'Beasts, burrowers and birds': The enactment of researcher identities in UK business schools. Issue 3 (July 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Bell, Emma; Clarke, Daniel W
• Is Part Of: Management learning. Volume 45:Issue 3(2014:Jul.)
• Page Start: 249
• Page End: 266
• Publication Date: 2014-07
• Subjects: Knowledge production -- metaphor -- research practice -- symbolism -- undergraduate students -- visual analysis; Industrial management -- Study and teaching -- Periodicals; Executives -- Training of -- Periodicals; Organizational learning -- Periodicals; Knowledge management -- Periodicals; 302.35
• DOI: 10.1177/1350507613478890
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1461-7307

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.