Bringing the ugly back: A dialogic exploration of ethics in leadership through an ethno-narrative re-reading of the Enron case

Edwards, Gareth; Hawkins, Beverley; Schedlitzki, Doris

Abstract

© The Author(s) 2018. In this article, we adopt a dialogic approach to examining narratives on ethics in leadership. We do this through an ethno-narrative re-reading of writing on the Enron case informed by Bakhtin’s ideas on dialogue. Employing concepts such as beautyism, aesthetic craving and recent writing around disgust and abjection in organizations helps us to develop a deeper relational interpretation of written accounts of leadership and ethics in organizations. We identify two underlying and interrelated social tensions exemplified in existing narratives on this popular example of ‘unethical’ leadership practice. Both tensions, we conclude, are linked to denigrating the ugly in favour of the beautiful, and we have labelled them ‘suppressing the ugly’ and a fetish for ‘looking good’. We go on to suggest that these two tensions then combine in the stories about this case to ultimately beautify a toxic masculinized persona. We suggest therefore that our dialogic perspective on ethical leadership narratives helps to uncover how accounts about Enron are developed through an intricate interplay between seeking to ‘look good’ and the suppression of moral judgment by leaders of the organization.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Mar 26, 2018
• Online Publication Date: May 21, 2018
• Publication Date: Apr 1, 2019
• Deposit Date: Apr 9, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 9, 2018
• Journal: Human Relations
• Print ISSN: 0018-7267
• Electronic ISSN: 1741-282X
• Publisher: SAGE Publications
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 72
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 733-754
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718773859
• Keywords: Leadership, Ethics, Dialogism, Beauty, Ugliness, Bakhtin
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/849249
• Publisher URL: https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726718773859
• Additional Information: Additional Information : Edwards, G., Hawkins, B. and Schedlitzki, D. (2019) Bringing the ugly back: A dialogic exploration of ethics in leadership through an ethno-narrative re-reading of the Enron Case. Human Relations. ISSN 0018-7267. Copyright © 2019. Reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications.
• Contract Date: Apr 9, 2018