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Few organisations exhibit the importance of physicality in leadership as explicitly as the symphony orchestra. While usually attributed to the direction of the conductor my own experience suggests that leading in orchestral performance is grounded in physical relations between individuals and among instrumental groups across the orchestra as much as in the interaction between musicians and maestro. In order to further interrogate this experience while enhancing our understanding of onstage relations among orchestral musicians, I recently undertook research that employed an autoethnographic methodology underpinned by the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty (2002, 2004) and the sense-making ideas of Weick (1995, 2001a). Using this method while drawing on ideas such as kinaesthetic empathy (Pallaro, 1995; Parviainen, 2002), the picture presented in what follows is one of leadership embedded in physical interaction among colleagues.

This interaction is, I suggest, based on sense-making and sense-giving activity that occurs in a ‘kinaesthetic loop’ that draws on and is generated by auditory, visual and gestural information given and received by individual musicians. This activity in turn mediates the acoustic space between musicians and thus, ultimately, determines how leadership and coordination in the orchestra are constituted. Rather than being disembodied products of dictatorial direction dispensed through the orchestra’s hierarchy, orchestral performance and leadership emerge in this more nuanced account as co-creative processes in which all the musicians on stage share responsibility.

Although within the leadership literature there is a body of research concerning the physical attributes of leaders, close examination reveals that much of it offers a rather surface level of analysis. A number of studies, for example, attempt to correlate leaders’ height with their success, and attempts have been made to identify a relationship between leaders’ performance and their attractiveness. In this book, a range of scholars from differing perspectives delve below the apparent level of physicality to highlight its paradoxically ‘invisible’ aspects including: the impact of gesture, the way in which the physical is intrinsically interwoven with the social and the contradictory nature of bodily taboos. The book shows how each of these aspects plays an important role in the creation and maintenance of leadership relationships.

This chapter introduces three tussles we and our authors have faced in navigating this territory. Firstly, we have worked hard to find forms of writing which ‘point towards’ the experience of physicality. Realising that written language can never ‘be’ that experience (just as Magritte demonstrates with his painting, ‘Ceci n’est pas une pipe’ that the reproduction of the pipe is not the pipe itself) we have encouraged authors to contribute first-person accounts, in-depth case studies focused on individuals and even activities which involve the reader in order to evoke a sense of the physical. Secondly, we have endeavoured to distinguish the ‘inside-out’ phenomenon of ‘embodiment’ from the ‘outside-in’ occurrence of ‘physicality’. Finally, our authors have worked to reveal the mutual entanglement of social and material worlds, such that paradoxically, the physical reveals itself to be ‘in flow’ and continually in a process of ‘becoming’. After describing how we have sought to resolve these challenges, a taster from each chapter is offered. The chapter concludes by reasserting the importance of recognising the physical nature of the connection at the heart of human relationships experienced as leadership.

The practice of ‘city-making’ – a civic-led form of urban development – is currently gaining attention from urban professionals and scholars across Europe. Whereas scholars have so far focused mostly on the conditions that make such civic-led urban development possible, little research has been dedicated to the skills and capacities of city-makers. This challenge is taken up in this chapter. Interviews with city-makers across Europe reveal that whereas knowledge of socio-spatial processes and process competences are important, city-makers also deploy a third set of skills, including the ability to act in the moment, adapt to contingencies and connect personal drivers to city-wide processes. This third set of skills is further conceptualised, by drawing out an analogy with Deleuzian-Guattarian lines of flight and modern dance improvisation techniques. Four dance improvisation techniques are discussed more in detail and compared with the practices described by the city-makers interviewed for this study. The concluding section of this chapter speculates on how the notion of improvisation could be adopted within wider practices of spatial planning and urban governance as well.

Society’s relations to animals pose possible blind spots in sociological theory that may be revealed and illuminated by studying systems of human‐animal interaction. By investigating whether and how animals enter into key processes that shape self and society we may determine the ways in which animals might be included in the core subject matter of sociology. An earlier discussion of the role of animals in sociology initiated by Weber is reviewed. Issues that debate raised about the extent of linguistically‐mediated human‐animal intersubjectivity are updated. It is in principle difficult to rule out animal languages, and some animals have acquired human language. But sociology may follow a more fecund empirical route by examining successful human‐animal performances produced by enduring interspecies relationships. Following this route, this paper specifically argues that the human self should be seen to take root in the available mixed species community. To show this, the work of G.H. Mead is revisited and corrected in light of recent work on early human development, and conceptual analyses of language, the body, and the self. The formation of the self is not dependent on only linguistic exchanges; a nonverbal nonhuman other can contribute to the self‐reflective sense of being a human self. Based on this reasoning, examples of studies of humans with wild and domestic animals illustrate the potential for a human‐animal sociology.

The purpose of this paper is to go beyond the leader-centric approach to highlight the shared leadership phenomena happening in organizations where there is no head leader. Seeing interactions between the orchestra members through the lens of aesthetics is a useful way of understanding leadership phenomena.

The different approaches used are interviews, participant observation, analysis of video, photo materials and journalist review.

The managerial evidence says that without a head leader nothing is possible in organizations with a high level of complexity is not proved in a conductorless orchestra. The orchestra without a conductor shows that leadership is an aesthetic phenomenon. The conductorless orchestra is enhancing the sensitivity of organizational practices in a situation where beauty is a common goal to achieve. Studying leadership through the aesthetic lens is very relevant to understand this phenomenon, and shows that leadership is a co-construction between leaders and followers (and therefore negotiated).

It has to be compared to a non “amateur” orchestra where power struggles are maybe more visible.

No study has been done on aesthetics and the no-conductor orchestra.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how researchers in the field of arts marketing are gradually abandoning the traditional marketing concept in order to respond to established and emerging modes of audience engagement.

