Why Management Learning needs history,and what you can do about it

Reflexivity

Reflexivity, as a concept, analytical technique and research attitude, has taken shape in the pages of Management Learning. This is unsurprising given it is ‘the journal for critical reflexive scholarship’ (our emphasis). Reflexivity, at a basic level, is an exercise in reflection. While reflexivity has an historical dimension, we feel that an explicit engagement of reflexivity with history can add value to management learning.

Reflexivity implies turning our analytic lens and research tools onto ourselves to explore what taken-for-granted assumptions, values and beliefs we bring to our academic endeavours (Cunliffe, 2002, 2003, 2020). This requires second-order thought, or thought about thought (Cunliffe, 2016). Reflexivity encourages an examination of our being, and thus how we are composed as researchers and our consequent impact on our research relationships and outcomes. This implies examining how our assumptions shape our behaviour, interactions and language, as well as how we educate and do research. Ontologically, reflexivity is grounded in the idea that we actively build the social realities that we inhabit. The question of a reflexive analysis is, how do we do so? Are we intentional, accountable and responsible in our research practices (Hibbert and Cunliffe, 2015)? Who do we privilege, and which voices are silenced in our research? Furthermore, how does this impact the realities we participate in creating (Cunliffe, 2016, 2020)? The intent, with reflexivity, is not to offer definitive answers, but rather to unsettle ourselves and the convenient truths to which we ascribe (Pollner, 1991). Doing so paves a path for critical management learning because it probes us to question our intellectual assumptions throughout the learning process. An attitude of reflexivity in pedagogy deters us from doing learning with an attitude of certainty, where we know what is best for others. Rather, the idea is to be continually responsive and open. This is central to responsible learning because it reminds us to be careful about our actions given their capacity to shape research relationships and outcomes.

Various types of reflexivity are in currency, including radical/critical reflexivity, self-reflexivity and, more recently, historical reflexivity. Radical reflexivity implies examining values, ideologies, processes of normalization as well as language in how day-to-day realities are composed through our academic practices (Cunliffe, 2016, 2020). Radical reflexivity is concerned with the underlying assumptions of our research tools, methods and the role that our research plays in upholding certain societal and practical realities, over others (Cunliffe, 2020). Self-reflexivity, on the other hand, is highly introspective. The focus is on the self. The idea is to examine one’s composition and future aspirations, who one wishes to become. This involves a critical self-dialogue to explore what basic assumptions, values and beliefs underpin our identities and practices as researchers (Cunliffe, 2020). Ways of being, relating, interpreting and acting are reflected upon (Corlett, 2013; Cunliffe, 2003, 2016). The idea is for researchers to be explicit that their research is an outcome of a series of decisions made by a situated self. Historical reflexivity refers to engaging in historical organization studies with an attitude of reflexivity. Although the concept lacks theoretical maturity, it holds tremendous promise for guiding researchers who carry out history research. It reminds them to approach archival documents, archives and history texts with questions about their conditions of creation (Barros et al., 2018; Decker et al., 2021; Durepos and Vince, 2021; Stutz and Sachs, 2018). Historical reflexivity asks, how can reflexivity enhance historical analysis? A point of our provocation is that we have not considered the question the other way around. Here, we ask, what value does history offer to reflexive practice?

Engaging the concepts of reflexivity with history, explicitly, can bring depth to radical reflexivity. A precondition of being historical in radical reflexive practice is having historical literacy (an expertise in historical information) and historical awareness (an ability to trace the path of emergence of present-day concepts/events; Seixas, 2017). However, radical reflexivity goes beyond these in that it entails personally connecting with past conditions, events and situations. It requires a continuous and iterative meaningful connection to one’s past. This is only possible with proficiency in one’s personal past in relation to events in culture and society. Engaging with history in reflexive practice offers an avenue to unearth the taken-for-granted values, assumptions, and beliefs that are solidified therein. These are historical explorations, given values, assumptions, and beliefs sediment over time. To question them means asking about their trajectory: Where did they come from and how did one come to espouse them? The ontological foundation of reflexivity reminds us to acknowledge that we live in a social world and shape it in intentional and unintentional ways. Furthermore, it pushes us to accept responsibility for how we shape it. Fulfilling that responsibility necessitates visiting and re-visiting aspects of our former selves and research practices to unearth our intentions, actions and research outcome, over time.

The value of history for self-reflexivity resides in the type and depth of sensemaking it may encourage. A historically aware reflexive practice would entail a deep dive into how the researcher has composed her identity as such, over time, vis-à-vis her research relationships and outcomes. Questions would include, how does a researcher write and re-write herself in the present, after making sense of various events and decisions in her past? It would involve exploring how these exercises lead to small and profound changes of the self. This type of sensemaking is nonchronological and compounding, where sensemaking of prior and subsequent events layers onto one another in ways that are mutually informing and/or contradictory. This type of profound exploration is a way to learn about oneself as researcher, in relation to one’s research choices and social world. This type of exercise may assist in understanding the impact of the self on research choices. Untimely, it may encourage a profound learning process.

