UNIVERSITY OF READING

‘I don’t wear an MBA T-shirt, I wear an MBA vest’: Adaption and identity work among MBA graduates Benjamin Reid January 2009

Submitted in fulfilment of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Henley Business School

Abstract This thesis adds to the rapidly-expanding body of work concerned with understanding how individuals undertake identity work at work. The identity work literature is in an elaboration phase. This thesis contributes to that elaboration by developing a concept of ‘adaption’, which extends and refines the identity work process through studying a specific context: management learning, and, in particular, Master of Business Administration (MBA) graduates in their workplaces. I first of all frame their experience of becoming an MBA through a discussion of the broader issues and discourses surrounding the MBA qualification, particularly a nagging concern from many stakeholders that its value is questionable. Despite extensive research demonstrating the monetary value of an MBA to individual learners, the discourse surrounding MBAs seems to obsess over whether this is ultimately real ‘value’ – it seems we must strive to rule out it being a self-fulfilling prophecy, or an empty symbol held together by people’s beliefs, like the fabulous robes of the ruler in the ‘the emperor’s new clothes’ fable. Examining the identity work undertaken by MBAs provides insight into why this nagging concern remains, and highlights some of the problems for traditional evaluative approaches to the MBA. A central contribution of the thesis is its repeated ‘takes’ on the MBA identity work experience, firstly examining the MBA as an expatriate, attempting to translate their business school developed MBA identity into a workplace identity. The second approach is of the MBA employing the qualification as a mask, through which others might see them. The third ‘take’ attempts to understand how individuals might combine aspects of the first two ‘takes’ in a process of ‘adaption’. The thesis argues that ‘adaption’ as a perspective on the identity work processes of MBAs gives better insight into the constitution of an MBA identity than many alternative conceptualisations.

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Declaration of Original Authorship I confirm that this thesis is my own work and the use of all material from other sources has been properly and fully acknowledged.

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Acknowledgments There’s always a danger of coming over all Oscar acceptance speech in acknowledgments. I can quite understand how many authors go for the cryptic quote rather than the effusive laundry list. On the other hand, over the length of my period of study, I have built up such debts of gratitude to so many, it would churlish not to enumerate as many as possible here. First of all I would like to thank my supervisors, Professors John Burgoyne and David Birchall, and Dr Liz Houldsworth, for their ideas and inspiration. Many thanks also go to the AutoMaker and GovDept employees who were kind enough volunteer to be participants in the data collection for this study – particularly the four who had me skulking around their office for a week. I would like to thank the (former) denizens of Kennet House 5 (and other sundry PhDers who have joined me on this roller-coaster ride) for their humour, advice and friendship along the way, including Rachel Quaye, Anna Truch, Cigdem Gogus, Helen Stride, Suzie Moon, Jeni Giambona, Carola Hillenbrand and Nick Silburn, and most especially Nigel Spinks, without whose constant knowledgeable support (and badgering) this thesis would never have been completed. This thesis has lasted considerably longer than the major relationships of my life (to-date!). I therefore owe an enormous amount to the patience and kindness of Ellie Hyde, who began this journey with me; to Hannah Riddell, who saw the thesis and me through its difficult middle period, and particularly to Laura Bevan, who has been fantastic in encouraging me to see it to the finish. Most of all I would like to thank my parents, Will and Dee Reid, for their unstinting support for me in so many different ways I’d need another thesis just to list them all. On a final, more flippant note: I registered for this degree only a few weeks prior to the American election debacle in Florida in November 2000, in which George W Bush was installed as president through the so-called ‘Rehnquist putsch’. I’m submitting it only days before Bush’s successor is inaugurated. I feel that, given a yardstick of ‘almost-single-handedly bringing the world’s only superpower to its knees’, this thesis has, by contrast, been a fairly successful use of an individual’s time.

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Table of Contents Page number Abstract ............................................................................................................................................................ 2 Declaration of Original Authorship ........................................................................................................ 3 Acknowledgments ........................................................................................................................................ 4 Table of Contents .......................................................................................................................................... 5 Table of Figures ............................................................................................................................................. 9 Table of Tables ............................................................................................................................................... 9

1.

Introduction ........................................................................................................................................10 1.0.1 What this thesis is about................................................................................................................ 10 1.0.2 What this thesis is like .................................................................................................................... 10 1.0.3 Thesis structure................................................................................................................................. 11

1.1

The discourse of learning.......................................................................................................................... 15 1.1.1 Relevance, Risk and Responsibility ............................................................................................ 16 1.1.2 The rise (and rise) of management development and the MBA..................................... 20

1.2

Evaluating management development and the MBA .................................................................... 23 1.2.1 Human capital approaches and the ‘black box’ .................................................................... 27 1.2.2 The Emperor’s New Clothes and the MBA as ‘signalling’ ................................................. 30 1.2.3 Developing research questions .................................................................................................... 31

2.

Literature Review.............................................................................................................................33

2.1

Learning Transfer ........................................................................................................................................ 33 2.1.1 The empty vessel ............................................................................................................................... 34 2.1.2 Transfer of Training.......................................................................................................................... 36 2.1.3 Transfer of Training: psychological traditions ...................................................................... 37 2.1.4 Moving on from transfer of training .......................................................................................... 40

2.2

The Process of Learning ............................................................................................................................ 41 2.2.1 Social learning ..................................................................................................................................... 42 2.2.1.1 Phenomenology and practice ............................................................................................ 42 2.2.1.2 Situating social learning ...................................................................................................... 43 2.2.2 Communities of Practice ................................................................................................................. 46 2.2.2.1 CoP and reification................................................................................................................. 46 2.2.2.2 CoP and change ....................................................................................................................... 47 2.2.2.3 Legitimate Peripheral Participation ............................................................................... 47 2.2.2.4 Multi-membership of Communities of Practice......................................................... 48 2.2.2.5 Identity and learning in CoP .............................................................................................. 49 2.2.3 The MBA as broker........................................................................................................................... 50 2.2.3.1 Boundaries ................................................................................................................................ 51 5

2.2.3.2 Boundaries and brokerage ................................................................................................. 52 2.2.4 Critiques of Communities of Practice ........................................................................................ 54 2.2.5 Building on Communities of Practice ........................................................................................ 57 2.3

The Function of identity ............................................................................................................................ 59 2.3.1 Functionalist identities.................................................................................................................... 61 2.3.2 Modernity and identity.................................................................................................................... 63 2.3.3 High modernist approaches to identity (1): Social Identity Theory............................. 65 2.3.4 High-modernist approaches to identity (2): Identity projects ....................................... 67 2.3.4.2 Critiques of identity projects ............................................................................................. 69 2.3.5 Conclusions to high-modernist identity ................................................................................... 70

2.4

Poststructuralism and identity ............................................................................................................... 72 2.4.1 Identity in a post-structuralist era ............................................................................................. 72 2.4.2 Foucault and identity in organisations ..................................................................................... 75 2.4.2.1 Foucault and ‘power / knowledge’ ................................................................................. 75 2.4.2.2 Foucault and management development ..................................................................... 77 2.4.2.3 Foucault as panacea? ............................................................................................................ 80 2.4.2.4 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 83

2.5 Identity Work ......................................................................................................................................................... 84 2.5.1 Developing identity work ............................................................................................................... 84 2.5.2 ‘Balancing’ structure and agency in identity work .............................................................. 89 2.5.3 MBA identity work? .......................................................................................................................... 92

3.

Methodology........................................................................................................................................95

3.1

Methodological frame................................................................................................................................. 95 3.1.1 Mapping management research ................................................................................................. 96 3.1.2 Positioning the empirical work................................................................................................... 99 3.1.3 Inductive and qualitative............................................................................................................ 101

3.2

Methodologies ............................................................................................................................................ 104 3.2.1 Interviews .......................................................................................................................................... 104 3.2.2 Observation ....................................................................................................................................... 107

3.3

Method ........................................................................................................................................................... 109 3.3.1 Sampling ............................................................................................................................................. 111 3.3.2 Undertaking the data collection - interviews ...................................................................... 113 3.3.3 Undertaking the data collection - observation ................................................................... 113

3.4

Analytical techniques............................................................................................................................... 114 3.4.1 Metaphors .......................................................................................................................................... 114 3.4.2 Data presentation ........................................................................................................................... 116 3.4.3 Data analysis procedure .............................................................................................................. 117

3.5

Validity.......................................................................................................................................................... 119

3.6

Conclusions to methodology ................................................................................................................ 121

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4.

Findings.............................................................................................................................................. 122

4.1 The MBA as Expatriate ................................................................................................................................... 122 4.1.1 Introduction: The expatriate metaphor ................................................................................ 122 4.1.2 Data analysis: the MBA as Expatriate .................................................................................... 125 4.1.2.1 Social learning and differentiating communities ................................................... 125 4.1.2.2 There and back again: An MBA’s tale .......................................................................... 127 4.1.2.3 Multiple communities ....................................................................................................... 130 4.1.2.4 You speak MBA?................................................................................................................... 134 4.1.2.5 Translation............................................................................................................................. 136 4.1.2.6 Preparing for translation ................................................................................................. 137 4.1.2.7 Translation as finding a ‘space’ for repatriation .................................................... 139 4.1.2.8 Translating concepts and practice ............................................................................... 142 4.1.2.9 Brokering the MBA ............................................................................................................. 145 4.1.3 Conclusions ....................................................................................................................................... 147 4.2

The MBA as Mask ...................................................................................................................................... 149 4.2.1 Introduction: the mask metaphor............................................................................................ 149 4.2.2 Data analysis: the MBA as Mask................................................................................................ 151 4.2.2.1 The MBA as symbol ............................................................................................................ 151 4.2.2.2 The discourse of MBAs...................................................................................................... 153 4.2.2.3 The MBA as mask ................................................................................................................ 156 4.2.2.4 Showing and hiding the MBA ......................................................................................... 160 4.2.2.5 Being / doing the MBA mask .......................................................................................... 164 4.2.2.6 Identification and the MBA as mask ............................................................................ 167 4.2.3 Conclusions ....................................................................................................................................... 171

4.3

The MBA as Adaption .............................................................................................................................. 173 4.3.1 Introduction: the adaption metaphor .................................................................................... 173 4.3.2 Data analysis: the MBA as Adaption ....................................................................................... 175 4.3.2.1 Adaption by ‘cutting: first this figure, then that’ ................................................... 177 4.3.2.2 The texture of adaption .................................................................................................... 179 4.3.2.3 (Di-)vested interests and the MBA............................................................................... 183 4.3.3 Conclusions ....................................................................................................................................... 188

5.

Discussion and Conclusions........................................................................................................ 190

5.1

Adaption and MBA Identity work ....................................................................................................... 190 5.1.1 Reflections on adaption as identity work ............................................................................ 192 5.1.2 Adaption and identity work frameworks ............................................................................ 195 5.1.3 Situating adaption in the recent empirical literature ..................................................... 198 5.1.4 The implications of adaption .................................................................................................... 205

5.2

Limitations ................................................................................................................................................... 208 5.2.1 Methodological Reflexivity ........................................................................................................ 208 5.2.1.1 Generalisability .................................................................................................................... 210 5.2.1.2 Reliability................................................................................................................................ 212 5.2.2 Epistemological Reflexivity ....................................................................................................... 213 5.2.2.1 Reflections on good identity work work ................................................................... 213 7

5.2.2.2 The meta-skills problem .................................................................................................. 214 5.2.3 Disciplinary Reflexivity ............................................................................................................... 215 5.2.3.1 Multi-standpoint research ............................................................................................... 216 5.2.3.2 The (theoretical) road not travelled............................................................................ 217 5.3

Contribution of the thesis and directions for further research .............................................. 219 5.3.1 Contributions of the thesis......................................................................................................... 219 5.3.2 Directions for further research ................................................................................................ 221

References .................................................................................................................................................. 223

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Table of Figures Page number Figure 1: Thesis map...................................................................................................................................................12 Figure 2: The structure of the discourse of management learning.........................................................16 Figure 3: A value-chain model of the impact of business and management education.................23 Figure 4: Identity regulation, identity work and self-identity..................................................................87 Figure 5: Positioning management research....................................................................................................96 Figure 6: Positioning the research of this thesis.............................................................................................99 Figure 7: The process of managerial expatriation and repatriation....................................................123 Figure 8: Adaption and MBA identity work....................................................................................................192 Figure 9: Comparing Alvesson and Willmott (2002) to the MBA adaption model.......................196

Table of Tables Page number Table 1: Conceptualisations of learning.............................................................................................................44 Table 2: Conceptualisations of identity..............................................................................................................60 Table 3: Description of data collection organisations................................................................................109 Table 4: Data collection matrix............................................................................................................................111

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1. 1.0.1

Introduction What this thesis is about

This thesis is about the MBA(s). There, I’ve said it. Within six words I’ve taken great strides in the ‘carving’ of written ‘organisation’ for this thesis from the ‘disorganisation’ of blankness (Cooper, 1986). Like a modern-day Dr Frankenstein I’ve reflexively given my vast and unwieldy construction a ‘subject’ to be ‘about’ – an ‘I’, if you will, in ‘order’ for it to begin its process of exorcising, through writing, the ambiguities of the world (see De Certeau, 1984: 134) and to lurch on stitchedtogether legs towards its bound identity as a ‘thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy’ (Reading PhD regulations) for its thrilled-yet-still-frightened creator. Interestingly, of course, it is this creation which is ‘evidence’ of my completion of the PhD, and indeed will stand as such to back up my qualification should I be awarded it, but yet actually (of course) this sentence has been written well in advance of knowing whether it will actually do so. These words therefore constitute part of that evidence, yet cannot do so while I write them. It is then somewhat ironic that having spent 8 (or so!) years examining and exploring the relations between ‘learning’, ‘identity’, ‘qualifications’ and ‘practice’, that this thesis now become the central symbol and ‘boundary object’ (Wenger, 2000; Bowker and Star, 2000) by which my sense of identity as a doctor is confirmed (or otherwise!), it now existing precisely in that maelstrom between practice, representation, legitimacy and identity in which I’ve been so interested in relation to my subject – the MBA – all along. In a sense, of course, what this thesis is ‘about’, then, has little to do with MBAs at all, and is rather ‘about’ my acceptance into the academic community – it can be ‘about’, in the prepositional sense, the process of completing a doctorate. My sense is that it will also have set you thinking (if the title hadn’t already) about all of your possible personal connections to MBAs – to MBA graduates among your friends, MBAs in your workplace, perhaps MBAs you’ve taught, or even been married to. Or perhaps your thoughts don’t go to a particular MBA at all, but to ‘MBAs’ in general – what they’re like, how they look, how they behave – or even to the MBA qualification itself (if it can be said to have an ‘itself’), and not the people at all. This thesis will address the MBA qualification, and its evaluation, from the perspective of ‘identity’ and ‘identity work’ – a somewhat different take than many academic and practitioner studies which have attempted to ‘value’, to ‘categorise’ of MBAs into pre-configured boxes marked things like ‘better’ and ‘worse’; ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ ‘ROI’; ‘more competent’ or ‘less competent’. In doing so, this thesis will follow Beck, et al. (2003) in finding that the main issues around such evaluative boundaries are no longer ‘across’ them, but in the variety of generative mechanisms for constructing who we are among them, and therefore take ‘the process of the construction of these divisions as the focus of analysis’ (Munro, 1997: 4). This thesis will include and explore some of the broader sets of connections to the MBA that may have been ‘about’ (‘In the area or vicinity; near’) in your mind; triggered by your act of viewing that loaded triumvirate of symbols: MBA.

1.0.2

What this thesis is like

The empirical focus of this thesis is narrow, focusing on a very small number of individuals who could not hope to represent (and should not be expected to) the vast range of those who have 10

undertaken, or are undertaking, MBA programmes. As is perhaps suggested above and will be repeated later on, concrete assertions of causality, ‘proof’ and ‘facts’ concerning the MBA – its unequivocal ‘worth’, future, and prospects – are not to be found here. However, what it might be seen to lack in empirical breadth, it attempts to recover through conceptual breadth and insight. As Stanley Deetz (1996) suggests, even when insights into actual concrete practice on a day-to-day level are ‘particularistic regarding both time and place … the emerging analytic frame is designed to aid the deeper understanding of other particular settings’ (196). While clearly open to the accusation of over-reaching the remit of its evidence, this thesis attempts to comprehend (in its etymological sense of ‘to grasp together’, as Heidegger, 1988 [1927]: 21) notes) a broad range of theoretical elements, drawn from some fairly diverse intellectual traditions. The extent to which this theoretical collage has been successful is, so to speak, in the eye of the reader (and see the limitations of the thesis on Chapter 5). What I see as the more definite, and specific, contributions which this thesis makes are discussed in Section 5.3.

1.0.3

Thesis structure

This structure of this thesis is laid out in a thesis ‘map’ (see Figure 1 below). It shows the flow of ideas and connections between the various areas of literature, methodology and findings presentation. For brevity, at this stage some of the more controversial statements and concepts pass uncommented here, as they will be addressed and definitions explored during the main body of the thesis. For the same reason, this overview will be unencumbered by references. This opening Chapter is designed to ‘set the scene’ in both the broader social context of learning and management learning in particular. In Section 1 it suggests that rise of the MBA can be explained through its position as the outcome of a number of important and powerful discourses, which can be accessed through discourse analysis. Section 1.2 then examines the issues involved in the evaluation of MBAs through both organisational and scholarly channels. It describes both the positive and negative lines of argument current around the MBA, and from that analysis, poses a number of research questions which will be tackled by the empirical work in this thesis. The primary theoretical literature is then reviewed in this thesis in Chapter 2, which covers two themes which have central relevance to the understanding of the MBA in the workplace, and its evaluation: those of learning, and of identity.1 Learning is explored in Section 2.1 and 2.2 at a greater theoretical depth than the context-setting of Chapter 1. The thrust of the argument in Sections 2.1 and 2.1 is that, generally speaking, a ‘normative’ or ‘functionalist’ theory of learning underlies many of the existing attempts to understand and ‘value’ the MBA, and that consideration of alternative conceptions which are informed by a more constructionist or post-structuralist understanding might provide stronger theoretical resources for examining the MBA. The argument of these sections proceeds from a concept of ‘transfer’ underlying conceptions of learning (Section 2.1), to one which understands learning as situated within Communities of Practice (Section 2.2).

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The structuring of the literature review was informed by the discussion of structuring literature concepts outlined in Dunleavy, 2003: 62-75)

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Chapter 1: Context 1.1 The role of learning in the discourse of modern Western organizations and society

1.2

The position of the MBA and management qualifications in that discourse – and methods of evaluating it

Chapter 2: Literature Review Themes

Perspective

Learning

Normative / functionalist

2.1 ‘Transfer’ of Training

2.3 Functional / unitary identity

2.2

2.4 Post-modern / post-structuralist identities

Constructionist / post-structuralist

Situated Learning theory (SLT) – Communities of Practice

Identity

2.5 Identity-work

Chapter 3: Methodology

Frame Methodology

3.1 Research frame 3.2 Interviews, Observation

Method

3.3 Context, sample, and data collection

Analysis

3.4 Analytical techniques

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Chapter 4: Findings 4.1 Metaphor 1: The MBA as Expatriate

4.2 Metaphor 2 The MBA as Mask

4.3 Metaphor 3: The MBA as Adaption

Chapter 5: Discussion and Conclusions 5.1 Adaption and MBA identity work

5.2 Limitations

5.3 Contributions and directions for further research

Figure 1: Thesis map As an approach to learning, Communities of Practice theory takes particular account of the concept of identity. Because of the importance of identity to understanding situated learning, identity is central topic of the second half of the literature review. Mirroring the structure of the first half of Chapter 2, Sections 2.3 and 2.4 trace a distinction in conceptualisations of identity between normative / functionalist and constructionist / post-structuralist approaches. Views of individual identity drawn from psychology as a discipline tend to assume the stability of individual identity, and can be seen to align generally with a more normative / functionalist view, while those more adopting a fluid concept of identity are informed by a poststructuralist or post-modern approach. These two themes, of learning and identity, are then discussed together in Section 2.5 through the idea of ‘identity work’. Identity work is suggested as a frame for exploring and understanding how learning and identity ‘change’ are occurring to MBAs in the workplace. The conclusions to the literature in Chapter 2 are designed to set a loose frame for the research, rather than a constraining research ‘model’. Chapter 3, and particular Section 3.1, then sets the frame developed through the literature within a research paradigm model, and links that task of classification to the appropriate methods for undertaking the research. The ways in which specific use of the chosen methodology is made within this thesis is then outlined in Section 3.2, centring 13

on the approaches of interviews, and observation. The more practical elements of the method, including sampling, are then discussed in Section 3.3, and the approach to analysing data – in particular the decision to analyse through the ‘lenses’ of three metaphors – is covered in Section 3.4. Chapter 4 presents the findings of the thesis through the ‘lens’ of the three metaphors – the first, covered in Section 4.1, is of the MBA as Expatriate, and it explores issues of ‘brokerage’, ‘liminality’ and ‘translation’. The second metaphor, examined in Section 4.2, is of the MBA as Mask, covering the showing and the hiding of the MBA, the MBAs a kind of badge or label, and the idea of identification of, or with, an MBA. The last metaphor, that of the MBA as Adaption, (covered in Section 4.5) introduces a neologism to explore how the MBAs cut a particular figure as an MBA in the workplace, and how they divest themselves of the MBA. Chapter 5, and in particular Section 5.1, then draws out some of the central conclusions of the research, linking it back to the research questions outlined in Chapter 1. Section 5.1 additionally locates and discusses the new concept of ‘adaption’ within the appropriate literature. Section 5.2 discusses of the limitations of the research both conceptually and methodologically, and Section 5.3 concludes the thesis by indicating what I see as its main contributions – conceptually, methodologically and practically – and with the outline of a research programme to take forward the ideas developed in the thesis.

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1.1 The discourse of learning I make no apology for placing higher education at the heart of the productive capacity of the knowledge-driven economy. David Blunkett, UK Education Secretary, 2001 In the last 20 years or so ‘learning’ has become the buzzword that can do no wrong. Education and learning are the solutions to every putative problem – to poverty and social deprivation, unemployment, re-employment, and national competitiveness, through to ‘making the most of one’s opportunities’, and even ‘living a fulfilled life’ (see Hesketh, 2003). Institutions at all levels of society have rushed to embrace the drive for greater, faster and more ‘flexible’ learning for the betterment of all, with the UK’s New Labour government perhaps the most vehement in its pronouncements – the former Education Secretary’s self-confident quip quoted above being one of a plethora of such ‘headline’ statements2, with the most ubiquitous being the former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s claim that his top priorities for government were ‘education, education, education’. There is little indication that the current UK leadership is any less in thrall to the power of learning. If the invocation of ‘learning’ as a panacea at a national level has been bombastic, the rhetoric for learning within organisations has been (if the mainstream business press in the 1990’s and 2000’s is anything to go by) even more gushing, with learning posited variously as: ‘the only lasting source of competitive advantage’ (Thurow, 1992: 27, see also Stata, 1989: 64); the ‘key to long-term organisational success’ (see, for example, Grant, 1996; Collis, 1994), and, for an even more apocalyptic example, Kirnan (1993: 9, my emphasis): Propelled by the competitive exigencies of speed, global responsiveness, and the need to innovate constantly or perish, and enabled by new technologies, learning will become the only viable alternative to corporate extinction. In this section of Chapter 1 I will set the context for the rest of the thesis. To do so I will take the kinds of statements I quote immediately above as examples of a powerful discourse which can be analysed to help us understand the historical context of the rise of the MBA degree, and something of its current role in society. Discourse and discourse analysis are complex and sometime controversial terms, but they offer a powerful lens through which to understand and analyse social context. For the purposes of this introductory chapter, by discourse I mean: ... language use relative to social, political and cultural formations – it is language reflecting social order but also language shaping social order, and shaping individuals’ interactions with society. (Jaworski and Coupland, 1999: 3) I am adopting a discursive view of the kinds of statements which open this section because I agree with Contu, et al. (2003: 945) that ‘at a minimum, learning cannot sensibly be discussed in isolation from its political context’, and therefore think it appropriate to take the ‘wide-angle lens’ (Chouliaraki and Fairclough, 1999) of discourse – an approach which adopts what Hardy (2004) calls 2

I’m here conflating the terms ‘learning’ and ‘education’, although I’m aware that for some this is controversial (see Thomas and Anthony, 1996).

