Beyond Legitimacy: A Bold Agenda for MLE Scholarship

Twenty years ago, Academy of Management Learning and Education (AMLE) was launched as a complement to the established suite of Academy journals, which focused on empirical scholarship (Academy of Management Journal), conceptual scholarship (Academy of Management Review), and management practice (Academy of Management Executive). Emerging from a task force recommendation, the Academy sought to introduce a journal that would “publish high-quality materials on management learning, education, and teaching” (Lewicki, 2002: 8). The AMLE editorial team envisioned a journal that would complement Journal of Management Education (JME) and Management Learning, which were already notable journals in the field, and, in so doing, further the legitimacy of management education in the Academy. The AMLE editors aspired to achieve this vision by “engaging the Academy’s best scholars and teachers in sustained dialogue and debate about their teaching philosophy and strategy, and, hopefully, to encourage them to apply their sophisticated analytical and research skills to the pressing matters of learning and education” (Lewicki, 2002: 8). At the time, “pressing matters” included evaluating the effectiveness of technological learning innovations such as “fancy” PowerPoint slides and streaming video and the impact of electronic versus paper submissions on publishing (Lewicki, 2002).

With record speed, AMLE established its unique position in the field of management learning and education (hereafter, “MLE”). AMLE became a home for diverse paradigms, lenses, and scholarly approaches to MLE that generate debate, dialogue, and provocation. Within its first decade, AMLE’s editors felt confident in stating that the journal was already “advancing the legitimacy of learning and education research in the management discipline and within business schools in general” (Brown, 2012, referencing Arbaugh, 2008: 5). Subsequent empirical research showed that AMLE’s editorial team established a high level of leadership legitimacy that paralleled AMJ, as well as structural, procedural, and consequential legitimacy ahead of other prominent MLE journals (i.e., JME, Management Learning, and Decision Sciences Journal of Innovation Education) (Rynes & Brown, 2011).¹ This legitimacy also extended to MLE scholars. The field began to attract young scholars who were embracing their MLE identities (Arbaugh, 2010) while established scholars no longer saw MLE scholarship as the “stepchild in one’s scholarly dossier” (Schmidt-Wilk & Fukami, 2010: 150).

And now our editorial team is presiding over the 20th anniversary of AMLE. As we consider how this past might inform the future for the journal and the field, our perspective is also grounded in the unimaginable circumstances in which we are living and working. The events of the past two years, including the pandemic, public reckoning with racial injustice, and growing political and economic chasms, have upended work, organizations, and academia. There is a symmetry to this context, as the inaugural issue of AMLE was published a year after 9/11. In that inaugural issue, MLE scholars examined how the events of 9/11 were transforming faculty careers, teaching, and management education more broadly (Lewicki, 2002). Twenty years later, we must now consider how our contemporary black swans (Taleb, 2007), or perhaps tsunamis, are defining the future for MLE and MLE scholarship.

With this backdrop, we lay out what we hope will be a bold, impactful, and perhaps even provocative agenda for the next 20 years of MLE. We frame this agenda around three core questions. First, we explore what management learning might become, given the events of the recent past. In other words, what is it that management students will need to know to have successful lives and careers and to build generative organizations? Second, we consider who management students are and how management academics might think more expansively about whom we have a responsibility to educate and develop. Finally, we turn our attention to our own institutions and careers as we consider the business of business schools. There is extensive discussion on the continued bureaucratization of academia and the pressures of academic life. How might we envision a different future that enables more management academics to craft meaningful, impactful, sustainable academic careers in which we are doing work that is “important and relevant for society” (Ryazanova, Wright, & Laasch, 2021)? Below, we expand on each of these questions as we suggest how MLE scholars might lead these conversations through empirical research, theory development, and constructive debate and dialogue.

WHAT IS MANAGEMENT LEARNING?

It may seem superfluous to note that the societal crises of the past two years are profoundly changing work, organizations, and careers. Nonetheless, we will take a moment to review a few of the events that are most relevant to this conversation of what students are learning through management education.

The most salient way in which the pandemic is transforming work is the permanent shift to an increasingly remote workforce. Organizations have been forced to experiment with new models of how work happens and how managers lead. Across all industries and contexts, managers are learning new ways to develop and coach employees, build strong teams, and manage conflict in a virtual or hybrid environment. This evolving environment requires different skills, greater empathy, and often exposes managerial shortcomings that are more evident in a remote or hybrid work context.

The pandemic has also exposed, and exacerbated, the stress, burnout, and mental health issues that have become prevalent in the modern world of work, sparking vigorous debates about causes and solutions (Kensbock, Alkærsig, & Lomberg, 2022; Pierce & Rider, 2022). The rapid increase in workplace flexibility that emerged during the pandemic is often depicted as a net positive, as it has led to reduced commuting and better work–life integration (Franken, Bentley, Shafaei, Farr-Wharton, Onnis, & Omari, 2021). Yet, in so doing, it has also blurred the boundaries between work and home, which has led to increased expectations of 24/7 availability, immediate responsiveness, and higher demands for collaborative work. Leaders who continue to disregard the impact of work on individuals’ mental well-being and boundaries will struggle to attract and retain top talent.

