Leadership oratory: the fusion of East Asian and Western traditions, the case of applause in Singapore
30 Mar 2026
12:30 -14:00
Times are shown in local time
Open to: All
Room W4.05 (Cambridge Judge Business School)
Trumpington St
Cambridge
CB2 1AG
United Kingdom
Join our Organisational Theory and Information Systems seminar
Speaker: Timothy Clark, Professor, Singapore Management University
About the seminar topic
Prior studies of the nature of charismatic oratory and speaker-audience interaction have primarily focused on leaders in a Western context (eg Atkinson, 1984a, b; Bryman, 1992; Clark and Greatbatch, 2011; Den Hartog and Verburg, 1997; Heritage and Greatbatch, 1986; Holladay and Coombs, 1993, 1994; Howell and Frost, 1989). A small number of studies have started to identify the features of speaker-audience interaction and a distinctive leadership oratorical tradition in East Asia, primarily in Japan and South Korea (Bull and Feldman, 2011; Feldman and Bull, 2012; Choi and Bull, 2021). Building on this work, this paper presents the findings of a Conversation Analytic (CA) study of naturally occurring interactions between speakers and audiences in 45 speeches by leaders in Singapore and compares the results with previous studies of political and management oratory in Western and East Asian contexts. The findings identify that Singaporean political oratory is in many respects at the crossroads of Western and East Asian oratorical traditions. Together, our findings contribute to the leadership literature by demonstrating the importance of understanding contextual influences on the processes that lead to collective audience response and a sense of group cohesiveness when Singaporean politicians deliver speeches to live audiences. This has important implications for theory and practice that are elaborated.
Speaker bio
Professor Clark has been a senior leader of Universities in Singapore and the UK for the last 18 years. He was Provost of SMU (2019-2025). Prior to that he was Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Social Sciences and Health) and Professor of Organisational Behaviour (2002-19) at Durham University, United Kingdom. Before joining Durham University, he was Reader in Management at King’s College London (1996-2002).
His research has focused on understanding the role and nature of management consultants and management gurus in the creation and diffusion of management knowledge and practices, and the nature of charismatic leadership. What has tied these research areas together is a series of projects that have focused on the nature of human social interaction and how individuals build rapport, trust and reputations by communicating their ideas and messages to audiences in different contexts. His most recent research is concerned with audience-speaker interaction in Singapore and the similarities and differences between East Asian and Western oratorical traditions.
He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (2010) and the British Academy of Management (2009). He was made an inaugural Academic Fellow of the International Council of Management Consultancy Institutes in 2013, and Principal Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy in 2015. He is a former General Editor of Journal of Management Studies (2000-2010) and past Chair (2009) and President (2011) of the British Academy of Management, and was Vice-Chair of the Economic and Social Research Council’s Training and Skills Committee (2010-2015).
Register
No registration required. If you have any questions about this seminar, please email Luke Slater.