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a ‘distal’ focus – to examine the kinds of statements which are shaping the social order around learning, and in particular, management learning. I would suggest that there are three major ‘moves’ within the structures of discourse which have shaped the rise in popularity of learning generally, and management learning and the MBA in particular. All three of these ‘moves’ are related to the shift towards what some have termed the ‘knowledge economy’ (Drucker, 1969), something which is causing, as Hugh Willmott (1994: 109) says, individuals to feel a ‘heightened sense of indeterminacy, freedom and responsibility’. From these suggestions come the three major areas in which the discourse of learning is shaping the rise of management development and the MBA (see Figure 2 below): the need for individuals to mitigate ‘risk’ in modern society which no longer provides relatively stable social roles but rather a high degree of indeterminacy; the balance of freedom to undertake what one desires – for example in what one learns – against the demand for ‘relevance’ in that learning; and the shift of ‘responsibility’ for mitigating that risk from social institutions and structure onto individuals. While I would argue these discursive forces are highly interdependent, I begin by discussing them separately.

Risk: in a ‘knowledge’ economy your value is what you know, which must be kept ‘up-dated’ Relevance: the push for a greater connection between education and employee practice

Responsibility: the shifting of the onus for ‘relevant’ development to the individual

The Rise (and rise) of management development and the MBA

Figure 2: the structure of the discourse of management learning

1.1.1 Relevance, Risk and Responsibility The first aspect of this discourse of learning is very apparent from the kinds of statements and claims made in the opening paragraph of this chapter: that of the relevance of people and their ‘knowledge’ to the proper, and better, functioning of organisations and society. This shift has been heralded by the arrival into mainstream management discourse of a whole host of terms linking knowledge – that is, people – and working. As a smattering of examples, compare ‘knowledge worker’ (Drucker, 1993), ‘knowledge-intensive organisations’ (Alvesson, 2000), and ‘human capital’ 16

(Fitz-Enz, 2000; Becker, 1964), all designed to emphasise the centrality of human resources to enterprise. With people as the key lever for management to pull, their knowledge and skills – and the development of those through learning – are seen to be of central relevance to all of corporate life: The total development of our people is essential to achieving our goal of corporate excellence…the fullest development of people is on an equal plane with financial success … practicing the virtues of life and business success are not only compatible but enrich on another. (Senge, 1990: 143-4, quoted Grey, 2002: 185) Viewing this discourse from one angle, then, the thrust of the rhetoric is towards an altruistic focus on the greater development of people by organisations. Such an apparent determination by organisations to invest in education and learning would seem at first glance to be a triumph of a ‘liberal’ perspective on education, where all institutions in society – private and public – should embrace education for education’s sake (Hugstad, 1983). However, when discussed in terms of what kind of learning is required, and, just as importantly, what kinds of people are required to do that learning, a more specific form of relevance is invoked (Rappert, 1999) so that, as Contu, et al. (2003: 941) suggest, despite the fact that the ‘promulgation of learning discourse in the 1990s can be read as the invocation of a seemingly more benign language which superficially resonates with progressivism [it still maintains] an underlying commitment to functional or utilitarian conception of education’. Relevant education is not, then, what individuals would like to study, but is increasingly focused towards the development of what are seen as ‘business and management skills’, which will increase the ‘employability’ of individuals (Brown, et al., 2003) and (seen as a direct consequence) improve the performance of organisations (Olian, et al., 1998; Moingeon and Edmondson, 1996). The intransitive role of learning and education from a ‘liberal’ perspective is therefore made ‘relevant’ by being rendered as a transitive form of ‘training’ (Antonacopoulou, 2001; 1999; Grey and Garsten, 2001); a utilitarian preparation for a job position matching the increased focus on the ‘performativity’ of state-funded education (Brown and Hesketh, 2004; Willmott, 1995). Opportunities for individual freedom in learning and development are recast as simply an organisational ‘lubricant’ (Höpfl and Dawes, 1995), smoothing the ‘fit’ between individual and organisation: learning becomes ‘concerned with the enhancement of attributes of the person [for the purpose of] the pursuit of order and predictability in organisational performance’ (Höpfl and Dawes, 1995: 19), and education becomes assessed solely against the extent to which ‘our current educational and learning environment supports or hinders the growth of a knowledge-driven economy’ (Foresight: Information, 2000: 7; see also Prichard and Willmott, 1997). Education and learning are then only ‘relevant’ insofar as they are appropriately ‘vocational’ training – with skills developed through learning as close as possible in their delivery mode to their expected application at work. As business and management are seen as key drivers of national and global economies, the push for ‘relevance’ in education in and of itself would predicate increasing interest in, and provision of, business and management education such as the MBA. However, the rise of management

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development and the MBA is not only driven by its conformity with the demand for ‘relevant’ education, but also by the related discourses of risk and responsibility. The sociologist Ulrich Beck has termed the condition of western modernity a ‘risk society’ (Beck, 1992). He calls it this because he believes that a key discourse of modern society is its emphasis on flexibility: that individuals can change who they are through the course of their lives, including their roles, personal circumstances, social status and standing etc. The implication of such flexibility is that one’s role, personal circumstances etc, are therefore always at risk and must somehow be maintained. An individual’s position in society is therefore always, for Beck, an insecure one (Beck, 1992), not guaranteed by right of birth or caste, but requiring action to ensure one can ‘progress’ within society, and conversely, that one does not ‘slip’ within society. Within the context of organisations, an implication of this discourse of risk is increasing flexibility around the distribution of jobs and roles, the discourse both allowing and expecting movement between roles on the basis of recognition of skills and abilities rather than, say, only based on tenure in the job (Beck, 2000). But each affirmation of skills and abilities at work – for example promotion – creates new insecurities, and requires new and continued demonstrations of skills and abilities for the role to be maintained. However, as sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, 2001: 227, ellipsis in original) points out, citing Jean Baudrillard, ‘diffuse, unfocused anxieties admit of no specific remedies…’. One method of temporarily assuaging that insecurity might be to gain a new indicator of one’s skills and abilities, and a good example of such an indicator would be an academic qualification, and in particular, one seen as relevant. However, any particular qualification’s ‘relevance’ is still relative, creating an open-ended drive for more indicators of abilities, skills and knowledge, in which the only way to appropriately address risk is to constantly call for more indicators – at an individual, organisational and national level. Hence, despite at least 50 years of formal management education tradition in the UK, Professor Michael Porter can easily, in 2003, produce an analysis to government which condemns the ‘poor quality of much of the British management cadre’ and recommends as medicine for the condition … a greater focus on management development and education (see, for example, Stewart, 2003)3. Because no specific symbol or indicator reaches or provides that grasped-for security, the only solution is then the constant reinvestment in indicators of knowledge which do not represent the knowledge directly, but rather show individuals as the kinds of people who take time to invest in their own development – that is, demonstrating a forward-looking aptitude for relevant learning (Sennett, 2003). The taking up of what are designated as relevant learning opportunities therefore becomes a crucial way in which employees can signal their aptitude, attempt to mitigate their social risk, and show enthusiasm for their current or prospective organisations. In this way the discourse of a risk society underpins and supports the drive for relevant learning towards evergreater consumption of management development, and in particular, management development qualifications like the MBA. 3

There is now an established litany of such ‘official’ calls for ‘better’ – i.e. more – management education in the UK – most noting in passing the higher levels of management education in the US. These stretch back from Porter cited in the main text through the 1987 report by Constable and McCormick for the CBI (Constable and McCormick, 1987), and the ‘Owen Report’ of 1971 (Owen, et al., 1971).

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One further aspect of the modern discourse of learning has informed the rise of the management development qualifications, and that is the way in which the responsibility for the relevant mitigation of risk – for example through undertaking management development – is shifting in responsibility away from social institutions, structures and organisations, and onto individuals (Contu, et al., 2003). Chris Grey (1997) actually terms this shift ‘responsibilisation’, to indicate the pressure the discourse exerts on individuals to conform. There are two actions within the responsibilisation thesis, which can be glossed as the ‘carrot’ and the ‘stick’: rewards and punishments (Foucault, 1977/1980). In terms of rewards, the discourse suggests that one can be seen as doing ones civic or national ‘duty’ by investing in oneself in terms of relevant development – by doing one’s bit to ensure national economic growth in the face of fierce global competition. This idea of obligation to continued individual development is captured in the notion of what Anthony Hesketh (2003: 2) terms ‘employability’, within which learning is ‘being increasingly rearticulated and transmogrified by policy makers in both the UK and US as a means through which individual and social (economic) fulfilment can be obtained’. Undertaking development as a manager is therefore positioned as a way of helping your society as well as yourself. However, as noted in the discussion of relevance above, the range of options to which one should apply oneself is in fact sharply circumscribed, at precisely the same time as the onus of responsibility is made clear: Management development may advocate growth and improvement of the individual; however, in so doing it is employed as a means of transferring the responsibility for development to the individual, while holding the promise of future promotion which is a means of recognition and reward. (Antonacopoulou, 2001: 329) Furthermore, the discourse of responsibilisation, as evidenced by statements from governmental and organisational sources, provides a strong incentive to conform by spelling out the penalties for non-compliance (Bauman, 2001). The summary thrust of the this aspect of the discourse, as Bagnall, (2000: 21, quoted Hesketh, 2003: 3) notes, is that ‘it is no longer enough to tread water. In the new global, knowledge-driven economy you have to run just to stand still.’ It is therefore your responsibility to develop yourself so that you can contribute in ways which are socially or organisationally desirable, or, as this statement from US business guru Gary Hamel (2000: 25) indicates, you risk losing relevance, security and status: Dream, create, explore, invent, pioneer, imagine: do these words describes what you do? If not, you are already irrelevant. British business guru Charles Handy (1995: 3, my emphasis) concurs when he informs us that in that in modern, ‘intelligent’ organisations, ‘there is no place for the incompetent … [such organisations are not] going to be everyone’s cup of tea unless they are educated and prepared for it’. This element of the ‘stick’ – the threat of irrelevancy – in relation to the ‘carrot’ of learning opportunities for individuals is crucial to understanding the overall operation of the discourse. As sociologist Richard Sennett concludes, any failure to demonstrate an enthusiasm or aptitude for learning and self-improvement can result in the organisation, or society, viewing you as a burden and from this position it is extremely difficult to garner any form of legitimised social respect (Sennett, 2003) and is also often a severe curtailment of any hopes of career progression (Grey, 19

1994). It is in this sense that taking responsibility to participate in ‘relevant’ management development can be seen as an admission of vulnerability – an acknowledgement of the need for symbols of aptitude to garner security – rather than the ‘free choice’ of a ‘self-starter’ manager (Ackers and Preston, 1997).

1.1.2 The rise (and rise) of management development and the MBA Each of the aspects of the discourse discussed above – relevance, risk and responsibility – operating individually would point toward an increase in the provision and take up of management development and management qualifications. But the interaction of these three discursive ‘tropes’ forms a powerful driver towards ever-greater occurrences of management development. As the discourse of relevance pushes education, and educational experience, to be understood only in economic or (potential) monetary terms (Ritzer, 1993; Willmott, 1995)4, it is not surprising there is a clamour for well-recognised symbols of those in society who are conforming to the discourse through their investment in appropriate development. So, from a discourse analysis of the kinds of statements regarding learning which resonate in modern western society, and reference to authors who themselves have analysed this learning discourse, increasing investment – by both organisations and individuals – in business and management education is an entirely understandable, even inevitable, phenomenon. Business and management education provides (or at least should provide) a form of development which is seen as relevant to the economic drivers of education generally, and gives an opportunity for responsible individuals to demonstrate aptitude to help them gain promotions and deal with, or at least hedge against, their constant social insecurity and risk. These networks of discourses operating interdependently therefore go a long way to explaining the current £1bn a year expenditure on business education in the UK alone (Crainer and Dearlove, 1999). And within the broader rise of management development, a qualification which symbolises those attributes back to the broader social discourse, and is interpretable in those terms, would be both powerful and seen as valuable: the MBA is arguably such a signifier. The purpose of this opening examination of aspects of learning in society was to set the context regarding the rise of management development. It is, however, an analysis which is highly sensitive to the concept as a discourse, rather than seeing learning as a concrete phenomenon whose rise and prominence should go as natural or unquestioned. From this analysis it should be understood that business and management development, and the MBA, fulfil a social as well as a business need; something not always acknowledged, or perhaps not understood, by some investigators of the MBA. With the discursive context regarding management development now explored, this analysis moves to understand the historical context of the MBA qualification specifically. The MBA is now firmly entrenched as the most widely-known, and widely-conferred, postgraduate qualification in the world. It is described by Baruch and Peiperl (2000) as the ‘jewel in the crown’ of 4

This move towards monetary valuation of all social action was termed ‘de-differentiation’ by Lyotard (1984: 48): ‘The question (overt or implied) now asked by the professional student, and the State, of institutions of higher education is no longer “is it true?” but “What use is it?”’, education then becoming dominated by the need to ‘improve the performativity of the social system' (Lane, 2000: 88)

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management studies. It is perceived as the top qualification on 12 criteria in an extensive survey of managers conducted by Schofield (2000) including employability, getting the respect of one’s colleagues, and developing leadership skills. Baruch and Peiperl (2000: 71) trace a quantitative expansion of the MBA in the UK from 20 MBA programmes producing roughly 1200 graduates in 1986, through 113 programmes with 4080 graduates in 1991, 6714 graduates in 1994, and 9117 graduates from 116 programmes by 1998. The UK government figures show an astonishing 40865 Masters graduates in business and administration studies in 2006-7 in the UK (HESA, 2008), of which more recent Association of MBAs figures suggest over 10,000 are MBAs (AMBA, 2007). While this still pales into insignificance beside an AACSB figure of 90,000 MBA graduates a year in the US, (of 146,406 business masters awarded in 2007 (USDE, 2008)) it is clear that the trend towards the MBA as a management development qualification has been an unequivocal stampede. The genesis and history of the rise of the MBA in the UK has been somewhat different to its equivalent appearance in the US. The MBA qualification was instituted at Harvard in the USA in the early 20th Century (Khurana, 2007), but introduced to Britain only after the founding of the first state-funded business schools in 1965 as a result of the Franks Report into the UK’s requirement for dedicated business schools (Jones, 2003). While the immediate-post-graduation MBA programmes widely offered in the US were seen as almost obsolete by the 1950s, and only recovered their status through the raising of entry standards and the academic quality of faculty, the UK has always concentrated on providing so-called ‘post-experience’ MBAs whereby students gain several years of industry experience prior to beginning the course. However, while the rise in prestige of the American MBA has been almost unchecked since that mid-century crisis, the development of the MBA programme in the UK is widely seen as being ‘held-up’ by the suspicions of British manufacturing – exemplified by the Owen Report of 1971 (Owen, et al., 1971) – that the advantages of an academic qualification were mostly for individuals, whereas what were perceived as more ‘practical’ shorter post-experience management programmes were seen as of greater organisational advantage (Workman, 2003: 2). One of the Owen Report writers’ chief concerns, as noted by Nancy Foy (1978) was the apparent absence of a clear connection between what industry (in this case mostly manufacturing, as the three report writers were all senior managers of heavy industry companies) desired from managers, and what business schools were delivering – in other words, a failure of ‘relevance’. The MBA was instituted and intended primarily as a conscious attempted to raise the standard of the British management cadre overall, and, to a certain degree, to ‘professionalise’ the role of manager (Reed and Anthony, 1997; Grint, 1995: 45-67). This is, interestingly, in sharp contrast to the US, where business schools’ status issues focused on around the inability of business studies to establish itself as a serious and professional discipline within the academy (see Khurana, 2007). While issues over the content and curriculum of the MBA have bubbled under constantly since the discussions of the 1970s – for example around the degree to which MBAs should be available in industry or discipline specialisms (Hunt and Speck, 1986), have a national or international flavour (Costea, 1999), or approach management from a ‘scientific’ or humanities perspective (Butler, 1986) – most UK MBA programmes are now accredited by one or more of the various regulatory bodies – AMBA, EQUIS and AASCB – each of whom stipulate a core curriculum which must be covered. Widespread external accreditation has therefore standardised much of the course content across different MBA programmes, although not around the teaching styles and delivery 21

formats, which remain extremely diverse (Brocklehurst, et al., 2007; Mazza, et al., 2005). Regardless of the format of delivery, the direct and indirect costs of an MBA programme to individuals and organisations can be very high. MBA programmes at what are considered the most prestigious schools can routinely cost £40,000 for a one-year programme, and factoring in living costs during a year spent not earning, and the opportunity costs of ‘missing’ a year’s experience in business, make an MBA programme an extremely expensive undertaking. However, the MBA course in the UK has from the start been unusual as a higher education qualification, in that it has always been a course which has attracted both individuals paying their way through the course, and corporations interested in ‘sponsoring’ employees through the qualification – therefore the full costs have not always fallen on the individual student. Although (as is hinted towards in discussion of the Owens report above) the motivations and expectations of individual and organisational stakeholders in the MBA relationship are far from transparent or unambiguous, the prevalence of corporate sponsorship is at least indicative of an assumption of the ‘value’ of MBA programmes to corporations as well as to individuals. Therefore, for both sponsoring corporations and individuals, the MBA is clearly viewed as a major, but valuable, investment of time and money. As Alisdair Mant (1981: 24), a very insightful investigator of management education, summarises: Management education, whatever revelations it may permit, is likely to be seen primarily as a means to a hoped-for end. The end is accelerated career progression and the school will be expected to reinforce hope in the future. Viewing the MBA as an investment – something given now in the hope of a later pay-off – is, of course, exactly what the multiple strands of the discourse of learning examined above would expect. Rather than straight-forward ‘spending’, the cost the MBA programme is very widely understood as something which will achieve a return, and a financial one, for variously the individual, the organisation and for society. These ideas and conceptualisations of the MBA have, through a number of discursive moves, driven the rise of the MBA, but they also very clearly provide the context and colour for both academic and practitioner approaches to valuing and evaluating the MBA qualification. Section 1.2 will therefore draw on this section’s discursive analysis to examine how management development and the MBA have been evaluated.

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1.2 Evaluating management development and the MBA The huge investments in management development and in the MBA – from both individuals and corporations – have unsurprisingly been accompanied by strong calls for extensive and rigorous evaluation of these investments. If the MBA is to be viewed primarily as an investment, as the previous section suggested, then there is going to a great deal of interest in calculating a return on that investment. While the previous section took a highly ‘distal’ view of the discourse of learning to examine the rise of the MBA, this section shifts the focal length somewhat to examine how the value of the MBA – and of broader management development – is being conceptualised, understood and investigated. To begin with, a ‘value-chain’ model for management development is presented. The assumptions of this value-chain I would argue underpin a great deal of mainstream management development evaluation. A number of research studies are then examined to understand how they related to the model, with some of the study findings then being used to critique the model. In the light of the research findings the model is then re-conceptualised to give rise to a number of important research questions regarding the MBA. The analysis of Section 1.1 positions the MBA as the outcome of a number of key discursive ‘moves’ which serve to inform and direct our understanding of learning. However, I would suggest that the general underlying assumption of the value of an MBA is predicated on a quite different model – a ‘value-chain’ which links the undertaking of management development programmes such as the MBA progressively to its expected impact elsewhere. This chain stretches from the MBA programme itself, which is expected to increase an individual’s knowledge and skills, which then in turn impacts that individual’s ‘performance’ at work, their organisation’s performance, and then ultimately to the economic performance of society / the nation-state. Figure 3 below show a well-established version of this chain – it informed a major government-funded review of the value of management education in the UK completed in 2002.

