Provocation Essays Editorial: On the importance of moving and being moved

This article embarks on a hopeful exploration of queer phenomenology in order to reorient management learning toward the senses, the body, and the spaces of learning and teaching we inhabit during education. Starting from Michel Serres’ long-standing provocation that “If a revolt is to come, it will have to come from the five senses,” I ask whether and how we might reissue his timely call amid today’s understandings of sensuous and embodied learning as the “conditions of arrival” have changed considerably since its first articulation. Therefore, I propose to queer such a sensorial revolt by turning to Ahmed’s queer phenomenology as her understanding of dis/orientation as “the sixth sense” enables us to sensuously reorient management learning. To concretize and illustrate sensuous learning through dis/orientation, I draw on Fabian Ramos and Laura Roberts “pedagogy of wonder,” which forms part of their decolonial feminist educational work. In the epilogue, I introduce a new angle by revisiting Matthew Lopez’s play The Inheritance and suggest that my queer attempt to refuse the inheritance of heteronormative learning and education also enables generations of diverse people to learn, in sensuous ways, from each other and from each other’s otherness.

Section: Enter the “Unhappy” Sphere Of (Queer) Provocationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…199–200, my emphasis). But (queer) provocation also involves a political sense as wondering can and should “offer pathways for hopeful exploration” (Brewis and Bell, 2020: 535)—and, as I would add, for illustrating and trying out queer routes of reorientation.…”

Section: Enter the “Unhappy” Sphere Of (Queer) Provocationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“If a (queer) revolt is to come”: Toward a sensuous pedagogy for dis/orienting management learning

Steyaert

2022

“…I thus review the still diffuse literature on the subject and contribute with a more comprehensive perspective, which includes a typology of three approaches to studying organizational stupidity. Concurring with the Management Learning vocation of publishing ‘unexpected, unconventional, unusual and unorthodox’ pieces (Bell and Bridgman, 2018: 3), this poem-cum-commentary is ultimately aimed at using poetry and experimentation to ‘feed imagination, seed change and cultivate learning’ (Brewis and Bell, 2020: 536).…”

Section: Into the Realm Of Organizational Follymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Organizational stupidity can be conflated with other concepts, notably organizational incompetence, bullshit, nonsense and absurdity. To outline the scope of organizational stupidity research, it is hence useful to map a specific terrain (Brewis and Bell, 2020: 535) by better understanding how those concepts relate to each other.…”

Section: Mapping the Terrain Of Organizational Stupidity Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Into the realm of organizational folly: A poem, a review, and a typology of organizational stupidity

Azevedo

2022

This ‘Provocation essay’ is aimed at triggering reflection and fostering renewed research into organizational stupidity and its intersections with management learning. It opens with a critical poem evoking diverse aspects of our daily encounters with the idiocy, nonsense, and absurdity that pervades organizations. It continues with a more comprehensive review of the still diffuse research literature to reveal a typology of three approaches to studying organizational stupidity (systemic-mechanistic, critical-sociological and cultural-functionalist). It closes with a discussion of how stupidity detracts from reflexivity but can also play useful roles in organizations, which ultimately invites more management learning research on the topic.

“…We want to share, listen, and learn from the suffering that surfaces in teaching as we look carefully at whether, when, and how we might meet such suffering with compassion. We hope to provoke in the spirit of Brewis and Bell (2020), fostering a new dialog about compassion in management education by sharing stories such as this one, which came breaking through the surface of an essay written by a student we will call Oliver (names of students have been changed and identifying details removed from the story): Since I've been at college, I have felt like the school has been against me. I have examples of not getting into clubs or extracurricular groups because I could not answer obscure questions.…”

Section: Speaking the Unspoken: Giving Voice To Suffering And Compassion In Management Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The courage to teach with compassion: Enriching classroom designs and practices to foster responsiveness to suffering

Worline

Dutton

2021

Recognizing the prevalence of suffering among management teachers and students, we raise the importance of compassion as central to the practice of management teaching. To aid in understanding how suffering and compassion arise in management teaching, we call upon a theoretical view of their rhizomatic structure, which conveys the widespread, complex, and largely unspoken spreading of suffering and corresponding need for compassion in the work of management teaching. To meet this suffering with compassion, we propose two clusters of practices central to teaching that lend themselves to helping management teachers see possibilities for more skillfully intertwining suffering and compassion. The first focuses on how management teachers can design the context for teaching in ways that make compassion more likely, focusing specifically on roles and networks. The second draws upon Honneth’s recognitional infrastructure to focus on how teachers can approach the relational practice of teaching with emphasis on enriching human recognition of suffering. We conclude with a caution about overly simplistic approaches and overly individualized views of compassion in the work of management teaching. We call for systemic approaches to action that will enrich our imaginations as we approach management teaching and its role in our collective responsiveness to suffering.