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Paradoxes of Academic Practice: Managerialist Techniques in Critical Pedagogy

Torkild Thanem* & Louise Wallenberg** *School of Management & Economics, Växjö University, Sweden ** Department of Cinema Studies, Stockholm University, Sweden

The final version of this chapter is published in J. Wolfram Cox, T. LeTrent-Jones, M. Voronov & D. Weir (eds) (2009)

Critical Management Studies at Work: Multidisciplinary Approaches to Negotiating Tensions between Theory and Practice,

pp. 180-194. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

Abstract

Whereas previous critical management research has acknowledged the difficulties of creating

a critical dialogue in the classroom, this chapter addresses the paradox between the critical

and the technical by critically examining how contemporary pedagogy may promote critical

learning and classroom dialogue through the employment of neo-liberal managerialist

teaching techniques. The chapter is based on a self-reflexive discussion of the conflicts

confronting us in our triad roles as critical researchers (in organization studies and film

studies), as critical lecturers in these disciplines, and as quasi-pedagogues running a university

pedagogy course that is designed to improve the professionalism of fellow university lecturers

and enhance student learning. Working from research and teaching agendas that question

contemporary practices of work intensification, panopticism and reductionist schemes of

representation, we find that our teaching techniques run the risk of reproducing these same

practices. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how this conflict may be handled but

not resolved.

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Introduction

The last decade has seen an expanding literature examining the content and teaching

techniques of management education (for example, French and Grey 1996; Reynolds 1999;

Holman 2000; Cunliffe 2002; Hagen, Miller and Johnson 2003), and a number of contributors

have, from the perspective of critical management studies, discussed the importance of

introducing both critical perspectives and critical teaching techniques in management

education (for example, Case and Selvester 2000; Currie and Knights 2003). Further, some of

this research has acknowledged the difficulties of creating a critical dialogue in the classroom

(for example, Currie and Knights 2003) and highlighted the paradox of a critical pedagogy

wherein the teacher both becomes an agent of emancipation and a figure of authority (for

example, Hagen et al 2003: 247; Perriton and Reynolds 2004: pp 66, 72). Meanwhile, there is

a considerable body of research on the dissemination of management theory and other forms

of management knowledge beyond the academic institutions of management education and

research (for example, Abrahamson 1991, 1996; Sahlin-Andersson and Engwall 2002;

Engwall and Kipping 2004). Typically, this research focuses on the spread of management

knowledge via management consultancy firms to management practice in private, public, and,

more recently, voluntary sector organizations. However, neither of these research areas has

paid much attention to the managerialist underpinnings of contemporary pedagogy and the

ways in which neo-liberal management principles have diffused beyond the field of

management knowledge and practice and into the field of pedagogy. Indeed, studies

analyzing, prescribing or critiquing the dissemination of management knowledge into higher

education generally focus on the work of university administrators (for example, Seymour

1992; Birnbaum 2000; Brennan and Shah 2000; Lawrence and Dangerfield 2001;

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Cruickshank 2003; Deem and Brehony 2005) and ignore the managerialist processes of

teaching wherein lecturers and students are involved. This is odd, given the central part

played by organizational psychology in both pedagogy and management.

Extending both arms of research beyond the field of management and organization studies,

this chapter therefore explores the paradox between the critical and the technical by critically

discussing how contemporary pedagogy may promote critical learning and classroom

dialogue through the employment of neo-liberal managerialist teaching techniques. The

chapter’s first two sections provide a self-reflexive discussion of the conflicts confronting us

in our triad roles as critical researchers in organization studies and film studies, as critical

lecturers in these disciplines, and as quasi-pedagogues running the university pedagogy

course “UP1” at Stockholm University, which is designed to improve the professionalism of

fellow university teachers so as to enhance student learning. We make no claims to give a

fully representational view of contemporary university pedagogy or even university pedagogy

at Stockholm University. But we do believe that our involvement in university pedagogy

through the Centre for Learning and Teaching (CLT) at Stockholm University goes some way

in illustrating central trends in contemporary university pedagogy, and that the links this

enables us to trace between this form of university pedagogy and neo-liberal managerialist

principles and practices has some relevance for the larger field of university pedagogy and

education, including critical management education. This is not a totally unfounded claim to

make. Firstly, this is so because the course book used on the UP1 course – Biggs’s (2003)

Teaching for Quality Learning at University – which is one of few updated textbooks in this

area, is frequently used on similar courses at other universities and in other countries.

