Unrooting Management Education and Entrepreneurial Self From Neoliberal Demands: An Action Research Approach

Abstract

This study applies an action research to investigate the possibility of unsettling management education and the entrepreneurial self from neoliberal logic. The reflection takes as its case an action research diploma seminar in a Polish management school based on collaboration among students, employers from public and nongovernmental sectors, and academic teachers in the preparation of master’s theses. The main goal of this article is to illustrate the struggles involved in resisting neoliberal demands, including the ethical reorientation of the entrepreneurial self, in the management classroom. We conclude with a discussion of the emancipatory value of our project and its limitations.

Effects of Entrepreneurial Competence and Planning Guidance on the Relation Between University Students’ Attitude and Entrepreneurial Intention

“…This reaffirms the importance of formulating and adopting more holistic entrepreneurship teaching strategies, supported by successful worldwide field researches, theories and learnings. Entrepreneurial teaching could also use education for citizenship and for the exercise of substantive and responsible freedom that would strengthen the profile of more socially engaged entrepreneurial actions (Albuquerque et al, 2019; Zawadzki, 2020).…”

Antecedents of entrepreneurship in the career trajectories of junior enterprises alumni

“…These results are echoed in the studie by Salusse and Andreassi (2016), who criticize the teaching in entrepreneurship at universities for its lack of emphasis on experiential and dynamic methodologies that challenge students through the use of simulations, experimental laboratories, practices, and tests, stimulating critical thinking, and promoting maturation for the entrepreneurial career choice (Varamaki et al, 2015). In addition, these results are according with the study by Zawadzki et al (2020), who deconstruct the neoliberal form of the entrepreneurial self in the university classroom and put a great deal of effort into giving the students the opportunity to experience firsthand the reality of organizational processes and problems.…”

Navigating the Terrain of Entrepreneurship Education in Neoliberal Societies

“…One example where questions became discernible in particular during the master thesis process (Zawadzki et al, 2020), discusses how teachers attempted to join the debate surrounding the negative outcomes of neoliberal rationality in business schools and respond to the growing demands for the reinvention of management education (Steyaert et al, 2016). Using action research (AR) as a teaching process, Zawadzki et al (2020) sought to reorient both students' and their own thinking and actions to find routes to enact themselves as entrepreneurial selves in more meaningful and ethically aware ways. However, throughout the process, they faced the question of where this teaching effort leads us.…”

“…Although this subject position is difficult to detect-and therefore to resist-students have recently circumvented it through compliance or truth-telling strategies (Hedeboe Frederiksen & Berglund, 2020). Zawadzki et al (2020) illustrate the struggles involved in resisting neoliberal demands and the efforts needed to affirm an ethical reorientation of the entrepreneurial self in management studies. Similarly, from their liminalliminoid continuum Gaggiotti et al (2020) relate how students are invited to form "new" (alternative) selves through experiential learning.…”

“…Furthermore, we should not limit our investigations to how students engage in just these processes. The articles in this special issue call for extending this area of research to understand and embrace the identity work of teachers as well (see Wettermark, 2020;Zawadzki et al, 2020). Within the EE domain, there may be paradoxical tensions between the assumed "freedom" inherent to entrepreneurship (and entrepreneurship teaching) and the normative expectations set by our institutions and voiced by the students in terms of relevant content and the required qualifications for an entrepreneurship educator.…”