Dear Colleagues
Next July 2011, the 7th International Critical Management Conference will
take place in Italy with many vibrant streams....
CMS Conference (Naples, 2011) website is now on-line:
http://www.organizzazione.unina.it/cms7/
One of those streams is related to CRITICAL MANAGEMENT EDUCATION... and
some of you may be interested to have a look at it (below). Please, do not
hesitate to contact me at
jmalcaraz@iese.edu if you want to submit a paper
or want further details...
Thanks :=)
Jose M Alcaraz
STREAM: Generating Learning Environments for Critical Management
Education:
Where Are We Now, Where Should We Be Heading?
Call for papers
Stream Convenors:
Dr. Jose Manuel Alcaraz (Lead convenor): Barna Business School, Dominican
Republic
jmalcaraz@iese.edu
Dr. Carole Elliott: Hull University Business School, UK
c.j.elliott@hull.ac.uk
Dr. Maria Humphries: Waikato Management School, New Zealand
mariah@waikato.ac.nz
Dr. Sarah Robinson: Open University Business School, UK.
s.k.robinson@open.ac.uk
Diverse authors (e.g. Alvesson and Willmott, 1992; Fournier and Grey 2000;
Parker, 2002) have proposed that
education is a significant realm in which Critical Management Studies has,
or can have, practical impact. As
critical management educators, our main space of influence is the
classroom or learning contexts. Educators
who take their mandate from the transformative aspirations of critical
organisational theorists are in a good
position to generate environments that help students (future or current
managers and leaders) to examine
human organization more critically than has been the case in the past. The
literature about critical pedagogy
that has appeared within the last 15 years in journals such as The Journal
of Management Education (e.g.
Humphries and Dyer, 2005, 2001) Management Learning (e.g. Perriton &
Reynolds, 2004; Cunliffe & Linstead,
2009; Vince and Elkjaer 2009) and sporadically in the Academy of
Management Learning and Education (e.g..
Reynolds and Vince, 2004) constitute significant valuable contributions
for a Critical Management Education
(CME) agenda.
Much of this work emphasizes “an engagement with the ‘real world’
messiness as the basis for learning”
(Prichard 2009:52), as well as a significant advocacy for processes of
reflectivity and self‐reflection necessary
for making personal changes if the desired organizational changes are to
have any chance of realization.
These texts promote learning and education experiences that support a
significant shift in the view of business
organizations and their role in society: from one centered in
the ‘beautiful’/heroic managerialist traditional
handbook stories to others that highlight domination, oppression,
identity, insecurity, power and inequality
issues (Dehler, 2009). We invite this move to the consideration of these
challenging perspectives for the
potential such reflections and personal change can bring to the
transformation of undesirable outcomes. This
invitation includes the highlighting of ideals of emancipation,
empowerment, justice and sustainability. Contu
(2009) shows that CME scholars have brought tactics such as subversion and
deviation from the traditional
management curriculum, hybridization (inclusion of critical political
accounts beyond neo‐liberalism), and
teaching experimentation in a broad sense, to build learning environments
that are inspiring and enjoyable
(e.g. the use of poetry, movies and improvisational comedy). Boje and Al
Arkoubi (2009) suggests a future for
critical management education which draws on an elective range of critical
theoretical perspectives and which
relies on the application on five tenets namely: ethics of answerability,
commitment to emancipation,
promotion of multiculturalism, challenge of dichotomies, dialogism and
decentred power. These examples
bring teaching techniques that encourage learners to move from the more
usual business worldview centered
on the shareholder moral mandate, to another encompassing accountability
towards all organisation
stakeholders. We envisage contributing to a move from the traditional
rationale of short‐term profit
maximization to a sustained long‐term and socially engaged view of
the
(responsible) firm as portrayed,
among others, by the United Nations’ Principles for Responsible Management
Education initiative (UN‐PRME
2008). We seek, through this stream to contribute to an enhanced
understanding of the transformational
aspirations of critical approaches to management education, approaches
that may serve the ideals expressed
in the PRME more effectively than a continuation of predominant
pedagogical approaches.
We want to work with conference participants to identify and discuss the
value of some of these efforts and to
be inspired by pedagogical contributions that have not necessarily
originated in the CME field but which may
assist CMEducators in their quest for more effective classroom practices.
The 15‐year research project
coordinated by Ken Bain (2005, 2009) on ‘What the Best College Teachers
Do’ offers a valuable example of
such an initiative.
This stream is articulated, thus, on questions and topics related to the
generation of learning environments,
that is, a focus on critical teaching practices and resources, to discuss
what is currently going on or what could
be developed for the classroom/online, etc ‐ and why. Some
possibilities
for submissions include:
(a) What are some of the learning and education practices fruitfully used
in Critical Management
Education (CME)?
(b) How can we foster better Learning Environments that help CME to
enhance deep learning? What are
the learning and education CME strategies that have, or may have, a
sustained, substantial, and
positive influence on students?
(c) What are some of the key taken‐for‐granted notions that
CMS educators
want to transform? How can
we invite students to re‐think these before they feel pressed to
present or
repeat conservative
responses to such critique?
(d) How to create expectation failures that instructors can use to
challenge and transform students’
schemas?
