Executive Zen

Leadership & Wrestling

2006-03-19T17:01:00.000+00:00

It occured to me, whist reading, again, the wonderful and surprising essay by Roland Barthes 'The World of Wrestling' (1957), that I could use this idea as a base for a paper on leadership for the leadership conference later this year. As a model the Barthian inspiration would serve as a gentle though arresting preamble into an extended and frighteningly conclusive poststructural dissembling of some cherrished notions: notably, the self, the veneers of authenticity, psychological depth of the leader, and the consistency of follower's commitment to the leader. Alied to this is something else I'd like to try out with either this paper or another; and that is, to critique the accepted graphical depiction of the network metaphor - the spidery diagram with connecting lines and nodes. I'd like to bring to the foreground the interstercies, the gaps between the lines of network, the bits not captured by traffic of networkness along the pipes. To do this I think I'd use Latour's actor network theory, and start including the unsaids of place, objects, equipment and tools, and time, all of which are important determinants in the network. And since we're flipping things over, why not throw in to this tumble dryer of concepts the good old notion of self.

Lyotard: Right This Instant

2006-03-12T20:10:00.000+00:00

Now here's an obscure sounding title: but this book by Roger Mourad (1997) is a gem for unpacking the story of Lyotard (particularly 'The Postmodern Condition') and his pomo philosophy of higher education (pp.28-37)

"The dynamic and experimental sense of inquiry implied by Lyotard emphasises inquiry as an intellectual activity that aims to undergo and produce change."

Just the short section on Lyotard has made me realise that SoM's concern with pragmatism is of the same quality as that displayed in a selection of postmodern - specifically, poststructuralist - conceptions of knowledge.

Secret Coherence

2005-12-21T22:09:00.000+00:00

Is there something holding a text all together? Some sort of hidden pin or clip that clasps the text, vice-like, in an unquestioned cohesion of intrinsic meaning? Structural discourses posit a rationality to texts that make them cohere. Such coherence precedes the text: this rational cohesion is somehow stowed away, secreted, between the noggins and behind the panels of a polished text so that no customs officer would question its passage. What happens, though, if you squeeze the clip and unclasp this cohesion?: shine a torch and tap on the thin veneer of the seemingly upright text? Out pops a whole family of vagabonds, rife with excess meaning, all unaccounted for and bewildered in the bright light of questioning. Alas, with this traffic of unharmonious meaning the borders of our poststructural sensibility are a sham.

A Surplus of Meaning

2005-12-21T21:30:00.000+00:00

Poststructuralism is fond of talking about surpluses of meaning: namely, that differing readings of the same text produce differing meanings, all of which are tenable. I say let's redistribute these surpluses of meaning to the meaning poor. Rather than the meaning piling up rotting by the wayside we should shed it, ship it and truck it to the meaning famished around the world. In fact, why not factory farm surplus meaning so that the supply is always greater than the demand. Meaning could be our prime exported commodity, shipped, like coals to Newcastle, to meaning lean economies - those economies of discourse in need of stout butresses (not unlike fortified wines) to their weak tropes. Distilleries of stills, in intoxicating fumes of meaning labour pumping out text after text, would soon rehydrate the most meaning drained husk of authoritative interpretation.

A Garnish of Verbs

2005-12-21T21:00:00.000+00:00

In a poststructural 'reality' (scare quotes intended) - distinct from the one where language dishes up, unproblematically, our experiences and environment whole - language not only flavours the referent; the referent becomes language. That the world were not just served up with a seasonal garnish of verbs that one can push to the side of the plate, but that the entire feast comprises the textured, earthy and medicinal language garnish. In a linguistic universe reality is only mediated reality. Bon appetite!

