Summary
Contents
Subject index
The scholarship of management teaching and learning has established itself as a field in its own right, and this benchmark Handbook is the first to provide an account of the discipline. Original chapters from leading international academics identify the key issues and map out where the discipline is going. Each chapter provides a comprehensive and critical overview of the given topic area, highlights current debate, and reviews the emerging research agenda.
Reflexivity, Learning and Reflexive Practice
Reflexivity, Learning and Reflexive Practice
Abstract
In this chapter I explore three questions: What is reflexivity? Why is reflexivity important to managers and management learning? And how can we encourage and support reflexive practice in management learning? In relation to the first question, I offer a way of thinking about reflexivity from a constructionist and deconstructionist perspective. The former is situated in the sociological, existential, and phenomenological literature, the latter in poststruc-turalist and postmodern work. I move on to argue that reflexivity is fundamental to management and management learning because it is about who we are, how we relate to others, and what we do, and thus forms the basis for ethical and responsive management. Finally, I explore the implications of reflexivity for management learning, suggesting that one way of making reflexivity relevant to managers is to focus on reflexive practice. I suggest the basis for this is an understanding of how we make sense of our experience, and offer ways of incorporating reflexive practice in management learning.
To begin any paper with the question ‘What is Reflexivity?’ can lead the author and reader along a rocky road with many converging and diverging paths. It's a question I've been grappling with for a number of years, and one that involves delving into sociological, philosophical (existentialism, phenomenology, poststructuralism, etc.), anthropological, and other fields. It highlights not only a wideranging debate across the natural and social sciences on the meaning of reflexivity, but also differing interpretations and claims about its value and its problematic nature. Most of this debate has been an intellectual one, centered around various conceptualizations of reflexivity, its epistemological consequences, and its methodological possibilities (see Chia, 1996; Lawson, 1985; Linstead, 1994; Pollner, 1991). The critics of reflexivity claim it to be abstract, obscure, irrelevant, and encompassing overly self-indulgent introspection – a political and linguistic game played by academics with nothing better to do (Samuels, 1991; Searle, 1993). But I think these criticisms miss the point. Yes, reflexivity can be obscure if viewed in a particular way, but over the last ten years or so, I've found myself drawn more and more into believing there's a need for reflexivity in all aspects of our lives, and this plays through my research, teaching, and personal life. I've moved toward the belief that whatever else we may teach, reflexivity is fundamental to management learning because it is about who we are, how we relate to others, and what we do – and this is why reflexivity is a cornerstone for ethical and responsive management. I've also come to the realization that it's far easier to talk about reflexivity and to debate its merits, than it is to be reflexive. What I will argue in this chapter, is that being reflexive is at least as important, if not more so, as doing reflexivity, and that we need to address both in management education and learning. Of course, as a ‘good’ reflexive scholar I recognize mine is a situated position and therefore both fallible and contestable; nevertheless it is one that I offer as a possibility for incorporating a reflexive stance in management learning.
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