promotes pride, and instills a sense of individual identity and collective responsibility to protect it. An increased understanding of the high levels of personal connection to iconic natural resources may help managers to enhance public support for protecting climate-sensitive systems within Australia and around the world.
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Leadership is often assumed, intuitively, to be an important driver of sustainable development. To understand how leadership is conceptualised and analysed in the environmental sciences and to discover what this research says about... more
Leadership is often assumed, intuitively, to be an important driver of sustainable development. To understand how leadership is conceptualised and analysed in the environmental sciences and to discover what this research says about leadership outcomes, we conducted a review of environmental leadership research over the last ten years. We find that much of the environmental leadership literature we reviewed focuses on a few key individuals and desirable leadership competencies. It also reports that leadership is one of the most important of a number of factors contributing to effective management. Only a sub-set of the literature highlights interacting sources of leadership, disaggregates leadership outcomes or evaluates leadership processes in detail. We argue that the literature on environmental leadership is highly normative. Leadership is typically depicted as an unequivocal good and its importance is often asserted rather than tested. We trace how leadership studies in the management sciences are evolving and argue that, taking into account the state-of-the-art in environmental leadership research, there is still significant potential to progress more critical approaches to leadership research in environmental science.
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Leadership is heralded as being critical to addressing the ‘crisis of governance’ facing the Earth’s natural systems. While political, economic and corporate discourses of leadership have been widely and critically interrogated,... more
Leadership is heralded as being critical to addressing the ‘crisis of governance’ facing the Earth’s natural systems. While political, economic and corporate discourses of leadership have been widely and critically interrogated, narratives of environmental leadership remain relatively neglected in the academic literature. The aims of this paper are twofold. Firstly, to highlight the centrality and importance of environmental science’s construction and mobilization of leadership discourse. Secondly, to offer a critical analysis of environmental sciences’ deployment of leadership theory and constructs. The authors build on a review of leadership research in environmental science that reveals how leadership is conceptualised and analysed in this field of study. It is argued that environmental leadership research reflects rather narrow framings of leadership. An analytical typology proposed by Grint is employed to demonstrate how any singular framing of environmental leadership as person, position, process, result or purpose is problematic and needs to be supplanted by a pluralistic view. The paper concludes by highlighting key areas for improvement in environmental leadership research, with emphasis on how a political ecology of environmental crisis narratives contributes to a more critical body of research on leadership in environmental science.
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This article explores the way in which uses or abuses of urban metaphors can inform differing polities and ethics of human organization. From its earliest inception, the city has taken on a metaphorical significance for human communities;... more
This article explores the way in which uses or abuses of urban metaphors can inform differing polities and ethics of human organization. From its earliest inception, the city has taken on a metaphorical significance for human communities; being, at one and the same time, a discursive textual product of culture and, reciprocally, provider of artefacts and architecture that produces culture and meaning. The city can be interpreted as a trope that operates bi-directionally in cultural terms. It is a sign that can be worked to serve the principles of both metonymy and synecdoche. In metonymical or reductive form, the city has the propensity to become weighty and deadening. The work of Michael Porter on competitive strategy is invoked to illustrate this effect. In the guise of synecdoche, on the other hand, the city offers imaginative potential. Drawing inspiration from the literary works of Italo Calvino (in particular, his novel Invisible Cities) the article attempts to reveal the fecundity of the city for interpreting technologically-mediated organizational life. Calvino's emphasis on the principle of 'lightness' provides a link to the social theoretical writing of Boltanski and Chiapello on the 'projective city'. A synthesis of these two stylistically different literatures yields a novel way of critically approaching and understanding the reticular form and emerging ethics of contemporary human organization.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Effective program management is essential to ensure the elimination and eventual eradication of malaria.1 Malaria elimination, defined as the interruption of local transmission in a specific geographical area,2 is a long-term, focused and... more
Effective program management is essential to ensure the elimination and eventual eradication of malaria.1 Malaria elimination, defined as the interruption of local transmission in a specific geographical area,2 is a long-term, focused and technical process that requires effective management and communication at all levels. There are several core features of successful health program management, all of which are critical to achieve elimination.3 In general, elimination is facilitated by robust health systems, determined leadership, appropriate incentivization, an effective and real-time surveillance system, and regional collaborations. Elimination is hampered by sclerotic or inflexible health systems, a lack of sustained political and financial commitment, ill-equipped managers, unmotivated and untrained staff and external donor constraints. Program management in a malaria elimination setting differs in a number of ways from program management in a malaria control setting, and there ...