Business, management and leadership education

Individual business, management and leadership capacity – including thinking, knowledge, skills, selfconfidence

Certification, personal learning, career aspirations

Application at work through individual – task performance and wider individual contribution to team / organization

Organizational performance benefit

National and global economic performance and social benefit

Subsequent employment, career prospects, remuneration,. Personal well-being and constructive citizenship

Figure 3: A value chain model of the impact of business and management education (Adapted from Hirsh, Burgoyne and Williams, 2002) 23

The model from Hirsh, Burgoyne and Williams (2002) additionally indicates the expected impact of management development on an individual’s career. It constitutes a logical, causal chain of impacts, which attempts to unpack and explain how it should (come to) be that, as statements of the broader discourse suggest, investments in management development should create national and even global economic performance improvements (Brown, et al., 2003). Data deemed to be useful in evaluating of the success of management development programmes such as the MBA can then be ‘fitted’ to the model. Individual studies can therefore examine different links within the model as part of contributing to the evaluation of the entire discourse. So, for example, a positive link can be found between undertaking an MBA programme and individual knowledge as measured by the standardised General Management Aptitude Test (Kretovics, 1999; van der Sluis and Poell, 2002). The link between the MBA and career advantages, particularly in terms of increase in remuneration, is wellsupported, with Dugan, et al. (1999) finding that MBA graduates are likely to be better paid, promoted faster and given greater managerial responsibility sooner than those without, and Tracy and Waldfogel (1997) finding that there is a salary premium for an MBA even taking into account different levels of skill and remuneration at the point of joining the programme. As already noted, the MBA is additionally viewed by surveyed managers as the top qualification for employability and gaining the respect of your colleagues (Schofield, 2000). By far the most widespread indicators of the link between an MBA graduate and a salary premium (compared to their pre-MBA salary) are the myriad ‘league tables’ of business schools, the most well-known of which are produced by, and published in, Business Week, the Financial Times and The Economist. While these ranking systems measure many variables, the primary determinant of a business school’s league table position remains ‘before and after salary’ for their MBA programmes – i.e. an economic return on investment calculation for the individual. While the actual level of salary increase varies considerably by a) industry, b) pre-MBA salary level relative to industry norms and c) by school attended, on aggregate they indicate an extremely strong link between an MBA and career success as measured by remuneration (see, for example, Crainer and Dearlove, 1998). The perceived individual return on investment of an MBA is certainly evident in the way in which many business schools attempt to attract individuals to an MBA programme, with the MBA’s ability to ‘turbocharge your career’ (Hazelwood, 2003) very often to the forefront. Other links in the chain are also supported by empirical research. For example, Gallie and White (1993) found, in a survey of 4000 UK graduates, that 94% of respondents felt their MBA courses had been beneficial in terms of gaining a promotion, an increase in earnings, or an increase in job satisfaction or commitment – measures which straddle a return on investment for the individual and the organisation. Examining the link in the value-chain model between MBA performance and organisational performance Bertrand and Schoar (2003: 23), who studied 600 firms and 500 managers – some of whom worked for more than one organisation in the studied period – found a ‘positive relationship between MBA graduation and corporate performance as measured by rates of return on assets and operating returns on assets’, and, although the research is not focused on the MBA specifically, there is good positive evidence from an extensive literature review of the value of investments in management development to industries and nations (Blundell, et al., 1999). 24

But even including all of these findings, the strongest evidence for the value-chain conceptualisation is surely the raw numbers of individuals undertaking an MBA degree. The uptake of the MBA can be seen as an indicator of the soundness of the model, and therefore of the value of the MBA in the way in which the model assumes. In this sense, the model works because it works: individuals would surely not make these huge investments of their own money if there were not a reasonable degree of return, and corporations would not in turn sponsor students, or pay the higher salaries they do to MBA graduates, if there were not proportionate returns in such outcome measures as productivity, performance and profit. Following this logic, the MBA doesn’t need to be evaluated further than the evidence of its popularity – its value is inherent in its success in the ‘marketplace’ of possibilities. This highly positive understanding of the MBA is undoubtedly part of a broad discourse of the MBA which positions it as a prestigious qualification which commands a considerable salary premium, is an important indicator of extended individual knowledge and skills, and as something which drives superior individual, organisational and national performance. This understanding of the MBA clearly resonates with managers and with organisations, at least in their hiring, promotion and remuneration decisions. However, to assume this completes an understanding of the evaluation of the MBA would be telling (arguably less than) half the story, and certainly one that all but ignores the important issues from Section 1.1. See, for example, the following interesting extract from a transcribed discussion session conducted during a management development programme, analysed by Tony Watson of Nottingham Business School. It neatly illustrates some of the ambiguities and more subtle aspects of the issue of the broader image of the MBA: One woman immediately jumped in to tell the story of a man who had joined her organisation eighteen months previously. “He’s the kind of person who is never going to fit in”, she explained. She told how he had “done a full-time MBA” and come to the conclusion that he had to implement all the ideas he had learned on his “very expensive course”... [However] he had “little idea of how to relate to people”, and partly “because he had paid out so much money to learn this weird language” he felt he must talk in this way. (Watson, 2001: 390) This individual case certainly doesn’t fit with the positive value-chain analysis of the MBA. But other empirical data is also less than supportive of the positive effect of the MBA on the value chain. For example, O'Reilly and Chatman (1994; see also Pfeffer and Fong, 2002) show a very mixed picture in correlations between grade scores gained on the MBA and post-course salary, suggesting what is being measured on the MBA programme is not what is valued in the career marketplace. This finding is a breakdown of the knowledge
career benefits link in the value-chain model, which happens to also be one of the links with the strongest evidence to support it. It also appears that, although the pre-post programme salary comparison shows a premium for the MBA, comparing matched groups of MBAs and non-MBAs over the time of the former group’s MBA and three years beyond graduation, the data indicate few direct career advantages from taking an MBA compared to not doing so (Baruch and Leeming, 2001). The link between the MBA and superior individual performance is further eroded in Leonhardt, 2000: 18) comparison of job evaluations of MBAs and non-MBAs at the same consulting firm, and the finding that ‘non-MBAs were receiving 25

better evaluations, on average, than their peers who had gone to business school [to do an MBA]’ (see also Linder and Smith, 1992). Even at the broadest level of national competitiveness, it is far from clear that countries with almost no tradition of formal, qualification-based management education (for example Germany and Japan) have suffered any deleterious effects in their overall economic standing in comparison to the Anglo-Saxon countries which have very high take-up of the MBA degree (Grey, 2002: 185). Empirical findings which question the links in the MBA value-chain model can be supplemented by data which actively casts a bad light on the MBA. For example, research quoted in Ferraro (2005), discovered that the two demographic factors which correlate most highly with a propensity to commit fraud are a) a background in the armed forces or b) a business school degree. Couple this with the extremely high proportion of MBA graduates among Enron managers – and that firm’s very close links to business schools through sponsorship arrangements (see, for example, HarvardWatch, 2002; Mackensie, 2003) – a rather unfortunate picture is painted to the likely value of (an) MBA(s) to an organisation, and certainly one which would support some of the concerns, or prejudices, of the programme participant quoted in Watson (2001) above. For some commentators, these concerns are sufficiently serious as to warrant a wholesale rejection of the MBA, at least in its current form. For example, Henry Mintzberg’s (2004: 23) highprofile book-length critique of the MBA Managers not MBAs begins from the premise that ‘the MBA trains the wrong people in the wrong ways with the wrong consequences’. Others with similarly trenchant views of the MBA include Bennis and O'Toole (2005), Kuchinke (2007) and, although their target is wider than just the MBA, Ghoshal (2005) and Ferraro (2005), all of whom castigate the MBA for focusing too narrowly on ‘science-based’ methods at the expense of what are seen as the wider requirements of being a successful manager (and, by implication, successfully operationalising the value-chain model). While the focus of these critiques is the MBA programme – described as a ‘a weird, almost unimaginable design’ (Leavitt, 1989: 39) – individual holders of MBAs are not spared either, deemed ‘critters with lopsided brains, icy hearts and shrunken souls’ (Leavitt, 1989; quoted Pfeffer, 2001: 80). The message to businesses thinking of employing MBAs is stark: All MBA graduates should have skulls and crossbones stamped on their foreheads, along with warnings that they are not fit to manage. (Mintzberg, 2004: 12) Interestingly, none of these authors is questioning the requirement for a management qualification to support the management development value-chain model, or indeed the model itself. Rather they question the demographics of the participants, the curriculum, and the pedagogy of the programme, on the basis that the evidence (such as those studies quote above) suggests the MBA is not working as expected by the value-chain model. They would contend that the MBA might be successful for the individual in terms of career or remuneration, but that advantage is not being ‘passed’ down the value chain to organisations and society, e.g. that the MBA idea is sound, but its execution means it is not relevant to the needs of the other stakeholders such as organisations and society (Bennis and O'Toole, 2005). Some influential academic critics of the MBA go even further, for example Jeffrey Pfeffer and Fong (2002: 80) conclude that ‘there is little evidence that mastery 26

of the knowledge acquired in business schools enhances people’s careers, or that even attaining the MBA credential itself has much effect on graduates’ salaries or career attainment’. Understood in terms of the value-chain model of Figure 2, the empirical studies evaluating the MBA present a very mixed picture of the value of an MBA. However, the well-publicised nature of the critiques certainly creates at least the potential for a broader negative designation to the MBA within academia and the wider business world – one that sets a clear context for the comments made by Watson’s (2001) programme attendee, and is given further support by the following quote from a non-MBA manager, commenting in a memoir on the MBAs he remembers being brought in to ‘turn around’ in his online bookselling organisation: At times the MBAs seemed to dwell in a parallel universe where the nuts and bolts of the business – the number of books moving in and out of the warehouses – counted for less than the statistical shadows on the wall. (Marcus, 2004: 27) Despite this confusing picture of MBA value – its enormous success suggesting high value and reputation, but a lot of the evidence pointing elsewhere – there is one area in which most scholars are confident the MBA programme, and qualification, makes a difference: ‘MBA graduates are better, at least in their self-perception, on a number of measures, and such high self-efficacy may well lead to better performance’ (Baruch and Peiperl, 2000: 80). Sinclair (2002), surveying HR personnel responsible for sponsoring MBAs, also reported what the HR personnel perceived to be large gains in the self-confidence of their employees once they were MBAs. However, such apparently positive findings are just as easily re-interpreted, with Baruch and Peiperl (2000: 81), also choosing to comment in the same study that ‘it may be that those who evaluate and reward managers with MBAs are more likely to ensure that their performance is rewarded, perhaps because of a fear that, otherwise, they would be faster than others to leave’.

1.2.1

Human capital approaches and the ‘black box’

It seems the value-chain model has considerable problems in dealing with the ‘self-efficacy / selfconfidence’ finding, and furthermore has no way of understanding the role of the MBA other than as ‘failing’ if the empirical data fail to support the expected links in the chain. I would suggest that these problems – and they should be viewed as problems, give the very contradictory picture the empirical literature paints – are rooted in the management development value-chain’s assumptions, which draw on human capital theory (Becker, 1964) and the ‘returns to education’ school within the discipline of economics (e.g. Johnes, 1998). As economics is the dominant discipline within business and management scholarship (Ferraro, 2005) this is not surprising. This approach to evaluating education, sometimes called the ‘schooling’ approach within economics (Spence, 1973) informs the overall value-chain model, and each of its links – even when such a debt is not acknowledged by research studies. The human capital approach, as we have seen, aims to understand the economic benefits of different investments in education at different levels and on different units of analysis. But there are two areas of concern with ‘human capital’ model of

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economics when applied to the MBA – both of which are visible in the review of the MBA evaluation literature above. Firstly, the human capital model is at heart what Bruno Latour (see also Munro, 1997) calls a ‘blackbox’ model: it measures inputs to and outputs from the actual phenomenon, say, someone with an MBA, and examines correlations between them. But it does not examine the phenomenon itself which, within the research design, remains boxed off. Although the empirical studies based on the value-chain model and the human capital approach can select different points in the chain to measure, and use different measures, they cannot investigate – and in many cases are not interested in – how this value transfer is achieved, i.e. what is in the box. Because these approaches yield no information regarding how MBAs graduates might be operationalising the management development value chain, they can only speculate – for example suggesting that selfefficacy ‘may well lead to better performance’ (Baruch and Peiperl, 2000: 80) – as to the kinds of practices MBAs are undertaking (or not undertaking) to deserve either their higher salaries, or the scepticism concerning their achievements. Secondly, and relatedly, a black-box model such as the management development value-chain has to assume the relatively straight-forward visibility of the impact of the MBA, using measures usually drawn from the financial rewards of individuals, or the financial performance of departments, organisations and nations: recognising and measuring the impact of the MBA is then a case of selecting appropriate variables. But recognising and understanding the ways in which the MBAs might be making an impact cannot be assumed to be ‘read off’ data such as departmental or organisational performance. A rather good example of the recognition problem comes from a national newspaper interview article with an MBA graduate, who expresses the following concern: My employer - a multinational - was very encouraging when I said I wanted to do an MBA and helped finance it. But now I'm back in the fold, they aren't interested in applying anything I learned, so it's extremely frustrating. I'm actively looking for another job. (Jones, 2004) Being recognised as applying learning – of ‘doing’ MBA – in the workplace is a crucial link in the value-chain model. And this concern is not just one from this individual, but a consistent finding in surveys of MBA graduates (e.g. Golzen, 2001), and studies of MBA programmes and graduates (Legge, et al., 2007). Yet a black-box approach doesn’t access or investigate this possibility. Partly this is because the value-chain model tends to ignore possibility that there could be ‘considerable tensions in the relationship between the individual and what the company expects of him or her’ (Höpfl and Dawes, 1995: 21), and downplays the ‘difficulty of trying to manage some kind of accommodation between the various stakeholders’ (Lees, 1992: 139). Instead the assumption of consistency of aims and objectives from the MBA is maintained by research into the MBA based on the human capital model, even as the problem is acknowledged. Research based on the black box approach attempts to address the problem of recognition by shifting from measures based on, in the main, financial performance, to ones which measure the perceptions of various stakeholders involved. By measuring the perception of the success of the programme from the perspective of multiple stakeholders – or their assumed proxies, such as 28

‘strategic priorities’ for the viewpoint of senior managers – and testing whether their views are aligned, we can have greater confidence that the MBA as acting as the value-chain model would suggest (e.g. Winterton and Winterton, 1997). For example Mabey and Thomson (2000) surveyed MBA graduates and found that the key factors in determining a their personal views of the success of their programme were: the organisation’s firmness of commitment to management development, their clarity of strategy and explicitness towards management development, and the extent to which the organisation took control of provision. From the point of view of the valuechain model this indicates that a crucial factor in the success of the programme were that the participants understood the organisation as really wanting the kind of management development they were undertaking, something another study in the area terms ‘degree of external consistency’ (Kessels and Harrison, 1998: 52). A study by the same researchers but which surveyed HR personnel sponsoring people on the programmes found that every single one felt there had been some positive, and no negative impact on their firm as a result of HRD programmes sponsored by their organisation (Thomson, et al., 2001). All of these studies use perceptual measures to address some of the ‘black-box’ issues around recognition, and assume that consistency, or ‘alignment’ of opinion across stakeholders is indication that the value-chain still holds. However, their assumptions concerning what consistency of response from different stakeholders might mean remains within the black box, even using these perceptual measures. Alisdair Mant, writing in 1981, indicates the problem with the alignment approach: It is difficult, for example, for a corporate sponsor to evaluate a programme other than by attending to reports brought back by participants. But a participant may approve of a programme for reasons which have no connection with his likely job performance; or he may disapprove because it was a difficult experience for him [sic], and properly so. (Mant, 1981: 37) One interpretation of these ‘alignment’ studies is of course that MBAs are performing better because their undertaking of the MBA fits more clearly with their organisation’s strategic commitment to management development etc. However, another, as indicated by Mant (1981), is that those organisations who indicate to their employees, through various policies, that management development is important to them, then gain more positive responses from those employees, and that HR personnel who have made the decision to sponsor MBAs at great cost might feel responding in a negative way to the outcome might reflect badly on their own decisionmaking. While this second reading of the data might be dismissed as being cynical or troublemaking, in fact these studies, based on the black-box model, cannot distinguish between the two interpretations by using their data, leaving them utterly unable to counter the critiques of the MBA and its value already explored above. So, using the value-chain model – based on human capital theory – and a black-box approach to research into the MBA, creates a complex and highly indeterminate picture in terms of what the value of an MBA is, and to whom. Shifting to an ‘alignment’ approach allows for the important possibility of stakeholders in the value chain having different perspectives, but methods based on consensus cannot rule out the possibility that these stakeholders are agreeing to agree for reasons other than those planned for by researchers. Both approaches remain unable to counteract the strong critique levied against the MBA, even though those critiques are not themselves questioning the underlying value-chain model. Black-boxing the actual practice of what MBAs do is clearly a 29

problem for these methods and studies, and this problem remains when ‘alignment’ approaches are used to try and recognise the MBA instead. In fact, the alignment approach, where agreement between everyone as to the value of the MBA is taken to be the value of the MBA, is worryingly reminiscent of the Hans Christian Anderson folk-tale ‘the emperor’s new clothes’.

1.2.2

The Emperor’s New Clothes and the MBA as ‘signalling’

In the folk-tale ‘the Emperor’s New Clothes’, an emperor is sold by a shyster an apparently magnificent, but ‘actually’ non-existent gown that ‘only the cleverest people can see’. When ‘wearing’ this ‘gown’ on a parade through the street, all spectators collude in the viewing of the gown as proof of their intelligence, and are only disabused of the state of affairs when a small child in the crowd points out the ‘obvious’ truth. In terms of the MBA, as much of the research proceeds by the assumption that alignment of views between individuals and stakeholders constitutes evidence of value, there exists the possibility of seeing the MBA qualification as the ‘gown’, the individual who holds the MBA as the emperor, and the crowd as the vast range of senior managers, other MBA holders, business schools, management academics who are involved with MBAs one way or another. Indeed Mintzberg (2004: 36-7), as part of his critique, draws exactly this parallel, positioning himself as the small boy who points out the emperor / MBA’s nakedness. This view of the MBA positions it as a ‘self-fulfilling prophesy’ (Larsen, et al., 1998), a reading actually supported by the Dean of Columbia Business School, who commented that ‘of the top 15 people at Morgan Stanley, seven are [Columbia] alumni. It sort of becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy’ (Stern, 2002: 42). Given this reading, and the picture painted by the research reviewed so far in this thesis, it seems impossible to discount the possibility, or indeed probability, that MBA graduates do better in terms of career etc. because they are MBA graduates, regardless of whether they are better employees or managers – or of whether they impart their increased ‘value’ to the organisation and on to society. There is perhaps then nothing behind the symbol of the MBA – it really is the emperor’s non-existent robe – and is operating as a kind of sophisticated ‘con-trick’ perpetrated by everyone on everyone (Holmes, 1995a, see also Sturdy, et al., 2006a; Collins, 2004), and the MBA is a form of ‘pre-rational’ magic, a mystical ‘hocus-pocus’, ‘laden with organisational ritual … a game of meaningless outcomes’ (Clarke, 1999: 41). The MBA is then equivalent to more esoteric development programmes based on ‘fashionable pseudo-theory, therapy and quick remedies … pretentious American psycho-babble … highlighting the importance of positive stroking, cuddling and “Zeus culture” … with the occasional Zen or Eastern input’ (Williams, 1996: 24, quoted Clarke, 1999: 38). Interestingly, the discipline of economics has always been aware of, and analysed, qualifications as a signal, rather than an attribute – a label which tells the external audience something rather than something reflecting a specific internalised quality of an individual. They call this the ‘signalling’ (or sometimes ‘sorting’ (Johnes, 1998)) model of returns to education (Spence, 1973; Jaeger and Page, 1996). Within this model, the MBA signals something to the job market about the individual able to show that symbol. Although within economic analysis the signalling model maintains the black-box approach, so they are not interested in measuring what lies ‘behind’ that symbol, clearly analysing the MBA as a signalling symbol in this way is open to a kind of ‘fraud’: what if someone could show the ‘signal’ – the MBA – but not be the ‘better’ manager that it is supposed to symbolise? The 30

signalling model of conceptualising value is in many ways parallel to the ‘emperor’s new clothes’ understanding of the MBA, but with some important distinctions: the emperor’s new clothes story is negative – in that a clear fraud is being perpetrated – and resolved, in that the small boy is able to make a final designation about the emperor’s clothes, one way or the other. The signalling model allows for a symbolic – and consensual – approach to be adopted when investigating the MBA, but doesn’t assume the case can be resolved. In fact, economists assert that whether a human capital or a signalling model better explains the data – e.g. really tells us the truth about qualification and its value – cannot be resolved empirically (Johnes, 1998). Viewing the emperor’s new clothes issue in the light of the signalling model of returns to education opens up the space for an understanding of the constitution of an MBA which acknowledges the MBA as something ‘created’ between observers, but also the cause of, at least potential, ‘real’ outcomes.

1.2.3 Developing research questions Chapter 1 of this thesis has explored two key areas in order to set the context for the research to follow. Firstly, through a discourse analysis of the rise of the MBA degree, which located the MBA as at the centre of a powerful discourse which is affecting the behaviour and choices of individuals, organisations and societies. This discourse informs both the perception and understanding of the MBA in different social contexts, and the approaches taken by scholars and others to understanding the value of the MBA. The second half of this chapter has examined the ways in which the MBA has been evaluated, locating much of the research base as underpinned by a ‘value-chain’ concept of the MBA’s value, and utilising black-box approaches to undertake investigation. The resulting empirical picture is very mixed, with some starkly negative empirical evidence contributing to an influential and widespread critique of the MBA. What is clear is that the black-box approach elides any sense of the practices or practice which the MBAs are undertaking might be contributing, or otherwise, to the kinds of performance targets against which they are being measured. Because of the problems of recognising the MBA – or its effect – using financial measures, other research has shifted to an ‘alignment’ or ‘consensual’ model, which is still based on the black-box approach. This approach to recognising an MBA has advantages over the financial measures, in that acknowledges the importance of different stakeholders. However, its assumption that stakeholder alignment automatically implies the value-chain model is operating as expected leaves it open to the charge of the ‘emperor’s new clothes’ – that everyone is agreeing to agree. The constitution of an MBA in the workplace is at the heart of the problems of the approaches to the MBA examined in this chapter. The way in which learning is, and is seen to be, happening or applied in the workplace requires a close focus on the way in which MBAs are practicing, and recognised, as MBAs in the workplace. From Section 1.2, it seems that investigating the constitution of an MBA in the workplace will require an approach that takes account of, and can deal with, both the black-box and the emperor’s new clothes readings of the MBA. Finally, Sections 1.1 and 1.2 both set up a range of discourses which inform, create and analyse the MBA as a signifier and a symbol invested with considerable power and meaning. Both the 31

‘turbocharge your career with an MBA’, and the ‘critters with lopsided brains, icy hearts and shrunken souls’ aspects of the debate on MBAs are well-publicised, and therefore likely to be wellknown by those engaged in the MBA discourse – which would include most likely most or all of the people around the MBAs in their workplaces. From these issues enunciated above, I therefore posit four inter-related research questions for investigation in this thesis: 1. How do MBAs practice as MBAs in their workplace? 2. How are MBAs recognised in the workplace? 3. What constitutes being an MBA in the workplace? 4. How do MBAs’ senses of practicing or being recognised as an MBA at work relate to, or draw on, the ways of understanding an MBA reviewed in this chapter? These broad research questions will drive the direction of the rest of the thesis. From the contextual literature reviewed for this chapter it seems clear that learning – although it is a key term in the discourse analysis of Section 1.1 – only receives cursory consideration in terms of its conceptualisation in the reviews studied in Section 1.2. The conceptualisation of learning which drives the black-box approach and the value-chain model may need to be rethought in order to understand how MBAs practice in the workplace as MBAs. The second concept brought to the fore by the research questions is around who the MBAs are in their work settings, both to themselves and to others: how they are recognised, and how they constitute being an MBA. Such questions occasion examination of the identities of the MBAs in these contexts. Chapter 2 will therefore move to explore the literature and theoretical issues around these two key concepts: learning and identity.

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2.

Literature Review

The second chapter of this thesis will address what I see as the key theoretical concepts related to the understanding the practices, recognition and constitution of becoming an MBA. It looks to draw on a broad range of theory to illuminate some of the complexities of the area, but also to provide a loose frame for the subsequent research study. The first ‘theme’ to be examined in greater theoretical depth is the concept of learning. It begins by examining a concept of learning very prevalent in research studies which evaluate and examine management development – the idea of ‘learning transfer’ (Section 2.1), before examining more ‘situated’ theories of learning including ‘Communities of Practice’ theory (Section 2.2). The other key concept, that of identity, is then examined in its more functional and modernist forms in Section 2.3, and the approaches to identity which draw on poststructuralist theories in Section 2.4, before I attempt draw the key insights from the two concepts of learning and identity together in a discussion of the concept of ‘identity work’ in Section 2.5.

2.1 Learning Transfer Chapter 1 addressed the discourse of learning, and the approach of evaluative studies at what might be thought of as a ‘mid-range’ theory level of critique – questioning methodologies and exploring specific validity claims. In this Chapter I will consider the core theoretical elements which underpin (or overlay) the approaches to the MBA already considered, and what kind of theories might be more appropriate for tackling the kinds of research questions formulated at the conclusion of the previous chapter. As we have seen from Section 1.1, the mainstream discourse on learning is complex and convoluted, but the theoretical underpinnings, are, if anything, more nuanced still. For this reason, this review should not be seen as a comprehensive attempt to chart the development and arguments concerning learning at a philosophical level, but rather the structured selecting of appropriate elements from the theories to attempt to illuminate the issue in question. The linear model of value-creation explored in Section 1.2 not only made assumptions about the homogeneity and alignment of systems of value, but also made assumptions about the ‘nature’ of learning, and the role and place of the ‘learner’. These assumptions, as we will see, create the ‘conditions of possibility’ for the kinds of approaches and methodologies explored in Section 1.2. The following sections will therefore examine what these conditions are that motivates these assumptions, and how they subsequently affect and create the ‘logic’ of the value-chain model of management development.

