Todd Bridgman

Regulation is evil: An application of narrative policy analysis to regulatory debate in New Zealand

Using findings from research on the implementation of telephone number portability in New Zealand, we demonstrate how narrative analysis can account for how particular influence stories, or policy narratives, come to dominate the policy process. In this paper, we extend the concept of metanarrative, which to date has been interpreted as a story that policy makers use to recast policy problems. Policy metanarratives are shown to have strong pre-figurative effects and to be more pervasive than previously recognised.

Freedom and Autonomy in the University Enterprise

Purpose – This paper seeks to explore notions of enterprise as an instance of organizational change within university business schools, using a theoretical approach drawn from the discourse theory of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Their concept of articulatory practice is useful for examining the management of knowledge workers across multiple levels of discourse, including policy, practice and processes of identification. Specifically, the paper aims to investigate the articulation of enterprise within government policy on higher education, management practices of directing, funding, measuring and regulating the activities of faculty in ways that seek to promote enterprise, as well as demonstrating how agents can resist attempts at top‐down managerial control through processes of self‐identification.Design/methodology/approach – An empirical study consisting of an analysis of government reports on higher education along with 65 interviews conducted at six UK research‐led business schools.Findings – A...

Unfreezing change as three steps: Rethinking Kurt Lewin’s legacy for change management

Kurt Lewin’s ‘changing as three steps’ (unfreezing → changing → refreezing) is regarded by many as the classic or fundamental approach to managing change. Lewin has been criticized by scholars for over-simplifying the change process and has been defended by others against such charges. However, what has remained unquestioned is the model’s foundational significance. It is sometimes traced (if it is traced at all) to the first article ever published in Human Relations. Based on a comparison of what Lewin wrote about changing as three steps with how this is presented in later works, we argue that he never developed such a model and it took form after his death. We investigate how and why ‘changing as three steps’ came to be understood as the foundation of the fledgling subfield of change management and to influence change theory and practice to this day, and how questioning this supposed foundation can encourage innovation.

Managing, managerial control and managerial identity in the post‐bureaucratic world

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the issues involved in managerial control and managerial identity in relation to the idea of a post‐bureaucratic organization. In addition it introduces the papers in this special issue.Design/methodology/approach – The paper identifies the increasing complexity of issues of managerial control and managerial identity that arise from the idea of a post‐bureaucratic organization and post‐bureaucratic working practices, such as flex‐work and project management.Findings – The paper suggests that the form and nature of managerial control and managerial identity are constantly evolving and in a state of flux as a consequence of processes of (de)bureaucratization and (re)bureaucratization.Originality/value – The paper raises important questions about the nature of management in post‐bureaucratic work environments and challenges the behaviourist competencies approach to developing managers.

Why Management Learning Matters

The past year has been one of transition for the Management Learning editorial team. Ann Cunliffe stood down at the end of 2016 from her role as joint Editor-in-Chief, a position she took up in 2010 following 5 years as Associate Editor. Over the course of those 12 years, Ann acted in an editorial role for more than 400 papers. Through her contributions to understanding reflexivity and her work in building communities of research practice in qualitative research, Ann attracted new and established scholars from a wide range of disciplines to engage with and publish in the journal. During our transition into the Editors-in-Chief role, Ann has been an invaluable source of guidance and support. We thank her for her outstanding service to the journal. Ann’s departure means this is our first joint editorial as incoming Editors-in-Chief, and we take this opportunity to explain why Management Learning continues to be a journal that matters in the field of management learning and education. In addition to the core features of reflection and critique that are highlighted by the journal strapline, we want to emphasise the importance of ‘engagement’. This underlying motif cuts across many of the papers published in the journal, as well as the approach to scholarship that those who contribute to it value and encourage. While terms like ‘impact’ and ‘relevance’ have become increasingly popular and continue to be much debated in management research, we suggest ‘engagement’ offers a more meaningful, and perhaps less readily instrumentalised, term that encapsulates the diverse and multidirectional relationships between those who share an interest in the study of management learning. This includes learning which takes place in the context of the business school, in addition to practices and processes related to the creation and dissemination of diverse forms of knowledge in a wide range of organisations. This is one of the features that distinguishes Management Learning from other journals in the field such as Academy of Management Learning & Education and Journal of Management Education. The importance of engagement in Management Learning can be traced back to the journal’s foundation in 1970. The impetus for its development stemmed from initiatives focusing on managerial learning and the training of business school educators, under the auspices of the Association

The battle for ‘Middle-earth’: The constitution of interests and identities in The Hobbit dispute

This article draws on an industrial dispute over the filming of The Hobbit in New Zealand in 2010 to contribute to the theorisation of the interplay between interests and identities and our understanding of mobilisation and collective identity. While industrial disputes are typically viewed as conflict between groups with opposing material interests, this may miss the way in which both the identities of those involved and their interests are discursively constituted in articulatory processes. Specifically, we apply Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory and in doing so demonstrate that the dispute was more than a conflict over working conditions, it was a hegemonic struggle to fix meaning. In making this conceptual contribution we highlight a tendency within industrial relations analysis to reify interests.