Effective program management is essential for successful elimination of malaria. In this perspective article, evidence surrounding malaria program management is reviewed by management science and malaria experts through a literature... more
Effective program management is essential for successful elimination of malaria. In this perspective article, evidence surrounding malaria program management is reviewed by management science and malaria experts through a literature search of published and unpublished gray documents and key informant interviews. Program management in a malaria elimination setting differs from that in a malaria control setting in a number of ways, although knowledge and understanding of these distinctions are lacking. Several core features of successful health program management are critical to achieve elimination, including effective leadership and supervision at all levels, sustained political and financial commitment, reliable supply and control of physical resources, effective management of data and information, appropriate incentives, and consistent accountability. Adding to the complexity, the requirements of an elimination program may conflict with those of a control regimen. Thus, an addition...
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ABSTRACT Please copy the link for access to the full paper (50) and/or abstract: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/9tzAEx2fDF93jDMhVunZ/full#.U5-oYo1dUWI Many thanks
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[Extract] The first decade of this century has witnessed a plethora of failures in leadership with varying consequences. Amidst the various scandals and crises, increases in top management and key specialist pay and bonuses have continued... more
[Extract] The first decade of this century has witnessed a plethora of failures in leadership with varying consequences. Amidst the various scandals and crises, increases in top management and key specialist pay and bonuses have continued to rise in ways that, it could be argued, are far from justified by corporate performance1. Such inequities, as well as the apparent offloading of losses onto the taxpayers through bank bailouts, have made organizational and leadership ethics issues of significant public interest.
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... ten Bos wants us to stop using the metaphors of roads and speeds in our work of organizational structuring and analysis. ... Continuing the exploration of the relations between speed and time, for Charlie Gere the question is can we... more
... ten Bos wants us to stop using the metaphors of roads and speeds in our work of organizational structuring and analysis. ... Continuing the exploration of the relations between speed and time, for Charlie Gere the question is can we travel faster than time? ...
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Abstract The influence of astrology and alchemy on organizational conduct has not hitherto attracted much serious social scientific attention. Retro-organizational theory licenses paying closer attention to topics that are systematically... more
Abstract The influence of astrology and alchemy on organizational conduct has not hitherto attracted much serious social scientific attention. Retro-organizational theory licenses paying closer attention to topics that are systematically occluded by modern knowledge regimes and is invoked in this article to examine the manner in which premodern cosmologies underpin certain contemporary organizational practices. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator®(MBTI) is presented as a particularly conspicuous example of how the ...
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... http://mlq.sagepub.com/content/33/2/255.citation The online version of this article can be found at: DOI: 10.1177/1350507602332007 2002 33: 255 Management Learning Peter Case and Ken Selvester A Rejoinder to Roberts from the Normally... more
... http://mlq.sagepub.com/content/33/2/255.citation The online version of this article can be found at: DOI: 10.1177/1350507602332007 2002 33: 255 Management Learning Peter Case and Ken Selvester A Rejoinder to Roberts from the Normally Paranoid Published by: ...
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Abstract This article attempts a critical reappraisal of the part played bytrust'in management education. Our main contention is that trust is being perceptibly eroded by a range of factors that find their genesis in a wider... more
Abstract This article attempts a critical reappraisal of the part played bytrust'in management education. Our main contention is that trust is being perceptibly eroded by a range of factors that find their genesis in a wider set of social relations within contemporary capitalism. Accordingly, we set about trying to account for the diminution of trust in social theoretical terms. Having constructed an analytical matrix we then apply our reasoning to specific instances of mistrust in an educational context. Drawing on documented student ...
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There is much to applaud and commend in John Hendry's quietly passionate and polemical evaluation of management education and development practices within the UK higher education system. His condemnation of the tyranny of... more
There is much to applaud and commend in John Hendry's quietly passionate and polemical evaluation of management education and development practices within the UK higher education system. His condemnation of the tyranny of economics and its more pervasive counterpart the 'economic mindset'is most welcome, as is his insistence on the replacement of facile remedies and recipes by knowledge rooted in well-established intellectual traditions of the humanities and interpretative social sciences. Although he does not explicitly ...