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.
“Care” regards the study of ways and means of responsibly tending to people’s needs. Resources in this curated list include studies on the showing of concern as an organizational competence, the ethics of care, and how showing care and concern can become entrapping and stressful.
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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
Gherardi, S., and Rodeschini, G. (2016). Caring as a collective knowledgeable doing: About concern and being concerned. Management Learning, 47(3), 266-284.
Care is not an innate human capacity; rather, it is an organizational competence, a situated knowing that a group of professionals enact while attending to their everyday tasks.
The authors propose a post-humanist practice approach to reading care as a matter of concern for those producing care and for society at large. Care is framed as a collective knowledgeable ‘doing’, it is not an object or a quality that is added to work; rather, it is ‘caring’, an ongoing sociomaterial accomplishment.
Through an ethnography in a nursing home for the elderly, Gherardi and Rodeschini describe: (a) how caring was collectively performed in keeping a common orientation, (b) how caring was inscribed in a texture of practices, and (c) how a technological change in nutrition practice mobilized ethics as practice in situated decision-making. Since natural nutrition is being increasingly replaced by artificial feeding, they describe how the collective and organizational ethic of care with tube feeding is talked about in practice, in a front-stage situation and in the back-stage one. In this process, the duality of care as a matter of concern and as the process of being concerned by caring becomes visible.
Gabriel, Y. (2009). Reconciling an Ethic of Care with Critical Management Pedagogy. Management Learning, 40(4), 379-385.
The ethic of criticism has stood at the heart of western pedagogy for centuries. It has been the basis of science, morality and art as well as for the building of social and political institutions.
The author argues that this ethic of criticism is sometimes at odds with the ethic of care, one that commits the carer to look after and take responsibility for the well-being of the cared-for. This ethic of care is further undermined by contemporary consumerism and its inroads into the fields of education and learning. The resulting perception of management as a field of study for young people is entirely instrumental— an effective stepping stone to launch a career, but one devoid of either intrinsic interest or social value.
The author makes a plea for an enduring reconciliation of an ethic of care with an ethic of criticism as the basis for management education that is both interesting and socially useful.
Heath, T., O’Malley, L., & Tynan, C. (2019). Imagining a different voice: A critical and caring approach to management education. Management Learning, 50(4), 427-448.
This article discusses the use of the moral philosophy known as the ethics of care to critically engage management students in ways that favour the development and enactment of a critical and responsible mentality towards business. We use this ethics to ground critical thinking in a moral framework in order to create a conversation in which new possibilities for sustainable and ethical practices might be discovered. Specifically, we identify four teaching practices that allow students to experience being both ‘cared for’ and ‘one-caring’ and explore how this creates a deeper and more critical moral engagement with those affected by businesses. We further propose a framework for applying a care-ethical approach for teaching and learning.
Smith, S., & Kempster, S. (2019). In whose interest? Exploring care ethics within transformative learning. Management Learning, 50(3), 302-318.
This article brings attention to a seemingly pervasive and underlying assumption in critical management education that transformative learning is a good thing. We explore this assumption through a series of narratives examining the ethics of educators overtly seeking to enable transformative learning with owner-managers in order to impact their businesses. The focus on owner-managers is of significance in terms of transformative learning because of the centrality of the owner-manager to the delicate ecosystem, that is, the small and medium business. The article makes salient relational care in critical management education and the need for educators to engage in a moral dialogue regarding the relational impact of transformative learning in pedagogic designs. Such dialogue necessitates addressing in whose interest is transformative learning being sought, along with the orientation and framing of such learning.
Carlsen, A., & Sandelands, L. (2015). First passion: Wonder in organizational inquiry. Management Learning, 46(4), 373-390.
Wonder is the first passion in all inquiry and our reason to know, yet a phenomenon that is largely neglected in organizational research. Taking a relational and process approach, we develop a theory for the role of wonder in organizational inquiry. We propose that wonder in inquiry unfolds as a twofold movement between receptive appreciation and self-transcendent search, and we chart wonder’s course in four stages or “moments” of arousal, expansion, immersion, and explanation. Examples from generative experiences in qualitative research, hydrocarbon exploration, and feature journalism are used to illustrate and qualify this theory. At last, we emphasize main implications for organization studies in the importance of wondering together, of upholding the mysteries of wonder, and of keeping wonder alive in our conversations.
Episodes from the Talking About Organizations Podcast
- 45: Fate of Whistleblowers – C. Fred Alford
We discuss Fred Alford’s book Whistleblowers: Broken Lives and Organizational Power in 2001 to understand and make sense of horrible treatment often suffered by those who witness and report illegal or immoral acts and have the courage and persistence to speak up and stand for what is right. In workplace environments, we have a name for such heroic men and women – whistleblowers. But historically, the experiences of many other whistleblowers are discouraging – being ostracized, ignored, harassed, marginalized, physically attacked, socially isolated and ultimately defeated while the wrongdoers continue with their organizations. Alford’s study brings these experiences to light in hopes of changing attitudes toward those who would speak up for what is right. - 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.