Michaela Driver

Exploring student perceptions of group interaction and class satisfaction in the web-enhanced classroom

Abstract This paper presents an exploratory study of a web-enhanced televised class encouraging learner–learner interaction in small online groups. The purpose of the study was to examine whether various interactions among students in small groups could substitute for one-on-one interaction between the instructor and each student and lead to high levels of perceived class interaction and student satisfaction. It was found that perceptions of overall class interaction and student satisfaction seem to be positively affected by small group interaction. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Struggling with Lack: A Lacanian Perspective on Organizational Identity

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to research on organizational identity by developing a psychoanalytic perspective. In particular, the author draws on Lacanian theorizing to explore how organizational identity discourse is informed by imaginary constructions of subjectivity. It is proposed that the collective construction of coherent, unitary, and definably organizational identity discourse is validated by and validates conscious but illusory constructions of the self. The resulting discourse is inevitably disrupted by unconscious subjectivity and invariably fails. Therefore, the collective construction of fragmented, dynamic, and emergent organizational identity discourse is equally inevitable. While such discourse can be illusory, it also contains the opportunity for engaging in liberating struggles with identity as lack. The implications of this perspective for the theory and practice of organizational identity are discussed.

From empty speech to full speech? Reconceptualizing spirituality in organizations based on a psychoanalytically-grounded understanding of the self

Based on a psychoanalytic perspective, the article develops a new theoretical framework with which to examine organizational spirituality. Proponents of spirituality claim that it leads to the experience of an authentic self at work, one that is connected to others and a higher order, fully integrated, balanced, complete and ultimately fulfilled. This article suggests that these current definitions rest on conceptualizations of the self that capture little more than the imaginary function of the ego and the empty speech in which it engages. The article reconstructs core dimensions of spirituality in organizations as full speech, that is, as a discourse in which true subjectivity can emerge.

The Learning Organization: Foucauldian Gloom or Utopian Sunshine?

Based on Coopey’s critical review of the terms ‘Utopian sunshine’ and ‘Foucauldian gloom’ with regard to the learning organization (Coopey, 1998), this article explores the learning organization from two opposing perspectives. While researchers agree that the learning organization concept is an important one for organization science, two seemingly irreconcilable research communities are arguing about whether the learning organization is a dream or a nightmare for its members, particularly with regard to three critical dimensions: control, ideology and potentially painful employee experiences. The purpose of this article is to review and critically examine both the optimistic view of the learning organization as positive ideal and the more critical view of the learning organization as negative ideology. Based on this examination, the article aims to synthesize a new middle-ground perspective on the learning organization, referred to as the ‘fluorescent light’ view, incorporating elements from both optimistic and critical views in hopes of generating a dialog between them that will provide new research questions on control, ideology and potential pain in learning organizations.

Fostering Creativity in Business Education: Developing Creative Classroom Environments to Provide Students With Critical Workplace Competencies

Abstract This article explores the value of exposing students to creative classroom environments in business education to prepare them for creative workplaces. A study of student perceptions in four undergraduate business classrooms indicates that dimensions of creativity training, such as providing time and rewards for creativity, stimulating risk taking, diversity of thinking, cooperation, and questioning of assumptions, can be effctively integrated into business education.

From Loss to Lack: Stories of Organizational Change as Encounters with Failed Fantasies of Self, Work and Organization

This study advances research on storytelling and organizational change by exploring forty stories of change from a psychoanalytic, particularly Lacanian, perspective. It suggests that stories of organizational change serve an important and, to date, under-explored role as creative and empowering encounters with failed fantasies of self, work and organization. Implications for research on storytelling and organizational change are discussed.

Meaning and suffering in organizations

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of suffering for meaning making and spirituality in organizational contexts.Design/methodology/approach – The paper explores how organizational spaces may be created for meaning making and how this is linked to the idea of compassion.Findings – The paper suggests that while suffering has been explored in organizations, it has not been studied relative to existential meaning making. This is identified as a significant gap in research on organizational spirituality. The paper attempts to fill this gap and suggests that the study of suffering has to separate suffering as an objective phenomenon, which should be eliminated in organizations, from suffering as a subjective experience in which meaning may be found. It is also proposed that, for existential meaning to be uncovered in the face of suffering, organizational spaces have to be created in which such meaning making can take place.Originality/value – The paper suggests that suffering can be a pat...

Encountering the Arugula Leaf: The Failure of the Imaginary and its Implications for Research on Identity in Organizations

The article reviews research on identity in organizations. It suggests that current research reiterates imaginary constructions of identity by which identity can be defined as coherent or fragmented. Based on a psychoanalytic understanding of subjectivity, it explores how articulating identity as lack may unsettle such imaginary constructions. The article develops the significant implications this has for how identity is conceptualized and researched and, importantly, how the failure of imaginary identity constructions relates to resistance and control in organizations. The article provides new directions for the study of identity in organizations particularly with respect to widening the discursive spaces in which creative identity struggles occur.

Learning and Leadership in Organizations Toward Complementary Communities of Practice

The goal of this study is to stimulate dialog in the research community around a model of learning linked to leadership in organizations. It is an attempt to integrate various communities of practice and divergent approaches by placing equal emphasis on developing a model of organizational learning as well as on embedding the development process itself into the context of a scientific dialog. A model of how learning in organizations can be conceptualized as a role negotiated between superiors and their subordinates is developed and investigated. The model postulates that individuals in organizations accomplish learning by specializing in certain learning tasks. This specialization is based on role behaviors and resources that constrain or facilitate learning opportunities negotiated in the workplace between subordinates and their superiors. How this learning may be shared to result in organizational learning and implications for theory development are discussed.

New and Useless A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Organizational Creativity

The purpose of this article is to advance research on creativity in organizations by developing a psychoanalytic perspective from which creativity may be understood as an imaginary construction of the self. This self aims at producing the new and useful yet fails to do so. The useful is only marginally so, and many of the interactions designed to ensure usefulness result in socially useless activities. The article suggests, however, that from a psychoanalytic perspective, the failure of the imaginary is also useful. It is useful to the creative person as subject of the unconscious providing opportunities for struggles with otherness and alienation. Such struggles allow respondents to experience their creative potential and produce something beyond organizational kitsch. The implications for the theory and practice of organizational creativity are discussed.