Ledelse i kunst - kunst i ledelse: en artist talk med Wolfgang Plagge

Abstract

This chapter investigates how the arts may be used as an interpretative lens to inform and expand our conceptions of leadership. Our aim is to make a contribution to the rapidly expanding field of research where the arts are linked to leadership, not by instrumentally crafting particular traits of the arts into leadership devices, but as an attempt to understand complex and understated aspects of leadership as a practical phenomenon. We have conducted a semi-structured interview in the form of an artist talk with renowned Norwegian artist and scholar Wolfgang Plagge, who is engaged as a leader in the IRIS-project. In our conversation with Plagge we have focused on his experiences as an artist performing leadership activities, as well as elaborating on the nature of leadership in general. The empirical analysis has in combination with relevant theory on the arts and leadership generated five dimensions of the arts as a whole, which transcends the variety of contemporary and historical particularities of different forms of arts, and which we suggest may be fruitful to expand our knowledge of leadership practice. Our construed dimensions are: process, interaction, intentional creation, unpredictability and non-dualism.