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2.1.1 The empty vessel “In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir, nothing but Facts!” … The speaker, and the schoolmaster, and the third grown person present all backed a little, and swept with their eyes the inclined plane of little vessels then and there arranged in order, ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until they were full to the brim (Dickens, 1994 [1854]: 1) The great Victorian novelist may seem an odd authority to invoke at this point, but he, and in particular the attitude and approach towards learning and education advocated by the singular Mr. Gradgrind featured in the quote, provides a useful and colourful way of accessing the theoretical underpinnings of many of the considerations of learning from within the field of business and management. The important element to note from the quote above is the way in which ‘knowledge’ – ‘facts’ here – is conceived of as some kind of graspable, external ‘object’, which can be contained by another form of object; the individual students. ‘Facts’ can, following the logic of the quote above, be unproblematically recognised, combined in standard measurements such as ‘imperial gallons’, and transferred in some way from their current position, wherever that is, into the students. A spatial metaphor of knowledge and learning is being invoked here, one that has considerable implications for the way in which learning is understood and the practice of managing and understanding learning. It is this metaphor and its implications which will be examined in this section. The Dickens quote above is a particularly vivid instantiation of what Michael Reddy (1977) has termed the ‘conduit’ metaphor. This metaphor, he suggests, is one of a number of examples of abstract mental, cognitive, and theoretical concepts which are talked about, and more importantly understood in terms of the spatial technology of the material world. Reddy notes that ‘space’ is seen as the model upon which knowledge and learning might be understood. The operation of this order of metaphor can clearly be seen instantiated in everyday language use about knowledge, and the transmission of knowledge. Consider the ‘physical’ nature of knowledge when it is used in the phrase: ‘He gained a lot of ideas from the seminar’. Whether or not the considered view of the speaker would be that ideas can be understood in this discrete manner, the phrase is not uncommon or unlikely. If ‘ideas’ can therefore be conceptualised as objects, then it follows logically that they should be able to be transmitted or ‘sent’ in a similar manner to objects – as indeed is suggested by such constructions as ‘he got the idea across to her’, or ‘the concept was lost in translation’. Lakoff and Johnson (1980) coined the term ‘conceptual metaphors’ to denote those metaphors which underlie our ‘common sense’ understandings of abstract concepts. By this they suggest that when we see something in terms of something else – in this case, ‘ideas are objects’ – then we draw across from the source domain of the metaphor – in this case about objects in the physical world – many of the topological aspects of the target domain, in this case knowledge and the process of learning (See also Gibbs and Steen, 1999).

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What this means is that when employing the conceptual metaphor of ‘ideas are objects’, then we are likely to develop systems and practices which work on the assumption that when we ‘do things’ to ideas, then they will act and react in the same was as objects would. For example, when sending an object through the post to someone else, the object can be considered the same object when received by the other person. Therefore if we work on a metaphor of ‘ideas are objects’, when we ‘pour’ knowledge or ‘facts’, they will be the same in the original ‘vessel’ (wherever that is) as they are in the new ‘vessel’ of the student. As this suggests, not only is the abstract concept of knowledge reconfigured in spatial terms, but the configuration of the ‘knower’ or learner is similarly transmuted, here into a ‘container’ for this object knowledge. As Patching (1999: 176) suggests, seeing the individual as a ‘container’ for knowledge is consonant with ‘the metaphor [of the empty vessel, which] assumes that learning is analogous to some kind of ‘substance’ which is poured into a ‘vessel’, that vessel being the [learner] or his or her mind’. A further expansion of the tropes of the source domain over to the target domain of the metaphor suggests that this conceptualisation believes that the ‘knowledge’ or ‘facts’ maintain their object-like qualities even when within their new ‘container’ – ready, presumably, to be decanted intact onto the next ‘vessel’. The extent to which the conduit metaphor has created the conditions of possibility for our understanding of the structure and process of education cannot be over-stated. Its effects are of course most obvious in the development of a ‘rote-learning’ tradition exemplified by the schooling tradition parodied so effectively by Dickens above, but it also allows a stark insight into the way in which the process of learning is conceptualised on a much broader scale – including the kinds of studies and approaches examined in Section 1.2. However, the process by which the conduit metaphor engenders the conditions of possibility for MBA evaluation studies is probably not immediately clear. Studies of the MBA are in some sense ‘at one remove’ from this chapter’s so-far basic examination of the conduit metaphor at the level of everyday language. Even though I would argue strongly that many of the concerns, particularly in relation to the ‘emperor’s new clothes’ effect, are directly attributable to the causal model’s employment of a simplistic ‘spatialised’ conception of learning and learning transfer, there are a set of studies which more specifically employ the ‘spatial’ metaphor in examining learning, an particularly management learning. While it is somewhat of an oversimplification to apply a ‘group’ term to what is a relatively disparate set of literature, I shall now turn to a set of studies which I shall call the ‘transfer of training’ literature (Burke and Hutchins, 2007), to examine it as ‘bridge’ in the use of the conduit metaphor between simplistic ‘rote-learning’ examples, and the role the metaphor plays in the development of management development and MBA evaluation studies. It is particularly apposite to examine this area of literature as it has been specifically developed in the area of business and organisation studies.

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2.1.2 Transfer of Training The central concern of what I call the ‘transfer of training’ literature is the ‘linkage’ within the linear causal model (see Figure 3) between ‘knowledge gained’ and its ‘application’ (see, for example, Baldwin and Ford, 1988; Clarke, 2002). I am using the term ‘training’ here to indicate the literature’s clear focus on the idea that the ‘acquisition’ of knowledge – through the process of learning – is intended for the purposes of ‘application’ (Antonacopoulou, 2001), although, as with many other areas of this literature review, the literature interchanges its terminology between ‘training’, ‘learning’ and ‘education’ (Haskell, 1998). This point will be addressed in greater detail below. However, as a good starting point to begin our encounter with this literature here is a definition from Ruona, et al. (2002: 220): Although there are multiple definitions of transfer of learning, it is generally agreed that transfer involves the application, generalisability, and maintenance of new knowledge and skills. We can perhaps already see some of the elements of the conduit metaphor present in the construction of this definition – that ‘transfer’ involves the ‘moving’ of knowledge from one ‘area’ to another, as well as the level of success and ‘duration’ of its ‘application’. In the phrase ‘maintenance of new skills and knowledge’ we can sense that somehow knowledge is conceived of as remaining separately ‘new’ from ‘old’ knowledge, for specific, and identical ‘re-use’ as many times as is necessary. We can perhaps also discern from this definition the ‘history’ of the transfer of training literature, which developed to encompass ‘higher-order’ activities such as management ‘skills’ originally from the study of specific learned ‘behaviours’ – physical activities, largely – such as piecing together a mechanical device in the correct order (see Baldwin, et al., 1997). Following the conduit metaphor, the ‘knowledge’ about how to undertake an action ‘correctly’ – as specified by the ‘training’ – should be held inviolate within the head of the individual, and reproducible in a different spatial or temporal context; ‘transferred’ like an object to be ‘applied’ in the form of certain behaviours within a different situation. It is important here to note the clear separation between the actions of the body in ‘applying’ – behaving as specified by the training – and the role of head or mind: the ‘vessel’ which contains the object knowledge. This sets the stage for understanding how a ‘physical’ metaphor of learning and knowledge can colour and inform our understanding of the transfer of training literature. Firstly there is relatively explicit use of physical concepts and terminology for understanding the process of ‘transfer’ of training or learning. An excellent example comes from Royer (1979), who proposes a typology of ‘aspects’ of the transfer of training, some of which are very clearly drawing on a spatial metaphor. He posits, for example, to distinguish between ‘near’ and ‘far’ transfer, with near and far being related to the degree of similarity of the ‘input’ and ‘output’ contexts, as well as a ‘direction’ of difficulty, with ‘near’ transfer being easier than ‘far’ transfer. Royer (1979) also describes, among others, ‘vertical’ and ‘lateral’ transfer, in which ‘vertical transfer’ relates to whether the ‘same’ knowledge / skill is a ‘subset’ of undertaking a ‘larger’ ‘skilled’ activity, and ‘lateral transfer’ to the range of contexts in which it can be applied. It is important to note again the assumption of the sameness – the stability – of the ‘object’ knowledge so that, when conceptualised by the transfer of training literature, it is recognisable as a 36

discrete ‘building-block’, and can be unproblematically transferred ‘vertically’ to become a part of a larger set of behaviours. This sameness allows the researcher or theoriser to examine, almost as if under a microscope, the function of the piece of knowledge and how it is transferred from vessel to vessel in the process of learning, and hence the whole approach can be described as ‘functionalist’. The functional knowledge maintains its objective ‘realness’; that is, as Heracleous (2004: 102) describes it, the approach maintains ‘the ontological assumption that objects have a stable external existence independent of, and un-influenced by, actor’s perceptions’.

2.1.3 Transfer of Training: psychological traditions We have now reached the heart of the nexus of assumptions and conceptualisations which link a particular approach to learning – transfer of training – to the wider aspects of the MBA discourse which were examined in Chapter 1. The functionalist approach to learning and knowledge, operationalised through the conduit metaphor, posits a sharp distinction between the knowledge ‘held’, and the visible actions or behaviours involved in ‘applying’ that knowledge. Applied to the linear model of Figure 3, this conceptualisation of learning would suggest that, in the example of the MBA, knowledge is ‘acquired’, collected or combined within a particular context – usually the ‘business school’ – and then should then be ‘applied’ or ‘transferred’ to the organisational context, where the ‘value’ of the ‘knowledge’ will become visible. If it is not visible – particularly if no verisimilitude can be discerned between the original knowledge and the application – then it can be assumed that it has somehow failed to transfer, or to transfer correctly. If there is nothing ‘visible’ of the knowledge, then, as with the emperor’s clothes, it is assumed that there is nothing there. The methods through which the transfer of training literature has itself tackled the issue of how to ‘see’ the process of transfer will give us the link between the conduit metaphor, a functionalist view of learning, and the approaches to MBA valuation taken by the studies of Chapter 1. Because of the assumption of the stability of knowledge itself, the two elements upon which the transfer of training literature concentrates are those ‘external’ to knowledge: those perceived to be related to the head, or ‘vessel’ – to motivations or intentions – and those related to the individual’s ‘ease’ of transfer, of replicating the trained behaviours and skills – the environmental or contextual factors of the physical environment (Noe, 1986). This conceptualisation of the process of transfer in turn directs the kinds of methodological decisions made to investigate the degree, amount, or ‘success’ of that process. As Len Holmes, (2000a: 2) notes, ‘the assumption in all this is that learning is an identifiable process sui generis, and that learning outcomes are unequivocally and temporally fixed, … [which leads them to be seen as] objectively measurable at specific points in time’. Knowledge is therefore glossed as unchanging, with every possible ‘viewer’ of the knowledge perceiving it identically, and therefore perceptions of the ‘presence’ of the knowledge, that is, measures of how much individuals ‘felt’ that transfer had taken place, can be seen as valid. This is also supported by the functionalist tradition within the psychology discipline, which sees intention to act – related to the ‘head’ – as the best predictor and proxy of ‘actual’ behaviour (e.g. Chandon, et al., 2005). In this way psychology becomes the dominant underlying discipline for the transfer of training literature, because, especially in its cognitivist mode, it most closely allies its assumptions 37

to those of the conduit metaphor. As Holman, et al. (1997: 137) summarise, cognitivist psychology assumes several key elements, including 1) that a person is divorced from circumstance (the context / environment); 2) that mental processes can be studied in isolation; 3) that thinking consists of sequential problem-solving and interpreting a series of abstract codes which represent objects in the real world; and 4) that action always follows thought. It is therefore seen as appropriate, following these traditions, to employ perceptual measures to understand which environmental elements are related to the production of ‘successful’ learning transfer; both selfperceptions of behaviours and also the perceptions of those trying to ‘see’ the degree of transfer in others. Examining the findings of further ‘transfer of training’ studies, we can find that the vast majority employ such a perceptual methodology, and, as a consequence, produce remarkable consistency in their findings (Burke and Hutchins, 2007). All the studies quoted below employ a quantitative, deductive methodology, and (because the nature of knowledge itself it presumed to be unproblematic) examine those elements of environment which are thought to be possible conducive or retarding to the individual learner’s perceptions of learning transfer. For example, utilising this methodology, there is now a substantial body of empirical work built up over time which indicates the centrality of ‘management support for the programme’ on the likelihood of successful training transfer (Kirwan and Birchall, 2006; Peters and O'Connor, 1980; Brinkerhoff and Montesino, 1995). However, while perceptions of ‘organisational support’ are a consistent predictor of perceptions of training transfer in the literature, we have already seen from Section 1.2 that is it problematic to assume that a concurrence of viewpoints indicates a supportable ‘real’ findings as expected or required by a functionalist view of knowledge and the value-chain model of management development. To illustrate this point further I will use Huczynski and Lewis (1980) as an exemplar. Huczynski and Lewis (1980) employed a method which distinguished two ‘groups’ of research subjects which they identified by analysing the responses to a range of ‘environmental’ factors. They discovered statistically significant differences on the ‘degree of training transfer’ between the groups on several criteria, including: ‘attending the course on your own initiative’; ‘believing it would help with your job’, and; ‘discussing the course with your boss before attending’ (Huczynski and Lewis, 1980: 238). While the study offered strong support to the findings of those others reference just above, each of these methods of measuring transfer are open to alternative readings, much in the mode of the ‘emperor’s new clothes’ critique: ‘Discussing the opportunity with your boss’

Might learners want to respond positively to those issues they know are important to their organisations (represented by their immediate superiors)? Are they also more likely to view more positively those aspects where they feel they have received greater ‘recognition’ from more senior managers?

‘Attending the course on your own initiative’

If we consider the demands of the learning discourse (from Section 1.1) that individuals should ‘responsibilise’ themselves over their own learning, does this mean that learners are more likely to feel that conforming to the discourse is ‘doing the right thing’, and

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therefore respond in a way which rewards the individual for perceiving themselves as ‘owning’ the learning? ‘Believing it would help with your job’

This is also in line with the value-chain model of management development. Would learners be likely to discount this factor as irrelevant or unimportant, when doing so would be tantamount to respondents’ rejection of the value-chain model, and for many, a denial of the purpose of the training in the first place?

We can therefore, as I have just done, offer an alternative conceptualisation and explanation for why each of these elements could be linked to a ‘perception’ of ‘greater’ transfer of training, none of which have anything (in particular) to do with ‘application’ or ‘performance at work’. We can act as the boy in the crowd watching the emperor – ignoring the ‘consensus’ of views around us about whether ‘transfer’ has taken place and what ‘factors’ affect it – and say that, perhaps, just perhaps, it’s all a ‘con’ – a subconscious ‘inside-job’, where everyone agrees to agree.5 Similar concerns exist when dealing with related concepts such as competencies. Competencies are one response which attempt to address ‘higher levels’ within the transfer of training (e.g. Thompson, et al., 2003; Heyes, 1998, Heyes and Stuart, 1996). Richard Boyatzis (1982: 8), one of the fathers of the competency movement, developed the term because he believed that analysis of management endeavours should not remain at the level of tasks or functions – as much of the earlier transfer of training literature assumed – because those studies ‘did not address the person in the job[, that is,] the characteristics that enable or increase the likelihood of a person's performing those activities’. This view is supported by other transfer scholars who have argued for a sharp distinction between training and what they see as the higher-level skills involved in learning (Haskell, 1998; Thomas and Anthony, 1996). However, the concepts and methods developed to investigate learning transfer through competencies draw on the same underlying assumptions, particularly with regard to the idea that competencies are owned by individuals, and can be ‘identified, listed [and] related to managerial effectiveness, regardless of the job and the organisation, locating these through behavioural event interviews and behaviourally-anchored scales’ (Townley, 1999: 286). While competencies purport to measure higher-level abilities than the behaviour-based approaches of many transfer of training studies, they remain rooted in the assumptions of the conduit metaphor with regard to skill, knowledge and learning. Townley (1999: 285-289) even scurrilously applies the achievements of Hitler to a competency framework (he scores very highly) in order to demonstrate the degree to which competencies are seen as utterly ‘external’ to context – just as the conduit metaphor assumes knowledge to be.

5

It is worth pointing out that the transfer of training literature is moving further towards such conceptualisations – of ‘consensus’; of a ‘strategic’ view – in order to tackle the problem. For example, Awoniyi, et al. (2002) examine a concept they term ‘person-environment fit’; Lim and Johnson (2002) look at perceptions of perceptions, and Clarke (2002) assumes the same conceptualisation will hold for qualitative studies.

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2.1.4 Moving on from transfer of training The concerns identified in relation to the ‘emperor’s new clothes’ problem in the evaluation of MBAs can therefore also be identified when we examine the kind of concept of learning which underpins the transfer of training literature. All of these concerns revolve around this central issue of the ‘objectness’ of knowledge, and that accepting this rules out any investigation of knowledge as being created ‘between’ people, even though this is exactly what is repeatedly suggested by those very research studies looking to eliminate this ‘bias’. This similarity of issues between MBA evaluation and transfer of training literature is strongly suggestive that it is this problematic conception of learning which we’ve been examining – a psychological, functional conceptualisation represented by the conduit metaphor – which is in fact at the root of the concerns examined in Section 1.2. As Griffin (1994: 134) notes, the concept of transferability has an ‘aura of untouchability’ to it within much psychology-derived research on learning: ‘that transfer takes place is so powerful an assumption as to be deemed beyond discussion: what we think or can do just does transfer from one situation to another’. This gets to the heart of why the black box – emperor’s new clothes issue exists, both because the underlying assumptions regarding how knowledge is created and is validated assumes that individuals are the key holders of static, transferrable knowledge, and that this assumption is rarely acknowledged or questioned. In terms of understanding how learning and knowledge occur between individuals, the dominant transfer of training model has been shown to have is a strong bias towards ‘transactional’ explanations of group interaction – i.e. that there are semi-contractual arrangements between any two individuals, but who essentially remain unchanged by that interaction. Because of these constraints and the focus on the individual, we can see that ‘psychology has provided us with quite limiting ways of thinking about group membership and participation’ (Perriton and Reedy, 2002: 128). In order to move beyond the black box – emperor’s new clothes dynamic, it is crucial to alter the underlying nature of how learning is conceptualised, moving away from a functional, individualistic, psychologised process based on the conduit metaphor, to a more social concept which examines learning as a contextualised, group practice. Section 2.2 of the literature review will therefore discuss social and situated forms of learning, before focusing on a particular social learning theory: Communities of Practice.

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2.2 The Process of Learning The previous Section concluded by suggesting that many of the concerns identified in an analysis of the literature on the evaluation of MBAs stemmed from their failure to address, sufficiently and critically, the conception of learning which underpins their research approaches. As Silvia Gheradi says, theories which follow the conduit metaphor assume learning is to be ‘explained as the modification of collective mental structures (cognitive schemes, mental models, and the like)’ (Gheradi and Nicolini, 2000: 11). She further contends, as the previous Section also suggested, that ‘this view is deeply rooted in European culture that locate knowledge in the heads (or brains) of an organisation’s members and take learning to be the assimilation of information that is able to modify mental contents, behaviours, and actions’ (Gheradi and Nicolini, 2000: 12). Within this we see again the position of the sovereign individual as bearer of knowledge, the traditional hallmark of the discipline of psychology. So the theories upon which many management development assumptions are based tend to maintain a functionalist, instrumentalist approach to the idea of learning which concentrates on inputs and outcomes, and maintains a rigid separation between the ‘content’ of knowledge and the environment within which that content is defined. As Brown and Duguid (1991: 47) note, these functionalist theories assume learning is ‘the transmission of explicit, abstract knowledge from the head of someone who knows to the head of someone who does not, in surroundings that specifically exclude the complexities of practice and the communities of practitioners. The setting for learning is simply assumed not to matter.’ However, despite this almost hegemonic position on learning achieved by the discipline of psychology, as Steve Fox (2000: 854) notes, ‘our understandings of learning processes can no longer be the exclusive preserve of psychology and that [we have come to realise that] formal educational settings are not the only, or even the most promising places to study learning in practice’. It is to those theorists and researchers who have explored other methods of understanding learning processes that this Section of the thesis will now turn. It should of course be acknowledged that differences in ‘epistemology’ – in the sense of, broadly, our theories of knowledge, or how we believe we know what we know – has been a core element of philosophical discussion for millennia; within occidental tradition, at least, the concept of a reductionist, functionalist view of knowledge, very similar to the ‘transfer’ concept we’ve examined, was being termed by the ancient Greeks a ‘literal episteme’ (Wyssusek and Totzke, 2003 :9-12; see also Brown and Duguid, 2002: 118). Those conceptions of learning whose tenets are antithetical to those drawn from the conduit metaphor themselves have a equally long and distinguished history (not least Plato’s Phaedrus – see Wyssusek and Totzke, 2003: 3). However, the literature on the MBA and management development evaluation already covered makes little reference to the literature which will be examined here in Section 2.2. There is something of a Chinese wall – a silo mentality, perhaps – between the literatures of Sections 1.2 / 2.1 and Section 2.2, which ensures little reference from one to the other, particularly in the direction of the conduit metaphor-based literature drawing on alterative, more social, conceptualisations of learning.

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2.2.1 Social learning Given, then, the considerable diachronic depth to the issue of epistemology, it is useful for the purposes of this analysis to trace some of the current social learning theories back to philosophical debates during the early part of the 20th Century which came to be known as ‘phenomenology’, and ‘interpretivism’ (Hollis, 1994; Berger and Luckman, 1966).