The truth of networked learning lies at its borders

2005-11-24T08:30:00.000+00:00

In his book 'Understanding Poststrucrualism' (2005, Acumen) James Williams provides a very helpful set of philosophical criticisms of radical poststructrualism, together with some incisive counter criticisms. Williams seems to veer towards positing an essence of poststructuralism (doubly difficult given the nonessentialist nature of a slippery intellectual movement that dodges its very own '-ism') around "the limits of knowledge play an unavoidable role at its core". This strange claim means, according to Williams, that any settled form of knowledge or moral good is made by its limits and cannot be defined independently of them (p.2), e.g. the truth of a nation is at its borders. A limit is not defined in opposition to the core; it is a positive thing in its own right. If this is the case then poststructuralism calls into question the role of traditional forms of knowledge in setting definitions since these traditional forms only gain meaning via the (non traditional) limits of knowledge. The work of the limit is to open up the core and to change our sense of its role as a stable truth and value.

Here's where a poststructuralist-inspired definition of networked learning comes into play. 'Poststructuralism provides a thorough disruption of our secure sense of meaning and reference in language, of our understanding of our senses and of the arts, of our understanding of identity, of our sense of history and its role in the present, and of our understanding of language as something free of the work of the unconscious' (Williams, p.3). In the same fashion, a poststructuralist perspective on networked learning thoroughly disrupts our secure sense of meaning & reference in the language of traditional executive education, of our understanding of the identity and purpose of business schools and of the stable identity of the consumer such institution's product.

Reassembling Executive Education via Networked Learning

2005-09-08T01:50:00.000+01:00

I think Zizek's reading (p.18-19 in Organs without Bodies, Routledge 2004) of Deleuze's cyborgian conception of the human - where "it is meaningless to imagine a human being as a biological entity without the complex network of his or her tools" - as dependent on 'protheses' has a wonderful parallel with management/leadership education when one considers the necessary, and therefore defining given the above, prostheses of managers. What prosthesis is required that enables a manager to manage: what external mechanical supplements are necessary for a manager to do their job? The wonderful parallel is not so much the cyborgian conception itself (which is arresting and worthy of more study) but the underpinning this notion gives to a nacent poststructuralist definition of 'networked-learning' within, and in contrast to, traditional business school education. Networked learning is the instantiation of the network of tools a manager needs (as protheses) to function as a manager and/or leader: reassembling executive education, then, is a replication and extension of this prosthesis that serves as role model of this new conception of manager via a pedagogic function with respect to building and enhancing this network of tools. Networked-learning oriented B-school education serves to frame managers as (a potentiality of) a network of social relations. A manager is the totality of his or her network of social relations: what better way to learn how to be a manager than to partake of an education that is framed in this fashion, e.g. networked-learning?

A Moment of Zizek & Eagleton

2005-08-27T10:41:00.000+01:00

The productive Zizek has slammed on the brakes of my runnaway poststructuralist pulman. Short of derailing this train of thought, his 'Ticklish Subject' (Verso 1999) fearlessly rechampions the site of the Cartesian subjectivity; and hence is troubling for radical poststructuralists and pomo philosophical dilettante apologists like me. Eagleton, on the other hand, has jumped on the roof - a la Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible - of my speeding train and, in a fit of over-acting, accosted the driver with some seductive reasoning: not least of which goes along the lines of "to be inside and outside a postion at the same time - to occupy a territory while loitering sceptically on the boundary - is often where the most intensely creative ideas stem from. It is a resourceful place to be, if not a painless one." His 'After Theory' (Penguin 2003) is a passioned call for cultural theory to be the site of a renewed appraisal of theory in general; more precisely located possibly by Zizek's rechampioning of Cartesian subjectivity. Anyway; all aboard!

