Mirror, mirror on the wall : reflections on the good, the bad and the ugly of them all

![CDATA[In a conference that firmly addresses itself to symbolism, discussion about the fairy tale of Snow White would not seem out of place. Fairy tales can be an educational tool in confronting and dealing with life's 'little' challenges. Bettleheim observed that for a child, fairy tales provide "suggestions in symbolic form about how he may deal with these issues and grow safely into maturity" (1976, p. 9). The view expressed in this paper is that the fairy tale of Snow White is an apt metaphor for the manner in which we seem predisposed to thinking in binaries and binary opposites. In the case of the fairy tale of Snow White¹ we encounter the tussle between the themes of good and bad; daughter and step mother; beauty and ugliness; age and youth; narcissism and 'necessarily' diminished love for others; innocence and evil -- and some less obvious binary opposites such as power and powerlessness. It is also that such thinking appears to abound in the field of organisation studies as with leadership trait theory (House & Aditya, 1997; Kirkpatrick & Lock, 1991), leadership style scales (Fiedler & Chemers, 1984) and 2 X2 business strategy models (Porter, 1980,1985). As embodied by its leadership and strategy, these and other paradigms are reflections of what the organisation wants to be or what it does not want to be. Our argument is that a focus on one to the exclusion of the other negates the necessary awareness of plurality of 'good' affects that are 'bad' and 'bad' affects that are 'good' from leadership in and by organisations. These inversions occur through thesis, anti thesis and synthesis of opposites; and through their mutual causality. The elevation of one part of a binary over the other negates the reality of there being the good, the bad and the pretty ugly in even what might be considered 'the best' leading organisations in our communities. The plea in this paper is to first understand the origins and predispositions to such thinking and, at the same time, understand the alternatives that are possible in comprehending our world. In making such an appeal, we will not only relate this to the fairy tale of Snow White, but also the story of the world's largest retail store, Wal-Mart (Fernie & Arnold, 2002; Fox, 2005). Our first task is to reveal the origins and predispositions to thinking in binary opposites and how we subsequently become enraptured with the 'positive' -- the 'good', the 'beautiful', the 'virtuous', and the 'heroic' while ignoring the 'bad', the 'ugly', the 'immoral' and the 'cowardly' actions reflected by those we perceive to be our business leaders.]]