2.2.1.1

Phenomenology and practice

At the risk of oversimplification, philosophical approaches such as phenomenology stressed the ‘situated’ nature of knowledge, that is, they rejected the claim of the ‘neutral’ or objective observer as being able to ‘fully’ understand and explain the phenomena they were observing, in favour of a position which sees meaning as created in a particular situation by those participating in that situation. One implication of this position is that meaning is therefore seen as being created between people, and not transmitted from one to another, uni-directionally, or ‘by turns’ or indeed in a single ‘format’. A key figure in the development of a philosophy of phenomenology is Husserl (1931 [1913]), whose concept of ‘intentionality’ is relevant here. It links to his famous statement that ‘consciousness has no life apart from the object it considers’. By this he suggests that we understand the world around us in conjunction with it – it is not separate from us nor can be considered external to the way in which we understand it: ‘meanings do not have an independent existence, a reality of their own which is somehow separate from social actors’ (Haralambos, et al., 2004: 786). ‘Intentionality’ also stresses the centrality of the meaning we place upon actions, events and language, suggesting that actions and events similarly cannot be distinguished from the ways in which we understand them. An interpretive or phenomenological view of the world does not, therefore, accept the ‘given-ness’ of elements, ideas or relations, but rather is interested in the way in which meaning is constructed in interaction with other intentional beings, and this might be seen largely to take place through language – through the way things are talked about in specific situations – and through practice – the way things are ‘done’ in specific situations. The concept of practice will be covered in greater detail below, but in terms of the role of language and its position in the creation of meaning, interpretivists would view the use of language as constructing ‘accounts of the world [which] take place within shared systems of intelligibility – usually a spoken or written language. These accounts are not viewed as the external expression of the speaker’s internal processes … but as an expression of relationships among persons’ (Gergen, 1991: 78). The implications of such a resolutely social conception of knowledge for the process of learning are both profound and wide-ranging. Immediately the idea of learning ‘transfer’ becomes an impossibility because if meaning is created in context, then the ‘learning’ is not held in the head, but is instead inevitably re-constructed as meaningful in different ways in different contexts (Vygotsky, 1962 [1934]; Bruner, 1990). It is not the ‘same’ knowledge which is taken in and regurgitated elsewhere, but meaning constructed anew in each social context (Geertz, 1983). A central element of a social, situated conception of therefore becomes the participation of individuals in interaction through language and practice, making learning a multi-directional process, more akin to a story concocted by a group of people discussing an event – a community building a culture – than a conduit-metaphor ‘posted letter’. As Silvia Gheradi summarises:

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From a social perspective, learning is not something that takes place in the mind; it is something produced and reproduced in the social relations of individuals when they participate in society (Gheradi, 1999: 10) In addition to the role of language in the process of knowledge construction and learning, the second element relevant to the conception of learning I wish to examine is a theory of practice in learning. Wenger (1998: 281) notes the debt that practice theory owes to Marx’s (1844) concept of ‘praxis’, but perhaps more appropriate here is the way Weber introduces practice in relation to the social, inter-subjective nature of action, as well as talk and language: ‘action is social in so far as, by virtue of the subjective meaning attached to it by the acting individual (or individuals), it takes account of the behaviour of others and is thereby oriented in its course’ (Weber, 1964: 36). Practice theory therefore links action with intentionality to suggest that the way things are ‘done’ – both through language and action – together constitute a ‘practice’, a ‘way of doing things’ which are imbued with meaning by those communities who undertake that practice (Bourdieu, 1977). Practices can usefully be seen as a kind of set of non-canonical rules, ‘themselves the product of a small batch of schemes enabling agents to generate an infinity of practices adapted to endlessly changing situations, without those schemes ever having been considered as explicit principles’ (Bourdieu, 1977: 16). It is in this sense that knowing can be seen as embedded in practice (Blackler, 1995), and related to what Polanyi (1967) termed ‘tacit’ knowledge – the ways of doing things not convertible into forms interpretable immediately by a wide-range of people and incorporated into their practice. Such a theory of practice maintains the intentionality of a specific community’s understanding of ‘why things are done the way they are’ and combines this with the social element of learning undertaken by a group or community in interaction, so that practice becomes ‘the coordinated activities of individuals and groups … as it is informed by a particular organisational or group contexts’ (Cook and Brown, 1999: 386-7). In this way social learning can be seen as the ‘trajectory’ of participation in a specific practice, that is, ‘learning’ as the process of becoming an accomplished member of a group or community, skilled in the particular ‘craft’ of how that community does things (Sennett, 2003). By understanding the process of learning as conceptualised through practice, we can also explore the ways in which participation in interaction and the development of practice mutually constitute each another. As Silvia Gheradi puts it: ‘practice is an emergent structure produced and sustained by the members of a community as an open process, and it is at once [both] highly perturbable and highly resilient’ (Gheradi, 2000: 213; Gheradi, 2006; see also Wenger, 1998: 96). Such a situated, social conception of learning allows us a glimpse into how we might understand the emergent nature of the ‘emperor’s new clothes’ problematic, without assuming its potential salience must indicate a baseless con is being perpetrated.

2.2.1.2

Situating social learning

Having completed a brief exposition of some of the key tenets of learning drawing on a situated epistemology, we are now in a position to make some clearer statements about how learning will be understood and treated within this thesis, and also to posit some statements about situated learning theories developed more recently than the seminal works of phenomenology. Intentional 43

meaning has been brought centre-stage by an interpretivist stance, but the intersubjective, social nature of knowledge construction means the role of the individual learner has been somewhat decentred, so that within a situated learning theory meaning, ‘observed in everyday practice, [is] distributed – stretched-over, not divided among – mind, activity and culturally-organized settings’ (Lave, 1988: 1 my emphasis, see also Hutchins, 1995). And, rather than the individual acquisition, retention and demonstration of discrete knowledge ‘objects’, a situated learning theory would see ‘learning as a collective accomplishment which depends on a range of spatially and temporally distributed local practices lying outside the control of any organisation and within the network of relationships’ (Gheradi, 1999: 8) Contu and Willmott (2003; see also Contu and Willmott, 2000) deem Situated Learning Theory worthy of a set of capitals, and offer an excellent tabulated set of distinctions between the kind of learning exemplified by what they term ‘established’ learning theory – broadly that based on the conduit metaphor – and ‘situated’ learning (See Table 1). As they summarise, Situated Learning Theory questions the ‘adequacy of “old”, disembodied, and atomised thinking where little or no attention is paid to how, within the workplace, agents, activities, and their world mutually constitute each other within “Communities of Practice”’ (Contu and Willmott, 2003: 292). Hopefully the individual aspects of the table will be recognisable from their coverage in this Section, but important elements to re-cap are the distinctions between knowledge as ‘extractable’ and abstract, and knowledge as embedded and tacit, as well as the stark differences between what the two theories perceive as the outcome of learning – one focused on the accretion of knowledge, and the other with the ability to perform an identity – of being seen as knowledgeable – within a specific context. Conceptualisation: Learning

Established • Cognitive – Passive – Selective

Form of knowledge

• •

Understanding developed

•

Outcome of learning

•

Transmission

•

Canonical / Codified / Theoretical Distilled in texts and manuals Abstract / universal Acquisition of information or skill Vertical: Instruction by authorities

Situated • Interactive – Participative – Persuasive • Tacit / Embedded / Practical • Embedded in community and identity • Embodied / contextsensitive • Trans(formation) of identity • Horizontal: Collaboration with peers

Table 1: Conceptualisations of learning (adapted from Contu and Willmott, 2003: 294)

The specific term which Contu and Willmott (2003) use in the quote above, ‘Communities of Practice’, refers to a particular instantiation of Situated Learning Theory, first coined by Jean Lave 44

and Etienne Wenger (1991; see also Lave, 1988) but expanded and developed through by them and several other authors over the subsequent decade (e.g. Brown and Duguid, 1991; Wenger, 1998; Gheradi and Nicolini, 2000; Fox, 2000), although the term is now much more widespread than purely within ‘academic’ studies. It is this particular style of Situated Learning Theory – Communities of Practice – which will now be addressed in greater depth in this literature review. This particular approach has been chosen as most appropriate for tackling the issue of the MBA for several reasons: -

Firstly, Communities of Practice (CoP) theory is a Situated Learning Theory which would subscribe to all of the elements of the right-hand column of Table 1, each of which we have seen in this Section as central to refuting or reintepreting the functionalist position on learning which seems to cause so many problems in studies of the MBA.

-

Secondly, I feel that we can distinguish CoP theory on the basis that it has emerged from studies, in the main, of western workplaces (e.g. Cook and Yanow, 1993; Orr, 1996; Wenger, 1998), although not, as is explored in the next Section, precisely those where one is likely to find MBA graduates.

-

Thirdly, CoP theory offers a mechanism through which locally-constructed, situated meanings can be linked to broader influences – so that, although it is always locally constructed, the resources from which it is constructed can be drawn from ‘our practices with respect to the broader historical, social, and institutional discourses and style (e.g. scientific, religious, political, artistic)’ (Wenger, 1998: 141). This also offers a clear link to non-functionalist interpretations of learning from the discipline of education, for example, as Bruner (1990: 6465) suggests, we are ‘able to interpret meanings and meaning-making only in the degree to which we are able to specify the structure and coherence of the larger contexts in which specific meanings are created’. If we are to bring into play the kinds of discourses examined in Section 1.1 then our theory of learning will need this flexibility of generative mechanism.

-

Fourthly, it offers a situated argument, and one from an interpretivist episteme, but one which maintains a flexible, non-canonical definition for the social grouping. As Lave and Wenger (1991: 98) note, defining something as a community of practice ‘doesn’t necessarily imply copresence, [or] a well-defined, identifiable group [with] socially visible boundaries’. As such it avoids some of the apparent rigidities of such ‘monolithic’ terms as (corporate) ‘culture’ (Fox, 2000).

-

Fifthly, CoP theory develops a method of understanding some of the ways in which changes in meaning, identity, and learning are structured through social interaction, and it is this element which the next Section will focus upon, before moving to tie-in the role of the MBAs more directly with the theoretical position being developed.

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2.2.2 Communities of Practice This Section leans heavily on Wenger (1998) as a reference point, as this is generally seen as the most extensive exposition of the CoP theory. Wenger (1998) draws on the broader aspects of Situated Learning Theory from Table 1 above, in that he concurs that social groupings which he calls ‘communities’ centre around particular practices, and therefore that these practices ground any particular community’s understanding of what constitutes legitimate knowledge. Each community then delineates through its practice which the ‘rules’ through which practices are valued by that community, something Wenger (1998) terms the ‘regime of competence’ for a Community of Practice. It is important to note that the use of the term ‘competence’ here is very different from its use by the ‘competency movement’, because, within a social learning theory, the ‘competency’ is not the possession of a sovereign individual, but the circumscribing of particular practices by groups in interaction. This ‘regime of competence’ is therefore being constantly renegotiated by the community membership through their engagement in interaction over their ‘experiences’ of the practices that they share: ‘in this regard, a community of practice acts as locally negotiated regime of competence’ (Wenger, 1998: 137). Experience and competence are, for Wenger, two processes which are engaged in a dialectical relationship. On the one hand the experience of practice (the meaning of which is negotiated in interaction by members of the community) produces a regime of competence whereby certain practices are legitimized, and others excluded. A regime of competence, on the other hand, is the range of practices which must be engaged in for any member of the community to be recognised as attaining that membership identity. That engagement will inevitably be a negotiation of meaning between an individual member’s experience of this and other practices, and that regime of competence (Wenger, 1998: 138). So, as we might expect from a situated learning theory, ‘it is by its very practice – not by other criteria – that a community establishes what it is to be a competent participant, an outsider, or somewhere in between … within such a regime [of competence] knowing is no longer undefined [but] can be defined as what would be recognised as competent participation in the practice’ (Wenger, 1998: 137). Neither a person (or a community’s) experience nor its regime of competence therefore remain static in the interaction, and it is through this process of alteration to a community’s regime of competence and / or experience of practice that an understanding of the process of learning emerges. As Wenger notes, ‘for learning to be possible, an experience of meaning must be in interaction with a regime of competence’ (Wenger, 1998: 138).

2.2.2.1

CoP and reification

This interaction takes the form of a dialectic between participation and what Wenger terms ‘reification’. Participation is the active negotiation of meaning between members of the community, which obviously requires some ‘shared repertoire’ between members, that is, as set of ‘routines, words, tools, ways of doing things, stories, gestures, symbols, genres, actions, or concepts that the community has produced or adopted’ (Wenger, 1998: 83). This active negotiability then may result in the reification of certain elements of a regime of competence. By reification Wenger means the ‘process of giving form to our experiences by producing objects that congeal this experience into “thingness”’ (Wenger, 1998: 58). Wenger sees all kinds of codified or standardized procedures and rules as having gone through this process, as far-reaching as the 46

production of any sort writing, or of objects, through multifarious forms of abstraction and concretising. This process removes, at least temporarily, that practice from the realm of negotiability. The meaning of a practice is positioned within the object rather than in participation, although it can often be re-negotiated as the community’s experience alters. A practical example would be the way in which ‘knowledge’ about personality types is ‘reified’ into a measurement instrument such an emotional intelligence questionnaire, or, perhaps, the way experience or membership of a particular community is reified within an educational qualification like the MBA.

2.2.2.2

CoP and change

If ‘the concept of knowing is not defined outside a regime of competence’ (Wenger, 1998: 140), then it can appear that this apparently hermetic process of negotiation – of participation and reification – is difficult to reconcile with how communities may change. Clearly, if an individual does not engage in the practice they cannot conform to its regime of competence, and if they cannot conform in a way understood as legitimate by the community, they cannot engage in a meaningful way. It is therefore the process of learning that, under the auspices of CoP theory, can be seen as the way in which a) conforming to the reifications of a particular practice’s regime of competence can bring new experiences, or b) how new participation in new experiences can come to alter the community’s regime of competence. It is through different positionings in relation to the ‘centre’ of the practice – what Lave and Wenger (1991) term ‘full’ membership – that trajectories of belonging to a practice, and the role of learning in moving between them, become an important concept. Full membership may be defined as a position where an individual’s practice most readily conforms to the regime of competence and whose experience is most aligned with the development of the community’s practice. And, conversely, there may be positions whereby an individual only partially conforms, and has limited shared experience of practice, but yet they take up a peripheral position within the community’s practice nonetheless; they frame a ‘particular mode of engagement [as] a learner who participates in the actual practice of an expert [or community], but only to a limited degree and with limited responsibility for the ultimate product as a whole’ (Lave and Wenger, 1991: 21; see also Gheradi, 1999: 111).

2.2.2.3

Legitimate Peripheral Participation

Situated Learning Theory would suggest that being on the periphery of a practice is not an easy place to understand, or engage in, that practice, or to be identified as a member of it (Tempest and Starkey, 2004). Merely learning ‘about’ the practice doesn’t provide a meaningful experience of that practice because it lacks participation and engagement in negotiation of meaning with those at the ‘centre’ of that practice (Wenger, 1998: 100). Indeed, as Gheradi suggests, ‘Communities of Practice [can be seen] as closed cultural systems which prevent their members from comparing their implicit beliefs’ (Gheradi and Nicolini, 2001: 425). However, Lave and Wenger (1991) suggest that if this peripheral position is legitimised within the communities’ practice, for example, if ‘outsiders’ can have a limited or partial access to participate and engage in negotiation of meaning, then this can become a channel or position through which new-comers to a practice can learn about engaging in that practice. Lave and Wenger term this ‘legitimate peripheral participation’ (LPP), and liken this position within a community to that of the ‘apprentice’ (Lave and Wenger, 1991: 29), whose LPP ‘requires access to a wide range of ongoing activity, old-timers, and other members of the community; and to information, resources, and opportunities for participation’

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(Lave and Wenger 1991: 100), but who do not, to begin with at least, have sufficient shared repertoire of practices to be identified as a full member of the community. Several empirical studies have been undertaken with specific communities to develop and explore the idea of LPP, each focusing on the ways in which certain elements of practice are made legitimately available and negotiable to learners as apprentices. Lave and Wenger’s original formulation drew on studies of such groups as midwives, tailors, and members of Alcoholics Anonymous, and subsequently other studies have examined flute-makers (Cook and Yanow, 1993), photocopy repair technicians (Orr, 1996), project managers, (Vickers, 2001), and, perhaps most saliently in relation to MBA graduates, research students (Lee and Roth, 2003). In each case the practice of the peripheral learner is influenced and supported in conforming to the regime of competence by a range of individuals who are identified as being at the centre of the practice – ‘old-timers’ or ‘masters’, but the learner also contributes and engages in their own meaningmaking, which legitimates their involvement in the practice. Therefore, the concept of LPP posits that, ‘for learning purposes, a community can offer peripheral forms of participation that are considered legitimate without fulfilling all the conditions of membership’ (Wenger, 1998: 138). It is through this ‘apprenticeship’ model that we can see, as was suggested in the previous Section, the process of learning as the trajectory of the individual legitimisation in the community, from firstly being seen on the periphery of the practice, and then, ‘as they master more and more of these peripheral practices their legitimacy increases within the group; socially they move towards the centre and identify personally more and more with the community of practice in question (Fox, 2000: 855). It should be stressed, however, that ‘full’ membership is never a ‘settled’ position, but a constantly renegotiated position, because ‘members do not ever finally know how to do member, they are caught in an endless process of finding out’ (Munro, 1997:18).

2.2.2.4

Multi-membership of Communities of Practice

LPP within a community of practice is therefore a position related to ‘learning’ within Situated Learning Theory. However, it implies that ‘learning’ can only take place as: a) someone moves from the periphery to the centre of a community, or shifts their experience according to an altering regime of competence, or b) alters a regime of competence for a community by bringing new experiences into negotiation by that CoP. Option ‘b’ predicates that these other experiences must have been gained within a different community of practice to that being joined as a legitimate peripheral participant. Therefore, although so far we have discussed the process of learning within a specific ‘individual’ community of practice, the process is repeated within, without and across multiple Communities of Practice, as is suggested when Lave and Wenger (1991: 98) summarise the community of practice as ‘a set of relations among persons, activity and world over time and in relation with other tangential and overlapping Communities of Practice’ (my emphasis). Although meaning is therefore situated in the practice of specific communities, it is the case both that individuals may operate in multiple 48

Communities of Practice simultaneously, and also that elements of practice, repertoires and meaning may be shared by different communities. CoPs are linked in ‘constellations’ (Wenger, 1998: 141), joined through individuals whose practices encompass the regimes of competence of different communities to different extents, or through practices which are shared by different communities. The process of learning can now be seen as the ‘flow’ (or lack of it) of meaningful experiences and practices across different communities, or how one practice interpenetrates another. An example of this ‘learning’ might be a customer service manager who is studying for their MBA qualification part-time at a business school – the learning occurs not because of information the individual ‘transfers’ from one sphere to another, but in the way in which practicing as one forces a reappraisal of meaning-making within the other Community of Practice. In the light of this ‘constellations of Communities of Practice’ concept Wenger therefore modifies his earlier position somewhat when he comes to discuss the term ‘knowledge’ (having previous used only experience, competence, and knowing) to suggest that ‘what can be called knowledge, therefore, is not just a matter of local regimes of competence; it depends also on the orientation of these practices within broader constellations (Wenger, 1998: 141, my emphasis). A crucial element of understanding learning from within CoP theory, therefore, is both the way in which situated practices come to be altered, and the way in which individual’s identities are altered as they move between these multiple practices.

2.2.2.5

Identity and learning in CoP

It is at this point that our exploration of some of the major areas of the CoP theory can revisit one of the elements of Situated Learning Theory identified in Table 1 above: the role of ideas of identity as an outcome of learning. Because CoP is a social learning theory, being a ‘full’ member of a community of practice involves, primarily, being recognised as being a ‘full’ member of that community, that is, one is identified as a member of that community by others. What it means to have this identity is therefore constructed and re-constructed in interaction between members of that community of practice, and members of other Communities of Practice, whose own practices may place a very different meaning upon the practice being identified. Identity as an outcome of learning is therefore both a social process and an experience of practice. As Wenger (1998: 215) suggests, ‘because learning transforms who we are and what we can do, it is an experience of identity. It is not just an accumulation of skills and information, but a process of becoming – to become a certain person, or, conversely, to avoid being a certain person’. There is therefore a complex interleaving in CoP theory of ideas of learning, meaning and identity, that the three terms appear almost inseparable, as Wenger states: ‘to know in practice is to have a certain identity so that information gains the coherence of a form of participation’ (Wenger, 1998: 220). The identity of ‘becoming’ a particular member of a community – say a group of MBAs studying at a business school – is therefore really a constantly re-negotiated process of becoming identified with that community through its practice. Certain practices and meanings related to those practices have been developed, around what can and should be said and understood by the practices of their meetings, and those who share that experience and conform to its regime of competence are then identified as belonging to that group – labelled by themselves and others as members. The practices of this group however, will impinge in complex but different ways for each 49

individual on the practice and identity they have within other communities in their constellation – for example workplace or home identities, national identities, male identities, etc. The trajectory of participation they have within a particular community will also mediate the degree to which they are identified, or identify themselves with those communities. What one has learned, what one does (or perhaps ‘can’) know – the outcome of learning – are both the product, and the process of developing situated forms of identity. So it can be seen from Section 2.2.2 that CoP theory offer a particular approach to understanding learning from a social perspective, incorporating a range of other concepts to understand this process, including the idea of legitimate peripheral participation, trajectories of identity, and seeing language and negotiation of meaning as the central process of understanding experience. It has introduced at a theoretical level a way looking at learners and learning which contrasts starkly with a functionalist or psychological view. The next Section will draw upon the ideas expounded on CoP here to introduce a further relevant concept, that of the ‘broker’, and examine this idea more specifically in relation to the MBA.

2.2.3

The MBA as broker

The previous section outlined CoP as a theoretical framework for understanding the MBAs as learners within a social perspective on learning. This section, while still drawing heavily on the ‘central’ texts of CoP theory, will now look to understand the specific role that an MBA might play within such a framework. Firstly, it can now easily be seen that the issues of ‘transfer’ must be recalibrated within a CoP frame. Those studies which assess the ‘value’ of MBAs by examining how their ‘MBA knowledge or skills’ have transferred across to a workplace setting must now be seen in the light of a situated theory of learning. Instead of a constant view of unquestioned and unchanging ‘knowledge’ held inviolate in the MBAs’ heads, we can see instead that the MBAs have (at least)6 two major ‘learning’ roles to undertake. To attempt to explore their process of learning we must understand that they are, often simultaneously, developing a) practices as an MBA within a CoP of MBAs, and b) practices as an MBA within a CoP of work colleagues who do not (necessarily) share this repertoire or practice. In this sense they are both likely to be full members (of a work community) but also have a trajectory from LPP of their MBA community to being full members of that community by the time they gain their MBA qualification. It might be assumed, however, that they also attempt to maintain and develop their ‘MBA identity’ not merely within the community of practice of MBAs, but also within the community of employees of their organisation, where practice as an MBA is probably not central to workplace identities, or to the everyday practices of

6

Obviously each situated practice or community’s boundaries are not fixed, but constantly renegotiated, therefore these ‘MBA’ and ‘work’ communities used here are merely salient examples which seem likely to be relevant, rather than, at this stage, specific boundaries we can see demonstrated as meaningful to the MBAs. Clearly, similar kinds of issues and concerns will arise between other boundaries meaningful to the MBAs, like work and home, social life and MBA etc. The choice of ‘MBA’ and ‘work’ communities here is because it is central to answering the research question in relation to the broader functionalist conception of the MBA, not because it is unequivocally of greater import than an individual’s relation between any set of different communities (see Ashforth, et al., 2000).

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most of those with whom the MBAs are likely to be required to engage in negotiation and practice on a day-to-day basis. What should be clear is that it is at the ‘edges’ of these practices – the boundaries – which clearly share many repertoires of language but diverge in others – that much of the most complex negotiation of identity is being undertaken. The structure of the MBA course, for example, provide a relatively ‘clear’ and reified trajectory of participation between LPP as an MBA student, and becoming an MBA, but other forms of participation and identity are much less regulated or defined. Learning how to practice in these communities is a considerable act of negotiation within a community where often the MBA is providing practice and experiences which aren’t necessarily encompassed by the workplace Community of Practice. It is therefore important to consider in more detail the kind of role that the MBA plays in ‘working’ at these boundaries, and to do this by examining how these boundaries work in relation to some of the central concepts so far examined, including learning, peripherality, and what will be called ‘brokerage’.

