Abstract
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Peter B. Vaill passed away at age 83. Although most of his scholarly output was in the twentieth century, Vaill, remains a leading voice for the post-COVID generation for insisting that managing, organizing, and leading are performing arts not just skills, behaviors, or competencies. He questioned the dominant unsustainable paradigms of the field and often found them inaccurate or insufficient. He observed over 60 years that the field has made little progress in producing actionable research and effectively teaching it. His career is briefly summarized and then his vision, philosophy, and perspective for more sustainable organizations are arrayed in five sections: (1) “Permanent Whitewater”—VUCA; (2) Manager-Leaders not Management Competencies; (3) Practice; (4) Management is Purposing, Learning, En-courag-ing; and (5) Management Education. The current structure of the business school academy, AACSB accreditation, and the norms of Academy of Management scholarship largely mitigate against a next-generation Peter Vaill and more sustainable approaches to leadership and organizations.
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Notes
- 1.
For most of his career, Jerry Harvey, of “Abilene Paradox” fame was Vaill’s closest colleague. In a memorial tribute to Harvey, Vaill reported the following conversation—“I asked him, ‘Jerry, would you agree that golf and spirituality are two quite important things about you?’ he would reply, ‘Dr. Vaill, yes, and by the way they are not two things’” (Vaill, 2017, 107–108).
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Dent, E.B. (2022). A Paean to the “Poet Laureate of Management” Peter B. Vaill. In: K. Dhiman, S., F. Marques, J. (eds) Leadership After COVID-19. Future of Business and Finance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84867-5_3
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