Dr Ashhurst and Dr Long are pleased to announce their new book: Following-Leading in Risk, A Supplement. This is book nineteen in the series on the Social Psychology of Risk (SPoR). All books in the series can be downloaded free here: https://www.humandymensions.com/shop/

You can download this Supplement book for free here: https://www.humandymensions.com/product/following-leading-in-risk-a-supplement/

We published our book Following-Leading in Risk, A Humanising Dynamic in 2014 (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/following-leading-risk/) amidst the turmoil in the world known as ‘The Arab Spring’ and ‘The Occupy Movement’. Both of these movements placed a focus on ‘leadership from below’ and were accompanied by other disturbances from below such as: ‘Wikileaks’, Snowden, ‘Occupy Wall Street’ and what Negri (2005) might call The Politics of Subversion. Our book was not intended to be subversive as much as educative. We do however emphasise the importance in equity between following and leading.

Both Craig and Rob came together in an educational context as colleagues in 1990 and over the next 36 years became colleagues, fellow travellers, shared learners, disrupters, educators, academics and friends. We have taught in universities together, travelled together, taught many courses and workshops and shared a vision for humanising the workplace, leadership and persons in work and risk.

In 2026 we decided to revisit our book and conducted a series of workshops on following-leading in risk in March 2026 with a large group from all over the globe who practice SPoR. This series of workshops, documents in the last chapter, stirred us to develop this supplement.

Much has happened in the 12 years since Craig and I published our first book together. Many new events and experiences have affected our story, enhanced and sharpened our thinking and, challenged us to add to the agenda of that first book. This book release is called a ‘supplement’ and assumes one has read the first book

So, this book assumes that one has read the first book, and picks up where we left off.

Our purpose is: to enhance and build on the discussion in the previous book, add new models and methods to the ‘following-leading dynamic’, re-visit leadership discourse and trends, expand on key concepts and maintain the challenge to humanise risk in the workplace.

Since the book in 2014, Craig completed his PhD at ANU where is currently a researcher and academic (https://researchportalplus.anu.edu.au/en/persons/craig-ashhurst/) in the Fenner School of Environment and Society. His PhD One Team Where Worlds Collide: The Development of Transcoherence for Tackling Wicked Problems (https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/items/7931fab2-5104-4752-9119-fdf9b25fa224) has also helped refocus this supplement and indeed, the way we re-present the ‘following-leading dynamic’. This is a special focus in Chapter Four.

Since the last book, Rob has become semi-retired in his work and has also joined the Global Humanistic University (https://www.ghu.edu.ai/) as a Professor, supervising post-graduate work.

Why a ‘supplement’?

Derrida in his work Of Grammatology (https://monoskop.org/images/8/8e/Derrida_Jacques_Of_Grammatology_1998.pdf) offers a special discourse on the term ‘supplement’.

Derrida, in discussing the work of Rousseau and Levi-Strauss, makes the point that a supplement is an ambiguous term. It can mean an addition from the outside and also as supplying something missing. In this way Derrida speaks of ‘supplement’ as

the ‘strange unity’ of two gestures

In Derrida’s discussion, he puts binary oppositions against each other in this case, the nature of experience and a presence of ‘being’ in literature. Derrida perceives a unity in two opposing gestures. Indeed, what comes first and second can vary in meaning but be held together by one’s perspective. That is, the order of reason though different than the order of being, hold to a unified structure. Derrida calls this ‘the logic of supplementarity’. What Derrida proposes is that contradiction in text (living and written) is just a problem constructed by philosophy.

The Hyphen

In this supplement, we emphasise the hyphen between following-leading, a common practice in SPoR. It is in the hyphen where the dialectic takes place between i-thou (Buber). It is also the place of ‘meeting’ and learning.

In all the work of SPoR we emphasise the hyphen and in this case of following-leading, we represent what happens in the hyphen as follows:

The hyphen helps us manager the in-between, the now-but-not yet, the as-if and the what-if in living and being.

In philosophy, there seems to be an imperative that contradiction must not be tolerated and that philosophy should be about the elimination of inconsistent claims. Yet Derrida, like Ricoeur, argues that one’s hermeneutical imperative (theory of interpretation) creates such a problem that is not necessarily a problem. We see this also in Kierkegaard who understands that faith is not opposed to reason, even though faith seems absurd.

Derrida uses the language of ‘gesture’ to mean what is not spoken or written but is a ‘more expressive, more immediate sign’. Derrida demonstrates that neither gesture, text, speech or writing can be separated. They belong together ‘on one divided but coherent meaning’.

This is what this supplement seeks to do. To bring together following-leading, not as opposites opposed to each other or about the competition of one with the other but rather as a unity of opposites in dialectic that bring coherence.

In this supplement, we bring together the two gestures of ‘following’ and ‘leading’ into one enacted dynamic and explore a new enriching discussion to supplement our previous work.

You can download this Supplement book for free here: https://www.humandymensions.com/product/following-leading-in-risk-a-supplement/