Ann L. Cunliffe

Orientations to Social Constructionism: Relationally Responsive Social Constructionism and its Implications for Knowledge and Learning

This article maps the various interests and orientations of social constructionism as a basis for: (1) situating work in the field, (2) understanding differences in its interests and scope, (3) making deliberate choices about our own approach to social constructionist research and (4) thinking about how these choices might play through our teaching. The article suggests that these orientations are based on various underlying assumptions about the nature of social reality, which influence how we conceptualize and study organizations and management. It offers an example of one such orientation—relationally responsive social constructionism—and explores its implications for knowledge and learning.

The Philosopher Leader: On Relationalism, Ethics and Reflexivity—A Critical Perspective to Teaching Leadership

The issue of teaching from a critical perspective is particularly important and challenging at the Executive MBA level, where students are senior managers in influential positions and often deeply enmeshed in prevailing managerial ideologies, structures of control and systems of power. Questioning taken-for-granted systems can be perceived as threatening and needless, especially when ones career is dependent on the current system. Therefore one of the major challenges of teaching leadership from a critical perspective lies in persuading students of the need to think differently about leadership, organizations and themselves as leaders. The challenge can become particularly acute if the EMBA programme is based on conventional pedagogical premises and as a result, students come into the course expecting to be given tools to simplify their lives in the form of leadership principles and techniques. I will offer one way of thinking about leadership, drawing on the philosophical themes of relationalism, ethics and reflexivity. I begin by setting the context of the article in my experience of teaching an Executive Leadership course on a conventionally taught Executive MBA programme. I go on to introduce the three themes, which emerge from my interests in phenomenological philosophy, and examine their relevance and value to leadership and CMS, before discussing how each theme relates to the idea of a philosopher leader.

Working Within Hyphen- Spaces in Ethnographic Research: Implications for Research Identities and Practice

Ethnographers often find themselves wrestling with choices about their relationship with respondents: choices experienced by researchers engaged in many other methodologies. This article examines the agentic and political nature of those relationships using the notion of hyphen-spaces: a concept that offers a way of recognizing their complexity, making choices about how to position ourselves and work within them, and understanding the implications for research identities and practice. Drawing on Fine’s notion of “working the hyphens” and personal experience of ethnographic fieldwork in a tea plantation in Sri Lanka, we propose four hyphen-spaces of insiderness-outsiderness, sameness-difference, engagement-distance, and political activism–active neutrality. We believe an understanding of these relationships will help us become more informed and ethical researchers interested in engaging in different methodologies. Finally, we emphasize the fluid and agentic nature of researcher-respondent identities and the implications for practice.

Relationally Reflexive Practice A Generative Approach to Theory Development in Qualitative Research

In this article we explain how the development of new organization theory faces several mutually reinforcing problems, which collectively suppress generative debate and the creation of new and alternative theories. We argue that to overcome these problems, researchers should adopt relationally reflexive practices. This does not lead to an alternative method but instead informs how methods are applied. Specifically, we advocate a stance toward the application of qualitative methods that legitimizes insights from the situated life-with-others of the researcher. We argue that this stance can improve our abilities for generative theorizing in the field of management and organization studies.

Introduction: Teaching from Critical Perspectives

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Key concepts in organization theory

Introduction Agency Theory Alienation Authority Bureaucracy Business Strategy Complexity Science Contested Exchange Theory Control Cooperativism Corporate Governance Decision Making Discourse in Organizations Environmental Uncertainty Environment-Organization Interaction Flexibility Globalization Industrial Democracy Institutional Theory Labor Process Theory Life Cycle Models Materiality Organization Structure and Design Organizational Change Organizational Culture Organizational Learning and Knowledge Management Organizational Space Postmodern Turn and Organization Studies Power and Politics Scientific Management Stakeholder Theory Storytelling and Narrative Research Structuration Theory Systems Theory Technology and Organization Structure Transaction Cost Economics