Deleuze & Guattari

2005-07-29T12:55:00.000+01:00

Ok - here's the bad news for mainstream business education delivered by our nomadic poststructuralists, Gille Deleuze and Felix Guattari:

organisations are not discreet, identifiable entities which can be examined independently of their social contexts - this not only affects how we treat 'organisation' academically, but how we conceive our client organisations and how we work with them to define the scope of our joint educative endeavours
it is a fallacy to think that organisations (whatever these are, given the above) are perfectible - hence the notion of performance improvement is immediately suspect since this implies that attainment of a stasis, which is unachievable. Poststructuralism rejects the 18thC. Enlightenment-based teleology of progress; unfortunately, since executive education is un-selfreflectively footed in the modernist mindset, here is a major blind-spot
Capitalism's need to control and channel meaning, in order to remain unquestionable, is operationalised through the capture and control of the signifier. Capitalilsm appears to be aloof from question, certainly in the service industry of business education, when its analysis emerges from within capitalisms own regime of truth - this is a regime that is perpetuated by its own colonisation of signifiers (science, reason, measurement, evidence) on which business education is based and so we are too close to the problem to define it. Within the capitalist regime of truth there exists no mechanism for mounting such a challenge. Wouldn't this be an excellent basis on which to concieve of a 'becoming of leadership'?
Organisations do not exist simply to provide goods and services as efficiently as possible in resonse to customer demand, they exist to channel desire (a key component of D&G's thinking) into the production and consumption of capitalism's outputs, and to disable the potential for desire to desire anything beyond, or alternative, to this - which has major implications on how we define what we do for the organisations and individuals that come to us

This is work in progress: I'm sufficiently stirred up to start a deeper reading of Thousand Plateaus and Anti-Oedipus. More later...

Leadership & Poststructuralism

2005-07-24T19:30:00.000+01:00

This is a wonderful book: I've found it a tremendous companion along my rambling journey though poststructural texts - both primary and secondary texts. And for the first time I've come across a problem that I'll need to address in the poststructuralist leadership e-learning module that I'm creating along with Tony Hall. Davis introduces the work of Levinas as a pilot for poststructual apologists navigating their way around the ethical and political objections to poststructuralism. Specifically, and related to ethics, these criticisms depend upon the argument that poststructuralism dislocates or 'decentres' the human subject, leaving it incapable of choice or agency, and therefore undermining the grounds of ethical action. For without subjectivity there can be no ethics. I need to read Levinas to figure out the extent of the risks that are attributed to the tentative conclusions that there can be no general principles that can be applied in particular contexts; that every situation has to be assessed on its own terms, through the lens of Levinas's ethical notions. This is the familiar poststructuralist refrain, even though I've never heard it related to poststructural ethics: an intimate foreignness, as Cixous would call it.

The INTERCHANGES of the Text

2005-07-17T15:34:00.000+01:00

Mireille Calle-Gruber (in Cixous' 'Rootprints') says of interchanges that they "constitute a weaving that makes the texts unique... it forms very subtle networks." I'd never thought of an interchange in terms of a woven fabric before, until reading this passage in Rootprints (p.25). She goes on to speak of a renewed urgency with which reading is considered: "Weaving, interchanges, reticular system, non-mastery of a subject of writing, all of this brings forth an exigency of the reading."

Helene Cixous

2005-06-30T08:42:00.000+01:00

Helene Cixous talks about 'structural unfaithfulness'. Unfaithfulness for me is both a direction and a withholding. As with a faithlessness in modernism with Latour, I have lost my faith in structures (and in structuralism, the high church of structures) if adherence to structure means the devaluing of the individual - of their polyvocality, of their meaningful/less-ness, of their ignorance or deification of structure. For instance, the study of networks - long since ossified in the unquestioned rites and rituals of structuralism - by an un/non/dis-believer would become lost in the minute details of the tracery (the 'tracings' of Deleuze & Guattarri), carvings and tapestry of the church. Losing one's way implies there is a way to go. For 'loss of direction' read 'close reading', in the Derridian sense: or, cheekily, the devil is in the detail. The cost of ignorning such close readings is a monological structuration of detail. I'd rather get lost.