Overcoming Compliance to Change: Dynamics of Power, Obedience, and Resistance in a Classroom Restructure

Resistance to change is a central topic in the study of change management, with resistance by employees often portrayed as an inevitable and undesirable response to planned change that managers must attempt to overcome. While resistance can be detrimental to organizations, it can also be beneficial, by prompting deeper analysis of a change, or by preventing an ill-advised or unethical one. Yet it might be difficult for employees to voice their concerns about change, especially if implemented from the top down, because of the power relationships involved. This simple classroom activity, designed principally for undergraduate classes, simulates an organizational restructure, requiring students to reorganize themselves around the room multiple times on the order of the instructor. It provides an opportunity for students to analyze group dynamics, consider the value of resistance, and discuss how leaders can foster cultures that encourage employees to speak up.

Expecting the unexpected in Management Learning

When we are invited as editors to contribute to conference sessions, workshops and talks on journal publishing, we sometimes hear the word ‘quirky’ as a label used to describe work published in Management Learning. What we take people to mean when they describe the journal in this way is that articles are unexpected, unconventional, unusual and unorthodox. These characteristics are highly consistent with the remit of Management Learning, which is to publish thought-provoking work that opens up existing ways of thinking about knowledge and learning to critical scrutiny. Evidence of the appeal of quirky scholarship may be inferred from the journal’s rising impact factor, which increased further this year from 1.393 to 1.836 (Management JCR 89/194). However, quirkiness also implies deviation from the mainstream. It can therefore be seen as work that is risky – or even marginal and eccentric – and hence not to be taken especially seriously. In this editorial, we seek to explore the meaning of quirkiness and, through this, to embrace the possibilities that such a positioning affords. In so doing, we follow a tradition of reclaiming words that have formerly been used to subjugate or undermine, such as ‘queer’, and using them to ‘question dominant foundational assumptions about what is “normal” and what is “abnormal”’ (Rumens and Tyler, 2016: 225). By attempting to unsettle what is considered ‘normal’ in the study of management knowledge and learning, we endeavour to reclaim the word ‘quirky’ as a term with critical, reflexive potential. Our view is that quirky scholarship arises from the exercise of disciplined, sociological imagination (Mills, 1959) in pursuit of scholarly creativity. One of the ways in which quirky scholarship can be cultivated is through exposure to the unexpected. This is a feature of ethnomethodology which involves deliberately engineering unexpected situations and observing the social reactions

Overcoming the Problem With Solving Business Problems: Using Theory Differently to Rejuvenate the Case Method for Turbulent Times:

A questioning of the neoliberal consensus in the global economic order is creating turbulence in Western democracies. Long regarded as the only viable capitalist model, neoliberalism is now subjected to increasing scrutiny. Management education that has been aligned to a neoliberal worldview must now respond to this shifting landscape in order to retain its legitimacy. One core element of management education undergoing revision as a result is the case method of teaching. The case method’s traditionally narrow focus on training students to solve business problems is increasingly problematic in an environment where the structure of the capitalist system in which firms operate is now a topic of debate. To address this, we argue for a reconceptualization of the case method’s relationship with theory. This has conventionally taken two forms: a hostility to any inclusion of theory in the analytical process and an approach that uses theory as an instrument for profit maximization. We propose an alternative third approach that encourages students to engage in a critical questioning of business-as-usual capitalism from the perspective of multiple stakeholders, including managers, employees, unions, not-for-profit organizations, government, and the natural environment.

Early career development in the public sector: Lessons from a social constructionist perspective

This article explores the contribution a social constructionist paradigm can make to the study of career, through a small-scale empirical study of recent graduates employed in New Zealand’s state sector. A social constructionist lens denies the possibility of an individualised, generalised understanding of ‘career’, highlighting instead its local, contingent character as the product of social interaction. Our respondents’ collective construction of career was heavily shaped by a range of context-specific interactions and influences, such as the perception of a distinctive national identity, as well as by their young age and state sector location. It was also shaped by the research process, with us as researchers implicated in these meaning-making processes. Social constructionism shines a light on aspects of the field that are underplayed by mainstream, scientific approaches to the study of career, and therefore has valuable implications for practitioners, as well as scholars.