Cottage industries, critique and scholarship

We seem to be witnessing the birth of a cottage industry in our field as we, as a community of scholars, either reflect on our own publishing practices (e.g. Beatty and Leigh, 2010) or, more worryingly, permit others the licence to do so (e.g. Currie and Pandher, 2011, 2013) using methods that privilege technique over substance and method over an understanding of the complexities of the field in which we work. It is for us in management and organizational learning and education to decide collectively whether we permit this alarming trend to continue, gain momentum and become embedded and institutionalized within the growing panoply of academic performance management tools in a dean’s armamentarium. However, looking on the brighter side, one of the more productive outcomes of such inquiries is that they can cause us to stop, stand back and take stock of what we are seeking to achieve as editors, reviewers, authors and readers in the field of management and organizational learning and education, and equally importantly where we seek to place our significant conversations. The ‘what’ and the ‘where’ of our scholarship are instantiated in the aims and scope of the journals which populate our field. One of the difficulties that newcomers and outsiders face is that there may sometimes seem to be an embarrassment of riches for potential authors to choose from; witness the ‘84’ referred to by Currie and Pandher (2013). A cursory reading of the above list reveals many highly specialized journals (e.g. Journal of Applied Research for Business Instruction), the majority of which are in fact so specialized as to be unfamiliar to us, indeed only 11 of them have citation-based rankings. While an external perspective in general can have commendable attributes, one of the benefits of the expert-insider view is the privileged and sometimes tacit access that it grants to what really counts as important and what does not. In this regard, the majority of scholars working in the field of management and organization learning and education with whom we come into contact operate according to a number of fairly simple, reputable or tried-and-tested heuristics when confronted with choices about where they endeavour and aspire to place their work, for example, the Thomson Institute for Scientific Information’s 2and 5-year impact factors, UK’s Association of Business Schools Academic Journal Quality Guide, Australian Business Deans Council Journal Quality List 2013, the ‘Financial Times 45’ and, in our own field, Arbaugh’s (2008: 8) ‘big four’ journals, that is, Academy of Management Learning and Education (AMLE), Decision Sciences Journal of 510827 MLQ45110.1177/1350507613510827Management LearningCunliffe and Sadler-Smith research-article2014

Management Learning: The journal for critical, reflexive scholarship on organization and learning

The journal’s 2-year impact factor currently stands at 1.25 and the 5-year impact factor at 1.89 in the Thomson Reuters Journal Citation Reports (2014). In terms of 5-year trends, the journal’s mean 2-year impact factor stands at a healthy 1.37. As far as journal quality lists go, we await with interest the outcome of the revision to the United Kingdom’s Association of Business School (ABS) journal quality list to see how things stand. Further afield, the Australian Business Dean’s Council (ABDC) Journal Quality List (2013) rated Management Learning as an ‘A’ journal. However, the ABDC is right to remind us that journal lists should be only a starting point for assessing quality, and that there is no substitute for assessing the scholarship of a piece of work on a case-by-case basis. In this latter regard, the outcome of the United Kingdom’s Research Excellence Framework (unknown at the time of writing this Editorial) may also shed light on the quality, impact, and relevance of Management Learning scholarship. Management Learning has a long and respected history, the first issue being published in 1970 under the name of Management Education and Development. In 1994, the journal title changed to Management Learning, and in 2009, we celebrated our 40 th anniversary. We entered our fifth decade with the conviction and optimism that the type of scholarship the journal publishes “continues to be different” from the scholarship to be found in the mainstream management journals or that of the journals we consider our closest “relatives.” Perhaps better known in the UK, Australasia and Europe, we continually seek to expand our reach to North America and Asia to provide a forum for scholars wishing to challenge mainstream work. But we still struggle against the perception that we are a pedagogic teaching and learning journal—which clearly we are not. Rather, we publish innovative critical and reflexive scholarly work around learning, managing, and organizing—a philosophy that can be traced back to Mark Easterby-Smith and Mike Pedler’s 1986 Editorial, when in

