Kiran Trehan

Reflections on working with critical action learning

Critical action learning engages participants in a process of drawing from critical perspectives to make connections between their learning and work experiences, to understand and change interpersonal and organisational practices. But what does this mean in practice? How can critical action learning be expedited? What outcomes can critical action learning have for participants, and can the hopes for critical action learning be fulfilled? The intentions of this paper are to contribute reflections of our empirical experience on working with critical action learning in management development.

Critical action learning, policy learning and small firms: an inquiry

This article presents a conceptual and empirical synthesis of ‘critical action learning’ (CAL) and ‘policy learning’ (PL). We pursue this undertaking by reflecting upon a five-year inquiry into an initiative that aimed to provide business support to an action learning set comprising eight African-Caribbean entrepreneurs. CAL and PL share commitments that are riven with tensions, which we explore in our inquiry in relation to three themes that arose during the course of the investigation. The findings demonstrate how a synthesis of CAL and PL can: enrich CAL by recognizing the centrality of emotional and power relations; provide a vehicle to examine the tensions and dynamics that attend policy implementation; illustrate the merits of an experiential approach to evaluation. We contribute to debates on criticality in action learning and the need for more grounded approaches to the evaluation of initiatives directed at small firms.

Critical reflection in the workplace: is it just too difficult?

Purpose – The intentions of this article are to contribute reflections of an empirical account of working with critical reflection within an organisational development programme, addressing the following questions: What space is there for critical reflection in organisational development? What issues are raised for in‐company developers and providers by advocating critical reflection in organisation practice?Design/methodology/approach – A case study approach is taken, presenting an empirical account of a management and organisational development programme that integrated action learning and critical reflection.Findings – The account illustrates difficulties of employing critical reflection within the workplace arising from the more complex power relations between the multiple stakeholders in a commercial context. In particular, dissonance provoked by critical reflection confronts the client with a tension over whether to see organisation members primarily as customers to please or as participants in a ch...

Barriers to ethnic minority and women’s enterprise: Existing evidence, policy tensions and unsettled questions

This article presents an overarching review of the evidence regarding enterprise diversity. It discusses the context of ethnic minorities and women in enterprise and summarises research evidence relating to their relative access to finance, market selection and management skills. Policy within the field of diversity and enterprise is characterised by a number of tensions and unresolved questions including the presence of perceived or actual discrimination, the quantity and quality of ethnic minority and women-led businesses, potential market failure in the support provided to diverse enterprises and the substantive uniqueness of ethnic minority and women-led enterprises. Particular implications for policy and practice as well as directions for future research are discussed.

Who is not sleeping with whom?: What's not being talked about in HRD?

Human resource development (HRD) occupies some interesting educational territory. Given the rapid pace of development and innovation in education and in the practice of HRD, coupled with alternative approaches to learning, a re‐evaluation of HRD might be expected to be a prominent feature within discussions of the future practice of HRD. However, while there has been a growing demand in the academic literature of the last few years for management educators to engage more critically with their subject than has been the tradition in business schools. The case has been argued for strengthening the critical perspectives in contributory disciplines within management and for a revision of management more generally. Yet, while examples of critical pedagogies are accumulating, they seldom exhibit corresponding changes in HRD practices. Where HRD does depart from mainstream practices, alternatives are typically based on humanistic student‐centred aspirations for social equality, rather than on an analysis of HRD in terms of power, politics and social dynamics. The intention of this paper is to highlight what is not being talked about in HRD in order to illuminate the importance of power to the study of HRD. The paper will explore the significance of power in HRD, drawing on ideas from critical and post modern perspectives. By illuminating social and power relations embedded within HRD practices, the aim is to present a more contextualised and processual account than the proceduralist recipes that currently dominate the study of this vital aspect of educational and organisational practice.

Animating Critical Action Learning: Process-Based Leadership and Management Development.

