In the past two decades, management studies have made significant use of poetry both in research projects and teaching contexts. During the same time, numerous collections of poetry have appeared focusing on business life with contributions in particular by office workers. This article addresses the relationship between management research on poetry and the actual poetry in these ever more frequently appearing collections. Most work in management studies focuses on the form of poetry, rather than the content. By applying the concepts of “evoked knowledge” and “shared texts” from Antonio Strati’s organizational aesthetics, the content themes are made visible. Persistent in these collections is the appearance of the related feelings of anger, rage, and despair. An interpretive exploration of relevant poems illustrates how this kind of analysis can contribute to a broader understanding of workplace-anger issues, one that fully and deeply incorporates the inner lives of workers.
In light of recent critiques of management education, this article examines the Carnegie Report's argument that the core components of liberal arts education (Analytical Thinking, Multiple Framing, The Reflective Exploration of Meaning, and Practical Reasoning) can and should be integrated into the undergraduate business curriculum. It then reviews prior efforts to draw on liberal learning in management education and provides an illustration of integration in the design of a required undergraduate management course for working adults. Included is a template that faculty can follow to better integrate Colby's four dimensions of liberal learning into their business and management courses, with emphasis on the reflective exploration of meaning. In addition to course specifics, the article explores learning outcomes and student/administrative/institutional responses, as well as limitations, challenges, and opportunities for the future.
In his article, “Educational Research: The Hardest Science of All,” policy scholar David Berliner (2002) asserts that “no unpoetic description of the human condition can ever be complete” (p. 20). Berliner's words echo the epistemological and methodological climate of late 1970s and early 1980s social science research, a phase often characterized as the “literary turn.” In this historical moment, social science scholars turned to interdisciplinary sources, most notably literary theory and the humanities, for new means of addressing the ineffable, aesthetic aspects of human activity. This work and emphasis remains a prominent, growing genre within several fields, exemplified by widespread recognition of Margaret Wheatley's poetic approach to leadership inquiry and pedagogy (2009), frequent inclusion of aesthetic works in leading research journals (such as Qualitative Inquiry), and recent creation of arts‐ and humanities‐based educational research criteria for submissions to the American Educational Research Association's annual conference and sponsored journals.
No field of inquiry better illustrates the need to understand human activity as “poetic” than leadership, which is perhaps the quintessential marker of social existence. Accordingly, in this symposium we wish to explore how such interdisciplinary approaches, specifically those grounded in the humanities, have manifested in leadership inquiry and pedagogy. It is our hope that this collection of essays will illustrate the breadth and depth of the field of leadership studies, as well as offer our readers new perspectives and inspiration in their own research and practice.
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