Continuing to be different

We are fortunate in becoming the new joint Editors-in-Chief of Management Learning for several reasons: first, because it is an honour and privilege to serve the community of management learning scholars in this vitally important editorial capacity; second, because we take on these roles at a significant juncture for the journal, namely the publication milestone of volume 40 of Management Learning, and in particular issue 4 which looked back over the journal’s distinguished history, and forward to the challenges and opportunities that the field of managerial and organizational learning faces. Issue 40(4) celebrated the occasion with a series of contributions from twenty-four of the field’s founding and leading international scholars. The inception of our term of office is an appropriate point at which to reflect upon the issues raised by that distinguished group of contributors, and some of the implications of what they have said for the future direction of managerial and organizational learning. Recent years have witnessed a focusing of attention amongst editors, authors, librarians, and promotion panels on impact factors. In so far as Management Learning is concerned, our Journal Citation Reports impact factor has shown steady and healthy growth. The 2008 two-year impact factor was above the psychologically-important threshold value of 1, and the 2008 five-year impact factor was 1.49—testament to the quality of the scholarship of Management Learning’s contributing authors, the journal’s impact not only within its own field but in the wider sphere of management research and practice. The journal’s appeal and broad influence has as much to do with the range of issues that Management Learning’s authors address (including topics as diverse as organizational learning, knowledge management, leadership, networked learning, gender, power, critical pedagogy, communities of practice, and coaching) as with the importance and relevance of what they have to say. So while respecting and engaging with the significance of impact factors, our principal aim is to continue to promote a distinctive scholarship that combines a ‘critical’ edge with innovation, imagination, provocation, engagement, excellence and careful and thoughtful work. As Grey (2009) and McAulay and Sims (2009) remind us, journals such as Management Learning provide much-needed outlets for a freer, and at times iconoclastic, kind of writing which respects and promulgates a plurality of values and norms. The articles in the current issue, ranging from the application of MacIntyrian moral theory in organizational learning, to management as ‘the work that dare not speak its name’ are consistent with this tradition. Over the course of its history Management

Shaping the field

In our 2010 and 2011 editorials, we emphasized the distinct contribution that we believe Management Learning offers, not just to the management learning community but also to the broader field of organization and management studies. This is evidenced in the range of topics, perspectives and methodologies embraced by our authors. For example, in 2012, we published articles on topics ranging from Daoism and reflexivity (Xing and Sims, 2012) to the ‘state of unawareness’ (Faran and Wijnhoven, 2012), on issues of relevance to pedagogy, research and management practice (e.g. Kakavelakis and Edwards, 2012; MacLean et al., 2012; Mazen, 2012), encompassing an eclectic range of theoretical lenses including postcolonial and Foucauldian (Fougere and Moulettes, 2012; Harman, 2012), Bourdieu’s notion of ‘habitus’ (MacLean et al., 2012) and psychoanalytic (Gilmore and Anderson, 2012). This editorial is unique, in that it is in the second issue of the year because our first issue of 2013 continues our compelling run of special issues. The year 2012 was significant in that it saw the publication of two special issues. The first on Universalist, Local and Global Perspectives on Management Learning, edited by Anders Ortenblad, Robin Snell, Manuela Perrotta and Devi Akella, addressed the applicability and transferability of universalist theories to local contexts. The second, edited by Nic Beech, Robert MacIntosh, Elena Antonacopoulou and David Sims, comprised a range of articles tackling the various dialogic ways in which we come to know and practise management. Both special issues continued to expand the range of scholarly and thought-provoking articles published in Management Learning, and we thank the Guest Editors for their work in bringing these to publication. While papers published in the journal are eclectic, they all possess the unique Management Learning attributes of advancing theory and practice through creative enquiry that engages in a critique of convention and a questioning of taken-for-granted assumptions. We firmly believe that this distinctive identity is thriving and moving forward, emanating from the community of writers, reviewers, editors and readers who make up the discipline of ‘management learning’. We recognize that in our role as Editors, along with the invaluable contributions of our Associate Editors Paul Hibbert, Monica Kostera and Davide Nicolini, and our Book Reviews Editor Lisa Anderson, we are in the most privileged of positions in enabling the shape of the field. This is not only through the publication of scholarship in the journal; we have also taken the bold step of inaugurating the first Management Learning Conference in March 2013 at the Lancaster University Management 480285 MLQ44210.1177/1350507613480285Management LearningCunliffe and Sadler-Smith 2013