(e) How to put students in intellectual and physical (experiential
learning) situations that they care about,
that they find particularly intriguing? How can we place students in
learning environments where they
are stimulated to pursue management problems that they will find
attractive, intriguing and
(especially) genuinely important?
(f) What are some of the powerful questions that can help in this CME
purpose? (E.g. in the area of CSR
those may be questions such as: ‘Do we have to choose between economic
development and the
environment?’; ‘What will be cheaper, saving on environmental initiatives
today, or fixing things from
environmental disaster tomorrow?’; ‘Can we rely on governments alone to
achieve a sustainable
world?’ ‘Can a Tobacco company have real CSR practices and policies?’).
Can our personal need for oil
(and its by‐products) be justified independently from the pressures
BP are
feeling to take
responsibility for the repercussions of their Oil leaks in the Gulf of
Mexico?
(g) How can we bridge the gap? That is how can we link our questions to
issues that are already in the
mind of the students/business professionals; questions that they already
see as important in their
everyday life? How can we put them in learning contexts where they also
have help in understanding
the significance of those questions and problems, where they are given an
opportunity to struggle, to
reach tentative conclusions and to receive feedback on their efforts?
(h) How can CME develop more experiential, action and situated learning
approaches to stimulate
students’ critical thinking?
(i) To what extent is CME generating learning environments that take into
account the international
nature of the management education classroom? How can diversity be
addressed and celebrated and
how can dominant (post‐colonial) legacies and hegemonies (both
educational
and organisational) be
challenged?
(j) How can CMEducators build learning environments that overcome some of
the contradictions and
tensions usually associated with the roles/purposes of business schools,
and critical
‘alternative’/'emancipatory' pedagogies?
(k) What other trends, insights, issues, and strategies in learning and
education may be needed for a CME
agenda? What for example, is the role of critical theory and critical
approaches to education practices
e.g. Habermas, Bourdieu etc. both in informing our own practice and for
use in direct teaching and
learning, and what is the legacy of critical educators such as Giroux
(1997) and Freire?
Submission Process and Important Dates
We welcome submissions by email, initially in the form of an abstract.
This should be maximum
1000 words, single spaced, 12 point font, A4 paper size.
1st October 2010 – please, submit abstract by email to
jmalcaraz@iese.edu
1st December 2010 – notification of acceptance
1st May 2011– Full papers due
References
Alvesson, M. and Willmott, H. (1992) eds. Critical Management Studies.
London: Sage.
Bain, K. (2005). What the Best College Teachers Do. Boston: Harvard
University Press
Bain, K. (2009). ‘Understanding Great Teaching’. Peer Review, Spring.
9‐12.
Boje, D and Al Arkoubi, K (2009). ‘Critical Management Education Beyond
the Siege’ in Armstrong, S and Fukami, C. The Sage
Handbook of Management Learning, Education and Development London: Sage
Cunliffe, A. & Linstead, St. (2009). ‘Introduction: Teaching From Critical
Perspectives’. Management Learning, Vol. 40, No. 1, 5‐9.
Contu, A. (2009). ‘Critical Management Education’. In Alvesson, M.,
Bridgman, T & Willmott. (2009). The Oxford Handbook of Critical
Management Studies. Oxford University Press.
Dehler, G. (2009). ‘Prospects and Possibilities of Critical Management
Education: Critical Beings and a Pedagogy of Critical Action’.
Management Learning, vol. 40: pp. 31 ‐ 49.
Freire, P. (1970) ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’ New York: Continum
International Publishing
Fournier, V. and Grey, C. (2000) 'At the Critical Moment'. Human
Relations. Volume 53(1): 7–32
Giroux,, H.A. (1997) Pedagogy and the Politics of Hope: Theory Culture and
Schooling. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Humphries, M.T. and Dyer, S. (2001). ‘Changing the Nature and Conditions
of Employment: Stimulating critical Reflection’. Journal of
Management Education, Vol.25, No.3, pp.325‐340.
Humphries, M.T. and Dyer, S. (2005). ‘Transformation Through Critical
Management Education’. Journal of Management Education.
Vol 29, No 1. pp. 169‐195. Fritz Roethlisberger Award for Best paper
2005.
Knights, D. and Willmott, H. (2007) eds. Introducing Organizational
Behavior Management. London:
Thomson Learning.
Parker, M (2002). Against Management: Organisation in the Age of
Managerialism. Oxford:
Polity.
Perriton, L. and Reynolds, M. (2004). ‘Critical Management Education: From
Pedagogy of Possibility to Pedagogy of Refusal?’
Management Learning 35 (1): 61‐77.
Prichard, C. (2009). ‘Three Moves for Engaging Students in Critical
Management Studies’. Management Learning, Vol. 40, No. 1, 51‐
68
Reynolds, M. and Vince, R. (2004). ‘Critical Management Education and
Action‐Based Learning: Synergies and Contradictions’.
Academy of Management Learning and Education 3(4): 442‐56.
Vince, R and Elkjaer, B. (2009). ‘Breaking the Boundaries of Existing
Knowledge: A Celebration of the 40th
Anniversary of Management Learning’. Management Learning. Vol. 40, No. 4,
347‐352.
UN‐PRME working group (2008). New Learning Methodologies and
Principles for
Responsible Management Education. 3rd draft,
November. Working Paper.