Secondly, an examination of the recent debates in the area of critical management education

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reveals a fairly widespread reliance and employment of similar teaching techniques to those

used in the UP1 course.

While managerialism may be obvious in the more authoritarian and teacher-centred style of

conventional teaching practices (focusing on what the teacher does rather than what students

do), we argue that managerialism also prevails in the more student-centred approaches of

contemporary pedagogy which emphasize the freedom and responsibility of individual

students to take charge of their own learning and which are being employed to accommodate

soaring student numbers, the scarcity of financial resources and increasingly demanding

clients (including students, parents, policymakers and future employers). Despite the

widespread claim that academia encourages and thrives on independent thinking,

contemporary teaching techniques also pursue the management of thought, consciousness and

behaviour through teaching and learning activities (TLAs), motivation schemes, course

assessment tasks, and classroom management. And while Foucault (1977) – and Hoskin

(1979; see also Hoskin and Macve 1986) – have investigated the role of panoptic discipline in

the history of the school and the examination, we argue that neo-liberal forms of panoptic

discipline are further ingrained in contemporary pedagogy through managerialist tools and

techniques such as McGregor’s (1960) Theory X and Y.1 This is discussed in the penultimate

section of this chapter. Finally, and drawing on the recent debate in management and

organization studies on the power of knowledge producers contra the power of knowledge

users (Collins 2004), we discuss how the conflicts and paradoxes between our critical

research and teaching agendas and our neo-liberal managerialist teaching techniques have

been dealt with and may be dealt with but not necessarily reconciled.

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Academic backgrounds

Louise’s research, which is based on feminist and queer theory, is an attempt to deconstruct

visual representations of gender, sexuality and ethnicity in film and television by drawing

attention to alternative forms of embodiment that question and challenge heteronormative and

eurocentric representations of masculinity and manhood. In her teaching, which ranges from

first year courses in film studies to graduate courses and supervision in feminist film theory,

Louise seeks to help students critically analyze and deconstruct dominant representations of

gender, sexuality and ethnicity in the visual media. Part of this involves analyzing how

modern visual media and culture produce idealized bodily representations that in turn produce

panoptic forms of peer surveillance and self-surveillance and disciplinary body regimes.

Similarly, Torkild’s research in organization studies, inspired by contemporary French

thought, seeks to critically analyze the power and limits of public health and urban planning

in constructing, managing and organizing human bodies and bodily interaction beyond the

boundaries of formal organizations. In his teaching, which includes undergraduate and

graduate courses in management, organizational behaviour and organization theory, Torkild

seeks to integrate issues of embodiment, emotion, gender and sexuality in discussions of

traditional and contemporary forms of organization so as to help students challenge

universalist, apolitical and cognitized understandings of human behaviour in organizational

life. In both his research and teaching, he tries to challenge neo-liberal and managerialist

theories and practices of panopticism and work intensification.

Since 2003, we have both been engaged in running the university pedagogy course, UP1, for

fellow university teachers through the CLT at Stockholm University. Whereas Louise had

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already been involved as a CLT instructor giving workshops on the gender, ethnicity and

diversity aspects of university teaching, Torkild got involved with the CLT anticipating that it

would help him promote a critical pedagogy of critical reflection and critical management

studies in his own department. Ironically, his initial concern was primarily with integrating

critical perspectives into course content rather than with the learning process and the student-

teacher relationship, and, as pointed out by previous research on critical management

education, the former by no means guarantees a critical pedagogy (for example, Reynolds

1999; Currie and Knights, 2003). As we aim to show in this chapter, our concern with critical

perspectives has been seriously challenged throughout our involvement with the CLT.

Relentlessly trying to work from research agendas and using course content that question

contemporary practices of work intensification, panopticism and reductionist schemes of

representation, we find that the teaching practices prescribed in contemporary university

pedagogy – teaching practices we have come to employ in our own teaching – may run the

risk of reproducing practices of work intensification, panopticism and reductionist schemes of

representation.

