Identity Work and Pedagogy: Revisiting George Herbert Mead as a Vehicle for Critical Management Education and Learning

Abstract

He received his doctorate from the University of Bath having completed a discursive ethnographic study on humour and laughter. His primary research interests centre on issues of discourse, power, ethics, identity, embodiment, sensemaking, autoethnography and reflexivity.

When ‘I’ becomes ‘we’: An ethnographic study of power and responsibility in a large food retail cooperative

“…. is a source of the exercise of power that conditions the self-formation process, it is not totalizing in its determination of identity’ (Huber and Knights, 2021).…”

Collaborative Inquiry Fuelled by Reflexive Learning: Changing Change

“…In what is well captured in interventionist action research, the reflexivity provoked by the cycles of action and reflection transforms professionals’ construction and enactment of their professional practice “generating content, process, and premise learning” (Coghlan, 2011, p. 62). This is also more recently echoed by Huber and Knights (2022), who draw on Mead's pedagogy to argue that through meaningful social interaction, we come to “re-form” our identities and learn to think and feel differently. Reflexive learners, therefore, engage in relational dialogue to generate understandings about their own self-assumptions and actions, and the implications these have for their authoring of social reality and their own person (self)-hood.…”

“…Reflexive learners, therefore, engage in relational dialogue to generate understandings about their own self-assumptions and actions, and the implications these have for their authoring of social reality and their own person (self)-hood. Hence, Cunliffe rightly argues (2002, p. 37), they are “becoming more aware of how we constitute and maintain our realities and identities in continued dialogue with the self and others.” In doing so, Huber and Knights (2022) also echo, they not only think but also feel differently. To which we would also add that those practicing reflexivity do so by engaging not only their thoughts and feelings but also their “sentience” (Antonacopoulou, 2019; Rigg, 2018).…”

“…Hence, our aim is to extend references to reflexivity as impactful to individual cognitive and emotional states or team performance and innovation (Huber & Knights, 2022; Schippers et al, 2015) and explore the oft-hidden dynamics between the process (form), content and impact of practicing reflexivity fuelled by emplacement. For the purposes of this paper, this aim is situated in collaborative inquiry—a practice we recognize as transcending and connecting units (individual/team/organization) of analysis.…”

“…As Hibbert (2012) points out, reflexive learning can help learners identify and engage with power, but reflexivity is itself not immune to power asymmetries. Making efforts to create "safe spaces" for collective or individual reflection, therefore, is challenging for educators yet not insurmountable, as Huber and Knights (2022) suggest. This is why our analysis is focusing on such systemic shifts drawing on emplacement as a stance-taking process that affords to navigate VUCA conditions by changing change.…”