Abstract
Tolkien’s masterpieces The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit rank among the greatest works of fantasy literature ever produced and enjoy a large, committed fan base. One of these fans is Dr. Michael J. Urick, who reads the books every other year, conducts research with Peter Jackson’s film adaptations in the background, and wears a special-made wedding ring engraved with a quote by Tolkien in Elvish. Dr. Urick uses his passion for Tolkien’s works to study leadership practices in the novels, guided by his belief that we can learn much about organizational behavior from popular culture. Based on experiences in the classroom, he believes there are several advantages to employing fictional works of literature for explaining leadership theories: it helps students to better remember theories, it offers helpful illustrations of applying leadership behaviors in real life, and it is a fun way of learning. As such, the book aims to be “useful in exploring academically supported leadership theories” (p. 10).
This book fits within a tradition of organizational scholarship that uses fictional literature for studying organizational life (e.g. Phillips, 1995; Rhodes and Brown, 2005; Thexton et al., 2019). Analyzing fictional novels is increasingly popular among scholars, because it can tell us much about how organizations are viewed, experienced, and managed by organizational members. Fictional literature is not only used to present novel theoretical ideas to readers, but novels are also treated as raw data that can be subjected to systematic analysis by researchers. In this book, however, Tolkien’s works are mainly used for educational purposes to clarify theoretical perspectives (cf. Czarniawska-Joerges and Guillet de Monthoux, 2005; Knights and Willmott, 1999).
It serves this purpose well. The book is an interesting source for anyone who is curious about organizational leadership. Leadership, here, is studied primarily from a process perspective and is defined as the “ability to exert influence and resist unwanted influence in turn” (p. 16; see also Daft, 2014). Leadership does not require any formal title, but solely depends on being influential. Influence can be gained in various ways and the book therefore prioritizes leader emergence and leadership practices over static roles and fixed positions.
At the beginning, Dr. Urick offers some insight into the life and philosophy of Tolkien to help readers interpret the stories and lessons that follow. Most important to this book is Tolkien’s skeptical view on domineering and coercive forms of leadership. Dr. Urick writes that, according to Tolkien, “an individual has no business being the boss over another” and that “those most fit to manage (. . .) are those who do not seek out those roles” (p.19). These views are recurring throughout the book and are embraced by the author himself.
The core of the book consists of nine chapters, in which the The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit are used to exemplify leadership practices. The chapters focus on how leaders gain power, exercise influence, guide teams, communicate, respect and promote diversity, serve as mentors, conduct meetings, act as stewards, and manage celebrations. The chapters have a similar structure: the author studies one of the above leadership themes with frequent reference to some key leaders or leadership practices in the Middle-Earth saga.
For instance, in Chapter three, Aragorn is introduced as having a right to the throne of Gondor, although he does not seek the position of power. He adopts a servant leadership style, acting in the common interest to protect people against evil influences, as he strives to lead a virtuous life. Instead, Denethor, the steward of Gondor, does seek domination and his power rests almost solely on his (temporary) formal title, which he uses to hold on to power and rule over a frightened population. Aragorn alone is ultimately successful and Dr. Urick presents him as a model leader, warning organizational members that the best leaders are not always the ones who seek the top position (pp. 21–27). Throughout the book, the authors makes similar connections between the stories of Middle-Earth and real-world practical lessons.
In perhaps the strongest chapter, the author dissects mentoring relationships, building more extensively on his own earlier research. He advocates, among others, for organically emerging mentor-mentee relationships and describes how mentors can take a distance to give their mentees the confidence to handle challenges on their own. After describing the mentoring relationship between the human king Théoden and the hobbit Merry, he also concludes that leaders “must focus on training and developing the next generation of leaders so that they will be able to become effective decision-makers leveraging the knowledge that they need to be successful. And current leader also must be open to learning from organizational newcomers to improve the current state of organizations” (p. 83).
While Tolkien’s Middle-Earth sage proves a great resource for analyzing leadership practices, there are also some shortcomings to the fantasy novels. First, the books tend to stereotype the fictional races that feature in them. Elves, humans, dwarves are generally good, while orcs and trolls are always evil. The identity of individual characters is largely defined by the group to which they belong (pp. 66–67). Organizational life, however, is infinitely more complex than this conflict between good and evil. Second, all main leaders in the books are men with female leaders playing only a minor role. The author acknowledges this deficiency (pp. 69–70). Yet, there are even no female team members in most of the organizations that are central to the book (e.g. the fellowship of the ring), leaving the reader to wonder to what extent these findings are generalizable to real-world organizations.
In spite of the books’ shortcomings, the author succeeds in introducing a great variety of leadership practices to the reader and convincingly shows how popular culture can be a valuable resource to organizational scholars. In addition, Dr. Urick’s book features several common elements of human life, which are often forgotten in our theory-oriented research, but deserve to be studied in their own right. Examples include the importance of friendship, food, and music. Finally, the ten lessons with which the book concludes (e.g. “Good leaders foster growth and development of their followers”) (pp. 118–119) will be of value to many leaders as well.
Yet, there are also some limitations to the book. At times, it seems to deviate from its aim of exploring and illustrating theory-based leadership practices based on popular culture, because it focuses primarily on identifying leadership lessons instead. But “advice is a dangerous gift” (Tolkien, 2009: 110) and one may question whether the lessons drawn from leadership in Middle-Earth can really always be translated as easily to real-world organizations. The recurring comparison between good leaders (e.g. Aragorn, Gandalf) and bad ones (e.g. Denethor, Saruman) tends to lead to absolutist claims about what makes a good leader, possibly because Middle-Earth features a simple moral universe, containing a good and a bad side. It may therefore not always do justice to the pragmatic and moral complexity in which organizational leaders generally have to navigate and operate. Moreover, themes are not always discussed as thoroughly as they could have been. There are no excerpts from the original books, even though these could have helped to clarify the author’s thematic discussions. As a result, the book tells a lot about leaders in Middle-Earth, but does not show leaders’ actual interactions and behaviors as described in the books. This also makes it difficult to convincingly challenge conventional leadership theories or complement the existing literature with novel insights.
Still, one can read that the author greatly enjoyed writing the book and a variety of organizational scholars will find familiar themes in it (e.g. team work, abuse of power, and resistance). Ultimately, the book’s primary function, as intended, will be to serve as an accessible and entertaining source for students. A next step might be to systematically analyze Tolkien’s books on a more specific theme for theory-construction purposes, because Dr. Urick has demonstrated that Tolkien’s works hold great potential for organizational scholarship.