A glimpse into contemporary university pedagogy

While Swedish universities have provided university pedagogy training programs for several

decades, the CLT and its particular university pedagogy training program is a response to the

recent Government bill on higher education requiring ten weeks formal university pedagogy

training for all new appointed university lecturers. The bill was launched by the Ministry of

Education and approved by the Government in 2002, made legally binding from July 1st

2003, and is monitored by the National Agency for Higher Education (through paragraph 7 of

The Higher Education Ordinance). It maintains that enhancing university teachers’

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pedagogical competence and consciousness through formal pedagogical training is important

because of the new demands and challenges facing the structure and practice of higher

education, teaching and examination, such as the increase of new student groups in higher

education (Swedish Ministry of Education 2001/02). While this may be interpreted in

different ways at different Swedish universities, the CLT at Stockholm University emphasizes

that its training programmes are designed to improve the professionalism of university

teachers so as to enhance student learning. This is even related to a concern with the Bologna

process and the implementation of the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) across the

European Union and how this may affect the position of Stockholm University as an

international – or at least a European – player in higher education. The CLT plays an

important part in realizing this vision, promoting the need for explicit learning objectives and

outcomes, a systematic employment of teaching and learning activities, a variety of

(particularly formative) assessment forms, and the transparency of assessment criteria.

Without describing the UP1 course content and teaching process in any detail, it is worth

noting that the course serves as an introduction to university pedagogy and constitutes the first

two weeks of the total of ten weeks of training that new lecturers are required to undertake. It

aims to improve the professionalism of university lecturers and facilitate students’ deep

learning through a combination of empirically based pedagogical theory and an active

utilization of participants’ own experiences. More specifically, this is pursued by means of

seminars, group exercises and plenary discussions, by groups of participants planning and

running mini seminars, and by participants developing their own course descriptions and peer

reviewing the course descriptions of fellow participants. Upon completion of the course,

participants should be able to plan, implement and assess their own teaching, reflect about

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their views on the teacher-student relationship, critically examine pedagogical theory and

research, and formulate their own learning perspective.

As mentioned above, the course is based around a university pedagogy textbook by Biggs

(2003) and his emphasis on constructive alignment in the teaching and learning process.

Whereas traditional teaching models and practices have tended to focus on what the teacher

does in terms of transferring knowledge to students (who thereby are reduced to passive

recipients), and while this may be differentiated from phenomenographic perspectives to

learning that view teaching as a way to change students’ world views (Marton 1981), Biggs’s

constructionist perspective focuses on what the student does and the importance of students

taking responsibility for creating their own learning and gaining a sense of ownership of their

subject knowledge. Issues of ownership and responsibility are crucial to the argument about

managerialism and neo-liberalism pursued in this chapter and will therefore be discussed in

the next section. Further, constructive alignment involves planning for and teaching in such a

way that teaching and learning activities (what the teacher and students do on a particular

course) and assessment techniques are aligned to help students achieve the learning outcomes

of a course. According to Biggs, this has become increasingly important with the

transformation that higher education has undergone during the past few decades. A

tremendous growth in student numbers and a more heterogeneous student population as well

as scarce financial conditions coupled with a neo-liberal environment characterized by

tougher demands on value for money from politicians, employers, students and society as a

whole, are all important factors contributing to this transformation.

Without acknowledging the political dimensions of this transformation, Biggs (2003) argues

that a university pedagogy based on constructive alignment becomes a way to resolve the

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difficulties facing higher education and achieve deep learning amongst large portions of the

student population. Influenced by Marton and Säljö (1977a, 1977b), Biggs argues that

students’ level of learning (that is, deep or surface learning) and their cognitive engagement

(from memorizing to applying and theorizing) is a result of their attitudes to learning and,

more importantly, the degree of student activity required. Here, he divides the student

population into two categories: those with a genuine interest in learning a subject, and those

who study a subject for merely instrumental or coincidental reasons (for example, someone

who enters business school expecting that a business degree will get them a high paid job or

someone who enters university waiting for the job market to improve). Biggs refers to

members of the former group as “Susans” and members of the latter group as “Roberts”.

