Managing To Learn: The Social Poetics of a Polyphonic 'Classroom'

Abstract

This paper draws on Bakhtin's use of polyphony and explores its potential for organizing processes within management education. In developing the concept of a polyphonic 'classroom', the interplay between tutor, manager-student and theory is related to Bakhtin's identification of the relationship between hero, other characters and idea within Dostoevsky's novels. In particular, a carnivalesque polyphonic relationship is argued to change tutor—student relations, extend the physical classroom into a wider polyphonic 'classroom' that includes the manager-student's work context and re-imagines learning as a changing, social poetic performance beyond common understanding of learning as cognitive processes of understanding or sense making.