The Aesthetics of Leadership: Beau Geste as Critical Behaviour

This paper focuses on the role of beau geste in organizations, showing that it is endowed with a specifically critical dimension as it challenges both the established order and customary practices. We also scrutinize its unique role that consists in critically resisting economic norms. Analysing the beau geste actually offers an opportunity to broaden the scope of our vision of leadership by relying on aesthetics rather than conventionally viewing the leader as an artist. In the first part, we thus concentrate on the way leadership scholars have so far dealt with aesthetics. In the second part, through a series of examples and by adopting a historical perspective, we describe the defining features of the beau geste in organizations: gratuity effect, impact on the common good, size effect and surprise effect. We then analyse how beau geste indeed constitutes a form of provocation against an ‘organized’ world in which economic rationality seems to prevail. In the conclusion, we outline future prospects for research.