Whereas “Susan” typifies the traditional university student that in small numbers dominated

university campuses some decades ago, when higher education was still a privilege for the

few, “Robert” typifies the increasingly common university student that during the last couple

of decades has come to dominate university campuses. Whereas “Susan” can reach deep

levels of learning in traditional and teacher-centred learning processes, Biggs argues that

“Robert” is likely to remain on a surface level of learning when studying in this kind of

learning environment. The key to getting “Robert” up to the same level as “Susan” lies in

increasing the level of student activity required. And, Biggs stresses, traditional teaching

models that focus on what the teacher does – rather than what students do – are antithetical to

this possibility.

Biggs (2003) claims that focusing on what he calls the backwash effect offers an explanation

of this problem. Whereas teachers usually plan a course from the perspective of what content

they want to get across to students, students typically approach a course from the perspective

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of passing or doing well on exams and assessments. While this traps teachers in a teacher-

centred approach to learning by which students are pacified, it also traps students in a surface

approach to learning just for the final exam. Biggs’s solution involves utilizing the backwash

effect by making both teachers and students focus on learning objectives. For teachers, this

first involves translating course content into learning objectives (that is, the knowledge and

skills they want students to have learned upon completion of the course) and making these

explicit for themselves and for students. Secondly, it means making marking criteria

transparent and aligning learning objectives and assessment forms so that students’ exam

performance becomes an indicator and even a measure of how well the learning objectives

have been achieved. In many cases, this means redesigning exams so that surface approaches

to learning become insufficient and inadequate in achieving learning objectives. Even if

students continue to focus on the exam rather than on the course learning objectives, they will

not be able to pass or perform well unless they can show that they have achieved the learning

objectives. But in order to support student performance on summative assessments and

achieve learning objectives it is important that teachers implement a teaching and learning

model that activates students and removes stress and pressure from summative assessments at

the end of a course. This is typically done by means of formative assessments that allow

students to practice – and enhance – the knowledge and skills they have learnt.

During the past few years pedagogical research has promoted the learning portfolio as an

effective means of letting students make their learning process transparent. The learning

portfolio is a combination of formative and summative assessment as well as self and teacher

assessment. The learning portfolio involves performing a variety of tasks whereby students

can demonstrate what they have learnt and how well they have attained the learning

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objectives (Baume 2001; Fallows and Chandramohan 2001; Race 2001). When used on

shorter modules, the teacher usually decides what tasks to be included. But when used on full-

weight courses individual students may be given some choice in deciding what to include.

Pedagogues pursuing this method stress the importance of students clearly justifying why a

certain task has been included and how their handling of this task is proof of their learning

development and achievement of learning objectives. The learning portfolio typically

proceeds by the following sequential format: Students start work on it whilst attending a

course, they receive feedback on their work from peers and teachers, which is then integrated

into a revised version of the portfolio, and a final version is submitted to the teacher for

marking at the end of the course. But learning does not end here. Ideally, students continue to

work on, update and use the portfolio after completing the course. Thus, it enables students to

take responsibility for and take charge of their own learning process so as to create skills and

knowledge tailored to their own specific needs and interests and to eventually gain a sense of

ownership of their subject knowledge. Creating a portfolio typically requires that students

continuously reflect upon, justify and evaluate their own learning process. Thus, it often

implies more work for students than ordinary assessment forms.

However, just giving students more to do and assessing them on a wider scale of tasks is not

sufficient to promote learning if motivation falls short. Invoking McGregor’s (1960) Theory

X and Y of motivation, Biggs (2003) argues that fostering a so-called Theory Y learning

environment is crucial. Ideally, this makes students feel safe as they are being encouraged to

participate in and contribute to the learning process without the risk of failure or ridicule. The

learning portfolio may foster a Theory Y learning climate insofar as risk and performance

pressure is removed from final exams and distributed across time and across a variety of

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learning tasks and exercises. But while this may work well for full time students with high

levels of motivation (those Biggs refers to as “Susans”), it may create more stress and

performance pressure for less academically inclined students (those Biggs refers to as

“Roberts”) – who tend to require stricter guidelines – and for students who work part-time and

may depend on short breaks in the curriculum to juggle and cope with their work shifts.

