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is changing their symbolic order, they could take care of the the world at will” (p. 1471). Such conceptualization of the
university by working on the independent agenda, which for relationship between leadership and power tends to overesti-
some magical reason is a kernel that is not affected by the mate the power of leaders, up to the point that it makes of the
reforms. “heroic leadership identity . . . preponderant as part of most
Liberation from the paradoxical position turns even more leaders’ development” (Abreu Pederzini, 2016, p. 326). Now,
interesting in the final fantasy: inevitability. Here, leaders we know, of course, leaders could have access to better or
claimed that the effects of the macroenvironment on their more abundant resources. Yet, it is actually difficult to go as
symbolic order, and thus their paradoxical position, were far as to justify this ideal of the heroic leader that controls
unavoidable. In other words, what is going to happen out everything. Something that is clearly evident in the many
there is going to happen. And, therefore, they do not really cases of apparently powerful leaders that ended up falling,
see themselves anymore in a paradoxical position, because including people like Margaret Thatcher or infamous Drug
even if followers are expecting leaders to defend them Lord Pablo Escobar. Furthermore, the problem of academic
against the hostile higher education changes, the policies are literature overlooking leaders’ impotence might be the con-
unavoidable. So as Pontius Pilate, university leaders could sequence partly of a poor conceptualization of power, as the
calmly wash their hands, and say that their magical realist leadership and power literature has tended to overemphasize
expected role as grand saviors does not apply to things that how one person has influence over others, but not much is
are unavoidable. One possible way of looking at this is not as said about other factors that have power over us. Having
a fantasy of liberation but of power, because “the exercise of reflected, at the beginning of this article, on how all these
power can produce as much acceptance as may be wished other factors build complex and chaotic realities in which
for” (Foucault, 1982, p. 789). Nevertheless, a second inter- any single individual will eventually prove to be at least par-
pretation exists. When the Buddha, Shakyamuni, strived to tially impotent, I argued, thus, that leaders as human beings
understand how to liberate humans from suffering, he did not would also be impotent in many ways. Others have already
arrive at resistance as the fantasy of liberation, but accep- explored this idea in business and management studies too.
tance. Therefore, those who attain nirvana, becoming “fully For example, MacKay and Chia’s (2013) exploration of an
liberated from all suffering,” liberate themselves not through automotive company going through the shocks of the finan-
resistance, but through the fantasy of the world as something cial downturn of 2008/2009 illustrates how the leaders of the
that humans cannot change but simply have to accept (Harari, company were far from being able to control the fate of their
2014, pp. 196-198). Inevitability might be an instrumental company.
fantasy for leaders’ development, if inevitability allows/ Given the intricacies of the complex world in which we
enables leaders to get over—accept—whatever they cannot live, I argued that people have, thus, built fantasies about
control/change, and focus instead on what they can. The lat- order; because order is at the end of the day the ultimate fan-
ter would not be surprising, it is best expressed in the con- tasy. In such attempts, humans have ended up building sym-
ventional wisdom (allegedly enunciated in the 19th century bolic orders that are pretty much a collection of fantasies
by Edward E. Hale) that says, “I am only one, but I am one. about how everything in the world has place, meaning, pur-
I cannot do everything, but I can do something, and I will not pose, and direction (Zizek, 1989). And, hence, in an
let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do.” Althusserian sense (2006), symbolic orders end up hailing
people as to give them a role and place within the chaos of
Implications: Leaders and Power, a Critical View the world. However, the problem of the fantasy of the sym-
bolic and its delusion of order is that through its hail, it
Let us look at the full implications of magical realist fanta- becomes yet another source of nonhuman power over
sies. It turns out that these fantasies could be extremely valu- humans. The irony here is, therefore, that the fantasy of the
able to leaders, if by partially liberating them from their symbolic is built by humans; however, as these constructions
paradoxical position (Ornstein & Ornstein, 2008), allow take on a life of their own, and through a process of inverted
leaders to focus instead on that which leaders could probably reflection, they come back to submit us to their wishes, “so
control better. The latter generates, hence, a novel conceptu- that men and women submit to what are in fact products of
alization of the relationship between leadership and power. their own activity” (Eagleton, 1991, p. 70).
As Yukl (1989) acknowledges, leadership and power have Now, the problem for leaders emerges as in modern sym-
been constantly related as simply: leaders have power bolic orders of the magical realism type, leaders have become
(Bendahan et al., 2015; Chou et al., 2015; De Hoogh et al., a fantasy of followers. The fantasy of the romance of leader-
2015; Espedal, 2015; Rosenthal & Pittinsky, 2006). This is ship that Meindl et al. (1985) many years ago first described.
not a surprise, since that is how some of the ancient academic Where, in an effort to put order on all that we cannot control,
conceptualizations of leadership emerged, such as Carlyle we romanticize some simple normal human beings—lead-
and his Great Man Theory, where, as Grint (2005) recalls, ers—as having an implicit surplus of meaning, because they
leaders are seen as “independent agents, able to manipulate are supposed to be capable to defend us against all that we