2.2.3.1

Boundaries

The notion of the boundary has become very central to thinking about organisations. Although theories of the firm, and of organisational structure, have been examining ‘boundaries’ at a theoretical level for most of the 20th Century (see, for example, Pugh, 1973; Williamson, 1975), from a social perspective there has recently been a question as to ‘whether our current theories adequately cater for the evolution of boundaries and boundary “blurring” in modern society’ (Paulsen and Hernes, 2003: 2). This alteration in the view of what is an appropriate theory of the boundary, Paulsen (2003: 3) suggests, has gone through similar shift to the concept of learning charted in this literature review – from a broadly ‘functional’ to a ‘constructionist’ perspective – so that now ‘the idea of boundary, having been almost inextricably linked to the idea of “organisation”, should logically form a part of this re-examination [of boundaries], as the notion of the organisation as a spatially stable and monolithic system [also] becomes subject to question’. As such, there is a greater level of interest in how boundaries are constructed, rather than where they are placed (Ulrich, 2003) and also a realisation that despite an increasing concept of ‘fluidity’ in society, that ‘what we are witnessing is not an effacement of boundaries, but a proliferation’ (Paulsen and Hernes, 2003: 4). In fact one way in which organisational boundaries might usefully be re-conceptualised – and to move them away from a rigid spatial metaphor – is through the lens of the flexible and temporary boundaries theorised as existing between Communities of Practice. Those individuals at the cusp of boundaries between practices – as we might perceive MBAs to be – therefore are important mediators in these fluid negotiated distinctions between practices. The relationship between these Communities of Practice in which the MBAs are involved is not necessarily a harmonious one (Gheradi and Nicolini, 2002), but Wenger (2000) stresses that this tension between regimes of competence can in fact support learning: Learning at boundaries is likely to be maximised for individuals and for communities when experience and competence are in close tension... [which requires among other things] ways to translate between repertoires so that experience and competence actually interact. (Wenger and Snyder, 2000: 233). 51

Therefore, as Wenger (1998: 140) notes, the practice of exposing a communities’ experience to different repertoires may be central to the development of the community’s learning: because it creates ‘a tension between experience and competence … crossing boundaries is a process by which learning is potentially enhanced, and potentially impaired’ (Wenger, 1998: 140). This ‘double-edged’ nature of a boundary position between Communities of Practice is a reflection, and extension, of the problematic nature of any ‘peripheral’ position in a community. As Lave and Wenger (1991: 36) point out, the periphery is both ‘a powerful and powerless place’; an ambiguous place, because practices ‘can be guarded just as it can be made available … a community of practice can be a fortress just as it can be an open door’. An individual’s legitimacy in their peripheral participation must be negotiated, and if their practice and experience from other CoP’s are seen to ‘threaten’ the regime of competence of another practice, an individual’s legitimacy can be revoked – their ability to participate removed. It should also be noted that, despite the fluidity and negotiability of all aspects of practice, it is not that there is nothing ‘at stake’ for either the individual attempting to participate at the boundary, or the community of practice with whom they are engaging. For the MBAs, for example, it is unlikely that either their ability to participate in becoming an MBA within an MBA community, or their possibility of maintaining that MBA identity within a work community of practice, can be inconsequentially selected or abandoned. Steve Fox, (2000) highlights the complex and problematic ‘balance’ which those on the boundary may have to make between ‘submitting’ to the regime of competence of a community, and their own ‘stake’ or interest in a community in which they are committing their time: On the one hand, they need to engage in existing practice, which has developed over time: to understand it, to participate in it, and to become full members of the community in which it exists. On the other hand, they have a stake in its development as they begin to establish their own identity in its future. (Fox, 2000)

2.2.3.2

Boundaries and brokerage

The complex, shifting, negotiated position taken up by the MBAs at the boundaries between the practices can be usefully glossed as that of a ‘broker’. Wenger (1998: 109) defines this broker role as distinct from other, more general experiences of multi-membership of communities, and stresses the importance of the broker particularly in ‘making new connections across Communities of Practice … [involving] processes of translation, coordination and alignment between perspectives’. Brokerage is a deliberative act designed to encompass the practices of multiple communities within a frame of participation and engagement. Gheradi and Nicolini (2001: 426) extends this notion of the broker within Communities of Practice theory to suggest that ‘the broker personifies the ability to translate certain elements of one practice to another, to understand and appreciate the differences in perspective between one community and another’, synchronising the ‘practices of a plurality of actors, each with a specific body of knowledge’ (Gheradi and Nicolini 2001: 427). The broker role is appropriately applied to the MBAs in building a theoretical picture of practice as an MBA, because it seems plausible that such a role may be expected or even demanded of MBAs by the broader discourses of learning (see Section 1.1). While CoP theory suggests that negotiation 52

of the meaning of practices occur in all interactions, the boundary between the LPP of a student in an MBA community, and their full participation in a work community in which they are nonetheless often attempting to assert a ‘peripheral’ MBA identity, provides a likely site where brokerage, in this specific sense, may be required and examined. Added to that, there is a certain extent to which the MBA qualification itself could be examined as this kind of boundary object as part of a repertoire of brokerage. So, it can be seen that as part of a CoP theory of learning, the MBA student or graduate can be re-conceptualised as being in a ‘brokering’ position, negotiating the meaning within and between the multiple Communities of Practice to which they belong. They might be examined as acting as both apprentices and intermediaries in their various community of practice roles, ‘embodying and performing ordering arrangements’ (Gheradi and Nicolini, 2000: 10), and using language and boundary object to negotiate between practices. When considering the MBAs as possible brokers, it is important to stress that ‘brokerage’ as it is conceptualised within CoP is both a peripheral and ambiguous position. Wenger (1998) terms this precariousness ‘uprootedness’. He uses this term to denote the way in which those in the broker positions might feel about their situation. He describes uprootedness as a ‘an occupational hazard of brokering’ (Wenger, 1998: 110), noting also that those at the boundaries, and engaging extensively with other communities, can often sense themselves to be – and be considered as – outsiders by a particular CoP. Because of their altered experience and practice, brokerage rarely falls within a clear regime of competence, causing that role to appear confusing and uncertain to others, and, ‘as a consequence, brokers sometimes interpret the uprootedness associated with brokering in personal terms of individual inadequacy’ (Wenger, 1998: 110). Brokerage is also important in relation to the MBA because it is a role which insists on the interaction of learning, identity and legitimacy. Those wanting to take up brokering positions operating around and between the central practices of various communities must invest heavily in their time to be perceived as legitimate. But they are aware of the possibility of failure and as such must place their identity ‘on the line’ to be seen as legitimately ‘bridging’ the communities whose regimes of competence are unlikely to overlap entirely. Sandel (1992, cited Perriton and Reedy, 2002) uses the emotive phrase ‘the self at stake’ to describe such interactions, because identity between the communities is what forms and shapes that link, creating a ‘space’ on the periphery which can assist brokers in integrating new experiences into the practices of other communities, should the communities see those experiences as legitimate. Wenger and Snyder, 2000: 218) summarise this process, arguing that: Multi-membership is a critical source of learning because it forces an alignment of perspectives in negotiation of an engaged identity. Identity then becomes a living bridge [which can] bring diverging perspectives together, understand them through each other, and to find a way to engage them with one another. The role of broker is an important and useful concept for understanding the experience of MBAs, because it allows the development of a level of complexity and theoretical underpinning absent from many of the more orthodox functionalist investigations of MBAs. The ambiguous, ambivalent position of broker is also suitable to describe the MBAs trying to practice as MBAs within a complex, multi-valenced discursive context set out in Chapter 1.

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Communities of Practice, I have suggested, offers a powerful and interesting way of approaching the research question, and one which both challenges the hegemonic approaches to such research, and holds out the possibility of a more sophisticated investigation of such apparent paradoxes as the ‘emperor’s new clothes’ problem. However, CoP theory is far from a panacea. Although it offers a profound critique to functionalist approaches, it has come under critique itself from several quarters. It would be remiss of this literature review to assume either that Communities of Practice offered by itself a sufficient framework for exploring the research question, or to dismiss off-hand those critiques. Therefore, before concluding the Section of this review covering the concept of learning, the next Section will investigate those critiques.

2.2.4 Critiques of Communities of Practice Communities of Practice theory has been criticised in a number of areas which are relevant for this study. The first is that it lacks ‘distinctiveness’ in terms of its understanding of learning. The second is that its concept of ‘community’ within CoP is an abstraction which fails to take account of the range of experiences and modes of participation available to most people in communities. The third concern is that, in its development and take-up beyond those areas covered by this review, CoP theory has been ‘functionalised’ so that it no longer conforms to its original descriptive formulation. The final relevant concern is that CoP fails to acknowledge or conceptualise power appropriately. These critiques are dealt with in turn, and draw heavily on the analysis of Contu and Willmott (2003): Distinctiveness

Stephen Gourlay (1999: 11) is concerned that CoP constitutes a ‘conflation of learning with living’. As Contu and Willmott (2003: 288) summarise: within CoP ‘learning is conceived to be synonymous with the process of being socialised or enculturated into a community of practice’. If learning is understood as occurring every time anyone shifts towards or away from the centre of a community’s practice, or shifts between communities, then it could well be said to become indistinguishable from any or all social activity as a distinctive or distinguishable conceptual category. This suggests that CoP’s conceptualisation places learning beyond the point at which it could be meaningfully explored. While this is clearly a conceptual danger, in practice CoP’s ambit has been used only to investigate certain contexts, and its perspective and vocabulary provide powerful tools for understanding learning as social and situated.

‘Community’

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While even early authors on CoP such as John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid (2001 have suggested CoP gives too great an emphasis on the concept of community and not enough on practice, later authors have gone further and have implied that this imbalance ‘implicitly promotes a certain understanding of the relationships between individuals and groups, and obscures others’ (Reynolds, 2000). By this they mean that the concept of community within CoP inappropriately draws on the specific wider connotations of ‘community’ as a term, for example that it ‘radiates an almost visceral sense of warmth’ (Fear,

2001: 167) and is a ‘deceptive but warmly persuasive word’ (Fear, 2001: 167), giving connotations of strongly positive aspects such as harmony and consensus, and de-emphasising the (theoretically) equal likelihood of relations as antagonistic or conflicting. Gourlay (1999) further suggests that the word has implications of collaboration and homogeneity – of a CoP as a ‘pastoral idyll’ (Reynolds, 2000): Community is conceptualised in a way that tends to assume, or imply, coherence and consensus in its practices. Such usage, we suggest, glosses over a fractured, dynamic process of formation and reproduction in which there are often schisms and precarious alignments that are held together and papered over by unreflexive invocations of hegemonic notions including “community”, “family”, “team”, and “partnership”. (Contu and Willmott, 2003: 287) For the purposes of this study, it will be important not to be drawn into the assumption that communities to which the MBAs might belong will be necessarily harmonious in nature, and to understand the likely areas of internal and cross-community tension which might arise. Functionalising CoP

Contu and Willmott (2000; 2003: 289, emphases in original) suggest that, in the way CoP is being deployed by a wide range of academics and practitioners, ‘the analytical concept of legitimate peripheral participation is [being] recast as a technocratic tool of organisational engineering’. They see CoP as an analytic approach now being ‘leveraged’ (Saint-Onge and Wallace, 2003) for the benefit of certain stakeholders, particularly consultants who have been seen to combine CoP with other ‘buzzword’ terms such as knowledge management (Cox, 2005). CoP then becomes less about the situated nature of knowing and learning, and to a greater degree about the ‘cultivation’ of CoPs (Wenger, et al., 2002); the managerial reconfiguring of professional and non-canonical divides (see Swan, et al., 2002); the development of ‘meta-capabilities’ related to ‘effective’ Communities of Practice (Liedtka, 1999); and the development of measurement models to assess the ‘value’ of particular Communities of Practice (Saint-Onge and Wallace, 2003; 209-227). In terms of this thesis, the use of CoP will remain at the level of a heuristic to help understand the practice of MBAs, and will steer away from assumptions that CoP are somehow automatically a good thing, or something which can be created, cultivated or encouraged by managerial intervention.

CoP and power

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Several writers have noted that COP theory (at least from Wenger, 1998) lacks a central organising concept of power. Contu and Willmott (2003: 290), note that ‘in popular accounts of situated learning the “situatedness” of specific people … in specific circumstances is idealised by excluding issues of history, language and power’. They suggest that CoP theory focuses its analytical power upon the

‘micro’ level of individual or group interaction, but therefore is only a blunt instrument when applied to issues which transcend small social groupings. For example, despite a ‘case study’ which focuses on the role of a female clerical worker in an all-female department comprising the opening to Wenger (1998), the issues of gender or distinctions between management ‘class’ and ‘workers’ is almost entirely elided in his analysis (Ostermann, 2003). As Fox (2000) summarises: In sum, Wenger’s (1998) theoretical framework for understanding Communities of Practice does not think through the issues of power and inequality that were so suggestively prominent in Lave and Wenger (1991) … wider issues of power and conflict are referred to in passing in the footnotes rather than addressed head-on in the text. (Fox, 2000: 857) This absence, some argue, leaves CoP theory without a means of understanding why it is that some regimes of competence are legitimised. By any measure, if CoP cannot provide us with a way of understanding these outcomes, then this is a major concern in terms of the usefulness of the theory. As we have seen from Section 1.1, the broader discourse on learning exerts a powerful emotive and illocutionary force upon individuals. In particular, we need to understand the process through which ‘dominant groups may impose orthodoxy … ([which] has to be consciously managed) … [and try] to preserve a universe of that which is taken for granted … maintained by censorship and exclusion’ (Bourdieu, 1977: 170). For individuals to broker a position of legitimacy within communities may well entail conflict, discord, repression, exclusion and censorship as much as it does Wenger’s (1998: 174) elements of alignment, imagination and engagement. By assessing how other kinds of social theories might complement CoP theory’s apparent weakness in this area, we should be able to take on board, as Perriton (2002) notes, how: … an individual’s entry into a learning community is not an act where it can be said that the individual is voluntarily entering or negotiating membership of the norms and values of that group. It becomes equally a place where identity is inscribed and proscribed. Identity in a group setting of any sort therefore becomes the “gift” of the “conflicting and contradictory” social discourses operating within the group. (Perriton and Reedy, 2002: 130) So it can be seen from this Section that CoP theory has been subject to critiques in a number of different areas. In terms of this thesis, in the main, the critiques – of distinctiveness, of ‘community’ and of ‘functionalising’ – are concerns to take into account in any analysis, but which do not fundamentally threaten the strength or the appropriateness of CoP as a major pillar for a framework for understanding practicing as an MBA. The final critique concerning power, however, 56

has more serious implications for this research, and any framework for investigating the MBA would also require theory which might help to explain the role of the broader discourses of Section 1.1, and provide a mechanism for understanding how different meanings are inculcated, adopted, negotiated, and reified into practice.

2.2.5 Building on Communities of Practice The purpose of Section 2.2 of this thesis was to explore a viable alternative conceptualisation of learning to that which appears to underpin much of the research currently undertaken into MBAs. It has suggested that a situated learning theory can counter some of the apparent concerns and contradictions created by a functionalist view of learning. It has furthermore positioned Communities of Practice theory as a specific form of learning theory to apply to my research questions. CoP theory draws on phenomenological and interpretivist traditions to specify a particular construction of learning which emphasises learning as a tacit and embedded process, to be understood as always and inevitably situated within specific contexts rather than discrete, functional and context-free (Lave and Wenger, 1991). Taking this view of learning forces a focus on language and the day-to-day practice of participants in specific communities. This section of the thesis has positioned CoP as a particular situated learning theory with a growing but specialised canon of literature, rather than assuming ‘a formulation of situated learning [which] then emerges in which Communities of Practice become the self-referential fonts of all relevant knowledge and learning’ (Contu and Willmott, 2003: 292). This section of the literature has explored in detail how CoP theory views learning as process through which one learns gradually to practice within a particular community, beginning by being allowed to participate peripherally before potentially later becoming recognised as a core practitioner within that social group (Wenger, 1998). The vast majority of individuals are members of many such communities at any one point in time, and have different degrees of membership within each, so that: At any given time as well as over the course of anyone’s life history, each of us is a member of many, shifting communities, each of which establishes, for each of its members, multiple social identities, multiple principles of identification with other people, and, accordingly, a collage or grab-bag of allegiances, beliefs, and sets of motives. (Smith, 1988: 168) This conceptualisation of learning has brought to the fore ideas of social boundaries. It emphasises that the ways in which individuals move across or into those boundaries affects how they are viewed, and what kinds of practices are seen as legitimate for them, e.g. their learning is bound up with their identities within particular communities. The idea of the individual ‘brokering’ between the practices of different communities is therefore central to understanding the process of learning within CoP. This section of the literature review concludes that Communities of Practice as a form of situated learning is highly appropriate for exploring the learning involved in becoming an MBA, and in 57

particular in understanding how they practice as MBAs in the work place. This is because situated learning theories such as CoP: …understand the process of knowledge formations and sharing as integral to everyday work practices. By conceptualising these practices as coincident with processes of identity formation that are articulated through relations of power, situated learning theory offers an alternative to, and invites a fundamental questioning of, mainstream learning theories. (Contu and Williams, 2003: 292) There are, however, a number of important critiques of CoP (which were covered in Section 2.2.4 above), particularly regarding way in which the theory uses the term ‘community’, how it has been taken up by some scholars and practitioners in a way that brings it much closer to the ‘mainstream’ learning theories it originally criticised, and its conceptualisation of how change is brought about to communities’ practices, e.g. its concept of power. Because of these concerns, despite the clear relevance of Communities of Practice theory to the research questions, I consider it important to examine another area of theory which may assist with these concerns, and that is scholarly examination of the concept of identity, beginning with functional conceptualisations of identity.

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2.3 The Function of identity The immediately preceding section has focused upon is a particular conception of learning related to the concept of Communities of Practice. It suggested that learning should not be seen as an objectified, stable concept which can be unequivocally ‘pinned down’ and dissected by a forensic, functionalist style of research, but rather that aspects of the meaning of learning, and therefore its worth, are intimately bound up with issues of identity. This attribution of learning in relation to a particular identity naturally shifts the conceptual bounds of this issue of the MBA away from a simplistic conception of ‘transfer’, but also forces the focus much more centrally onto the way in which this concept of identity is conceived of, understood, and constituted. If learning is therefore reconstituted as a social action – one in which the designation of having ‘learned’ something is the ability to be identified as a ‘competent’ practitioner of the norms of a particular social group – then the identity which one can claim, project, or maintain shifts becomes a central concept in the understanding and evaluation of ‘learning’ events such as the MBA. It is therefore appropriate, in order to explore the implications of such a conception of learning, that mainstream and alternative assumptions about the nature and role of identity as a concept should also be investigated, so that a more comprehensive understanding of identity as a heuristic for examining the MBA can be uncovered. This second half of this literature review is therefore devoted to the examination of identity, firstly with a broad historical sketch (Section 2.3 into 2.4) before moving on to examine the complex interplay of the issues of structure and agency and ‘identity work’ in relation to identity (Section 2.5). As we will see, the way in which identity can, is, and should be conceptualised by philosophers, social scientists and management theorists is anything but homogenous or clear-cut – not surprising given that it now occupies a central position in research in disciplines as varied as cultural studies (Hall and DuGay, 1996), psychology (van Dick, 2001; Harré, 1998a), history (Elliot, 2001; Booth and Rowlinson, 2006; Rowlinson and Carter, 2002), education (Marton, et al., 1993), sociology (Giddens, 1991; Bauman, 2001) and philosophy (Foucault, 1980; Laclau and Mouffe, 1985), as well as business and management studies / organisation studies (e.g. Pratt and Foreman, 2000; Alvesson and Willmott, 2002; Pullen, 2005).7 When examining the use of the term across disciplines, an indication of the range of conceptionalisations is Harré's (1983: 6) comment that identity as a term has ‘drifted right across the semantic landscape to come to mean more or less its opposite’. Despite identity’s breadth of disciplinary backgrounds there does, however, appear to be a rare consensus among academic commentators concerning the importance of concepts of identity as a heuristic, with Wrong (2000) claiming identity as ‘the most widely used concept these days in the social sciences and humanities’, and Brown (2001) suggesting identity has become ‘a key concept in the study of human relations’ generally. Gubrium and Holstein (2000a, see also Gubrium and

7 In addition to its multi-disciplinarity, identity is also widely used to discuss and understand a wide range of issues. As Bendle, 2002: 2) notes, ‘identity is invoked significantly in discussions of the role of narrative in society, postmodernity, globalization, intellectuals, nationalism, cultural pluralism, the body, intimacy, social movements and social inequalities’.

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Holstein, 2000b) feel identity has become the ‘blockbuster’ issue in interpreting social relations. Evidence of its currency within management studies include special journal issues (e.g. Academy of Management Review (2000) Vol. 25 No. 1; Organisation Studies (2001) Vol. 22 No. 2; as well as Human Relation (2009 Issue 3); Journal of Management Development (2009 – forthcoming Vol. 28); dedicated tracks at more recent conferences (British Academy of Management Conference, annually since 2004; Critical Management Studies, 2005 & 2007; European Academy of Management Conferences 2005-7); and an explosion of citations (632 articles since 2002 for identity as an academic conceptual category on the EBSCO business-oriented citations database – excluding terms such as ‘identity-theft’).

Elements of Identity

Source of identity ‘Display’ of identity

Role of identity

Role of language

Conceptions of identity ‘Functionalist’ ‘High-modernist’ Section 2.3.1 and 2.3.2 Section 2.3.3 and 2.3.4 Innate, discrete, Relatively flexible, but relatively stable and consistency created fixed through negotiation of a narrative of identity Individual Consciousness consciousness imposing consistency on social attributions An unconscious A process carefully presentation of your managed by the innate identity / individual to maximise attributes positive attributions Allows me to know ‘I’ Gives us a sense of exist, distinguishes belonging, a cultural ‘me’ from all else history of me

Conduit

Game

‘Postmodern’ Section 2.4 Extremely fluid, socially constructed but without an assumption of homogeneity Discourse repeatedly reassigns identity by context Identity and the individual and outcome ‘produced’ by discourse Gives a temporary connection to concepts, temporally and contextually flexible Constitutive

Table 2: Conceptualisations of identity (adapted from Gioia, 1998; see also Alvesson, 2003) It is therefore appropriate to begin an investigation of identity from a slightly wider perspective; one which charts changes in the conceptualisation of identity across a wide spectrum of (western) social thought. To do this I will apply a historical ‘narrative’ to the conceptualisation of identity, one which divides approaches to identity into three broad periods – periods taking either a ‘functionalist’, ‘high-modernist’ or ‘poststructuralist’ perspective – loosely following Gioia's (1998) categorisation of approaches to identity (see also Pratt and Foreman, 2000: 37). I am aware that periodising conceptualisations in this way is crude, and always a precarious over-simplification, however it provides a useful ‘lens’ through which to view changes in the way in which identity has 60

been understood. Table 2 above introduces the elements through which a ‘narrative’ of identity conceptualisations will be traced across the next two main sections of the literature review.