Critical scholarship

Management Learning is ‘the journal for critical reflexive scholarship’ (our emphasis). How can historical analysis assist the journal’s mandate for critical inquiry? Here we focus on how history can be used as a vehicle for critique (Durepos et al., 2021).

Critical historians have taught us that history is always written with an agenda that serves some people, as well as their beliefs and goals (Jenkins, 1995; Scott, 2007). An ideology underpins all narratives of the past, even those that purport to be neutral (Ermarth, 2011). An engagement with history can help us learn about the past of management learning and, most importantly, learn who is missing from these accounts and which agendas are most prevalent. For example, critical history points us to ask whether the past of our discipline is written in a way that supports an agenda of profit maximization. Or, does it include theories underpinned by ideologies to maximize output and disregard negative human consequences (Zald, 2002)? Using history for critique allows us to write narratives of hidden and marginalized populations (Burrell, 1997; Cooke, 2003). It helps us surface the buried and neglected roots of, for example, race, ethnicity, indigeneity, gender, class, poverty, sexuality, gender identity and expression, geographical (dis)location, rurality, age, disability/ability, migration status, parental status, religion/spirituality, citizenship and the environment and their role in management learning. The type of impact that these factors have on management learning can guide us in reconstructing the past of the discipline.

Using history as a vehicle for critique points to its emancipatory potential. Emancipation is a process whereby people break free from oppressive ideologies and repressive systems of inequity (Alvesson and Willmott, 1992). Examples of oppressive systems of inequity include patriarchy, racism, colonialism, classism, heterosexism, genderism, and ableism (Hankivsky, 2014). Breaking free happens when people first become conscious of the role that ideologies and systems of oppression play on their collective consciousness, and second, foster self-knowledge and/or collective knowledge to empower them to alter their personal and social condition (Alvesson and Willmott, 1992; Scott, 2007). At its core, emancipation is a learning process. As we explain below, history can fuel an agenda of emancipation to foster learning (Jenkins, 1999; Jenkins et al., 2007).

A focus on history can illuminate the power of a shared past to mobilize collective action against oppressive and inequitable social systems. In Canada, we have witnessed the Indigenous population mobilize around their shared past of forced residential schools and cultural genocide to counter colonialism in the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation public inquiry (Regan, 2010). At the basis of social movements, we often find collectives bound by dark pasts of inequities and injustices that fuel desires for emancipation.

Adding to activist movements, agendas of emancipatory history can and do feature prominently in our scholarly research. For example, we can expose normative research methodologies that serve to sustain an inequitable status quo over time. We can draw on research methods that place first-person voices at the centre stage (Tuhiwai Smith, 1999). Above all, a reflexive analysis of how we compose our research identity, over time, allows us to examine what Ermarth (2007) calls moments of enunciation. The moment of enunciation refers to a period of undecidability that precedes articulation. It is the location of indecision where we contemplate whether to reproduce, move away from or challenge convention (Jenkins, 1999). Researchers must explore their moments of enunciation, over time, to ask how they have and continue to fuel agendas of emancipation. After all, our research outcomes, methods and choices of language have an enactive capacity. Our research, historical or otherwise, helps to bring into being what it describes (Law and Urry, 2004; Munslow, 1997). It helps to produce and strengthen certain realities over others.

This leads us to question, what realities do we wish to uphold and strengthen through our scholarly efforts? Which do we wish to problematize? Historical analysis can help us denaturalise conventional realities that sustain present-day inequities. Denaturalization means identifying what values, systemic processes and societal systems are seemingly ‘normal’ or ‘natural’. Denaturalization pushes us to question the historic process through which the norm came to be (Fournier and Grey, 2000). It implies showing that things could be otherwise. It does this by exposing self-legitimating processes in which questioning is silenced through a logic that suggests ‘we must do it this way because we have always done it this way’. Historical analysis is well suited to denaturalise what is presented as having naturally evolved from its origin (Scott, 2007).

One way that historical analysis can denaturalise and provoke learning is by asking new questions, provoking new interpretations and encouraging non-authoritative, creative readings (Ermarth, 2007; Jenkins, 1999, 2009; Jenkins et al., 2007). Historical research that adopts a reflexive tone moves us away from an attitude of authority, where we are the guardian of the interpretation of our message. Rather, it opens itself to continuous readings and interpretations.

An exploration of the past of management learning can open us to our conditions of possibility. Scott (2007) explains that history can make visible blind spots and help imagine ways to think and act differently. As Jenkins (1999) notes, the past is never done, it is made and remade vis-à-vis our present conditions. In re-interpreting the past, we create new contexts for the present (Munslow, 1997). These new contexts shape the social systems therein; they are a powerful force for change. Opening our conditions of possibility fosters critical learning, which may enable us to break free from constraining social circumstances.

