Exceptions that make the rule? Koizumi Jun'ichiro and political leadership in Japan (original) (raw)

Anthropologising the complexity of leadership: A holistic understanding of cross-cultural context

The topic of leadership is exciting with a mysterious undertone. It has long remained one of the most overanalysed, frantically debated, and yet frustratingly underspecified areas of research within management and organisational studies. Using Japan as an example, this paper attempts to bring anthropological perspectives to bear on the unravelling of the leadership conundrum. Of great significance is the contextualisation of leadership in space and time; what it means to be leadership varies from nation/organisation to nation/organisation and changes over time. Although the complex nature of context is now often invoked, confusion and chaos continue to abound. It is suggested that a holistic understanding of cross-cultural context, combined with commitment to empirically-based, qualitative methods, can serve as an alternative approach to clarifying the jumbled field of leadership research, as well as throwing fresh insights into practical application and future direction.

Political Leadership and Power Redistribution

The Chinese Journal of International Politics, 2016

The theoretical puzzle that moral realism must crack is that of why a rising state is able to displace a dominating hegemon even though it is inferior to the latter in terms of economic base, technical invention, education system, military strength, and political system. Moral realism attributes political leadership to the rise or decline of great powers and categorizes political leadership, according to morality, as inactive, conservative, proactive, or aggressive types at national level, and as tyranny, hegemony, and humane authority at international level. Moral realism is a binary theory which suggests that a state's strength determine strategic interests while types of political leadership determine strategies for achieving those interests. According to moral realist theory it will be possible for China to change the international system in the 21 century if it practices the moral principles of fairness, justice, and civility both at home and abroad. The shift of world power has been a durable topic in the theoretical study of international relations (IR). The most popular research on this issue is arguably that by Paul Kennedy who attribute imperial overstretch to the decline of a hegemon by arguing that the global obligations defined by policymakers are far greater than their country's strength to defend. 1 Unlike most research on why a hegemon declines, moral realist theory focuses on why and how a rising state is able to displace a dominating hegemon. 2 Its answer is that the rising

Intersectionality in the Processes of Leadership Incarnation: a Multisited Approach Based on the Mobilizations of Brazilian Migrants in Japan

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2016

Social science literature rarely analyzes leadership as an issue relating to the lives of ordinary people. Many studies have explored leadership in relation to the political field and to the incarnation of political roles, including such high-profile cases as Presidents, Prime Ministers or party leaders. A recent publication based on a range of international case studies in western contexts attests to this dominant trend (Alexandre-Collier, Vergniolle de Chantal, 2015). One of the main causes of this trend is that leadership in western societies is usually related to a dominant position, which has been incorporated in the social image of a white man from an upper or middle class background (Morris, Staggenborg, 2004; Acker, 2006; Achin, Dorlin and Rennes, 2008). A similar configuration is noticeable in Japan where the leadership positions have been gradually monopolized throughout history by men with high social status (Neary, 1996). This historical trend also reflects the patriarchal paradigm which was widely disseminated from the "modernization period" of Meiji (Ueno, 2004). Furthermore, the early studies point out a so-called "weakness" of Japanese leadership, which would be connected with the seniority system through a specific patronage among the relationships between the oyabun, an aged leader, and his or her kobun, a young subaltern (Nakane, 1970). In contemporary Japan, the "rîdâ" 2) is still identified with the pregnant image in which his or her position should automatically reach by way of the seniority system. However, these studies have been criticized for its culturalistic bias and, as it was observed in western contexts, the emergence of leaders in Japan is also related to the charismatic skills' development, the social distinction and a variety of biographical trajectories marked by disruption and/ or by change in private life (Brumann, 1996). The leadership issue more generally leads to address a double problem: the difference that leadership

Problems, problems, problems: The social construction of 'leadership

Human Relations, 2005

The invasion of Iraq was premised upon accounts of the situation that have proved unsustainable, but that has not generated a change in the strategy of the coalition forces. Conventional contingency accounts of leadership suggest that accurate accounts of the context are a critical element of the decision-making apparatus but such accounts appear incapable of explaining the decisions of those engaged. An alternative model is developed that adapts the Tame and Wicked problem analysis of Rittell and Webber, in association with Etzioni's typology of compliance, to propose an alternative analysis that is rooted in social constructivist approaches.This is then applied to three asymmetric case studies which suggest that decision-makers are much more active in the constitution of the context than conventional contingency theories allow, and that a persuasive rendition of the context then legitimizes a particular form of action that often relates to the decision-maker's preferred mode of engagement, rather than what 'the situation' apparently demands. In effect, the context is reconstructed as a political arena not a scientific laboratory. K E Y WO R D S contingency leadership problems social constructivism war 1 4 6 7 Human Relations