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Discusses some aspects of power and powerlessness of contemporary leaders from four different areas of experiences: psychoanalysis, therapeutic communities, Tavistock conferences on group relations, and as a consultant in organisations. Some common trends of narcissism from these areas are seen and it is concluded that the importance for leaders to be able to combine rationality and emotionality, strength and weakness, and the male and female part in us – that is, to be complete human beings – is paramount.

The purpose of this paper is to individually examine the findings from eight case studies presented in this special issue and comparatively identify the findings regarding local learning and action.

Underlying research questions regarding power and powerlessness in regard to addressing underlying risk factors affecting local populations form the basis for the discussion. Proceedings of a collaborative workshop conducted with the contributing authors are analysed qualitatively to identify learning relating to the research questions emerging from the case studies individually and collectively.

A number of strategies and tactics for addressing underlying risk factors affecting local populations were identified from the case studies, including collaboration and cohesion. Campaigning, lobbying, communications and social mobilisation in an attempt to bridge the gap between local concerns and the decision-making of government and other powerful actors. Innovation and local mobilisation to address shortcomings in government support for disaster reduction and development. Communications as a first base to influence behaviour of both communities and government. Social change through empowerment of women to act in disaster reduction and development.

The outcomes of the action research conducted by the authors individually and collectively highlight the necessity for bridging different scales of action through a range of strategies and tactics to move beyond local self-reliance to influence on underlying risk factors. The action research process employed may have wider applications in gathering and formalising local-level experience and knowledge.

The case studies and their analysis present a range of practical strategies and tactics to strengthen local resilience and address underlying risk factors which are replicable in other contexts.

Practitioners are activists and do not often engage in critical reflection and analysis. The method presented here offers a means of achieving this in order to generate learning from local-level experience. The findings contribute to the consideration of cross-scale action to address underlying risk factors which impact local communities.

The extant literature provides evidence that control measures employed in communities of practice (CoPs) have undergone significant changes with the evolution of the concept. When it started as a self-organized group, its members had the freedom to pursue their own interests. Now, CoPs are moving closer toward bureaucratic form of control. The purpose of this paper is to discuss that although it might still be difficult to locate the power base in a CoP, undercurrents suggest that they have a strong affinity for managements’ interests.

This approach taken in this paper is to present a historical background, contrast characteristics of present CoPs with its earlier versions and develop propositions highlighting a power-based perspective on leadership, sponsorship and objectives for CoPs within an existing organization.

The authors have found that power in a CoP has undergone tremendous changes from the time when it was introduced by Lave and Wenger (1991). When it started as a self-organized group, control exerted was null and void, as the members were given freedom to pursue their interests. The paper shows that CoPs can be formed intentionally, which is quite contrary to the common belief that they emerge naturally. Now, CoPs are moving closer toward bureaucratic form of control with the setting up of governance committees. This has serious repercussions for their autonomy, as envisaged by the early proponents of CoP, who believed that closely knit informal groups would enhance situational learning.

There is a general feeling that the word “autonomy” is a misnomer for CoP today. The power that once rested with the CoP group has been taken over by management in the form of sponsorship, goal congruency, etc. What appears as powerful in a CoP today is the sponsor and the CoP has ceased to exist as they used to be. This paper makes it clear that a CoP approach can provide value to the modern organization. However, if the issues discussed herein with regard to organizational power are not appropriately accounted for, CoP may fall short of expectations.

Hierarchy and bureaucracy have been more or less welcomed companions of human civilisation from the very beginning. In almost every culture and epoch, ruling elites and followers, superiors and subordinates can be identified. Hierarchy and bureaucracy are quite flexible, adaptable and they are fairly persistent – but why could, or even should we see this as a problem?

This introduction will first provide a brief history of no change, followed by the second section where the advantages and disadvantages and the contested terrain of hierarchy are elaborated in some length. The discussion focuses on three areas: the functional, social and ethical qualities of hierarchy. In the final section, the chapters of this volume will be briefly introduced. The chapters are grouped into three sections: (I) Fundamentals and historical accounts of bureaucracy, (II) Organisational, cultural and socio-psychological aspects of hierarchy and (III) Alternative views on, and alternatives to hierarchy.