Working in the Twilight of Foundationalism

2005-06-28T20:51:00.000+01:00

Pick up any good postfeminist treatise (St Pierre & Pillow, (2000), 'Working the Ruins', Routledge) and you'll find the authors waving farewell to foundationalism and girding themselves to working through the crisis of representation and legitimation. Such texts bite a half-moon clean out of centred, signifying and stable nomotheses. Like a wood struggling through a wood, the loin-girding of these texts gives me hope that there is a cause left to fight which is the cause of unpacking: of margins, of self, of the triumph of narrative cohesion, of modernism and progress, of technonarcicism, of uncritical pedagogy, of management orthodoxy: and, importantly, of the elitist discourse of the poststructuralism itself. The engines of deconstruction are set. Fighting talk indeed!

Setting the Scene

2005-06-28T11:12:00.000+01:00

This (crude) matrix gives an indication of the territory of my investigation. The vertical axis represents an epistemological bipolarity of how one can know: and the horizontal axis represents our attitude to what there is to know, and whether this is from an essentialist (certainty) or non-essentialist (uncertainty) perspective. For the sake of situating a hypothesis (see below), the scope of study is concentrated in the upper right quadrant.

Hypotheses

2005-06-26T17:28:00.000+01:00

I thought it about time that I attempted some hypotheses for a tentative thesis. It came to me in the bath that the tension that existed in my MA thesis was between a structured/structural approach to networked learning and a more rhizomatic approach a la D&G. The following hypotheses were based on a recent reading of Bruno Latour's 'We Have Never Been Modern.'

So a possible hypothesis could be:
What is the link between the work of structured networked learning and the work of rhizomatic networked learning? In particular:

structuration only makes sense (gains meaning) in the light of rhizomation
that b-school & management development or executive education concentrates on structured networked learning
that rhizomised networked learning is the future of networked learning for leaders

Cybercultures & Online Exec Ed

2005-05-23T09:16:00.000+01:00

Can we claim to have a cyberculture that defines and bounds our online endeavours? If our bag is online executive education, then shouldn't we be framing our investigations along the lines of existing 'cyberculture' discourse? Key Questions include:

what is an online community? Is it some form of virtual hot-tub? Can we witness a semi-compulsive practice of checking in occasionally with others who are checking in occasionally in all sorts of online forums? Or is this a fiction?
is it a body of people who, like me, venture onto the Net for a few minutes between activities or while the bath runs, or between instant messenger conversations, or between meeting with my colleagues & clients?
are online or virtual communities an illusion, where there are no real people and no real communication - a term used by idealistic technophiles who fail to understand that the authentic cannot be engendered through technological means.
Virtual community is people all over the business education world gathered around their computers doing everyday tasks?

Borrowing from the cyberculture discourse serves to reframe how I think about and describe the link between online & education. The technohype of the cyberculture discourse throws into sharp contrast the pedestrian pace of our community's (which one is this then?) adoption of ICT.

ExecutiveZen

2005-05-09T09:55:00.000+01:00

ExecutiveZen
Cranfield are launching two ICT-related initiatives that meet our perception of our client’s needs. These are the Knowledge INTERCHANGE, and CranfieldOnline.com. Both are intended to operate in the territory outlined above – the INTERCHANGE of institutionalised/educationalised executive education and situationalised/practitioner-oriented learning. For both projects the use of technology is placed secondary to the learning requirements of the delegate/corporate. This intent is in line with Cranfield’s adoption of the title networked learning as the appropriate categorisation of learning mediated via ICT, as distinct from the more limiting title of e-learning, which serves to foreground the role of technology. Networked learning employs both technological-oriented networks (the Internet, ICT in general) and social networks to fulfil its aim of creating new knowledge and learning opportunities relevant to our client.

