چکیده:
Recent research on leadership has proven that self-awareness is an important factorinfluencing leadership. Having used an empirical research methodology, Avolio and Gardner espoused a comprehensive definition of self-awareness; they like other positivists, in general, assume empirical science to be the only valid scientific method for the study of self-awareness. Despite positivists’ beliefs and assumptions (ontology and epistemology) that science is a value-free enterprise, Avolio and Gardner consider morals and ethics as foundational resources for achieving self-awareness, thereby injecting values into studies of self-awareness. In our opinion, although Avolio and Gardner endeavored to explain self-awareness comprehensively, using strictly empirical approaches, they nevertheless could not come up with a comprehensive explanation. This article aims to study, analyze and critique Avolio and Gardner’s perspectives, and the epistemology and methodology that have lead to their conclusions. By referring to the ontology, epistemology and methodology of Allamah Tabatabaie, this article critiques Avolio and Gardner’s epistemological and methodological approaches. According to Allamah Tabatabaie reaching self-awareness requires a type of knowledge beyond empirical scientific approaches currently popular in thewest. Allamah Tabatabaie believes self-awareness requires both knowledge-through presence2and acquired knowledge. These two forms of knowledge must be guided, directed and supported through the four foundational beliefs of the Abrahamic faiths presented within this paper. The four foundational beliefs are necessary for initiating and continuing knowledge creation and gain, so as to prevent these activities from being misled by human caprice and entering into a realm of imagination and wishful thinking3.
خلاصه ماشینی:
"Having taken an empirical approach, Avolio and Gardner founders of Authentic Leadership Theory, found that self-awareness based on moral principles is the essential factor influencing personal character and behavior of leaders (Avolio and Gardner, 2005).
Contrary to Avolio and Gardner, Allamah Tabatabaie believes in immaterial (dimensions of) reality and the fact that its causal laws lead to a type of knowledge beyond the empirical approach.
In a similar view to Avolio and Gardner, Allamah Tabatabaie argues that the order of reality does not change over time, and laws discovered today will hold in the future while adding that knowledge is above material limitations including time and space (Allamah Tabatabaie, 1332/1957, chapter 4; Javadi Amoli, 1379/ 2000, p: 175 to 193).
Furthermore the mind classifies the received material from the outside world and gains further understanding (paraphrased from Allamah Tabatabaie, "Principles of Philosophy and the Method of Realism" 1332/ 1957, chapter: 3 and P: 200 and 206).
According to Avolio and Gardner, man’s self-awareness is based on two fountainheads: the non-experimental available as inherent capital of ethics within the being of man, and the experimental knowledge arrived at through the senses and the observation of the world around us.
Also, Allamah Tabatabaie, like Avolio and Gardner, considers moral principles as an absolute necessity for reaching self-awareness.
In addition, Avolio and Gardner consider that moral and ethical principles are inherent and natural to man and those principles act as a necessary capital for man in his quest to reach self-awareness."