Curated reading list on the topic of ‘Learning in Organizations’ in management and organization studies
A collaboration between the Management Learning journal and the Talking About Organizations Podcast!
The list below is another of our curated collections of episodes and accompanying readings courtesy of the Management Learning journal. The aim of these collections is to pair our episodes with external thematic readings in order to augment gaps in our portfolio, provide quick ‘crash courses’, as well as offer more in depth bibliographies on selected topics.
Emotions in work, emotions used for work, emotions in studying work – it’s certain that emotions play an important role when it comes to understanding work, organizations and management learning. This list tackles the classic work of Maslow and Forester, not to mention emotional labour, emotions in research, & emotions and liminality in considering this topic. The below collection consists of seven articles from the Management Learning journal and five of our episodes that explore both classical and contemporary research into the meaning, methods, and importance of learning in organizations.
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Other curated reading lists: Care | Emotions | Gender & Feminism | Group Relations | Historical Approaches | Learning in Organizations | Sociomateriality | Return to Resources Page
Resources from the Management Learning Journal
Irving, G., Wright, A. & Hibbert, P. (2019) Threshold concept learning: Emotions and liminal space transitions. Management Learning, 50(3), pp. 355–373.
This article explores how learners transition through the liminal space when they engage with and master threshold concepts. We investigate this question through a qualitative study of undergraduate students as they grapple with the threshold concept of evidence-based management (EBMgT) as a disciplinary way of thinking and practicing. Our findings elaborate threshold concept learning as a cumulative process of the learner’s engagement with the troublesome, integrative-and-bounded, irreversible, and transformative elements of a threshold concept. Through this elaboration, we show how transitions through liminal spaces in threshold concept learning play out as an interrelated, cognitive, and affective process. We identify key transition points and mechanisms related to doubt, high-activation negative emotions, regret, and emotional resolution that trigger entry into, progression through or getting stuck within, and exit from a liminal space when a learner engages with and masters a threshold concept. Our research, therefore, contributes processual insight into liminality in threshold concept learning by opening up the transitions and emotions that play out for the learners in the liminal space. We also contribute to wider debates about student engagement with disciplinary ways of thinking and practicing in management.
Iszatt-White, M. & Lenney, P. (2020). Enacting emotional labour in consultancy work: Playing with liminality and navigating power dynamics. Management Learning, 51(3), pp. 314–335.
While theoretical understanding of professional emotional labour has developed in recent years, methodological issues with capturing its practice mean that understanding of how professional emotional labour is enacted remains relatively limited. The current study utilises memory work to surface potentially unacknowledged meanings associated with the remembered performance of professional emotional labour as a proxy for the psychological access required to demonstrate dissonance between felt and displayed emotions. The article uses an emotionally charged feedback meeting between a management consultant and their client as an opportune context for surfacing the enactment of professional emotional labour. The combined memory work data – consisting of original meeting recordings and a parallel commentary developed in discussion with the consultant – are analysed through a Goffmanian lens in order to theorise role positioning as a tool of enacting professional emotional labour. A model is proposed that maps the roles adopted against the dimensions of playing with liminality and navigating power dynamics. We suggest the potential transferability of these findings to other situations of liminality and their relevance for management learning interventions.
McMurray, R. (2021). Immersion, drowning, dispersion and resurfacing: Coping with the emotions of ethnographic management learning. Management Learning. [Online First] doi: 10.1177/13505076211020456.
While organisational researchers have had a long-standing commitment to ensuring the well-being of others, relatively little attention has been paid to the care of fieldworkers themselves, particularly in emotional terms. Drawing on personal experiences of ethnographic research with UK charity Samaritans, this paper considers the ways in which embedding oneself in the culture of another organisation can expose researchers to pain which, if not recognised or ameliorated, can be become toxic. The paper questions whether such pain is an inevitable consequence of certain forms of qualitative research and, if so, how we might learn to cope with its effects. In answer, the paper describes a journey through immersion, drowning and eventually resurfacing, where the latter is facilitated by a process defined as emotional dispersion. The paper contributes to our understanding of (i) the necessarily painful nature of certain immersive modes of ethnographic and qualitative research, (ii) the conceptualisation of emotional dispersion and its practical implications for coping with emotional pain, burnout and toxicity as a relational practice and (iii) the relative balance of institutional and individual duties when it comes to a care of the self in emotional terms.
Shotter, J. & Tsoukas, H. (2014). Performing phronesis: On the way to engaged judgment. Management Learning, 45(4), pp. 377–396.