Beyond the pandemic, the public, widespread grappling with systemic racism, which has gone on predominately in the United States but has had worldwide implications, has exposed the ways in which inequity and injustice are reflected and reinforced by work and organizations, including business schools (Minefee, Caridad Rabelo, Stewart, & Jones Young, 2018). Scholars are acknowledging that organizations are not “race-neutral”; rather, they are “constituting and constituted by racial processes” (Ray, 2019: 27). Organizational processes related to everything from hiring and promotion, to professional norms, to hierarchies and role responsibilities function as mechanisms that reproduce inequality. Building organizations that are more inclusive will require leaders to enact new ways of organizing.

MLE scholars can lead these conversations by establishing empirical and theoretical bases for a pedagogy that challenges conventional approaches to managerialism and promotes management that leads with an ethics of human well-being, while also attending to organizational performance (Lavine, Carlsen, Spreitzer, Peterson, & Roberts, 2022). In AMLE, we are already seeing dramatic changes toward such a pedagogy, including embracing responsible management practices (Moosmayer, Laasch, Parkes, & Brown, 2020) and integrating self-awareness, mindfulness (Kay & Young, 2021), and reflexivity (Zulfiqar & Prasad, 2021) into management education and leadership development. These pedagogical perspectives provide a foundation for MLE scholars to explore new content, approaches, and theories of management learning that can catalyze a transformation of work and organizing. MLE scholars can also contribute to this conversation by examining how the role and stance of management educators might evolve to align with a pedagogy that invigorates more generative ways of working (e.g., Dyck & Caza, 2022; Worline & Dutton, 2022). To support a post-pandemic world of work that is more generative, inclusive, and humanistic, management educators will need to reimagine what management students need to know and how to best support this learning.

A generative, inclusive management pedagogy is also predicated on management educators becoming more informed about the ways in which dominant theories of management and organizing may be entangled in inequities based on race, gender, ethnicity, and class (Prieto, Phipps, Giugni, & Stott, 2021). For instance, Frederick Taylor’s work on scientific management continues to be included in management textbooks, as it is the footing for many modern-day management processes—yet, how many management students also learn that scientific management and bureaucratic organizing principles are based in part on “plantation management” and their use of enslaved people (Roediger & Esch, 2012)? How often do management students learn about the role of American business and business theory in the rise of Nazi Germany (Conn, 2019)—a topic that is of particular importance as we consider the role of business in supporting, and hopefully denouncing, totalitarian regimes? What benefit might it have for management students to understand how theories related to conformity or resistance to change stem from earlier work by social psychologists—specifically, scientists who were greatly influenced by their own personal losses during the Holocaust (Bridgeman & Cummings, 2022)?

Teaching students more humanistic, inclusive approaches to managing will require management educators to reckon with the racial, gendered, and class underpinnings of many management theories and integrate these perspectives into MLE. A more inclusive approach to MLE might also benefit from scholarship that explores diverse perspectives on organizing and managing along with masculine, Eurocentric management theories. Potential questions to consider include the following: How might management learning be expanded and informed by feminist ways of organizing or traditions from beyond the North Atlantic (Kothiyal, Bell, & Clarke, 2018; Woods, Dell, & Carroll, 2022)? Or, how might MLE scholars better understand the ways in which conventional management curriculum may be further marginalizing under-represented students even as we seek to develop a more inclusive approach to MLE (Minefee et al., 2018; Prieto et al., 2021)? MLE scholars have the opportunity establish the empirical and theoretical grounding for a management pedagogy that breaks down inequity and injustice rather than perpetuate it. In so doing, this may be the most profound way in which we can support a generative, equitable world of work.

WHO IS A MANAGEMENT LEARNER?

The second element of this broader, bolder vision of MLE centers on our students and expanding the scope of who has access to management learning. The UN Principles of Responsible Management Education initiative, which includes over 800 signatories, asks management educators to pledge their commitment to “providing future leaders with the skills needed to balance economic and sustainability goals” (PRME Secretariat, 2007: para. 2). At AMLE, we have seen an increase in theoretical and empirical scholarship that attends to developing responsible business leaders. Yet, in emphasizing the development of responsible business “leaders,” we have overlooked one of the fundamental ways MLE may be able to advance the UN Sustainable Development Goals—by expanding who can access, and benefit, from management learning.

A vast majority of today’s global workforce will not have the opportunity or resources to enter a management education classroom, be it in person or virtually. There are front-line, warehouse, and factory workers whose work lives could be transformed through exposure to management learning. There are farmers who may be struggling to pursue sustainable and humane farming practices while earning enough to support their families and communities. There are immigrants who have left behind their homes and families along with their work and careers and will need to build new work lives and identities (Hajro, Zilinskaite, & Baldassari, 2021). Formerly incarcerated individuals are pursuing entrepreneurial activities—in part, because they are more likely to struggle to find traditional employment (Patzelt, Williams, & Shepherd, 2014). And this list goes on. These individuals have much to gain from the transfer of management knowledge and skills as well as the personal and professional growth and identity development that occurs through management learning.