2.3.1 Functionalist identities What we can term a functionalist conception of identity can either be said to have developed from the work of the philosopher Rene Descartes (1596-1650), or that Descartes’ thinking represents the apogee of such a conceptualisation. Descartes famously distinguished sharply between the mind, or consciousness, which he termed ‘res cognitans’, and the exterior world of the body and everything of the world, which he termed ‘res extensa’ (Descartes, 1954 [1642]). As we have no ultimately verifiable method of establishing the existence of anything, Descartes reasoned, we must always doubt its existence. Descartes realised this ‘doubt’ was the one constant – if existence is doubted, something must be doing the doubting; doing the thinking that it is doubting. The subject which doubts / thinks must therefore itself exist. The ‘self’ was therefore that consciousness which could doubt and think; an ‘I’ could be reflexively viewed as the thing which doubted: ‘cognito ergo sum’. This conceptualisation of the subject as ‘thinking’ drives a wedge between the mind and the body, with a definite emphasis on the controlling function of the res cognitans over the res extensa, as the former occupies a prior position ontologically – it is only res cognitans which can provide truth that is ‘unshakeably certain’ (Descartes, 1954 [1642]: 66) while the world beyond is a ‘shifting and deceptive res extansa … a mere inert and homogeneous mass’ (Clegg, et al., 2004: 21, my emphasis). Two crucial implications flow from a Cartesian conceptualisation of identity. Firstly, the assumption of unity in identity. The ‘I’ is aware of its own consciousness, and defines that ‘I’ as singular and unitary. Secondly, this ‘I’ could then act on the world while maintaining its own integral unity, that is, the ‘I’ remains separate from, and unchanged by, the world upon which it acts. The self is therefore definitively ‘bounded’ as the unequivocal source of meaning because it provides a ‘unique [and] more-or-less integrated motivational and cognitive universe, a dynamic centre of awareness, emotion, judgement and action, organised into a distinctive whole and set contrastively against other such wholes and against a social and natural background’ (Geertz, 1983: 59, cited Linstead, 1993). Geertz emphasises that the perceived unity of Cartesian self is what drives this separation between the self and all-else, with the inherent assumption of the ‘supposed unity and homogeneity of the ensemble of its positions [ensuring] … the conception of the subject as origin and basis of social relations’ (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985: 115, cited Deetz, 2002). The Cartesian self is therefore separate, cognitive, and singular, as Tarnas (1991) summarises: Here, then [is] the prototypical declaration of the [Cartesian] self. Established as a fullyseparate, self-defining entity, for whom its own rational self-awareness was absolutely primary – doubting everything except itself, seeing itself in opposition not only to traditional authorities but to the world, as subject against object, as a thinking, observing, measuring, manipulating being, fully distinct from an objective God and an external nature. (Tarnas, 1991: 280) 61

We have then, in Cartesian traditions, a strong connection between the realist ontology of self – that ‘I’ exist because I think – and the designation of knowledge, both about oneself and others. It is therefore through this adoption of Cartesian concepts that a certain approach to the self comes into being, including the foregrounding of the role of the individual as observer, and then designator, of the ‘truth’ of their surroundings. This reinforces the connections between a functionalist conception of identity, and a functionalist conception of learning and knowledge. A spatialist, cognitive, functional conception of learning is ultimately under-pinned by a unitary assumption of identity, and a conception of social relations derived from the individual agent as creator of knowledge and meaning. From the adoption of a functionalist perspective on identity, then, the ‘nature’ of the self is essentially located in the agency, albeit reflexive agency, of the individual. While contexts may change around them, the individual remains and retains an ‘essence’ of identity which can be analysed and reflected upon. Therefore ultimately flowing from a particular reading of Cartesian thought is the ability for disciplines such as psychology to determine ‘fixed’ patterns in thought and behaviour flowing from the ‘core’ identity of an individual, be these termed ‘traits’ (Eysenck, 1967), ‘skills’ (Welford, 1968), ‘competencies’ (Boyatzis, 1982), ‘personality types’ (Myers, 1962) ‘intelligence’ or ‘IQ’ (Yerkes and LaRue, 1913), ‘emotional intelligence’ (Goleman, 1998), group roles (Belbin, 1981), leadership styles and even ‘learning styles’ (Honey and Mumford, 1982). A connection can be understood, therefore, between ‘traditional’ approaches to examining MBAs, and a functional conception of identity, just as it could be addressed by examining conceptions of learning (in Section 2.1.). Because it is this essentialist conception of identity which underpins strongly functionalist research on learning, precisely the same critiques which applied to functionalist learning in Section 2.2 can also be applied to functionalist conceptions of identity. These critiques would include: • • •

Viewing the idea of a static, constant identity as a radically under-socialised conception of the formation and role of identity (Giddens, 1991) Concerns that seeing the res cognitans as fundamentally separate from the res extensa ignores the important role of a concept of practice (Gheradi, 2000; Bourdieu, 1991) Concerns that a functionalist conception of identity requires that language be an inert tool used by the self for defining itself and the world; that a functionalist identity must buy into the conduit metaphor (see Section 2.1) for its empiricism to engender some concept of useful knowledge (Derrida, 1978; Lyotard, 1984)

Descartes’ original position was somewhat more sophisticated than this sketch has suggested, which means that these critiques are therefore inevitably addressed at something of a straw man. An utterly functional conception of identity, (complete with the acceptance of only purely innate capacities and the assumption of a rigidly-defined self, applicable in all contexts) is rarely invoked in the 21st century, even by the most overreaching of cognitive and behavioural psychologists. I will therefore argue that such thinking has been largely superseded, although I accept that the kind of ‘identity tools’ noted above, such as Emotional Intelligence and Learning Styles, clearly have their roots in very functionalist approaches (see Locke, 2005; Reynolds, 1997). 62

At this point it should be clear that a ‘narrative’ of conceptions of identity – from functionalist to high-modernist to poststructuralist – is both powerful and flawed, in that it demonstrates broader changes over time, but somewhat downplays the issue that ‘earlier’ conceptions might continue to both influence and re-emerge under new guises in certain disciplines. I am acknowledging, therefore, that a strongly functionalist conception of identity continues to play a key role in ordering western social thought at the present time. However I would suggest that a ‘highmodernist’ conception of identity (Bendle, 2002) emerges in response to the points of critique of functionalist identity noted above; a high-modernist conception of identity which begins to address the issue of social influence and to tackle the problems of accepting that language operates beyond the conduit metaphor.

2.3.2 Modernity and identity To overstate the case for the sake of simple exposition, a ‘high-modernist’-period conceptualisation of identity can be said to accept a role for a) language as a productive force, and b) social structure, in attributions of identity. With the arrival of the high-modernist period, ‘flexibility’ is introduced to conceptions of identity. However, different disciplines tackled the move to a ‘high-modernist’ conception of identity in different ways. For example, the discipline of psychology developed the idea of a ‘gestalt’ to incorporate this ‘flexibility’ into identity. A gestalt is an identity which is constructed, developed and realised through social interaction – a concept clearly responding to the critiques of purely functional identities (Haviland-Jones, 2000: 296). Gestalt psychology doesn’t assume that the self can be attributed as ‘identical’ in all social contexts, for a start by acknowledging the role of ‘others’ in that denomination, but does maintains its links to Cartesian thinking by positing stable patterns of attribution which are imposed by consciousness / the mind as a way of ‘creating’ identity. By assuming that the meaning of an identity is developed in interaction with other social actors, and is then reflexively interpreted as an attribute of the self, gestalt psychology of this kind of approach – especially in the way it has influenced social psychology (Weick, 1979) – can be said to fall under the ‘interpretive’ conception from Gioia's (1998) categorisation, a category which I am here designating as equivalent to the ‘high-modernist’ period, although clearly this use of ‘interpretive’ is somewhat different to its designation with, say, Communities of Practice theory. However, high-modernist conceptions of identity extend beyond a single discipline’s approach to the issue. The discipline of social psychology’s interrogation of the concept concludes that ‘the singularity we feel ourselves to be is not an entity … [however,] the body-centred structure of perception is one such recurring stability found in all acts of perceiving’ (Harré, 1998b 3). Harré neatly encapsulates the high-modernist position of a socially-constructed self, but one which is nonetheless a reflexive identification of an ‘existing’ and relatively-stable core (Gergen, 1991). In this way it partially recapitulates the Cartesian dualism and the coalescence of identity around an individual, but places ‘display’ of a particular identity at specific times in the realm of negotiation through language and social context. It is this re-working which results in a limited but distinct degree of ‘flexibility’ to identity conceptions.

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What was being developed, therefore, was a conceptualisation of identity in which the role of the self in a specific social context was brought centre-stage, that is, a situated conception of identity just as a situated conception of learning was developed. Individuals in situated interaction would create, and re-create, identification with particular social groupings, which in turn designated the identity attributed by others to an individual. An identity became something constructed socially, something which allowed one to identify, or otherwise, with the characteristics or attributes of different groups. There are clear points of connection between identity in this vein, and a Communities of Practice conception of meaning-creation and social learning (see Section 2.2). A high-modernist identity is therefore, like Communities of Practice, ‘a matter of membership, which involves (or should involve) an imaginative identification with the details of the lives and desires of others’ (Rorty, 1988, my emphasis). The perception of the self is ‘at stake’ (Sandel, 1992; see also Sandel, 1996) in interaction and membership gives rise to a concept of self which is repeatedly tentatively professed by individuals, but always open to contradiction and redefinition by other individuals and social groups. The high-modernist self is therefore not singular but rather an individual working on their ‘self’ through language, by proposing, positing, defending and retracting particular identities in social settings. Identity in this conception is malleable to a certain extent, by drawing on the productive capacity of language to create certain impressions, and in this sense embodies the ‘gestalt’ tradition. Doug Kellner (1992) neatly summarises the delicate balance in high-modernist conceptions of identity between fixity and fluidity which this ‘working on the self’ creates: In modernity, identity becomes more mobile, multiple, personal, self-reflexive, and subject to change and innovation. Yet the forms of identity in modernity are also relatively substantial and fixed; identity still comes from a circumscribed set of roles and norms ... [However,] modernity also increases ‘Other’ directedness … for as the number of possible identities increases, one must gain recognition to assume a stable, recognised identity. (Kellner, 1992: 141-2). The ‘recognition’ required to assume a relatively stable identity therefore becomes, in a highmodernist conception, the route to the creation of a sense of a unitary personhood. The ‘reality’ of that identity is determined in the ‘space’ between the individual and the group of which they are a member. This kind of conception of identity clearly resonates with certain of Etienne Wenger’s ideas on identity as an inseparable element of conceptualising learning in Communities of Practice, including the centrality of membership and social interaction, and the socially constructed (as opposed to prior) nature of ‘unity’ in identity. As Wenger and Snyder (2000) note: Identity extends in space, across boundaries. It is neither unitary nor fragmented. It is an experience of multi-membership, an intersection of many relationships that you hold into the experience of being a person, at once one and multiple. (Wenger and Snyder, 2000: 242). A high-modernist identity creates for each individual what can be termed a ‘parliament of selves’, that is, ‘as many social identities as he or she has group memberships’ (Pratt and Foreman, 2000: 19), stressing the link between the individual, and those ‘larger’ groups to which they belong.

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Therefore, drawing together the strands of this brief introduction to a high-modernist identity, two important concerns can be identified: Social Identity Theory

Firstly, a high-modernist ‘identity-through-social-recognition’ conception focuses attention on the meaningful relationships between the individual and larger groups. A particular relationship relevant to this study, and one which has received much research attention, is the concept of identity created between an individual and a work organisation. This kind of relationship will be examined more closely in Section 2.3.3 by investigating work which draws on the Social Identity Theory of Henry Tajfel in the 1970s (Tajfel, 1978; Calás and Smircich, 2000).

Identity Projects

Secondly, the socially-constructed nature of identity gives rise to the possibility that one can ‘work on the self’ to gain social recognition. This assumption of identity as something for the individual agent to ‘work on’ provides a distinct psychological ‘drive’ for individuals to try and maintain their sense of a unitary self. This aspect of the high-modernist approach will be explored in Section 2.3.4 through examining the idea of what has been termed ‘reflexive modernity’, or ‘identity projects’ (Beck, et al., 2003; Davies and Harré, 1990).

The two points inter-connect if we consider that work organisations are likely to provide an important source of social interaction for many individuals, therefore the ‘drive’ to be recognised as an ‘approved’ identity may well strongly depend on what an organisation might consider to constitute an approved identity. The ‘need’ for an individual to strive for a recognised identity reinforces the continued role in a high-modernist conception of the individual as ‘agent’ with internal needs and desires which they attempt to fulfil. In the two more detailed sections below, then, I will concentrate on exploring the way in which these approaches are combining a ‘multiple’ conception of identity with the role of the individual as a source of ‘agency’.

2.3.3 High modernist approaches to identity (1): Social Identity Theory Social Identity Theory (SIT)8 grew out of the work of Henry Tajfel (Tajfel, 1978; Tajfel and Turner, 1979), and has now been invoked to support a wide range of approaches examining identity as, firstly, an attribute of individuals and larger social groupings such as organisations, and secondly as an outcome of the relationship between those attributions (van Dick, 2001). Several key tenets of Tajfel’s theory clearly align it with the ‘high-modernist’ approach to identity outlined above. For example, Social Identity Theory presents itself as an inherently social approach to identity, assuming that an individual constructs an identity in relation to the ‘Other’ – through processes it terms ‘categorisation’ and ‘comparison’ (Elsbach and Kramer, 1996). By this SIT suggests that to support and sustain any particular identity an individual uses linguistic resources to identify 8

SIT acquired its capitalisation and acronym from later authors than Tajfel himself.

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themselves with a particular social category, and further reinforces that identity by comparing that category to social groups with which they do not identify. These processes working together allow an individual to determine how important a particular identification is to their ‘self-concept’. An additional element of this process is that it takes place at a ‘local’ level (van Dick, 2001: 269) and will be re-stated and reassessed dependent on the individual’s immediate context. Under SIT, then, identity will be context-dependent, allowing individuals to identify differently with different groups at different times (Tajfel and Turner, 1985) – a situation supporting a conception of individuals as ‘segmenting’ their identities to their different ‘roles’ in different spheres of their lives (Ashforth, 2001; Nippert-Eng, 1996). These processes of comparison and categorisation would clearly seem to implicate the identity of larger social groupings in an individual’s designation of self-identity. Social Identity Theory would, following this reading, seem to have much in common with Communities of Practice, as presented in Section 2.2. However, investigating a little further into the Theory will present some distinctions. To begin with, Social Identity Theory sharply distinguishes between personal and social identity (van Dick, 2001; Tajfel and Turner, 1979). While Communities of Practice clearly maintains a conceptualisation of the individual, it focuses on the construction of meaning as always within a community rather than as ‘between’ the fixed positions of individual and group. Social Identity Theory, in contrast, maintains a rather transactional assumption of the relationship between individuals and organisations, so that even through interaction the individual maintains their separateness. This, of course, was one of the hallmarks of a functionalist identity – in essence Social Identity Theory recapitulates the Cartesian split, although now positioning it as the ‘construction’ of a sense of unity in the individual, and social context. When used in investigations of identity, SIT comes to resemble a functionalist conception in two other areas. Firstly, in its assumption that identity roles are ‘more or less stable (i.e. have relatively established boundaries and content) rather than in flux, emergent, or under threat’ (Ashforth, et al., 2000: 473); something a conceptual article invoking SIT confirms when suggesting that ‘... “personal values” refer to core, stable values such as those linked to one’s identity and rooted in one's upbringing, socioeconomic status and cultural background’ (Hewlin, 2003: 634). Secondly, despite a social conception and the element of ‘flexibility’, the sovereign individual and their cognitive ‘drive’ to achieve something is the ultimate determinant of a particular identity in SIT, even if that requires some social validation. As van Dick (2001) describes it, SIT operates because ‘individuals [are] motivated to achieve self-esteem; self-esteem based on social identity; [the] ‘request’ for positive identity means positive evaluations of ‘your’ group at the expense of others’ (van Dick, 2001: 269). The nature of relations between an ‘individual’ and ‘organisational’ identity within SIT are reconstituted as basically ‘contractual’ relations between discrete entities rather than symbiotic, as this quote from Dutton and Dukerich (1991) makes clear: The relationship between individuals’ senses of their organisational identity and image and their own sense of who they are and what they stand for suggests a very personal connection between organisational action and individual motivation. (Dutton and Dukerich, 1991: 550)

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So, while using the language of interpretivism / high-modernism – e.g. ‘personal’ and ‘sense of who they are’ – identity within SIT has become reified into ‘oppositional’ identities between organisations and individuals, and the purpose of good management becomes, therefore, to reduce that oppositional ‘mis-match’ ensuring ‘good’ identities for both the individual and the organisation. When translated into the business and management arena, SIT has become a performative concept, examining the organisation / individual identity relationship and from it deriving such maxims as: ‘in order to gain a positive self-concept from membership in an organisation, one has to help the organisation to be better off’ (van Dick, 2001: 271). A particularly strong example comes from van Dick (2001) who, in a review of the application of SIT, concludes: Social Identity Theory specifies the components and determinants of identification more theoretically than the organisational approach … SIT offers a particularly fertile background for predictions of situational and contextual variability of identification (van Dick, 2001: 266) ‘Organisational identity’, viewed within this reading of SIT – that is, both as a creator of ‘norms’ for individual identity construction and the collectivity of individual identities – is now a ‘tool’ which can be used predict and control organisational operations. Furthermore, individual agency – the degree to which a ‘discrete individual’ identifies with a particular situation – is now the driver and outcome of a ‘good’ organisational identity. At times this reading is indistinguishable from a strongly cognitivist view associated with mainstream psychology, open to all the critiques levelled at Cartesian approaches in the first place. So while elements of SIT suggest a more promising interpretive and high-modernist approach to identity, in much of its importation into business and management it has either regressed, or been re-interpreted, into a form most amenable to analysis through a very functionalist conception of identity. So while SIT appeared promising, ultimately an approach is required which develops an understanding of why it is that particular identities are desirable. The next Section therefore examines the concept of ‘identity projects’ (Giddens, 1991; Harré, 1983).

2.3.4 High-modernist approaches to identity (2): Identity projects ‘Identity projects’ are strongly associated with an approach which views current western society as in an age of ‘reflexive modernity’ (Beck, et al., 2003). Wajcman and Martin (2002) offer a neat encapsulation of the reflexive modernity position, noting that ‘it postulates a sharp decline in the power and legitimacy of authoritative norms; [and] a corresponding rise in a new form of identity formation which become orientated around the life-long ‘project’ of constructing and exploring identities’ (Wajcman and Martin, 2002: 986). In this reading we can see, firstly, that reflexive modernity resonates with the key tenets of a high-modernist idea of identity explored earlier, particularly concerning the increase in ‘flexibility’ introduced by the reduction in power of an ‘innate’, functionalist conception of identity. Secondly Wajcman and Martin (2002) also stress the ‘constructive’ role of language in forming identities. However, the third element of Wajcman and Martin’s statement has not so far been subject to scrutiny in our examination of identity – the idea of identity over time; as part of a ‘life-long project’.

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Identity as a ‘project of the self’ (Harré, 1983; Davies and Harré, 1990) assumes that in a highmodernist society people have an awareness of their identity as a social construct, that is, they can reflexively view that identity as something ‘created’. If this is the case, they can also therefore treat it as something malleable; they can see identity as something to be consciously manipulated. This kind of conceptualisation is especially prevalent in the work of sociologist Anthony Giddens, for example when he suggests that ‘the self is a reflexive project, for which the individual is responsible. We are not what we are, but what we make of ourselves’ (Giddens 1991: 75). Identity in terms of a ‘project’ identity is therefore not a fixed interaction between language / social groupings and an individual, but an ongoing construction, whose ‘reality’ continues to be determined by the reflexive judgement of the individual agent. As Giddens (1991: 53) confirms: Self-identity is not a distinctive trait, or even a collection of traits, possessed by the individual. It is the self as reflexively understood by the person … self-identity is continuity (across time and space) as interpreted reflexively by the agent. A project is consciously made to develop the self, and it is the constructed continuity of that project which engenders a sense of unity in identity (Harré, 1998a). A sense of unity is not achieved, therefore, as with Social Identity Theory, through positive comparisons to others, but through a sense of a ‘trajectory’ for the self (Giddens, 1991). Where identity projects cleave most strongly to the modernist / high-modernist position is in the assumption of a teleology of progress to social and individual identities; that they are going somewhere, something to be worked out and worked on to achieve specific goals. While this does not extend as far as a functionalist-style conception of the accumulation of attributes of identity, the idea of individuals forging a direction to identity projects also provides the impetus for individuals to manage their ‘dynamic portfolio of alternative self-conceptions’ (Rappoport, et al., 1999: 96). As well as, from SIT, a source of positive self-worth, within ‘identity projects’ managing an identity is ‘the continuing process by which a person seeks to attain and maintain uniqueness and individuality (personal being) whilst also being socially recognised (social being)’ (Holmes, 1995a). Reflexively producing an ‘identity narrative’ (Brown and Humphreys, 2002; Czarniawska, 1997) allows individuals to deploy the language and symbolic resources at their disposal to create the sense of unity and consistency which is required to make sense of their many identities. Following an identity projects approach, particular identities are desirable in particular circumstances only in the degree to which they ‘secure’ some retrospective consistency to an identity (Alvesson, 2001; Dyer and Keller-Cohen, 2000). Within this we can see a posited internal drive which is deemed to be pushing individuals towards making certain decisions, and not others, in the way that they deploy the flexibility of identity a high-modernist conception grants them. However, unlike within SIT, when the drive was towards positive identifications, the introduction of a diachronic aspect to the formulation of identity, through projects, gives us a possible insight into the process of identity ‘choices’ as they are assumed to be made to ensure a sense of consistency in the identity narrative (Bruner, 1990). The project of the self is therefore an ongoing, iterative task for the individual, who must draw on linguistic resources to negotiate a legitimate identity in social interaction (Holmes, 2000b). The interpretive element, emphasising the meaning created by individuals in local contexts 68

means there is considerable overlap between this conception of identity, and the Communities of Practice conception of creating meaning outlined in Section 2.2.

2.3.4.2

Critiques of identity projects

An ‘identity projects’ approach clearly places the social, and language, at the centre of its conceptualisation. However, it generally maintains that agency – the power to act to change one’s identity – remains primarily within the remit of the individual, albeit a reflexively ‘self-constructed’ individual. There is a strong sense within the identity projects approach that the flexibility of identity is ‘empowering’ to the individual; that they can shrug-off the strait-jacket of a particular identity as they, reflexively, react to a new situation. Positioned in this way, identity project resembles a consumptive model of identity where identities are chosen and worn like consumer items (Perriton and Reedy, 2002: 129), much as a customer makes free decisions about purchases. Despite Gidden’s assertions to the effect that identity is not an ‘attribute’ of the individual in the way that a functional identity might suggest, many of those approaches which draw heavily on Giddens and the reflexive modernity thesis for their theoretical underpinning use terminology which strongly position identity as a ‘consumptive’ process within the individual’s ambit as an agent. A good example is the idea of ‘provisional selves’ (Ibarra, 1999) in which it is suggested that individuals can, and do, ‘trial’ new identities prior to making ‘real’ life-changes to see if they’re likely to work for them. This clearly draws on Giddens’ idea of projects and the reflexivity of the self, but yet it is manifestly unclear what epistemological ‘status’ these ‘provisional selves’ have in relation to those doing the ‘trialling’. Are those identities somehow doing the trialling less sociallyconstructed than those selves being trialled? These concerns have led some to suggest that an identity-project conception of identity ‘fudges’ many of the key issues in relation to the question of agency, and some, for example Mestrovic (1998), go as far as to suggest that Giddens’ conception of identity and the agent ‘is completely vague and amounts to a cognitive, rationalist caricature of the agent that constitutes an ideological catch-all, an idealised vision of human empowerment’ (Mestrovic, 1998: 83). One of Mestrovic’s key concerns is that ultimately the ‘social’ element of reflexive modernity, despite beginning as a central element, becomes indistinguishable from a purely agency-driven conception, within which the individual is the ultimate arbiter of their own destiny, and identity. There’s a suggestion that Giddens’-style reflexive project of the self, although a socialised conception, re-opens the Cartesian split between individual and context, even if this is sociallyconstructed. As Matthew Adams (2003: 230) notes, ‘it maps a disjunction on to self and culture / society, so that the self is a separate bounded entity, pursuing its own teleology against a choiceladen, wholly separate, social backdrop’. Adams’ conclusion is that the ‘reflexive project of the self’ is ‘a culturally-located, politically-normative discourse, steeped … in modernist principles’ (Adams, 2003: 231). Adams (2003) seems to suggest that it is the high-modernist roots of a ‘project of the self’ approach which ultimately cause it to err towards an overly agency-driven conceptualisation. If, as I suggested earlier, high-modernist conceptions of identity were developed largely to address concerns with the effects of assuming a functionalist identity, then it seems that it may be the highmodernist conceptualisation more broadly which is at ‘fault’, rather than the ‘blame’ being attributable to specific instantiations of Giddens’ ideas.