Practical wisdom and judgment, rather than seen as ‘things’ hidden inside the mind, are best talked of, we suggest, as emerging developmentally within an unceasing flow of activities, in which practitioners are inextricably immersed. Following a performative line of thinking, we argue that when practitioners (namely, individuals immersed in a practice, experiencing their tasks through the emotions, standards of excellence and moral values the practice engenders or enacts) face a bewildering situation in which they do not know, initially at least, how to proceed, the judgment they exercise emerges out of seeking to establish a new orientation to their puzzling surroundings. They do so through actively trying to be in touch with their felt emotions and moral sensibilities, while attempting to articulate linguistically the feelings experienced in order to get a clearer view of relevant aspects of the situation at hand. Coming to a judgment involves moving around within a landscape of possibilities, and in so doing, being spontaneously responsive to the consequences of each move, and assessing which one (or combination of moves) seems best in resolving the initial tension aroused in one’s initial confusion.
Town, S., Donovan, M. C. J. & Beach, E. (2021). A “gestalt” framework of emotions and organizing: integrating innate, constructed, and discursive ontologies. Management Learning, 52(5), pp.519-540.
An ongoing debate exists regarding the ontology of emotions; that is, whether emotions are innate biological artifacts, social/discursive constructions, or—although less common in emotion research—both. Growing neuroscientific research provides strong evidence for the third perspective. Yet, this work foregrounds the individual’s experience, overlooking the role and context of organizing. In this article, we developed a new perspective of emotions and organizing. Our “gestalt” framework unites innate, socially constructed, and discursive ontologies to explain how emotions exist as innate yet latent organizational potentialities, become salient through social interaction, and are embedded in organizations through discourse. Together, these aspects comprise the gestalt emotion experience—where the whole is something more than its parts. The gestalt view offers organizational actors and scholars practical wisdom for navigating and analyzing emotions in organizations.
Other curated reading lists: Care | Emotions | Gender & Feminism | Group Relations | Historical Approaches | Learning in Organizations | Sociomateriality | Return to Resources Page
Episodes from the Talking About Organizations Podcast
- 91: Constructive Conflict – Mary Parker Follett
We return to the works of Mary Parker Follett and expand upon “The Law of the Situation” that we covered in Chapter 5. In this episode, we revisit Dynamic Administration with a look at the first five chapters as a whole – focusing on Chapter 1 (“Constuctive Conflict”), Chapter 3 (“Business as an Integrative Unity”), Chapter 4 (“Power”), and Chapter 5 (“How Must Business Management Develop in order to Possess the Essentials of a Profession”) that introduced Follett’s conception of professionalizing business. - 88: Social Defenses Against Anxiety — Isabel Menzies
This month’s episode examines one of the classic studies from the Tavistock Institute, Isabel Menzies’ “A Case-Study in the Functioning of Social Systems as a Defence Against Anxiety.” This famous study of how a teaching hospital developed odd and somewhat dysfunctional methods for protecting its nurses from anxiety and stress by effectively isolating nurses from the patients to prevent emotional attachment. Nursing students witnessing these methods in practice found them in violation of their expectations regarding care and their professional calling, and were quitting. What were these methods and why did they come about? - 66: Workplace Isolation – Forester
In this episode (which took place in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic), we explore the social and emotional impacts to the worker on having to work from home. For some workers, the concept of telework is hardly new. But many other vocations place great value on regular social contact with clients and customers. These include teachers, doctors, lawyers, public servants, and many others. The sudden thrust to teleworking for an unknown period of time has raised questions as to how these workers are coping with the new normal. - 35: The Managed Heart – Arlie Hochschild
The Managed Heart, originally published in 1983 by Dr. Arlie Hochschild, introduced the concept of emotional labour as a counterpart to the physical and mental labour performed in the scope of one’s duties. The importance of emotional labour is made clear in Dr. Hochschild’s descrption of flight attendants, who regardless of the dispositions of airline passengers, turbulence in the flight, or personal stress is required to act and behave in ways that minimize passenger anxiety and encourage them to fly with that airline again. Thus, the book explores the challenges of stress, protecting one’s personal identity and private life, differentiated (and often unfair) gender roles, miscommunication between supervisors and workers or workers and clients, and others. - 3: Theory of Human Motivation – Abraham Maslow
We discuss “A Theory of Human Motivation” by Abraham H. Maslow, one of the most famous psychology articles ever written. Originally published in 1943, it was in this landmark paper that Maslow presented his first detailed representation of Self-Actualization – the desire to become everything that one is capable of becoming – at the pinnacle of a hierarchy of human needs. What Maslow is most famous for, however, is the pyramid of human needs.