A Lacanian Perspective

Author: Guilherme Rozenbaum Bcheche, 2020.

Abstract

Leaders all around the world, especially those at the helm of organizations, are known to be enthusiastic art collectors. Nonetheless, little research has been done on the impact of the leaders’ art collecting pursuits on the development of their leadership approaches. This study sought to investigate the extent to which art collecting enabled 10 Brazilian leaders-cum-art collectors to attain leadership singularity through a close study of their speech in one-on-one, semi-structured, and online interviews. It examined the extent to which the interviewees’ “signifiers” — words whose meanings depend on context — revealed the impact of art collecting on their attainment of leadership “singularity” — the uniqueness of an individual’s style characterized by an absolute in difference to social conventions. The interviewees’ use of polarizing signifiers to describe the business world as harsh and calculated in stark contrast to the warmth they associated with art showed how they used art collecting as a buffer to shield them against unpleasant leadership realities. Moreover, their employment of signifiers and meanings, which recurred in both their business and art worlds, also illustrated how art collecting served as a transitional object for them to define their singular selves and their leadership approaches. Finally, the interviewees’ connecting signifiers revealed how art collecting challenged them to build an inclusive work environment or society by promoting openness to diverse perspectives. What this research study has affirmed is that something as seemingly trivial as words can surface the power of art in sustaining ambiguities and ambivalences for the cultivation of individual and leadership singularities with ripple effects on people around us.

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