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The purpose of this paper is to identify possible lines of research relating to communication and secrecy.

This paper is a conceptual essay drawing on recent research on secrecy.

The findings suggest that secrecy entails the communication of rules about communication, and that secrecy can play a role in the communicative constitution of organizations.

The paper is innovative in configuring secrecy as a form of communication rather than being the opposite of communication, and in showing the linkages between what are normally two separate domains of research.

While physical reactions and experiences are pervasive in the experiences of leaders and followers, most writing and theorising about leadership fails to register physicality’s significance. Consequently, this chapter relies primarily on a creative narrative, ‘The Interview’, to make visible the physicality in leadership. ‘The Interview’ records the experiences of three leaders in ConstructCo as they prepare for and reflect on the interview for a new CEO. Though fictional, the narrative interweaves real experiences from the lives of leaders with whom I have worked. The narrative form and allowing characters to speak give licence to the physical to appear and take its proper place as a crucial dimension of the leadership experience. The second half of the chapter explores the implications of the physical in leadership, beginning by mapping some of the dimensions of physicality experienced by the three characters in the narrative. The following discussion argues that those of us who research, teach and work with leaders should be open to seeing the way conventional norms mask the physical. I explore what new means and approaches are needed in research and writing to bring physicality into development work with leaders. This chapter, including the narrative and subsequent discussion, argues that being aware of physical selves, with the humanness, vulnerability and connection with others that physicality brings, offers new possibilities to our ways of being in leadership.

Describes how the UK logistics division of Norbert Dentressangle has teamed up with the University of Northampton Business School to offer the two‐year degree to the company's talented first‐line and middle managers.

Details the origins of the program, its content, the way it is organized and some initial results.

Reveals that participants have developed and applied knowledge that will enable them to deliver measurable business improvements, as well as enhance their own career prospects.

Stresses that work‐based learning is central to the ethos of the program and the course requires minimum levels of absence from the workplace. Assessment is by way of work‐based projects that are relevant to Norbert Dentressangle and focus on improving day‐to‐day performance. The company has been closely involved in tailoring the qualification content to meet the specific needs of the business and to shape the detail at the point of delivery and assessment.

Describes a very practical program that is helping to break down barriers between higher education and the world of work.

Highlights how first‐tier and middle managers, who may not have a degree, can become very successful higher‐education students because of their commitment to study and the skills they have gained in the workplace.

To consider the differences between Critical Management Studies (CMS) and political party politics.

Reading Lenin and Hitler, as well as CMS.

That they aren’t very similar, and can’t be, unless CMS becomes a disciplined movement.

That academics are not good at getting things done, and perhaps we shouldn’t really be expecting that they should be. What they do outside the academic context is another matter.

That is for others to judge.

There has been little thought given in science to the impact of direct brain‐machine interfacing upon the future development of human consciousness. Even less thought has been given to the possibilities for both optimizing and thwarting development in the cyborg child. A neurocognitive model of the evolution of cyborg consciousness is summarized, and from this model grounded speculations are offered pertaining to the future development of the higher cognitive functions in the cyborg child. It will be shown that cybernetic implants are “multistable”; that is, the artificial intelligence (AI) component of the cyborg brain‐machine linkage may function to condition development along ideological lines (the brain conditioned by the “ideological chip”), or may operate to open up neurocognitive development to new and heretofore unrealized limits (the brain’s development optimized by the “guru programme”). Development of the cyborg child may be conditioned in the interests of ideological concerns, or may lead to a consciousness that easily transcends all forms of ideology. Application of the guru programme may foster the emergence of new levels of cognitive complexity and information processing (à la Piagetian and neo‐Piagetian theory) that in turn allows new strategies of adaptation previously beyond human comprehension. The ethical and regulatory problems raised by cyborg technologies are addressed.