The Knowledge INTERCHANGE – will be launched in September 2005 at Cranfield’s Management Development Centre (CMDC). Situated overlooking the CMDC’s suite of lecture rooms, executive education delegates within the Knowledge INTERCHANGE will be able to access dedicated management knowledge resources, a wireless lounge, knowledge creation, media and coaching areas. The Knowledge INTERCHANGE will be an environment for clients to assimilate Cranfield’s latest thinking on issues related to management. It is a place where faculty and delegates will converge to jointly create new knowledge & valued learning for themselves and their organisations. Integral to the Knowledge INTERCHANGE are the services provided by the Library & Information Service at Cranfield, a key partner in the project. Networked technology allows us to open a window on the world’s knowledge and ideas, giving the ability to present executive development clients with a wealth of learning materials available 24x7 from anywhere in the world. Structured around four main themes, ‘paths’ will lead learners to interesting and relevant content, including research and analysis on global economies, markets and companies, in addition to books and journals on all aspects of business and management. Evolving from recommended reading for modules, assignments and projects our clients can delve more deeply into a topic area, looking for further materials on the same subject or linking to related topics. Technology supports such serendipity - the chance discovery of a document or idea that might represent completely new ways of thinking around a business problem.
The Knowledge INTERCHANGE plans to be both a physical and a virtual space. We are designing an online learning experience that actively engages users, whether they are on-site at Cranfield, accessing from home or the office. Such spaces imaginatively bring objects, text, images and people together to create virtual learning communities around management thinking at Cranfield and beyond. In this way the Knowledge INTERCHANGE lays a bridge between Cranfield University and our clients; the expert practitioners in industry, providing guidance and support in implementing management learning.
CranfieldOnline, like the Knowledge INTERCHANGE, is work-in-progress. It is the umbrella online environment which includes the Knowledge INTERCHANGE and all Cranfield programme-related web portals for both graduate academic (MBA, MSc, DBA, PhD) as well as open & customised executive education programmes.

What Clients Want

2005-05-09T09:51:00.000+01:00

ExecutiveZen
Amongst the lessons Cranfield have learned from talking with our clients, with fellow executive education practitioners and with the Oracle community in particular are the following:

That there are (at least) two distinct, and sometimes conflicting, agendas involved in negotiating the provision and uptake of an executive education ‘product’. A convenient, though by no means sufficient, labelling of these agenda distinctions is between theory and practice; between the theoretical (Mode 1) perspective and the practitioner (Mode 2) perspective; between thinkers and doers. Quite possibly, striving for a unitary agenda across these perspectives is a futile process doomed to failure. More than that, such a unifying intent may ultimately limit our efforts to make a real and full contribution to management/business theory and practice. The convenience of unified agenda serves only to oversimplify a rich complexity. When transformed into the logical conclusion of a set of principles for executive education, or principles for the adoption of information communication technology (ICT) in executive education, the unifying intent inevitably leads to the wrong issues being addressed or a one-size-fits-all solution whose application is attempted but not appreciated. Equally importantly, a unitary perspective ignores the political dimensions inside organisations – some of which are related to learning, where others speak of power networks – that often provide the impetus for executive education decisions that have a direct commercial impact on the b-school provider communities.
That what we think consumers ‘should’ want, they don’t
That the ICT approach adopted by executive education providers is at the same time both dynamic and hesitant. Two informal Cranfield surveys of global b-school providers spaced at a twelve month interval indicates significant change in the nature of the product, the approach and the platforms used in delivering it. What was offered by one provider and the means by which it was provided at the start of the year was different to their offering at the end of the year. This was the case for several providers surveyed. In itself this should not be surprising, given the rate of change of IT systems. However, the breadth of change observed infers changing patterns of consumption as well as changing conceptions of those products.

ExecutiveZen

2005-05-09T09:50:00.000+01:00

ExecutiveZen
Our entire approach to meeting the above client requirements is based on a specific treatment of the divide between ‘theory’ and ‘practice’. Cranfield’s educational heritage is situated in ‘practical knowledge’ rather than in abstract theorising. To use the technical jargon of methods of knowledge production (Gibbons et al, 1994, The New Production of Knowledge, Sage), we operate in the 'Mode 2' paradigm in which knowledge is produced in the context of application by the practitioner. This is distinct to the 'Mode 1' paradigm, where knowledge production occurs largely as a result of an academic agenda and where little attention is given to its application by practitioners. I think this Mode1/Mode 2 distinction is a useful categorisation for our group, as it begins to map out the two strategic agendas of b-school and b-school consumer.

