Egyptian icon reflects leadership and identity concepts
A School of Management senior lecturer has been researching how leaders have used the Sphinx to cultivate identity.
For centuries, Dr Sally Riad says, the Sphinx has been used to represent Egypt and to also emphasise other nations' power.
Statues of the Sphinx were used by the French, for example, to mark Napoleon’s victories in Egypt, and then by the British to mark theirs.
"My research particularly explores how the Sphinx has been appropriated, and the multiplicity of meanings it has acquired. It can be used to legitimise or de-legitimise achievements. It is often associated with riddles but can also be a symbol of power.
"Views on the Sphinx have changed so often over the years that you can’t pin down a specific meaning of the Sphinx for very long."
In the same way – Dr Riad makes the parallel after her earlier studies of Cleopatra – you can’t pin down a fixed meaning of leadership.
Dr Riad will present a paper to the Australian New Zealand Academy of Management conference in December. The paper looks at engagements with the Sphinx in 19th century art and texts, and draws implications for modern day organisational studies, specifically the field of postcolonial inquiry.
"My studies of the Sphinx – and Cleopatra – pull you in, as they deal with artefacts," says Dr Riad.
"It would be easy to lose yourself in a labyrinth of research. You have to take a step back and ask, 'What does this say about identity and leadership?'"
Dr Riad's earlier studies of Cleopatra and leadership culminated in the publishing of a paper in The Leadership Quarterly in 2011. The paper charts how the depictions of Cleopatra have changed, and reflects on how our ideas of leadership have also changed.
Understanding leadership depends on power relations at a given place and time, says Dr Riad.
"Over the last 15 years, Cleopatra has been recast as a leader but the evidence on her life hasn't changed that much. Why is this? She is just being re-interpreted. The new interpretations show us how we see leadership now and remind us that this continues to change."