{"title":"The fallacies of non-agility: Approaching organizational agility through a dialectical practice perspective","authors":"Ryan Armstrong, Daniel Manitsky","doi":"10.1177/13505076221100924","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13505076221100924","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Complexity, paradox, tension, and contradiction are increasingly seen as permeating all aspects of organizational life. Yet despite ongoing advancement, both our understanding of the nature of complexity and how to use this increased appreciation of it in practice are still developing. In this spirit, this article considers organizational agility and how to achieve it. Here, current discussions of organizational agility have failed to sufficiently address the fundamental tensions inherent in learning stemming from conflicting goals and incentives, evident in an ongoing discussion of theory-informed approaches for bringing about organizational agility. In this article, we claim that incorporating a dialectical perspective of learning would provide a means of understanding the successes and failures of practices aimed at bringing about agility. We consider the maligned dialectic, four fallacious ways of thinking that hinder agility, and the extent to which these can be overcome. As evidence, we present a case of Agile implementation in which one of the authors acted as a consultant and involving a large-scale social change. Considering this from a dialectical perspective, we discuss ways that dysfunction in achieving agility might be reduced through disruptive interventions, such as Agile.</p>","PeriodicalId":47925,"journal":{"name":"Management Learning","volume":"24 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2022-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138509056","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Towards an aspirational future: Cultivating ontological empathy within the ethos of Management Learning","authors":"Ajnesh Prasad, M. Śliwa","doi":"10.1177/13505076221085757","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13505076221085757","url":null,"abstract":"As we write this editorial in January 2022, we look back on 2021 and we look ahead to another year of curating Management Learning together with a fantastic team of Associate Editors, a wonderful Editorial Assistant, a supportive publisher, and the community of International Editorial Board members, reviewers, and, of course, our readers. We have said ‘goodbye’ to 2021: another year replete with challenges and uncertainties, which, for this journal, has turned out to be very successful. Management Learning has continued to publish high quality, original, critical and reflexive scholarship on organisations and learning. Our 2-year impact factor has risen to 4.952. As a team, we have stuck together and grown closer. We were sad to see the term of Todd Bridgman as Co-Editor-inChief and Alexia Panayiotou as Associate Editor come to an end, and we thank them for the excellent and deeply committed work on leading and shaping this journal. At the same time, we are truly excited to welcome Ajnesh Prasad as the new Co-Editor-in-Chief of Management Learning. It is clear that 2022 has started for the journal on a high note and with a lot of enthusiasm, ambition and hope. We take this beginning of the new year — and the change in the composition of the team of Co-Editors-in-Chief – as an opportunity for reflection on our ethical commitments as Editors-inChief of Management Learning. What are we committed to as journal editors, especially while working under the current circumstances and given the institutional pressures of contemporary business schools? What does this mean to us? How do we put these commitments into practice?","PeriodicalId":47925,"journal":{"name":"Management Learning","volume":"53 1","pages":"139 - 145"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47595373","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Decolonizing journals in management and organizations? Epistemological colonial encounters and the double translation","authors":"Amon Barros, R. Alcadipani","doi":"10.1177/13505076221083204","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13505076221083204","url":null,"abstract":"Increasingly, academics worldwide need publishing in international journals. Various events and articles aim at teaching others how to write, and they spread ideas and skills to help newcomers. However, we tend to neglect the specificities of periphery-based academics, engaging with “international” journals. Drawing from our experience as academics from Brazil, we argue that publishing in top-academic journals in management and organization studies demands more than knowing a language and goes beyond style. Periphery-based academics willing to publish in “international” journals engage in a colonial encounter. They need to develop their ability to perform a double-translation, writing ideas in another language and for another audience. Besides, they need to deal with financial costs that are often invisible to others. We claim that decolonizing international journals is challenging and must be an ongoing process, of which some steps we highlight here.","PeriodicalId":47925,"journal":{"name":"Management Learning","volume":"54 1","pages":"576 - 586"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2022-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48459758","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book review: The Routledge Companion to Organizational Diversity Research Methods","authors":"Ilaria Boncori","doi":"10.1177/13505076221082777","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13505076221082777","url":null,"abstract":"My former PhD supervisor and I were recently discussing the role of a ‘companion’ as a promising metaphor. A companion is someone with you on your journey with whom to share the experience, a witness of your encounters and reflections. Research is often a solitary journey on which postgraduate students would certainly