Increasing attention is focusing on the value of critical approaches to enhancing leadership and management development processes. This paper examines how a critical action learning perspectives can be harnessed to produce valuable learning and development through critically reflective practise. Critical action learning approaches not only explore underlying power and control issues, but actively engage in an examination of political and cultural processes affecting leadership development. The aims of this paper are to explore approaches to critical action learning, to elucidate its principal features, to highlight how it can be applied in leadership and management development contexts and, finally, to illuminate some of the complexities and challenges of working with critical action learning in practice.

Theorising Critical HRD: A Paradox of Intricacy and Discrepancy.

Purpose – This paper aims to advance theoretical understanding of the concept of “critical human resource development”.Design/methodology/approach – This is a conceptual paper.Findings – Foregrounding questions of power, emotions and political dynamics within the analysis of organisational learning and development activity, critical approaches in HRD pay particular attention to the importance of context, interests and patterns of inter‐relationships amongst organisation stakeholders. It is notable that much of the work in this area operates on a theoretical plane, and is often light on practical guidance or recognition of the distinctive contexts of HRD practice, compared to other areas of critical learning.Research limitations/implications – Empirical investigations that have systematically applied critical approaches to HRD are in short supply, and their potential to enrich HRD practice has rarely been explored. This paper contributes to addressing these gaps.Originality/value – Firstly, it elucidates t...

Not Critical Enough? Black Women Raise Challenges for Critical Management Learning.

The aspirations of critical management learning are individual and societal transformation, with hopes for non-hierarchical learning communities. This article reflects on the experiences of running a critical management development programme with managers from diverse backgrounds, presenting six case studies of black women, whose experiences raise challenges for the liberatory intentions of critical management learning. Some found the programme positive, but others found it disempowering. In seeking to understand these experiences, and the differences between them, feminist pedagogy provides insights into gendered power relations which critical education neglects. However, for a business school context, with a widely diverse student group, it is argued that deeper insights are offered within anti-racist pedagogy and the concept of habitus.

Critical action learning

The aim of this Special Section on critical action learning (CAL) is to make a contribution to advancing the theory and practice of CAL and in so doing, to produce useful theory that enables CAL to develop as a promising practice in Management Learning. Our focus is related to conceptualisation of the field and the dynamics of implementation, which all too often remains implicit within extant studies. The emerging varieties of CAL (Anderson and Thorpe, 2004; Ram and Trehan, 2009, 2010; Trehan and Rigg, 2013; Vince, 2011) demonstrate the momentum that is developing behind a critical perspective on action learning, as well as the potential pedagogic and analytical benefits of adopting such an approach. In addition to educators, CAL has shown the potential to act as a resource for researchers, policy-makers and practitioners (Ram and Trehan, 2010). The current interest in CAL and its application in organisations have brought to the surface, a range of important questions for scholars and practitioners. In particular, these relate to the articulation of philosophical assumptions that underpin CAL theoretically and empirically so that its practice can be laid open to careful scrutiny that is informed by rigorously developed principles that become the foundation for future theoretical and practical development. Establishing a conceptual view on the meaning and significance of ‘critical action learning’ is not a simple undertaking. The enactment of CAL requires not so much a template of technique but a genuine commitment to engage with, surface and learn from the emotional and political dynamics of the collaborative, problem or challenge-focused context. To realise the potential of CAL, we need to show greater sensitivity to the assumptions that inform our research and practice in this area, demonstrate how the core concerns of CAL influence policy implementation, and engage more closely with oft-neglected communities of practice within mainstream management, organisation studies and small business firms (Ram and Trehan, 2010). These two papers that follow both draw on empirical work to offer new contributions to our thinking about CAL.

Psychodynamic and Critical Perspectives on Leadership Development

The problem and the solution. Increasing attention is focusing on the value of critical approaches to enhancing human resource development (HRD). This article examines how critical HRD and psychoanalytic processes can be harnessed to produce valuable learning through reflection. Psychodynamic perspectives not only explore underlying power and control issues but actively engage in an examination of political and cultural processes affecting the development process. Such perspectives enable one to move beyond purely instrumentalist approaches toward embracing the complexity of leadership development.