Event Details

PEML (LUMS Professional and Executive Management Learning) Lunchtime Seminar Cecília Bezerra, LUMS Visiting Researcher from School of Management at the Federal University of Bahia, Brazil

A sociomaterial perspective on management education

The inter-relationships between ‘things’ and people is very little understood in management education, yet in other fields there is evidence of the capacity of educational innovations to bring about heightened creativity and enhanced practical learning through the systematic use of objects, furniture and spaces. Cecilia Bezerra’s presentation will draw on her PhD research in Brazil and Europe which explores the effects that material elements have on the ways in which management university students learn and how they feel about their learning experiences.

The rationale for this study comes from ongoing disquiet over the relevance and quality of teaching managers. These concerns have long permeated debates about the curriculum and the training of managers, foreshadowed by the studies of Fischer (1980, 2003), and reinforced by Nicolini (2003) when addressing the mass production of managers, and focusing on how to better educate and develop managers for the complex challenges they face.

More recently, the field has also started to contemplate a proposal called “Transformative Education in Management”, based on the role of the humanities and social sciences in the education of managers. It is a proposal arising from the pressure and the need to rethink and innovate the model of business schools, inviting a turn to the humanities and social sciences, in order to improve understanding of how to meet current demands beyond profit management, in order to review the teaching of management as a whole (Landfester & Metelmann, 2019). As educators seek innovative ways of addressing this deficiency, creative sociomaterial methods are being deployed. However, they have received scant research attention to evaluate their effects.

Reinventing management education (ME) demands reflection on what types of theories and sensibilities are missing in contemporary times; it needs ‘new voices’ (Gherardi, 2016). To this end, this seminar will discuss the potential of a sociomaterial approach. A sociomaterial perspective on managing (Fenwick, 2016) and organising has been fruitful (Orlikowski & Scott, 2023; Scott & Orliokowski, 2013), but the attention paid to materiality in ME has been limited (Bezerra & Davel, 2021; Michels et al, 2020). To the extent that there has been discussion, it has largely been instrumental, treating material elements as tools or artefacts to improve learning and teaching practices (Taylor & Statler, 2013). The emphasis has been on observations of ‘what’ these can be used for and ‘how’ they are helpful for educational practices. In contrast, a sociomaterial perspective on ME (Fenwick, 2016) offers potential to explore ‘why’ matter matters (Bezerra & Davel, 2021; Michels et al, 2020), and how materialities have effect (Peschl & Fundneider, 2012). It brings to the fore non-human agency in educational environments (Huang et al, 2020). It focuses attention on the inter-actions and connections these materialities establish with each other and with the living actors of education.

References

Bezerra, C. O., & Davel, E. P. B. (2021). A Sociomaterialidade do Ensino-Aprendizagem em Administração: Perspectivas e desafios. Revista Ciências Administrativas, 27(3). https://doi.org/10.5020/2318-0722.2021.27.3.11713

Fenwick, Tara. (2010). Re-thinking the “thing”: Sociomaterial approaches to understanding and researching learning in work. Journal of Workplace Learning. 22. 104-116.

Fenwick T (2016) What matters in sociomateriality: Towards a critical posthuman pedagogy in management education. In: Steyaert C, Beyes T, Parker M (eds) The Routledge Companion to Reinventing Management Education. London: Routledge, 249–263.

Fischer, T. (1980). Teaching management: is it urgent to change curricula? Bulletin No. 1 . Association of Graduate Programs in Management.

Fischer, T. (2003). Alice through the looking glass or Macunaíma in Campus Papagalli ? Mapping Routes for Teaching Organizational Studies in Brazil. Organizations & Society Magazine, Salvador-Bahia, v. 10, 28.

Gherardi S (2016) The practice-turn in management pedagogy: A cross-reading. In: Steyaert C, Beyes T, Parker M (eds) The Routledge Companion to Reinventing Management Education. London: Routledge, 264–270.

Huang, P. Wright, AL. and Stuart Middleton, S. (2022) How Material Objects Shape Student Team Learning Processes. AMLE, 21, 35–60, https://doi.org/10.5465/amle.2020.0025

Landfester, U., & Metelmann, J. (2021). De-disciplining humanity: the humanities’ case for Critical Management Literacy. Management Learning, 52(2), 144–164. https://doi.org/10.1177/1350507620958159

Michels, C., Hindley, C., Knowles, D., & Ruth, D. (2020). Learning atmospheres: Re-imagining management education through the dérive. Management Learning, 51(5), 559-578. https://doi.org/10.1177/1350507620906673

Nicolini, D. (2003). What will be the future of factory managers. Magazine of Business Management, 43(2), p. 44-54.

Orlikowski, W, & Scott, S. (2023). The Digital Undertow and Institutional Displacement: A Sociomaterial Approach. Organization Theory. 4. 10.1177/26317877231180898.

Peschl, Markus F. & Fundneider, Thomas, (2012). "Spaces enabling game-changing and sustaining innovations: Why space matters for knowledge creation and innovation.

Scott, S. & Orlikowski, W. (2013). Sociomateriality — taking the wrong turning? A response to Mutch. Information and Organization. 23. 77–80. 10.1016/j.infoandorg.2013.02.003.