Finally, and based on Schön’s (1983, 1987) research on professional education programmes

and practicing professionals in fields such as law, medicine and architecture, the UP1 course

emphasizes the importance of university lecturers becoming reflective practitioners. While the

learning portfolio and other forms of formative assessment may pose an opportunity for

students to reflect upon their own learning process, teachers are expected to improve the

quality and professionalism of their teaching by reflecting upon their teaching process, how

they teach, how students learn, and how they themselves learn. More specifically, this

involves basing their teaching on up-to-date pedagogical research, experimenting with

pedagogical innovations, and assessing the course structure and TLAs they adopt in their

teaching. Indeed, UP1 participants are examined by means of a learning portfolio wherein

they plan and reflect on their own teaching practices by designing, revising and improving

their own course descriptions.

Neo-liberal managerialism in contemporary university pedagogy

The above presentation of the UP1 course at Stockholm University draws attention to the

dissemination, penetration, prevalence and operationalization of management ideas and

managerialist techniques beyond the field of management and into the field of university

pedagogy. Whilst aiming to enhance student learning by improving the quality and

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professionalism of university teachers and higher education, the techniques mobilized in this

pursuit may be seen to actualize a neo-liberal management regime of individual freedom and

personal responsibility. For example, the focus on learning objectives actualizes a teleology

that perhaps finds its most extreme articulation under “management by objectives” schemes

prevalent in the management field wherein the process of learning is subsumed under and

geared towards attaining particular learning objectives. While the pursuit of particular

learning objectives may involve activating students through a more diverse set of teaching and

learning activities, it may also narrow the diversity of learning objectives and the diversity of

teaching and learning activities feeding into particular learning objectives. Further, while the

Susan/Robert dichotomy employed by Biggs (2003) seeks to improve learning for both ideal

type groups of students, it is a reductionist scheme of representation that risks reinforcing the

difference between the two groups, demonizing the “Roberts” and reinforcing rather than

reducing the elitism of higher education.

But more importantly, the emphasis on student-centred learning through teaching and learning

activities and formative assessment implies work intensification and panoptic forms of

surveillance and discipline. Neither students nor teachers can expect lectures or seminars to be

reduced to the one-way communication of standard textbook material from teacher to

students. Thus, students cannot miss lectures or seminars because they would then run the risk

of missing out on participating in teaching and learning activities that could be crucial to

exam and assessment performance. Further, formative assessments subject students to

continuous surveillance in the striving for continuous improvement and performance

optimization. Formative assessment not only involves teachers surveilling and monitoring

student performance. It equally provides students with a means to monitor their own

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performance. And insofar as teaching quality may be measured by student performance and

learning outcomes, it provides teachers with a means to monitor their own teaching

performance. Moreover, insofar as this monitoring makes student and teaching performance

more transparent, they are more readily accessible to university administrators and quality

assessment teams, thus providing parties outside of the classroom with an opportunity to

monitor student and teacher performance from the view of bureaucratic, managerial, financial

and political interests.

In the context of higher education, a Theory Y learning environment makes students free to –

and expected to – take charge of their own learning process. As this makes students

increasingly responsible for their own learning, it may motivate students to continuously

monitor their performance in an effort to enhance their performance. However, as argued in

the critical management literature (for example, Willmott1993; Garsten and Grey 1997), the

freedom to perform is equally a pressure to perform and it is likely that this pressure is

reinforced as students take charge of the learning process and gain a sense of ownership of

their knowledge. Finally, the stress on becoming a reflective practitioner provides a further

opportunity for teachers to monitor their own work, performance and professional

development as it involves reflecting on and evaluating for example which course structure,

which teaching and learning activities, which assessment forms and which innovations work,

and which ones do not. At the CLT at Stockholm University, reflective practice has been

taken beyond Schön (1983, 1987) and all the way to SWOT analysis. On a recent teaching

staff meeting participants were asked to SWOT analysis in reflecting on their roles as

university pedagogy instructors – no mention was made of the critique frequently raised

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against SWOT analysis, that it focuses on the here and now and that it typically ignores the

historical, political and theoretical aspects of the phenomenon considered.

