Post-leadership leadership: mastering the new liquidity

This chapter discusses liquid selves, liquid organisations and liquid aesthetics as three facets of a post-canonical theory of leadership relations. Leadership changes in liquid spaces, becoming a form of post-leadership leadership. Bauman distinguishes between solid and liquid modernity. Solid modernity represents the world of conventional organisation and management theory. Liquid selves are valorised as free selves: free to choose, free to take responsible action for their self, free to construct their own biographies and projections of self. These are all self-centred, even as they project synoptically to others. More established liquid organisations will prefer a signature architect, preferably a starchitect. Hancock suggests that liquid organisations will seek to structure fun, novelty and excitement into the experience of being at work. The work itself becomes liquid-it spills over into downtime, occupies the wakeful creative moments of the organisational members and travels with them as they use their portable digital devices.