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Publications
  • 2012
  • Chapter
  • The Handbook for Teaching Leadership: Knowing, Doing, and Being

Creating Leaders: An Ontological/Phenomenological Model

By: Michael C. Jensen, Werner Erhard and Kari L. Granger
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Abstract

The sole objective of our ontological/phenomenological approach to creating leaders is to leave students actually being leaders and exercising leadership effectively as their natural self-expression. By "natural self-expression" we mean a way of being and acting in any leadership situation that is a spontaneous and intuitive effective response to what one is dealing with. In creating leaders we employ the ontological discipline (from the Latin ontologia "science of being," see Heidegger, 1927). The ontological model of leader and leadership opens up and reveals the actual nature of being when one is being a leader and opens up and reveals the source of one's actions when exercising leadership. And ontology's associated phenomenological methodology (explained in [2] below) provides actionable access to what has been opened up. The being of being a leader and the actions of the effective exercise of leadership can be accessed, researched, and taught either 1) as being and action are observed and commented on "from the stands," specifically as these are observed by someone, and then described, interpreted, and explained (third-person theory of) or 2) as being and action are actually experienced "on the court," specifically as these are actually lived (real-time first-person experience of). As a formal discipline, the "on the court" method of accessing being and action (that is, as being and action are actually lived) is named phenomenology. In short, an epistemological mastery of a subject leaves one knowing. An ontological mastery of a subject leaves one being.

Keywords

Leadership Development; Attitudes; Behavior; Experience and Expertise; Knowledge Acquisition

Citation

Jensen, Michael C., Werner Erhard, and Kari L. Granger. "Creating Leaders: An Ontological/Phenomenological Model." Chap. 16 in The Handbook for Teaching Leadership: Knowing, Doing, and Being, edited by Scott Snook, Nitin Nohria, and Rakesh Khurana. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2012.
  • SSRN

About The Author

Michael C. Jensen

→More Publications

More from the Authors

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    Putting Integrity into Finance: A Purely Positive Approach

    By: Werner Erhard and Michael C. Jensen
    • 2012
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    Author-Level Eigenfactor Metrics: Evaluating the Influence of Authors, Institutions and Countries within the SSRN community

    By: Jevin D. West, Michael C. Jensen, Ralph J. Dandrea, Gregg Gordon and Carl T. Bergstrom
    • 2011
    • Faculty Research

    Pioneers in Finance: An Interview with Michael C. Jensen - Part 1

    By: Michael C. Jensen and Ralph A. Walkling
More from the Authors
  • Putting Integrity into Finance: A Purely Positive Approach By: Werner Erhard and Michael C. Jensen
  • Author-Level Eigenfactor Metrics: Evaluating the Influence of Authors, Institutions and Countries within the SSRN community By: Jevin D. West, Michael C. Jensen, Ralph J. Dandrea, Gregg Gordon and Carl T. Bergstrom
  • Pioneers in Finance: An Interview with Michael C. Jensen - Part 1 By: Michael C. Jensen and Ralph A. Walkling
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