Ideally, new course designs, innovative teaching and learning activities, formative

assessments and reflective practice enable lecturers to take the necessary actions to correct

suboptimal teaching practices and improve teaching and learning. Critical voices that this is

time-consuming and implies extra work are marginalized by contrary claims: that it makes

teaching and learning better and more fun, that it is time-saving in the long run, that it helps

teachers integrate research into teaching, and that it is all done for the greater good of

enhanced student learning and employability in a knowledge society where recruiters and

employers are more demanding and selective in terms of what knowledge and skills they want

graduates to be able to contribute.

The emphasis on university lecturers becoming reflective practitioners raises important issues

regarding the relationship between the technical and the critical (see Grey 1997). Holman

(2000) distinguishes between four different contemporary models of management education:

academic liberalism, experiential liberalism, experiential vocationalism, and the

experiential/critical school.2 These are all then discussed in terms of their epistemological

axiom, pedagogical axiom, social axiom, organizational axiom, and management axiom.

While academic liberalism and experiential vocationalism according to Holman express a

technicist perspective, experiential liberalism and the experimental/critical school express a

practice perspective and a critical perspective respectively. It is not stretching it too far to

apply this to the field of contemporary university pedagogy. In particular, the pedagogical and

organizational axioms of experiential liberalism, which is based on reflection and oriented

towards practice, are strongly expressed in our practice as quasi-pedagogues at Stockholm

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University’s CLT. Still, the experiential liberalism characterizing the university pedagogy that

we are subjected to and that we pursue in our own work as quasi-pedagogues embodies

significant technicist elements (what Holman calls academic theoretical knowledge): it aims

to develop technical teaching skills by acquiring theoretical knowledge about pedagogical

research and by acting on the basis of reflections about teaching experience. Since this

involves work intensification and panoptic forms of surveillance and discipline, they are in

stark contrast to the course content we try to address in our own teaching in organization

studies and film studies. Questioning work intensification and panoptic forms of surveillance

and discipline, our teaching content is more akin to what Holman calls the experiential/critical

model.

At the same time, an experiential/critical pedagogy is not completely different from a

pedagogy of experiential liberalism. It too relies on teachers reflecting about their teaching

and students reflecting about their learning. According to Dehler, Welsh and Lewis (2001)

becoming a reflective practitioner is not merely about teachers reflecting about their teaching

and students reflecting about their learning. In critical management education it also involves

asking students to reflect critically on the social context of management and its institutions as

well as on the power relations underpinning the social context they inhabit as students. With

respect to contemporary university pedagogy training programmes, this would even involve

asking participants to reflect critically on the societal and institutional context in which they

and their teaching are embedded. Although this was not initially on the agenda of the UP1

course at Stockholm University, these issues have been raised by a small number of course

participants, particularly participants trapped in and frustrated by short term teaching

contracts with no or little opportunities for doing research. (Interestingly, this is in contrast

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with UP1 participants with limited teaching experience, who request more knowledge about

concrete teaching techniques.) Furthermore, Dehler et al argue that reversing the teacher-

student relationship wherein students take more responsibility for their own learning and

integrating critical research insights into teaching are crucial parts of critical pedagogy. This

means that it is necessary to go beyond the cognitized and apolitical notion of critical thinking

as a generic skill limited to skill-building, problem-solving, self-reflection and questioning. In

addition, one must explicitly consider how the instrumental benefits of critical thinking and

mainstream techniques ‘may mask their critical potential’ (Dehler et al 2001, p503). On this

account, critical pedagogy therefore becomes equally open to the above critique that student-

centred approaches may produce work intensification and panoptic surveillance and

discipline. However, it also enables students to reflect critically on the work intensification

and panoptic forms of surveillance and discipline to which they are subjected as students, and

reflect on the work intensification and panoptic forms of surveillance and discipline to which

they may be subjected and subject others in their future work and management careers.