Given our Mode 2 heritage, Cranfield are addressing the needs of executive education consumers in the following ways:

The process of customisation is driven by our reluctance to simply quote or paraphrase, synthesise or further develop an abstract theory that may or may not describe or predict circumstances within the consumers’ contexts. Our classical content is grounded in theory, but at the very least its continued theoretical treatment is geared toward a further advancement of that theory from the active input into the knowledge creation process by the practitioner – the manager/delegate/client/consumer. At our best we use theory to help our consumers articulate their strategic and operational contexts, with these articulations then forming the basis of pragmatically-oriented classroom discussion.
There is a trade-off between taking time to assimilate theoretical frameworks with a view to more clearly articulate business issues, and having a ‘convenient’ intervention. We meet this need by optimising the focus of the material delivered by academics onto the practitioners’ contexts: this is done via the consultancy and needs assessment process
The above two points ensure that the intervention is relevant. The experience & skill of the programme director ensures that the learning methods (e.g. case study, action learning, discussion, etc.) is relevant to the learning capacities of consumers
In answer to the need to provide clients with a systemic intervention that brings performance improvements through the application of our latest thinking: we use action learning and project groups to provide continuity between multi-module programmes and offer executive coaching post-programme, all of which embeds the process of knowledge application inside the delegate’s workplace

2005-05-09T09:48:00.000+01:00

Following on from Lee's thoughts on exactly who constitutes a 'client', we are not doing ourselves (as b-schools that is) any favours in claiming that we can indeed summarise our client's needs. The danger of such a claim is that it reinforces a doctor/patient mindset that implies that we (b-schools) know what is good for you (clients). I'm prepared to run the risk of going off on an academic tangent with this as I believe our uncritical acceptance of classical pedagogical methods is part of the problem we’re encountering. Whilst the 'doctor/patient' metaphor grossly oversimplifies the wealth of intentions at play in our educative endeavours, I'd hope it may serve to stimulate reflection of how we (as individuals and as representatives of our institutions) frame our practices.

That said, I perceive my clients needs for the provision of executive education from Cranfield as the following:

Highly customised, i.e. not one-size-fits-all approach. Clients want an active part in the programme design process, via a needs analysis consisting of consultancy, focus groups and interviews
Convenience – or reduced opportunity costs of managers out of the workplace for long periods. This often relates to locating programmes either in or near the workplace or at a geographical distance from Cranfield classrooms.
Relevant to their particular managerial & business contexts - even for open enrolment programmes, consumers want exposure to content that is targeted at their specific work contexts. Corporate consumers want us to understand the strategic contexts of their businesses so that we can tailor content to suit their learning requirements.
For programmes aimed at the corporate, clients want a systemic intervention – a programme that not only builds the efficacy of individual delegates but which has a wider beneficial impact on the entire organisation.
The latest thinking on all aspects of management – to support the programme content with evidence-based research. The utilisation of that new knowledge then allows clients to plan strategies and operations that delivers not just performance improvement but competitive advantage
The intervention should directly contribute to performance improvements for the individual delegates and/or client organisation that are measurable, be that via classical evaluation methods or via the active management of an embedded suite of process improvement or performance metrics
Where the intervention is aimed at a corporate, the chosen developmental tactics (exec.ed) employed should align with, bolster or supplant existing corporate management development policy; namely, develop existing & emergent competencies inside the client organisation; align with existing and/or emergent management career structures; and provide feedback to the corporate management development policy stakeholders on the efficacy of that policy
For open enrolment executive education delegates want to increase their managerial capability via the assimilation of new knowledge, stimulating learning processes, and to learn alongside similarly effective practitioners with whom they can network
A clearly planned process that translates knowledge acquired in the classroom into action in the workplace
The integration of innovative learning methods onto the programmed development intervention, e.g. coaching, action learning sets and project groups, e-learning, blogs, networking events, guest speakers
A trusted and longer term relationship with a executive education provider that can deliver all of the above