The study is based on a comprehensive content analysis of the past three decades of journal articles related to arts marketing.

The results of the content analysis highlight that a paradigm shift in arts marketing has occurred over the past two decades, from an overriding focus on neoliberal processes of consumption towards a relational, humanistic approach, which aims to enrich audiences and interrogate the wider value and impact of their arts experiences.

The logical conclusion to be derived from this paradigmatic shift is that “arts marketing” is increasingly becoming an outmoded misnomer, which suggests the need for a fundamental reassessment of the traditional arts marketing concept.

In order to develop meaningful relationships with audiences, arts and cultural organisations should prioritise the long-term relational approaches offered by audience engagement over short-term tactical activities such as segmentation and promotion.

The paper advocates a radical reconceptualization of the field that would replace the transactional 4P model with a relational 4E model, derived from an adoption of theories, processes and practices related to the elements of experience, exchange, environment and engagement.

Multisensory stimulation is integral to experiential consumption. However, a gap persists between recognition of the importance of multisensory stimulation and the research techniques used to study the effects of such stimulation on consumption experiences. This article draws on sensory anthropology to narrow the gap.

Sensory anthropology has the potential to help consumer researchers understand multisensory stimulation and its effect on consumption experiences. To highlight this potential, ethnographic fieldwork is reported for two related experiential settings: yacht racing and adventure racing.

It is shown how consumer researchers can apply concepts and data collection techniques from sensory anthropology to derive powerful insights into consumption experiences. A set of guidelines and examples is derived from the embodied concepts associated with sensory anthropology, namely, kinaesthetic schema, bodily mimesis, the mindful body and local biology. These concepts are used to comprehend how consumers experience sensations phenomenologically, understand them culturally and re-enact them socially.

By acknowledging and engaging the senses, researchers can acquire embodied information that would not be evident from the conventional interview, survey or experimental data. Sensory anthropology adds to what is known from psychological, social and cultural sources to enable organisations to differentiate their offerings by means of the senses and sensory expressions, not only in yacht and adventure racing but potentially in many other experiential settings, such as travel, shopping, entertainment and immersive gaming.

This article offers distinct and original methodological insights for consumer researchers by focusing on concepts and data collection techniques that assist the study of experiential consumption from an embodied and corporeal perspective.

Mediation is defined as a process, whether referred and agreed to by the expression mediation, pre-litigation mediation, online mediation, community mediation, conciliation or any other expression of such similar import, whereby party or parties, request an independent third person referred to as mediator or mediation service provider to assist them in their attempt to reach a peaceful settlement of a dispute. The peaceful settlement of any dispute to be initiated, processed, guided and moderated in the process of successful mediation before parties, needs mediator to have four major new skills such as witness-awareness, stillness-concentration, empathy-motivation and a pragmatic-sensibility for fulfilling the aims and outcomes of mediation. These four skills are deeply inward and psychological, which can be accessed and empowered by an exercise of deepening experience called spiritual in content and application. However, a crucial interchange of meaning and value that very often come into this situation between spirituality and psychology is an important one to be mentioned here. The two seemingly distant disciplines of experience, one of psychology and another of spirituality lies in the orientation that an individual and a collective give to life and world as a whole. When life and world are accepted in totality, spirituality can be life-affirmative and world-embracing giving us a direction to the individual psychological states of though-emotion-sensation-behaviour complex to embrace and enhance values of inclusion, harmony and development at the collective and universal level. These psychological states, both individual and collective, gradually open the vision and mission of values to live within and outside, to be and to become, and finally manifest a future world of stability, order, richness and growing perfection by solving challenges that come to our existence. It makes life both spiritual and earthly. This chapter demonstrates that this kind of spiritual meaning, value and experience entering into and operating through psychological capacities give mediator four major new skills for easing the process and purpose of mediation exercise. One, an objective awareness to witness the proceedings of the mediation calmly within the conscious cognition and without having any bias and fixed beliefs towards any issues of the parties. Two, a stillness with sensory concentration to avoid unnecessary reactions or agitations that human nature is prone to in taking sides on issues or become lop-sided in approach and consequently affecting mediation's outcome of peaceful settlement. Three, an empathy that animates and motivates parties to look for win-win situation for both as against the adversarial method currently present in the legal system where one party loses and another party gains grounds, which results in bitterness in parties' relationships, rights and obligations. Four, a pragmatic sensibility or practical responsibility by which costs or damages or injuries of all kinds such as social, economic, profit-loss ratio, psychological or organizational stress etc., can be pre-calculated, meaningfully distributed and harmonized between parties by the mediator. With millions of pending legal cases in the existing system of the courts of law that are supposedly designed to provide access to justice and, unfortunately have become fragile as a result of severe shortage of resources of all kinds to deal with sheer quantity and intricate complexity of issues in the disputes, applied spirituality in mediation can pave way for easy, flexible, quick, cost-effective and satisfactory justice to both sides of the parties when these four major new skills are developed through application of spiritual experience and experiments in the whole process of mediation. The author explains in this article the method of acquiring these four major new skills in experiential form in any mediation scenario and the rationale for infusing applied spirituality in mediation. Author also discusses the Indian situation of mediation in the light of new developments sought for enhancing the alternative dispute resolution. At the end, this chapter demonstrates the bigger picture that represent the need of spirituality using these four major new skills while mediating challenges of sustainable development. It will be shown in the end how spirituality, sustainability and mediation for settlements of disputes of sustainable development have something common, core and collective. This is the premise based on which the relationship between applied spirituality and mediation in overcoming the challenges of sustainability are expressed with the help of intuitive, inspirational, integrative and intelligent actions for a sustaining our future age, new humanity and harmonious space.