Learning subversion in the business school: An ‘improbable’ encounter

Abstract

Entrepreneurs develop activities that challenge the status quo, break the rules and subvert systems. How can such a thing be taught/learnt in a business school? This article contributes to current debates within entrepreneurship studies that aim to address the subversive nature of entrepreneurial activity. We conducted an ethnographic case study of an entrepreneurship course that seeks to redefine the teaching and learning boundaries of subversive activity in a leading European business school. Drawing on the theory of Bakhtin, which has thus far been overlooked in entrepreneurship studies, we unpick the potentiality of art practices in the learning and experiencing of the subversive dimension of entrepreneurship. We employ the concept of 'dialogical pedagogy' in order to address calls for more 'relationally experienced' approaches to management learning that foreground the conflicts, emotional strains and uncertainties that are embedded in the fabric of entrepreneurial practice. We show how 'subversive dialogues' are enacted between students and teachers as they engage in the learning process and discuss implications for critical entrepreneurship teaching in an increasingly commoditized education environment.

Learning everyday entrepreneurial practices through coworking

“…Hence, this research theoretically and empirically enriches the body of knowledge on learning that draws attention to learning possibilities beyond business schools and orthodox forms of management learning (e.g. Beyes and Michels, 2011;Bissola et al, 2017;Bureau and Komporozos-Athanasiou, 2016) by exploring the potential for everyday learning that is situated in unorthodox spaces.…”

“…In the management education context, Beyes and Michels (2011), Bureau and Komporozos-Athanasiou (2016) and Bissola et al (2017) discuss students’ appropriating spaces outside the norms of business schools to deconstruct and contest the status quo. Students become attuned to how space unfolds to offer contradictions and transformative possibilities (Beyes and Michels, 2011).…”

“…Such requirements create a sense of unfixedness in contemporary occupational identities (Loacker and Śliwa, 2016) and, at the same time, a need to learn how to organise everyday life and work within these uncertainties. It is understood that such learning needs to occur in situations that foster re-imagining and re-enacting of the ways we organise the socialities of the learning process (Beyes and Michels, 2011; Bissola et al, 2017; Bureau and Komporozos-Athanasiou, 2016). Hence, it is necessary to understand where and how entrepreneurial individuals learn to develop their everyday practices.…”

ReviewingManagement Learning: The field and the journal

“…Those studies that do theorise individual learning tend to be small scale (e.g. Bureau and Komporozos-Athanasiou, 2017; Culpin and Scott, 2012) and there is a decline in the meta-theorising of individual learning that might serve as a guide to practice such as those mentioned at the beginning of this paragraph.…”

What can managers learn online? Investigating possibilities for active understanding in the online MBA classroom

“…Here, disagreements are allowed to surface only in restricted manner, factual quibbles over whether this or that industry is more profitable, while wider questions, such as that of the utility of such 'facts' or the trustworthiness of experts, or even the notion of profit are pushed into the background. This leaves us with a very stylized form of speech, one that is deprived of 'ideological coloration and specificity' (Bakhtin, 1984: 382) and more akin to typical MBA talk with the impress of the authoritative voice, both inscribed in the programme, the system and the instructor(s) (Bureau & Komporozos-Athanasiou, 2016). There is little evidence that Episode A does more than elaborate abstract ideas.…”