[none]

2005-04-27T14:10:00.000+01:00

our task as educators is to look awry and ask
questions that produce knowledge differently and
different knowledgeable

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Poststructuralist Feminist Influences

2005-04-27T13:55:00.000+01:00

"Significantly, poststructuralist feminism continue to trouble the subject of humanism - the rational, conscious, stable, unified, knowing individual whose morality allows atrocities beyond imagingin but still claims inalienable "rights" tht protect it from resonsibility to the Other it destroys" - from St.Pierre & Pillow, (2000) Working the Ruins: feminist poststructural theory and methods in education, Routledge.

2005-01-25T20:39:00.000+00:00

Toby Thompson

Networked Learning & Community Inside Business Schools

2005-01-25T12:43:00.000+00:00

I'm a fan of 'networked learning'. I think this concept accurately addresses the notion of community-based-learning which interests me. The definition of networked learning I like, but am not wholly comfortable with, comes from Jones & Steeples (Networked Learning: Perspectives & Issues - Springer, 2002):

"Learning in which information and communication technology is used to promote connections: between one learner and other learners, between learners and tutors; between a learning community and its learning resources"

The point I would add is that this ICT-enabled learning need not be just educationalised or classroom-oriented learning. By educationalised I mean graduate (e.g. MBA, MSc) and open or customised executive education. The learning community referred to here need not be related solely to business school's classroom endeavours, nor to our formal programmes of education. Using this blog, I'd like to promote the value of considering non-educationalised ICT-enabled learning not just as potential channels for the delivery of pre- & post-requisites to formal management education programmes but as the natural 'site' of learning for our consumers. If this appears 'out of scope', Cranfield School of Management, for one, promotes the ethos of actionable knowledge within the commercial contexts of its application. The blurring of the distinction between classroom and workplace that the above definition affords, compliments the ethos of actionable knowledge. As a colleague states, critical scrutiny of the notion of 'community' brings with it questions around the space & place of learning. Where is the 'where' of our consumer's learning? (Not to mention the question of when does a consumer become a learner?)

As regards 'community', I take the lead from Wenger's (1998, Communities of Practice, Cambridge) definition:

"Participation [in a community]... refers not just to local events of engagement in certain activities with certain people, but to a more encompassing process of being active participants in the practices of social communities and constructing identities in relation to these communities."

If you substituted 'certain activities' in this quote for business school executive education programmes, then these are the type of communities I feel we have an opportunity to cultivate via the affordances of 'networked learning'. And my point about all this, I hear you asking?As key opinion formers in our respective institutions, our framing of the debate solely within educationalised and institutionalised confines runs the risk of fueling the criticisms leveled against b-schools as being irrelevant, elitist and out-of-touch. Truly 'high touch' executive education has less to do with the classroom and more to do with situated and proximal application of knowledge that b-schools may or may not be in posession of.

What d'you reckon?

Mapping the Territory

2005-01-25T11:02:00.000+00:00

My interest is in learning - principally, how managers & business leaders learn, and how business schools have a part to play in what these people learn. I work at a business school, and am responsible for developing e-learning for managers. I also have an interest in philosophy. You don't see much written about the philosophy of management learning? As my wife says, ever the one to obsess about discovering the philosophical angle of everyday situations, I have an interest in challenging common assumptions, using the tool-box of philosophy. Since I find myself involved in management education, I naturally bring philosophical questions to bare on the topic of my worklife. This blog is a way of discovering - of writing into being - my thoughts on the philosphy (or the Zen) of management learning. Thanks for reading this far...