‘Beasts, burrowers and birds’: the enactment of researcher identities in UK business schools

TY - JOUR

T1 - ‘Beasts, burrowers and birds’

T2 - the enactment of researcher identities in UK business schools

AU - Bell, Emma

AU - Clarke, Daniel W.

PY - 2014/7/1

Y1 - 2014/7/1

N2 - In this article, we suggest that management research constitutes a field of practice that is made practically intelligible through embodied enactment. This relies on imagination, constructing modes of belonging within communities of management research practice. Undergraduate students constitute a significant audience towards whom these self-presentational performances are directed. Our analysis is based on findings from four UK business schools where students participated in a free drawing and focus group exercise and were asked to visualize a management researcher. Through identification of three dominant animal metaphors of management research practice, we explore the symbolic relations whereby a prevailing image of the management researcher, as untouchable, solitary, aggressive, competitive and careerist, is socially constructed. We argue that this competitive, self-interested impression of research is detrimental to ethical, critically reflexive, reciprocal and participatory modes of research, and to the development of management research as a broadly inclusive system of social learning.

AB - In this article, we suggest that management research constitutes a field of practice that is made practically intelligible through embodied enactment. This relies on imagination, constructing modes of belonging within communities of management research practice. Undergraduate students constitute a significant audience towards whom these self-presentational performances are directed. Our analysis is based on findings from four UK business schools where students participated in a free drawing and focus group exercise and were asked to visualize a management researcher. Through identification of three dominant animal metaphors of management research practice, we explore the symbolic relations whereby a prevailing image of the management researcher, as untouchable, solitary, aggressive, competitive and careerist, is socially constructed. We argue that this competitive, self-interested impression of research is detrimental to ethical, critically reflexive, reciprocal and participatory modes of research, and to the development of management research as a broadly inclusive system of social learning.

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/84907207028

U2 - 10.1177/1350507613478890

DO - 10.1177/1350507613478890

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:84907207028

SN - 1350-5076

VL - 45

SP - 249

EP - 266

JO - Management Learning

JF - Management Learning

IS - 3

ER -