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‘Identity projects’ presents an interesting and influential way of conceptualising identity. The idea of reflexivity as a method of understanding how an individual is (re)created is a powerful one, which clearly offers a medium through which the experience of becoming an MBA could be understood, not least one which tallies with many elements of a Communities of Practice approach. By introducing the idea of ‘working on the self’ identity projects approaches clearly resonate with the influential public discourses on learning and education. However, similarly to the Communities of Practice approach, identity projects can be criticised for its lack of a coherent concept of ‘power’ or other force which would explain meaningful change in identity. It ultimately fails to deal with the idea that ‘identity is viewed as a situated self which is set within a wider system of identities’ (Carbaugh, 1996), or acknowledge the way in which identity might be governed from outside the locus of control of the individual (Rose, 1989; Hacking, 1986).

2.3.5 Conclusions to high-modernist identity High-modernist approaches to identity incorporate a social and language-based element, eliminating some of the more pressing problems of purely functionalist identities. However, both of the specific approaches to identity investigated in this section – that of Social Identity Theory and identity projects – seem in practice to ‘lapse’ back into functional concerns, particularly in their recapitulation of the Cartesian split, albeit each on slightly different terms. Social Identity Theory offers an approach to linking the identities of individuals and larger social groupings, but one which ultimately seems little more than the organisation or social group as a ‘metaphorical’ individual which can be investigated as though it had cognitive agency (Cornelisson, 2002). Identity projects does offer a powerful explanation of the rise of the MBA through its assumption that individuals are building a career and life ‘project’ or ‘narrative’ of which the MBA can be seen as a ‘milestone’ in constructing an identity: a yoking together of learning, identity and socioeconomic ‘progress’ which clearly must be taken account of in answering my research questions. However, in general it seems that its conceptualisation fails to account for its own role in creating and driving the discourse, and therefore is blind to how certain practices, discourses and identities are denied to certain groups, as opposed to being available for easy consumption. It is insufficiently reflexive to realise its position in creating a sense of individuals’ alienation from the sense of a secure identity; of acknowledging its part in supporting a philosophy which has ‘torn away the bases for the formation of sustaining identities, resulting in a growing malaise as people search in vain for a place to anchor a meaning for their lives’ (Wajcman and Martin, 2002: 987). A modernist conception of a telos – a diachronic ‘direction’ to societies and (increasingly through the idea of identity projects) individuals – requires a conception of language as the ‘medium’ of individuals and groups to ‘direct’ their attributions of progress (Derrida, 1994). Language and discourse continue to be seen as the ‘resources’ of individuals and groups, delineating identity rather than designating or defining identity for others (Hardy, et al., 2002). But what if this is an inadequate conceptualisation of the role of language in identity? What if, as is suggested by critics of both SIT and identity projects, discourse dictates as much as it is manipulated? What if language is something which constitutes identity as much as it constituted through it? It is these contentions 70

which requires we examine the third approach to identity identified by Gioia (1998; see also Table 2 above), those approaches coming under the heading of ‘poststructuralist’.

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2.4 Poststructuralism and identity The Cartesian subject, the unified, self-conscious ego, could … perhaps be salvaged so long as language itself continued to be seen as a stable system of meanings, whether the meaning was anchored in a direct relationship between signs and their referents in the real, or at least secured in a rule-governed structure that guaranteed the relationship between a signifier (sound, image) and a signified (idea, concept). In either case we could regard language as merely an object transparent to our intellect, a toolbox of signs of which we remain masters and can use as we will. But this stability is exactly what post-structuralism has put into question. (Sayer, 2004: 68) Sayer (2004) draws together a number of key tenets of post-structuralism in this quotation, all of which, as he indicates, are relevant to the analysis of the conceptualisation and role of identity. Firstly, the role of language and discourse in determining meaning and identity; secondly, the theorised collapse of any, even provisionally, ‘fixed’ relationships between language and ‘things’; and thirdly, the complete fluidity of identity as an outcome of this reformulation of the relationship of language and meaning. There are, however, some problems with this reading of poststructuralism’s effect on identity – not least that academics dispute whether it is appropriate to read terms such as ‘postmodernism’ and poststructuralism as periods rather than perspective – is the ‘post’ really ‘post’ anything? (Parker, 1995; Alvesson, 1995). Furthermore, any cursory ‘definition of postmodernism is likely to be disputed because the postmodernist label includes many diverse intellectual trends’ (Kilduff and Mehra, 1997: 455); summary is difficult because ‘there is no unified postmodern theory, or even a coherent set of positions’ (Best and Kellner, 1991: 2), and these are in addition to the concern that neat definitions run counter to the poststructuralist ethic in the first place. Because of these entrenched problems with opening up poststructuralism for analytical inspection this section of the literature review will not attempt to provide a comprehensive summary of poststructuralism as a movement, nor engage with all aspects of what has been termed poststructuralism or ‘postmodernism’ as it relates to debates about identity. However, the ways in which some perspectives which have been termed ‘poststructuralist’ approach issues of identity will be helpful for conceptualising identity in ways which have been lacking in the literature investigated so far. At its heart are those issues mentioned by Sayer in the opening quotation. This section will therefore outline a few of the broader trends in poststructuralism as they relate to identity formation (Section 2.4.1) and then investigate in some detail what has been termed the Foucauldian approach to identity within organisation studies (Section 2.4.2).

2.4.1 Identity in a post-structuralist era If we assume, somewhat controversially, that post-structuralism is a period, taking place ‘after’ modernity and structuralism (Cooper and Burrell, 1988), then we can see some of the changes to conceptualisations of identity and managerial identities between a ‘functionalist’ view and a ‘highmodernist view’ being extended and expanded in the poststructuralist period (Hassard and Parker, 1993). This is particularly the case in terms of the idea of ‘flexibility’ or fluidity of identity (Shotter 72

and Gergen, 1989). Poststructuralism assumes not only that people may construct several identities for different contents, a la the high-modernist conceptualisations, but also that a) this self now becomes ‘nomadic’ to the extent that there is no longer a ‘real’ more-stable identity recoverable below the many identities ‘put on’ in different circumstances (Grodin and Lindhof, 1996: 56), and b) this ‘fragmentation’ of identity – the decoupling of the person from the identity – breaks up the idea of a human bounded by skin or flesh altogether, leading to such pronouncements as: ‘the discrete individual is a fiction that we can better do without’ (Parker, 1992: 7). The fragmentation of identity and of the previously sovereign individual within a poststructuralist perspective is part of a broader questioning of high-modernist principles, and as such involves ‘a rejection of overarching propositions, an acceptance of pluralism and fragmentation, an emphasis on difference and heterogeneity, and an ironic admission of the ephemerality of things’ (Harvey, 1989a: 10). Any sense of ‘continuity’ of identity is therefore assumed to be an effect of continued consumption, or ‘taking up’ of certain discursively-available identities rather than something inherently tied to a particular person or individual (Brown, 1995: 138). The idea of a unified identity coalescing around a body being ‘given coherence by a sense of time and place’ is merely the outcome of certain identities being attributed to the ‘fictional’ ‘empty self [which can be] refilled, decanted and replenished with whatever personae the occasion demands’ (Brown, 1995: 80). If a sense of a consistency of identity and of people is not due to something inherent in their nature, then other ‘narratives’ of people and groups are also open to question, for example, the idea that lives, or societies have ‘narratives’ or a teleology; that they are trying to, achieve or achieving, ‘progress’ in some specified direction (Lyotard, 1984). If identities are merely collections of consumable and consumed personae, drawn on and discarded on a moment-by-moment basis (Lash and Urry, 1987), the idea of ‘working on the self’, or ‘developing the self’ becomes either pointless, impossible, or perhaps both. A poststructuralist perspective on identity therefore offers a particular challenge to the assumptions of Chapter 1’s broad discourse of learning concerning who and what we perceive MBAs to be. Of course the poststructuralist approach presents the challenge to the predominant learning discourse precisely by characterising is as a discourse; as merely one particular narrative constructed among and between shifting social groupings to make sense of social phenomena, and furthermore a narrative which holds no greater ‘truth’ or certainty than any other which might have been constructed. This ‘collapse of grand narratives’ and its effect on such concepts as ‘identity projects’ is at heart an outcome of poststructuralism’s view of the nature and status of language (Lyotard, 1984). Instead of a ‘routine’ approach to language as ‘transparent and unproblematic’ (Cooper, 1989: 494) poststructuralism features a ‘linguistic turn’ (Alvesson and Kärreman, 2000a) within which language takes on a strong productive quality; that is, the external world becomes an outcome of its construction in language, and asserts that ‘no assumption of reality can exist as anything more than its representation in language’ (Hardy and Clegg, 1999: 381). The power of language and discourse to ‘exclusively determine the control and boundaries of the ‘object domain’ to which [that discourse] relates’ (Reed, 2005: 1622, emphasis in original) indicates 73

a profound shift in the explanation of how identities are controlled and formed. Within a highmodernist conception, while aspects of identity are socially constructed through language, the individual creating their identity project retains at least a certain autonomy and agency to shape that identity. Within a strong poststructuralist perspective, the pre-existing structure of language has ‘always already’ positioned a particular identity as available (Derrida, 1976) and ‘places’ not individuals, but subjects of those available identities within an identifiable category within language. Thus it is not that there are certain types of identities which are subsequently recognised or identified in language, such as ‘bureaucrats’, or ‘managers’, or even ‘MBAs’, but rather ‘that a kind of person came into being at the same time as the kind itself was being invented’ (Hacking, 1986: 228). Identity, then, is not something somehow ‘prior’ to people’s recognition of it, including the increasingly slippery concept of the individual themselves, but rather any particular ‘subjectivity’ – bureaucrat, manager, MBA etc. – is the outcome of the effects of the discourse operating on what, in certain shifting discourses, is categorised as being an individual (Deetz, 2002: 32). This profound shift in the source of control of identity is without doubt problematic, but opens up a number of new avenues to our understanding of how the power to alter and create identities is constituted. Indeed it could be argued that it is the poststructuralist interest in the nature of language and discourse – the so-called ‘discursive explosion’ (Hall, 1996: 2) – which has caused ‘discursively manufactured and managed … subjectivity and identity [to] emerge as “the” key site for research and analysis’ (Reed, 2005: 1636). This, then, is the second meaning of the ‘linguistic turn’: that the shift in control of identity also shifts the focus of investigation and analysis to processes of identity, so that ‘investigations should move toward those processes which shape subjectivity rather than the process by which individual subjects act upon the world’ (Linstead, 1993: 60, emphasis in original; see also Westwood and Linstead, 2001: 3). Hardy, et al. (2005: 62) summarise the distinction: Unlike research on social identity, a discursive approach does not examine what members are thinking, nor does it attempt to relate collective identity to individual social identities. Rather its focus is primarily on the constructive effects of conversations in which participants describe themselves as a collective. With all types of social structures and identities now ‘recognised to be an effect of language, a tropological achievement’ (Westwood and Linstead, 2001: 5), the ways in which ‘the subject is structured through discourse, which is always anterior to them’ (Alvesson and Deetz, 2000: 97) becomes the backdrop for methods of investigating why certain attributes coalesce around certain created subjectivities; that is, what kinds of power does discourse apply to alter identities. Here, perhaps, in the analysis of the forms of discourse which ‘‘speak’ to him or her [and] position that person in the world’ (Alvesson and Deetz, 2000: 97), is a possible solution to the power problematic identified within the critique of Communities of Practice (see Section 2.2.4). By shifting the idea of the object of power away from the autonomous individual and onto how different ‘language games’ might interpellate particular subjects at particular times and for particular reasons, poststructuralism provides an important perspective on how changes in identity might occur. If, ‘in its broadest terms, language defines the possibilities of meaningful existence at 74

the same time as it limits them’ (Clegg, 1989: 151), then it follows that by investigating some of what post-structuralists term the ‘discursive practices’ – ‘of talk, text, writing, cognition, argumentation, and representation generally’ (Clegg, 1989: 151) – surrounding the MBA, we should reach a very different understanding of the nature of identity change and power to that provided by more functionalist or modernist approaches to identity. Therefore, having set out some of the broader implications of a poststructuralist approach for the understanding of identity, it is important to examine in a little more detail the link between power, discourse and subjectivity. Although by no means the only theorist drawn on within organisation studies for investigating identities through discourse, Michel Foucault is arguably the most widely-invoked, and it is to the ‘take up’ of Foucault’s ideas within studies of identity in organisations that this thesis now turns.

2.4.2 Foucault and identity in organisations The individual is not to be conceived of as a sort of elementary nucleus … [In fact] it is already one of the prime effects of power that certain bodies, certain gestures, certain desires, certain discourses, come to be identified and constituted as individuals … the individual is an effect of power. (Foucault, 1980: 98) Michel Foucault, the French philosopher and historian of thought, contributed a particular approach to understanding a number of issues under discussion here, and, as noted above, is one of the most widely cited post-structuralist authors and theorists within the organisation studies literature concerned with identity9. As the quote above implies, Foucault would concur with many other post-structuralists in seeing an individual as an effect rather than a cause, an outcome rather than an originator. However, it is because of a) Foucault’s attempts to incorporate a particular concept of power directly in his explanations of social and discursive change, and b) the relative wealth of literature incorporating his ideas within the study of organisational identities, that his specific inclusion here is warranted. While Communities of Practice offers a theory of learning around the MBA which emphasises social negotiation, Foucault, drawing on post-structuralist traditions concerning the constitutive power of discourse, offers a potentially complementary explanation of learning in relation to power and identity, one which can respond to (Perriton and Reedy, 2002: 130) call: What is needed for the debate on learning communities to open up is a theory of identity that treats identity as relatively unstable over time, its interpretation largely outside of the exercise of the subject’s will and, as a result, where an individual’s entry and existence within a sequestered social group is complex and contradictory.

2.4.2.1

Foucault and ‘power / knowledge’

What has come to be known as ‘Foucauldian’ theory, at least as it has been taken up within studies of organisations, offers a strong candidate for such a theory of identity because it attempts to account for the processes through which changes in identity (or subjectivity) occur, assuming subjectivities, although ‘drawn from society’, to be constituted through ‘local power’ which create

9

In common with a number of other authors and theorists termed ‘postmodernist’, or poststructuralist, Foucault tended to reject the term in relation to descriptions of himself. His protestations don’t seem to have had much subsequent effect in how others have positioned his work (Burrell, 1988).

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‘technologies which come to colonise the individual’ (Fleming and Spicer, 2003: 158). This Foucauldian study of local power in constituting forms of both knowledge and identities has been successfully employed to investigate a wide range of organisational themes or discourses, including team-working (Sewell and Wilkinson, 1992), entrepreneurship (Jones and Spicer, 2005b), personal development (Brewis, 1996), human resources (Townley, 1993), recruitment (Bergström and Knights, 2004; Deetz, 2002), careers (McKinley, 2002; Grey, 1994); Total Quality Management (Knights and McCabe, 2000) and work dress (Trethewey, 1999), among others. As Barratt notes, it is this re-conceptualisation of the way in which power and language operate together which have made Foucault so popular as an organisational theorist: Foucault has enabled a perspective on the complex microphysical circuitry of power relations which underpins organisational life, the practices of power which shape our lives and selves at work as well as the broader rationalities or regimes of truth … which are constituted through the operation of power. (Barratt, 2003: 2) Foucault suggests that power operates to determine ‘regimes of truth’ – truth – by being intertwined with knowledge in an operation he terms, to indicate their inseparability, ‘power/knowledge’ (Foucault, 1980; see also Clegg, 1989). Power / knowledge is not akin to traditional concepts of ‘sovereign’ power, where an identifiable group or individual ‘oppresses’ others (Kearins, 1996) – that is, power ‘should not be sought in the primary existence of a single point, in a unique source of sovereignty from which secondary and descendent forms would emanate’ (Foucault, 1979: 93) – but rather power / knowledge is instead ‘the multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate and which constitute their own organisation’ (Foucault, 1979: 92). Power can therefore only be understood as the local effect of discourse and discursive practices in determining who people are, and what they do, and what they know. What they can be said to know is an effect of discursive power operating to create a particular subjectivity: There is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge which does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations ... In short, it is not the subject of knowledge that produces a corpus of knowledge, useful or resistant to power, but power/knowledge, the processes and struggles that traverse it, and of which it is made up, that determine the form and possible domains of knowledge. (Foucault, 1979: 28-9) Power / knowledge offers a potential explanation for the ways in which identities at a local level can be determined by the broad sweep of social discourses, because these controls are ‘internalised’; that is, the ‘pervasive controls colonise the individual from within rather than from above or from the outside’ (Gabriel, 1999: 185). This ‘internalised’ power / knowledge defines subjectivities by ‘disciplining’ them into acting in certain ways; into being recognised as certain types of individuals through those actions: ‘Power seeps into the very grain of individuals, reaches right into their bodies, permeates their gestures, their posture, what they say, how they learn to live and work with other people’ (Foucault, 1977: 28, in Burrell, 1988: 226). 76

This internalised power / knowledge is the conceptual bridge between the concrete practices seen and recognised on a day-to-day basis and the sweeping ‘grandiose’ (Alvesson and Kärreman, 2000) discourses of, say, management learning or ‘career’. The broader discourse acts locally through a language-inscribed power / knowledge, creating subjectivities through a local categorisation or triage process which, because internalised, defines the individual just as they define themselves through its terms: This form of power applies itself to immediate everyday life which categorises the individual, marks him by his own individuality, attaches him to his own identity, imposes a law of truth on him which he must recognise and which others have to recognise in him. It is a form of power which makes individual subjects. (Foucault, 1982: 212) Power / knowledge defines us from the inside because language and its categorisations are anterior to our sense of ourselves. Because there is no individual ‘prior’ who could act in defining their own terms, through power / knowledge processes we ‘we subjugate ourselves to its operations [and] come to ‘know’ ‘ourselves’ through a process of subjectification (Brewis, 1998: 85). However, because conforming to the strictures of power / knowledge processes – disciplining our ‘selves’ to its categorisations – is exactly the process through which we may claim for ourselves identities as both powerful and / or knowledgeable, ‘power for Foucault is … much less repressive than it is productive – of all that we know of self’ (Brewis, 1998: 85). We are disciplined by the categorisations of power / knowledge, but such disciplining is not simply punitive, for ‘discipline [also] rewards, simply by the play of awards, thus making it possible to attain higher ranks and places; it punishes reversing this process’ (Foucault, 1979: 181). Indicators of being designated as knowing – the ‘awards’ for being regulated as ‘included’ rather than ‘excluded’ in certain categorisations by discourse (Jackson and Carter, 1998: 154) – might reasonably be said to include career ‘progression’, and management qualifications like the MBA. Studies of the way in which Foucauldian concepts of discipline can be applied to management development concepts are therefore a potentially excellent way of understanding power relations in the workplace and the process of identity determination (Trethewey, 1999).

2.4.2.2

Foucault and management development

Several aspects of management development have been investigated through a Foucauldian perspective, many viewing the broader aspects of human resource management as a complex and sophisticated disciplinary process (Townley, 1994), within which management training and development is seen as an important subset in Foucauldian terms. Early work examining management development through a Foucauldian lens concentrated on Foucault’s use of a particular image taken from the utilitarian thinker Jeremy Bentham – the Panopticon (Foucault, 1977). The Panopticon was a revolutionary eighteenth century prison design, whereby all the cells were arranged within view of a central guard tower, with all the cells lit from the back, while there was no light in the tower. In this way a single guard in the tower could always see what every prisoner was doing, but, importantly, they could not necessarily see him, and indeed the prisoners wouldn’t know from moment to moment whether anyone was watching them or not. The expectation was that prisoners would ‘discipline’ themselves to act correctly even when no one 77

was watching, because they could not be sure they weren’t being watched, and therefore in danger of punishment. Foucault uses this prison design as a metaphor for how discourses work, suggesting that we are rewarded for ‘good’ behaviour, and punished for bad behaviour, but we do this for ourselves – the discourse does not have sovereign power like a prison guard, but acts to alter our outlook and behaviour from the inside (see Burrell, 1988). Fox (1989; see also Fox, 1992) analyses management development in terms of the Panopticon, noting that the pressure to ‘develop oneself’ in terms of more management training, learning and qualifications can be viewed as a broad discourse which ultimately benefits a particular development of society, but which most managers see as a ‘free’ choice made for their individual benefit, and for ensuring their identities as ‘high-flyers’, ‘high-potentials’ ‘good company people’ etc. can be maintained. Thus the power of the ‘learning discourse’ discussed in Section 1.1 (see also Contu, et al., 2003) can be read as this kind of Foucauldian disciplining process. The process of management development is then a process of categorisation – designating the individuals ‘appropriate’ to be given certain identities as managers, as ‘executives’ or as ‘the kind of person prepared to invest in themselves’. Boje (1996b) even suggests that it is not only the process of developing managers can be read in this way, but that the ways in which management development is itself organised are interpretable through Foucauldian concepts – the ‘ordering’ of business schools, qualifications and academic disciplines (no pun intended …) as locally-inscribed discourses of power / knowledge. Such Foucaudian discourse analysis can help us understand a number of terms intertwined with discourses of learning and management development, for example its role in the delineation of ‘good’ (Ezzy, 1997), ‘competent’ (Brewis, 1996; DuGay, et al., 1996) and ‘appropriately dressed’ (Trethewey, 1999) managers who have the right ‘aptitudes’ (Sennett, 2003) to succeed. Adopting a Foucauldian viewpoint allows a potentially important insight into the ways in which qualifications such as the MBA become categorised identities / subjectivities with certain attributes attached to them. At this point, it is worth pausing to note that, even though Foucauldian approaches being posited here as an ‘answer’ to the problem of power within Communities of Practice’ understanding of learning, and their contradistinctions pointed up, they actually have one major analytical feature in common: despite the fact that Communities of Practice ‘typically focus on small group interactions in a work setting ... and Foucault's idea of regimes of discourse can span decades if not centuries [and that] this might suggest that the theories are irrevocably divided by their respective levels, or time-frames, of analysis … what they all share is a pivotal interest in concrete practices and that this is what makes them complementary to each other’ (Fox, 2000: 854). Fox’s ‘concrete practices’ are the methods through which power / knowledge in a Foucauldian sense is mobilised and deployed (Law, 1986: 12) and are intimately related to Foucault’s understanding of language as discourse: ‘from a Foucauldian perspective, discourses are systems of thought contingent upon material practices, that inform those practices through particular power techniques’ (Gheradi, 1999: 5). These material or concrete practices form ‘technologies’ which bridge between discourse and the production of particular types of person, and can be seen in the operation of all manner of organisational ‘techniques of notation, computation and calculation; procedures of examination and assessment [as well as] the standardisation of systems for training and the inculcation of habits’ (Miller and Rose, 1990: 8; see also DuGay, et al., 1996). The creating 78

of individuals through disciplinary mechanisms is therefore effected and perpetuated through standardised organisational systems, because ‘writing, documentation, marking, and notation are the media by which subjects are objectified, individualised, rendered visible, and subjected to the norm, as, for example, are students through examination grades’ (Covaleski, 1998: 297). Covaleski’s example of examination grades is highly salient to our discussion of management development qualifications and identity through a Foucauldian lens, and he goes on to describe the process through which these discursive practices or technologies come to create particular subjectivities over time: First, normalisation requires that individual action be situated within a larger whole that provides the framework for ordering and arranging individual actions in relation to a norm or standard. Second, this norm or standard, which is also thereby normative, is stipulated as either a minimum threshold to be cleared, an average to be matched, or an optimum to be achieved and thereby permits a comparison and differentiation of individuals. Third, normalisation produces hierarchies of differentiation by means of quantitative measurements and rankings. These rankings not only establish the fact of individual differences, but also impose a value on them. