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Bell, E and Clarke, DW (2013) Beasts, burrowers and birds: the enactment of researcher identities in UK business schools. Management Learning, 45 (3). 249 - 266. ISSN 1461-7307
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Abstract
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.
Item Type: | Article |
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Uncontrolled Keywords: | Knowledge production, metaphor, research practice, symbolism, undergraduate students, visual analysis |
Subjects: | H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General) |
Divisions: | Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > Keele Management School |
Related URLs: | |
Depositing User: | Symplectic |
Date Deposited: | 14 Oct 2015 14:27 |
Last Modified: | 20 May 2019 09:27 |
URI: | https://eprints.keele.ac.uk/id/eprint/998 |