Brown bag seminar for School of Management staff Citius, Altius, Fortius: Managers' quest for heroic leader identities

This lunchtime event led by Dr François-Régis Puyou marks the launch of a series of brown bag research seminars for staff in the School of Management.

The series aims to provide opportunities to showcase ongoing research and offer a regular space for colleagues across the School to come together and open up research conversations across the thematic groups and research centres.

In this seminar, the Accounting, Governance and Organisations group's Dr Puyou will present his research, ‘Citius, Altius, Fortius: Managers' quest for heroic leader identities'.

The work draws on Foucault. It uses his concept ‘governmentality' to analyse how middle-aged senior managers who engaged in competitive endurance sports fabricated ‘heroic' leader identities from this repertoire of discursive resources.

The study focusses on neoliberalism as a form of governmentality, and on healthism in particular. It analyses managers' constructions of themselves as people who self-examined, and sought continually to transform (improve) themselves, to fabricate identities as superior (heroic) leaders. It considers how in neoliberalism ‘healthism' constructs managers as enterprising selves.

Dr Puyou's co-authors were Professors Thibaut Bardon from Audencia Nantes and Andrew Brown from University of Bath.

Further details about the seminar have been circulated to School of Management staff.