Concluding remarks

How, then, may these paradoxes be dealt with in our teaching practice? Are neo-liberal

managerialist ideas and techniques necessarily bad? That is, are they fixed to a certain

managerialist and neo-liberal agenda? Discussing the dissemination and use of Business

Process Reengineering, Collins (2004) critiques critical management studies (for example,

Willmott 1994) for too readily imposing an evaluative lens on management fads and

knowledges and for attributing too much interpretive and intentional power to the producers

of such knowledge. Following Latour (1987), he stresses that what is produced is subject to

the power of users just as much as it is subject to the power of its producers. Users often

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reinterpret, change and reproduce a knowledge or technology according to their own needs

and interests. A similar – but reversed – issue has been debated by writers on critical

management education, where critical researchers have found that MBA students only

internalize critical perspectives to the extent that they serve the students’ own instrumental

ends. For example, Currie and Knights (2003) found that high performers on the MBA

programme they researched merely added a couple of paragraphs outlining a critical

perspective onto an otherwise mainstream assignment rather than applying a critical

perspective systematically and throughout and beyond the MBA programme to analyze the

political, economic and management institutions in which they are embedded. This

exemplifies previous discussions in radical organization theory on the danger of radical

concepts, such as alienation, being co-opted and colonized by the mainstream and

transformed into a matter of job redesign and job rotation (see for example, Burrell and

Morgan 1979). What Collins and Latour enable us to see, however, is that even managerialist

ideas and techniques may be co-opted and colonized by radical movements within and beyond

the field of management knowledge and practice – including contemporary university

pedagogy and disciplines such as film studies that are rarely associated with anything having

to do with management knowledge. Thus, neo-liberal, managerial ideas and techniques of

teaching and learning may be exploited – through the efforts of university lecturers and

students – to foster critiques that challenge these very same ideas and techniques in the

classroom and beyond. Although formative assessments such as the learning portfolio may

involve work intensification, reductionist schemes of representation, and panoptic forms of

surveillance and discipline, they may also enhance students’ consciousness about how they

are subjected to these as students and how they may subject others to it – and continue to be

subjected to it – in their future work and management careers.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the editors for their insightful and helpful comments on an earlier

draft. We are also grateful to our colleagues at the Stockholm University Centre for Learning

and Teaching for stimulating and challenging discussions on contemporary pedagogy. Torkild

gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Swedish Research Council.

Notes

1. We recognize the historical critique that Foucault’s emphasis on panopticism may be seen

to be based on a tendentious reading of history (incidentally, this critique is rarely

acknowledged in management and organization studies). But like Foucault and much

previous research in critical management studies (see for example, Munro 2000), our aim

is not to provide a historically correct reading of events but to trace managerialist

techniques in higher education. Our reading of panopticism is therefore more akin to that

of a diagram (see Foucault 1977; Deleuze 1988), which helps us trace neo-liberal

practices of monitoring and surveillance in student learning.

2. According to Holman (2000), academic liberalism pursues objective and theoretical

knowledge and scientific skills through lectures, seminars, case studies and

experimentation. From a technicist perspective it aims to educate management scientists

with a strong sense of personal autonomy. Stressing university autonomy, its academic

role is also directly vocational role and indirectly cultural. Experiential liberalism mainly

pursues subjective and experiential knowledge and interpersonal and technical skills

through a process of reflection, conceptualization and action that involves learning

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contracts, group work, action learning and self-development. From a practice perspective

it aims to educate practical scientists and authors and reflective practitioners with a strong

sense of personal autonomy and situated reflexivity. It too emphasizes university

autonomy, but its academic role is only indirectly related to the pursuit of cultural and

vocational interests. Experiential vocationalism pursues objective knowledge and

interpersonal and technical skills through competence based approaches. From a technicist

perspective it aims to educate competent managers with a strong sense of managerial

autonomy. It emphasizes the direct vocational role of management education, the

relevance of managerialist practices to higher education, and the importance of

standardization, quality, customer service and flexibility. Finally, highlighting the

connection between power and knowledge, the experiential/critical school pursues

subjective and experiential knowledge, critical insight, and interpersonal and technical

skills through critical reflection and action learning. From a critical perspective it aims to

educate critical practitioners with a strong sense of situated reflexivity in the pursuit of

empowerment, emancipation and social change. Its academic role is not only related to the

indirect pursuit of cultural and vocational interests. Emphasizing university autonomy,

management education is also seen to play a critical role in resisting the bureaucratization

and commodification of academic work.

References

Abrahamson, E. (1991), ‘Managerial Fads and Fashions: The Diffusion and Rejection of

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