The New Protreptic - The Concept and the Art

 Book presentation November 19, 2009, 15.30-17.30, CBS, Porcelænshaven 22, Room PHRs20

Attendance is free but please register here for the book presentation

In contemporary organizations, employees are too often made to feel that their lives and passions are of concern only for strategic purposes.

So-called technologies of intimacy—coaching is a prime example—enable management to expropriate the personal lives of knowledge workers for the use of the firm. This produces desperation, stress, and cynicism. As an antidote, protreptic dialogue is about realizing the deepest inherent values that control our lives and in the context of management, it requires addressing members of organizations not as employees, but as a human beings.

First articulated in ancient Greece in the fourth century, protreptic dialogue is a means of direct exhortation to pursue a just life by addressing core values: the good, the just, the true, and the beautiful, and hence involving attitudes such as generosity, decency, honesty, and empathy. While this form of dialogue has informed philosophers, lawyers, political theorists, and humanists since the Renaissance, and developed and shaped the European tradition of consulting and mentoring through the nineteenth century, it is important to conceive of the protreptic in contemporary terms. This has become especially apparent in light of the recent international financial downturn, as this type of structural crisis can only be met through innovation, which—by definition a social enterprise—demands open and committed dialogue.

Leadership is required to meet the great task of mastering this dialogue and to set people free. The protreptic allows for the possibility of a totally new approach to organizational communication and it evades the traps of shallowness and instrumentalism that have begun to dominate value-based management and corporate branding. Protreptic dialogue offers the possibility for both the leader and the employee to know themselves through reflective cooperation on the basis of a well-examined life. It is the necessary condition of genuine leadership, which we need now more than ever.

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"When I read an earlier draft of this book, I found I couldn’t put it down—literally. Its provocative ideas, strong tones, and poetic travels are complex, haunting, even mesmerizing. With this, Professor Kirkeby has created a noteworthy complement to Aristotle’s original thinking; indeed, I believe this book takes the concept of protreptics to far higher (and deeper) levels than Aristotle ever did. Its title, The New Protreptics, is surely well-deserved, and I think anyone interested in depth approaches to leadership will find it a rewarding and refreshing change from the usual leadership fare." (Professor Daved Barry, Banco BPI Chair of Creative Organization Studies, School of Economics & Management, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal)

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Book presentation November 19, 2009, 15.30-17.30, CBS, Porcelænshaven 22, Room PHRs20

Arrangementet er gratis men af logistiske årsager er tilmelding nødvendig. Klik her for at tilmelde dig