To broaden the reach of management learning, MLE scholars might start by exploring how management learning could be adapted beyond the classroom or university setting. MLE scholar might explore questions such as: (a) How might traditional models of management education be adapted to support learners in different settings?; (b) What could be less costly, but effective, approaches to management learning?; or (c) How do we begin to support management learning in a just-in-time coaching based format? Prior MLE scholarship on massive open online courses (MOOCs) can provide a foundation for these questions. While the disruption and democratization of education that MOOCs were expected to create has not materialized (Passarelli, 2014), past scholarship can still inform new perspectives for broadening the reach of management learning. MLE scholars might also learn from fields such as mental health, which has embraced coaching through apps, or recent developments in artificial intelligence. We may also want to explore how to bring in-person learning to students in diverse settings, which may be particularly important when connecting with vulnerable or immigrant communities who may need to socialize into new professional identities. These are just some of the ways in which MLE scholars can begin to think more expansively and creatively about who has access to management learning.

In thinking about how to expand the scope of who is a management learner, MLE scholars will want to be attentive to the needs, cultural background, and identities of more varied learners. For instance, Prieto et al. (2021) suggested that economically vulnerable individuals could be focused on developing leadership skills that will enable them to improve their communities rather than leave them behind. How might we adapt leadership pedagogy to embrace community-based models of leadership rather than the more prevalent individualistic achievement orientations to leadership? In communities where a business is expected to provide opportunities for the family, principles of management, coaching, and human resource practices may need to be taught differently. Alternatively, how might management education be adapted to support refugees who are simultaneously integrating into a workplace, a new profession, and a new life? Adaptation, customization, and attention to the differing needs of communities will be essential if we are to broaden the scope and impact of learners of management and organizations. In this way, MLE scholars can also advance the UN Sustainable Development Goals from the bottom up rather than simply supporting a top-down approach.

WHAT WILL IT MEAN TO BE A MANAGEMENT ACADEMIC?

As we challenge MLE scholars to be more expansive in what we teach and whom we teach, we also attend to how our own work world and careers are evolving. At AMLE, the journal’s mission has always included the business of business schools and scholarship that focuses on the “rhythms of academic life” (Billsberry, Köhler, Stratton, Cohen, & Taylor, 2019).

Over the past few years, this rhythm has been disrupted in profound ways. While management academics pivoted to maintain continuity for their students in the face of unimaginable trauma, doing so came with emotional stress, anxiety, and additional work demands. The competitive climate in which many faculty feel that they “must emphasize their identities as researchers and deemphasize their identities as educators” (Greenberg, Clair, & McClean, 2007: 439) and the effect of the managerialist controls and metrics prevalent in business schools (Knights & Clarke, 2014; Shams, 2019) have furthered the pressure and stress of an academic career. Management academics are increasingly feeling lost legitimacy and struggles with irresolvable tensions (Beech, 2011; Beech, Gilmore, Hibbert, & Ybema, 2016; Ellis & Ybema, 2010; Sveningsson & Alvesson, 2003). MLE scholars are poised to examine these dynamics as we seek to help ourselves and our colleagues build meaningful, sustainable academic careers.

MLE scholars are also poised to question the bureaucratization and institutionalization of business schools, which has increasingly created a two-tiered academic system of haves and have-nots. “Star faculty” who have low teaching loads, expansive research budgets, high salaries, and unusual fringe benefits such as forgivable home loans are funded, in part, by contingent faculty who have high teaching loads, few opportunities to engage in research, low pay, and less lucrative benefits. Management scholars are at the ready to condemn the inequities of organizational reliance on contingent workers and the gig economy (e.g., Kost, Fieseler, & Wong, 2020). Why then have we not taken concrete steps to examine these injustices in our academic worlds? This iniquitous situation is one that MLE scholars are well placed to consider, challenge, and change, and we must do so; critiquing injustice and inequity elsewhere requires the same scholarly scrutiny “at home.”

CONCLUSION

In closing, this broad, bold scholarly agenda is foundational to expanding the impact of MLE scholarship. Having long since established our legitimacy, it is time to use our position and influence to have an impact on the future of academic values, management and organizational norms, and institutions. Too often, we miss opportunities to drive management learning and management practice and public policy (Hoffman, 2021) as we maintain a stance of moral neutrality in the face of an international climate in which willful ignorance has been weaponized, economic growth has moved in lockstep with growing inequity, and intolerance has been overlooked simply because it has been inconvenient for governments and corporations to notice it. A response to these alarming trends demands a model of engaged scholarship that is robust and rigorous but also reflexive (Hibbert, 2021), so that we can contribute new, ethically informed insights that can lead to the formation of leaders, managers, and academic colleagues who can advocate for positive change (Greenberg et al., 2007; Hibbert, Beech, & Siedlok, 2017). Looking forward, MLE scholars will want to engage in research, theorizing, provocation, and debate that will cultivate a generative future for organizations, workers, and leaders—and for ourselves. As AMLE editors, we look forward to being part of conversations that will challenge and transform MLE and management practice. Such an outlook encompasses both our patient and enduring scholarly mission, and our urgent and pressing duty.