The historian Patrick Wolfe reminds us that the settler colonial logic of eliminating native societies to gain unrestricted access to their territory is not a phenomenon confined to the distant past. As Wolfe (2006, p. 388) writes, “settler colonizers come to stay: invasion is a structure not an event.” In the Gulf of Carpentaria region in Australia’s Northern Territory this settler colonial “logic of elimination” continues through mining projects that extract capital for transnational corporations while contaminating Indigenous land, overriding Indigenous law and custom and undermining Indigenous livelihoods. However, some Garawa, Gudanji, Marra, and Yanyuwa peoples are using creative ways to fight back, exhibiting “story paintings” to show how their people experience the destructive impacts of mining. We cannot know yet the full impact of this creative activism. But their body of work suggests it has the potential to challenge colonial institutions from below, inspiring growing networks of resistance and a collective meaning-making through storytelling that is led by Indigenous peoples on behalf of the living world.

Current research on justice has found that perceptions of injustice are reduced when harm‐doers provide an explanation or “account” of their actions. We question whether these findings generalize to everyone in organizations. In particular, we predict that responses to unjust acts and social accounts about them will differ for those in organizations who have less power and for those who are “in‐group” to the victim. We test this prediction by replicating Bies and Shapiro's study of causal accounts, using union subjects as well as managerial subjects, and constructing a scenario in which the victim is a worker and another in which the victim is a manager. As expected, union subjects were more angry about unjust acts than were managers. Counter to our expectations, all subjects perceived an act to be more unjust when the victim was a worker than when the victim was a manager. As in previous studies, an account reduced feelings of injustice, except in one situation: among those of lower power (union reps) who evaluated acts that hurt members of their own group (i.e., a worker), an account did not reduce their sense of injustice for the victim, even though it did reduce blame at the harm‐doer.

Professionals' accounts of working in challenging service environments bring into relief the tensions they experience in their work. An ethical dilemma where the wellbeing of a severely or profoundly learning disabled (LD) and highly dependent person is at stake is conceptually and emotionally challenging to those responsible for finding some resolution. This report develops the findings of empirical research described in an earlier paper on professionals' experiences of addressing serious ethical issues within their work with people with LD. We attempt to make clear how the ethical and policy frameworks to which they are accountable, their personal desire to improve the lives of people with LD and the relational aspects of their work raises strong feelings that make the work, at times, intolerable and at other times richly rewarding. Regardless, being in relation to the person with LD is prerequisite to making changes in their lives; therefore, the relational as well as procedural aspects of services provided by professionals need to be theorised. We offer a critique of these professionals' perspectives based on a distinction between instrumental and substantial rationalities, the latter being relatively absent in the managerial and scientific discourses within the NHS. This absence risks dehumanising clients and professionals and neglecting what is core to their work: the privilege of being with unique others, bearing witness to their histories and supporting them to live their lives.

U.S. military facilities abroad are key sites around which foreign citizens and U.S. officers negotiate questions of sovereignty with a particular intensity. Between 1999 and 2009, Manta, Ecuador, was home to one of the most strategic U.S. Air Force “forward operating locations” (or FOLs) in the Western hemisphere. While rejected by most Ecuadorian legal scholars, anti-FOL activists, and the current Ecuadorian administration as a violation of national sovereignty, the facility was widely embraced by residents of the city itself, who actively rejected this characterization of “violation” by arguing that the FOL was, on the contrary, a strategic means of bolstering their “municipal sovereignty.” Drawing on 14 months of ethnographic research on and around the FOL in 2006–2007, this chapter tracks the efforts of Manta residents, U.S. military personnel, and anti-base activists to both circumscribe and expand the various registers in which they articulated their understandings of “sovereignty.”

The purpose of this paper is to present the argument that leadership preparation programmes in the new millennium should be required to train school leaders emotionally as well as cognitively. A number of scholars have stressed that leaders are increasingly working within roles that are politically sensitive, conflicted and complex, resulting in role anxiety, emotional stress, and professional burnout. Principals and vice‐principals are frustrated because they are being forced to manage the marketplace, curriculum change, and governance factors with an increased emphasis on accountability, marketability, and globalisation, often at the expense of their primary role as educators.

Such a discussion is framed within a sociological perspective of emotions and presents the importance of acknowledging the primacy of school leaders' emotions in leadership preparation programs.

Sociological aspects of emotions are examined within a context of the globalisation, marketisation, and accountability confronting Western education and their implications for extant leadership preparation programs; the latent influences of these broader issues; and, more specifically, their effect on the emotions of leaders within a context unique to Western Canada. Recommendations for what apotropaic the role of leadership preparation programmes should play in shielding leaders from being overwhelmed from within a changing educational landscape are also discussed.

An examination of the emotions of school leaders and the importance of acknowledging their emotions within preparation programmes remains an understudied topic in the field of education.