appreciate such company, if student feedback on their experience is anything to go by. Researching diversity is a demanding endeavour: it spans deeply personal issues of identity as well as pressing social issues of equality and change. In this context relatability for students is as important as the need to be relevant by solving diversity issues in the workplace. The quality of a companion should therefore include such criteria: does it provide compelling conversations on diversity discourse and does it speak about research practice in ways which students find useful. In this sense Just, Risberg, and Villasèche’s (2021) collection The Routledge Companion to Organizational Diversity Research Methods is an enriching and thought-provoking companion.","PeriodicalId":47925,"journal":{"name":"Management Learning","volume":"53 1","pages":"621 - 622"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2022-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48761045","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Arts-based methods in business education: A reflection on a photo-elicitation project","authors":"G. Stavraki, Ioanna Anninou","doi":"10.1177/13505076221075046","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13505076221075046","url":null,"abstract":"This article addresses research calls to explore the theory and practice of arts-based methods in business and management education to better understand the learning processes and the ways of knowing that these methods generate. By focusing on photo-elicitation as a pedagogical tool, we problematize an insufficient focus of current discourses on its arts-based origins and revisit photo-elicitation from an arts-based perspective. Based on a reflective account emerging from our teaching experience with photo-elicitation as an assessment strategy, we provide a conceptualization of photo-elicitation as an (experiential) learning and teaching tool. This conceptualization teases out under-theorized elements (i.e. doing, power, multiple framing of meaning, audience) of the method and surfaces overlapping stages of a photo-elicitation learning process. We also offer novel insights into students’ encounters with the photo-elicitation method, thus illustrating the role of the method’s arts-based elements in understanding how learning occurs in such a context. Implications are also provided contributing to an understanding of the value of arts-based methods to the theory and practice of management education.","PeriodicalId":47925,"journal":{"name":"Management Learning","volume":"1 5","pages":"531 - 555"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2022-03-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41262046","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ideology, doxa and critical reflexive learning: The possibilities and limits of thinking that ‘diversity is good’","authors":"M. Morillas, L. Romani","doi":"10.1177/13505076221074632","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13505076221074632","url":null,"abstract":"How can managers reach a critical position from which to develop more responsible management practices? The literature suggests that the answer lies in critical reflexive learning, explaining how reflexivity can detach individuals from the grip of harmful ideologies. We challenge this premise, according to which critical reflexive learning and ideology are counterposed, arguing instead that they need to be studied as intertwined. We build on the organizational ethnography of a firm promoting inclusive and responsible management, studying a programme for recruitment of highly skilled migrants. Exploring managerial learning achieved through this programme, we show how critique, reflexivity and learning are closely linked to the ideological system of beliefs that naturalizes the organizational order: the organizational doxa ‘Diversity is good’. This work makes the following three contributions to literature on critical reflexive learning: it stresses the currently overlooked interconnection between critical reflexivity and ideology, it shows how an ideological expression (doxa) both induces and simultaneously bounds managers’ engagement with critique, and it argues for the counterintuitive possibility that critique and change can be achieved through doxa. We answer our opening question – how to reach critique and responsible change – somewhat provocatively; through the adoption of a new ideology.","PeriodicalId":47925,"journal":{"name":"Management Learning","volume":"54 1","pages":"511 - 530"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41903211","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘Maybe it’s culture and maybe it isn’t’: An ethnographic study of sensemaking, culture and performance in a multicultural team","authors":"A. Means, Kate Mackenzie Davey","doi":"10.1177/13505076211070358","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13505076211070358","url":null,"abstract":"Links between cultural diversity and team performance remain unclear despite extensive research. This study critiques essentialist ‘Input-Process-Output’ logics to focus on team members’ sensemaking. Using observation and interview data from an ethnographic study of an Indian-German team over an 18-month high-pressure project, we used thematic analysis and event sequencing to map sensemaking of culture and performance over time. Team members initially constructed a prospective frame linking stereotypes of cultural difference to performance, which plausibly explained problems while protecting identity. This frame proved resistant to updating. While overt conflict was avoided, the failure to confront difficulties closed down alternative explanations and prevented innovation and learning. Team performance was evaluated both positively and negatively reflecting ongoing ambiguity around performance. The role of culture in performance was only challenged post-project after time for reflection. The longitudinal, ethnographic approach enables this research to contribute to sensemaking by demonstrating the importance of prospective framing and highlighting the role of identity and plausibility in resisting updating frames. We argue that essentialist conceptions of the unequivocal positive or negative outcome of cultural diversity as ‘double-edged sword’ should be reframed to stress agency and the importance of facilitating conditions for learning in multicultural teams.","PeriodicalId":47925,"journal":{"name":"Management Learning","volume":"54 1","pages":"223 - 243"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2022-02-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42452701","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"There’s nothing as practical as understanding the nature of theory: A phenomenographic study of management educators’ implicit theories of theory","authors":"Michael Eichler, J. Billsberry","doi":"10.1177/13505076211066384","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13505076211066384","url":null,"abstract":"Although teaching in Business Schools takes a theory-driven perspective, there are multiple different interpretations of what this means. We make a contribution by examining how management educators define ‘theory’ and explore how differing definitions lead to variations in the way that teaching is conceptualised and designed. We adopt phenomenographic methods to reveal a five-level hierarchy of theory definitions ranging from simple descriptive notions of ‘theory as an idea’ to more explanatory definitions with causal and practice implications. This hierarchy shapes the way management educators design their teaching with those with the most sophisticated understanding of theory being the most practically focused in their teaching. Although all the interviewees view theory as having an interventional purpose to shape or change managerial action, management educators are haphazard in the ways they teach students to apply theory. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for the essential–non-essentialist debate in management education and suggest avenues for future research.","PeriodicalId":47925,"journal":{"name":"Management Learning","volume":"54 1","pages":"244 - 266"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2022-02-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47937742","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sensing: The elephant in the room of management learning","authors":"Alina Bas, M. Sinclair, Viktor Dörfler","doi":"10.1177/13505076221077226","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13505076221077226","url":null,"abstract":"This conceptual paper examines reasons why analytically educated learners may be reluctant to engage in sensory-based learning. Sensing is indispensable for constructing knowledge and should be employed on par with the intellect, particularly in today’s complex and uncertain context. Yet, we have observed learners’ reluctance to engage with sensing and attempted to understand the reasons for it. Our theoretical contribution illuminates the underlying causes of this phenomenon, thus furthering the study of sensing in the fields of individual learning and management learning. Our practical contribution prompts researchers, learners, educators, and managers to think more systematically about ways to overcome this reluctance and openly bring sensing into management learning practice on par with intellectual processing. With the help of phenomenal theorizing, the presented exploratory study identifies the following common barriers to sensory-based learning for analytically educated learners: corporate social norms against sensory-based evidence, discomfort of learning outside of one’s comfort zone, inadequate vocabulary for sensory experiences, lack of sensory awareness, preference for sequential reasoning, mistrust in sensory-based evidence, dismissive attitude, and denying (or not admitting to) the use of sensing.","PeriodicalId":47925,"journal":{"name":"Management Learning","volume":"54 1","pages":"489 - 510"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2022-02-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47773727","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Learning to inhabit the liquid liminal world of work: An auto-ethnographic visual study of work-life boundary transitions","authors":"M. Izak, H. Shortt, P. Case","doi":"10.1177/13505076211070359","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13505076211070359","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores a conceptually modified notion of liminality in order to make better sense of contemporary ‘flexible’ working life. Previous conceptualizations of liminality rely on the assumed existence of socially sustained boundaries and the possibility of boundary spanning. Under conditions of liquid modernity, however, boundaries or thresholds have been destabilized to the point of collapse. Nonetheless, individuals still feel the need to establish and maintain intersubjective boundaries to preserve their own sense of well-being. To understand the new predicament faced by employees, we reconceptualise liminality for liquid times – through the notion of liquid liminality – and, simultaneously, problematize dominant conceptions of work-life balance. The implications that liquid liminality carries for the notion of flexible knowledge work are discussed. Our auto-ethnographic visual study of an academic returning from maternity leave uses a socio-material lens to exemplify the struggles of the contemporary flexible knowledge worker. It also demonstrates how the constant transition between workplace and home life is freighted with anxiety and exhaustion. We also outline opportunities for establishing new learning habits that follow from our theoretical framing and empirical analysis.","PeriodicalId":47925,"journal":{"name":"Management Learning","volume":"54 1","pages":"198 - 222"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2022-02-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46949527","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}