Developing Leadership: Questions Business Schools Don't Ask

What kind of a leader do you want to become? 

The role of business schools in developing future managers and leaders has long been scrutinised and critiqued. This has been exacerbated by the recent financial crisis and many books have been written that condemn business schools for producing leaders who graduate without the ability to respond to the changing world around them, innovate, or act in a responsible way.

By way of remedy this provocative book takes the critique and debate further, proposing a number of ethical and spiritual resources including Heiggarian philosophy, classical Greek philosophy, and the Maori notion of wairua.  It explores existing teaching practices and suggests ways that business schools can:

• Encourage a greater understanding of different world views
• Introduce different perspectives such as the arts, philosophy and spirituality
• Encourage the practice of responsible and ethical leadership
• Nurture innovation and creativity.

Developing Leadership is accompanied by filmed seminars exploring the central debates, and interviews with the expert team of contributors. 

′A rare thing, this book gives more than the label promises. The title is about "questions", yet each chapter gives us answers to why important issues are not addressed in business schools – and what to do about it. This is a manifesto for reform, and the next big question is what will you, reader, do about it?′ - Professor Jonathan Gosling, Director, Centre for Leadership Studies, University of Exeter, UK, and Distinguished Visiting Professor of Leadership Development, INSEAD, France

Chris Mabey is a Chartered Psychologist and Professor in Leadership at Middlesex University Business School. Chris has held a career-long interest in leadership development as a counsellor for a charity, as a practitioner with British Telecom and Rank Xerox and as a consultant. More recently he has researched, taught and written on this topic with four different business schools.

Wolfgang Mayrhofer is Full Professor and head of the Interdisciplinary Institute of Management and Organisational Behaviour, Department of Management, WU Vienna (Vienna University of Economics and Business), Austria. He previously has held full-time research and teaching positions at the University of Paderborn, Germany, and at Dresden University of Technology, Germany, after receiving his diploma and doctoral degree, and post-doctoral degree (Habilitation) in Business Administration from WU.

He conducts research in comparative international human resource management, comparative careers, and systems theory and management and has received several national and international awards for outstanding research and service to the academic community. With his co-authors he published more than 30 books, most recently Gunz, H. P., Lazarova, M. B., & Mayrhofer, W. (Eds.). 2020. The Routledge Companion to Career Studies. Milton Park: Routledge, and Brewster, C., Mayrhofer, W., & Farndale, E. (Eds.). 2018. Handbook Of Research On Comparative Human Resource Management. (2 ed.). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, and more than 150 book chapters and 90 peer reviewed articles.

Wolfgang Mayrhofer is a member of the editorial board of several international journals, a research fellow at the Simon Fraser University Centre for Global Workforce Strategy (Vancouver, Canada), and a member of the academic advisory board of AHRMIO, the Association of Human Resource Management in International Organisations. His teaching assignments both at the undergraduate, graduate, and executive level and his role as visiting scholar has led him to many universities around the globe. He regularly consults with organisations in the for-profit and non-profit world and conducts management trainings, among others on sailboats (www.championSHIPS.at).