Exploring an alternative: Foucault-Chokr's unlearning approach to management education

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijme.2021.100496Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Management education is often dominated by discourses of financial performance rooted in the logic economic progress.

  • The managerialconcept of sustainability is an example that shows the limitations of contemporary management education.

  • Unlearning assists management students to develop critical capabilities to meet societal requirements.

  • Based on the empirical study, three possible principles of unlearning are developed.

Abstract

This paper develops Chokr's theory of unlearning on the basis of empirical data, which suggests that the current understanding of management education is often restricted to a pro-business discourse that privileges what Foucault termed “dominant knowledge”. Along the lines of Chokr's philosophical argument, the empirical findings reveal that the conventional approach to management education may pose an obstacle to responsible and sustainable management, and hence learning becomes the problem of which it is purported to be the solution, within the predominant discourse. It is proposed that a radical version of unlearning can help alleviate this predicament. With the help of the empirical study, we propose three suggestions. First, unlearning assists management students to develop a capability to “see the unseen”. Second, unlearning equips managers and management students with the capability to approach knowledge in a reflexive way. Third, unlearning should be to promote an environment wherein practitioners can radically question existing and institutionalized practices, and ultimately generate engaged citizens with ecological awareness.

Introduction

In recent years we have witnessed a renewed interest in the idea of unlearning from the perspectives of MOL (Management and Organizational Learning) (e.g. Becker, 2005, 2008, 2010; Cegarra-Navarro & Arcas-Lario, 2011; Tsang, 2017; Kluge & Schuffler, 2019; Peschl, 2019; Sharma & Lenka, 2019). Whilst there is a strong social-cultural tendency that maintains the assumption that learning is always “a good thing” (Contu et al., 2003, p. 933; Pedler, 2014; Pedler & Hsu, 2019), recent theoretical development problematizes the predominant view of learning, suggesting that unlearning is a necessary condition for alternative management learning and education. This paper seeks to contribute to the possibility of promoting the “unlearning” approach to management learning, from a Foucauldian perspective. Our frame of reference is based on Chokr (2009), who draws upon Foucault's concept of governmentality, and defines unlearning as “a process of educating individuals into their true form, the real and genuine human nature” (p. 50). Chokr's approach to unlearning radically challenges the predominant concept of management learning in the sense that it enables us to critically realize and address the problem of governmentality embedded in educational systems, whilst opening up the possibility of alternative forms of knowledge and practices (Brook et al., 2016; Hsu, 2013). This paper contends that Chokr's theory to date has not been fully explored in the field of management learning and the empirical study in this research reveals the problematic aspects of current management learning.

This paper explores the idea of unlearning based on empirical data from the Chinese campus of a British university and employs the focus group discussion as the data collection method. We use the concept of sustainable management learning (implicated in PRME, Principles for Responsible Management Education) as an example to highlight the limitations of the predominant approach to management learning. Business School undergraduate students are future managers and their attitude to responsible and sustainable management has important implications for the understanding of how management should act. Based upon Foucault-Chokr's approach to unlearning, this study seeks to make a contribution to: 1) connecting the theory of unlearning to the empirical context of management learning; 2) developing criteria for unlearning; 3) outlining the implications of the unlearning approach to management education.

Section snippets

Literature review

In the field of MOL, unlearning has gained renewed attention, driven by theoretical interests (e.g. Fiol & O’Connor, 2017; Starbuck, 2017; Tsang, 2017; Visser, 2017; Nguyen 2017) or practical interests (e.g. Reese, 2017; Antonacopoulou, 2009). In Brook et al.’s (2016) critical account of unlearning literature, the distinction between a renewed and conventional approach to unlearning lies in their “connection” to learning. Many conventional approaches to unlearning follow Hedberg's (1981) lens

Research design and methods

In this paper, we mainly adopt the focus group discussion method, which uses “group dynamics to obtain data on a specific subject”, without risking imposing the researcher's own opinion (Kitzinger, 1996; Pocetta et al., 2006). Focus group discussion is an exceptionally effective method in the field of social science and educational research, by which researchers can focus on the dialectical interactions between students (Hyde etc. 2005), as well as progressive gathering or updating of

Analysis

The data analysis was processed through the criteria we presented above: the ability to see something differently, think differently, handle knowledge autonomously, and the ability to be self-invented, self-governed, self-reflective and self-engaged. This section lists some important statements and concepts from the participants, emerged during the focus group discussion.

Findings and discussion

In this section, we will discuss the findings of the empirical study. Before we embark on this discussion, it is useful to have a general review of student's attitudes towards critical thinking because, in this research, critical thinking serves as a starting point and vehicle for our understanding of unlearning. In our analysis, there are a few statements that helped to illustrate their general attitudes. For example, one student reflected that, at the researched university, the teachers here

Implications and concluding remarks

This study problematizes the predominant practice and concept of learning and directs attention to the necessity of unlearning. At a theoretical level, it breaks new ground in articulating possible criteria for unlearning in the context of management. We found that the current state of management education might be part of the problem of which it is purported to be the cure. An example is the idea of sustainable management. Our empirical findings show that whilst the participant students knew

Acknowledgement

I wish to express my sincere thanks to the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback on this paper. I also wish to express my sincere thanks to Ying Qiu for her help with the research. The empirical study of this paper was funded by the Small Teaching and Learning Grant and NUBS China Small Research Grant at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China.

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