Criticality and Collegiality

Abstract

The growing crisis of confidence in the integrity of managerial decision making is partly attributed to the prescriptive character of educational programs favored by Western business schools. This character includes an overly instrumental preoccupation, preventing practitioner students from developing skill sets to address the varied issues that organizations face. We argue for more challenging pedagogical programs to help managers increase their understanding of contemporary managerial requirements. We document a teaching scenario that drew on critical management studies research material (coined as “troublesome knowledge”) designed to engage students. The “situated learning” focus adopted enabled students to collectively interrogate managerialist and troublesome knowledge perspectives. The integration of theory and practice that emerged through the combination of analytical sources, classroom dialogue, and novel assignments developed the students’ “relational” understandings and skills of “reflexivity,” a combination we characterize as advancing “practical wisdom.” The R&R (relational and reflexive) “threshold concepts” were used as a learning framework to chart student progress. We modeled a parallel facilitative mode of critical reflection- and relationship-centered management style. Feedback from the students indicates that the coupling of critically oriented conceptual material with the applied principles proffered empowering options for them regarding their own managerial practice.