Historical consciousness

Historical consciousness fully encompasses Management Learning’s ethos of being ‘the journal for critical reflexive scholarship’ (our emphasis). What we mean is that an appreciation for themes on history, the past and memory feature prominently in the ideology of the journal (see Durepos et al., 2020). Because of this, our understandings of learning and knowing in management and organization settings have been enriched. What we know about management learning and education, then, is not so much about understanding phenomena as having occurred at some point in the past but rather as a result of the (co)production and maintenance of historical narrative. Bringing historical consciousness to light as a tool promises to help gain an appreciation for the role history plays in our critical ‘doing’ of management learning scholarship.

Historical consciousness is a concept with multiple meanings. Most definitions can be traced to Hans-Georg Gadamer (1987: 89) as a starting point, where he wrote that it is ‘. . . the privilege of modern man to have a full awareness of historicity of everything present and the relativity of all opinions’. Thought of this way, being historical conscious is about ensuring the historically authentic value in portrayals of the past. An example of this could be the way one is to interpret language differences in Canadian management textbooks during the 1970s. When reading about organizational culture, individuals with historical consciousness would consider the historical context in which the text was written. Recognizing the role cultural practices, beliefs, and events that took place in Canada play in our understanding of management helps us to contextualize our understanding of culture in Canadian organizational behaviour textbooks during that epoch (see Arseneault et al., 2019) rather than imposing modern interpretations onto it. This matters because we are interested in helping to build history in management learning as a critical practice with certain curiosities resulting in the disruption of the status quo (i.e. linear, disinterested and mainstream historical thought).

Historical education research is another field that draws on historical consciousness, often referring to it as a ‘process of learning’ that involves students to first become aware of historicity and then question their role(s) in building and mobilizing historical narratives (Seixas, 2017). This is likely most amendable to how it is utilized in management and organization studies where it is recognized as accepting ‘history is a narrative construction’ and that ‘research into the processes involved in the development of these historical narratives offers insight[s] into the role history plays in organization and management’ (Tennent et al., 2020: 76).

Channelling the potential of historical consciousness in the way we approach doing critical scholarship on teaching and learning means history matters. It matters in the way that we think about, and draw on, history to help illustrate management phenomena. Sometimes history is ‘the point’ of the research, but often it helps illustrate our contributions to knowledge. Through rich insights from prior work detailing the ways history is called upon to explain organizational and management action (Hargadon and Wadhwani, 2023), we understand the potential of history is more than its additive value in theorizing. Historical context is not a variable to be measured but a point made about management knowledge. McLaren and Durepos (2021: 82) remind us that ‘context is formulated or constructed by us and our phenomenon of study’. This is important; history matters, therefore, because accounting for the influences that go into shaping a historical narrative lets us know there is more to a story (i.e. management) than what first appears. In many ways, historical narratives are political and so, too, are the knowledges that we use to build out management theory and practice.

For the most part, the accepted wisdom in management is that what we know about managing is supported by evidence-based knowledge. Knowledge in this way is learned in business school and legitimized materially in classrooms, almost always in textbooks and perhaps in the occasional practitioner article. What this norm fails to account for is the political nature and ideological character these are founded upon. Most often, this involves some engagement with the past and history. Embracing the processes of historical consciousness here means becoming aware and appreciating the precariousness of ‘managing’. We contend that this takes place through considering questions about the past. For example, how is the discourse of managing assumed in the present and how does it impact the future? A cursory grasp of historical methods and methodologies could help.

Our work in ANTi-History (Deal et al., 2024; Durepos and Mills, 2012) is one way to explore these questions. In this instance, the value of historical consciousness in management learning would be through empirical demonstration of the relational, (co)constructed nature of knowledge work. Through tracing the socio-politics that participate in maintaining management knowledge, we can unravel and destabilize ‘managing’ as settled science. Another way we can stimulate our awareness of ideological history in management is through Foucauldian means, notably archeo-genealogy. Excavation by Bridgman et al. (2019) of Maslow’s Pyramid is an example of how, by questioning our assumptions about progress, management learning benefits from unearthing surprising discontinuities and the plotting of new histories. If we can acknowledge management knowledge is riddled with interests, then we are better positioned to accept that not all we think we may know about the past and history is truthful or even accurate. Rather, it is an outcome of the production of discourses that ultimately supplant alternate stories and suppress diverse narratives.

Practicing historical consciousness in management learning reveals the importance of history here and now. With some irony, we have collectively grappled with articulating the inherent value of history for management learners. However, history has never been more important to help us distil and navigate the world around us (Suddaby, 2016). Historical consciousness helps to resolve this tension. How, might you ask? It is by refining our thinking in historical terms so that we build an awareness of history and actively expose its influence on our (mis)understanding of phenomena over time. Historical consciousness therefore holds the potential to encourage individuals to think critically, reflect thoughtfully and act with a deep understanding of historical contexts.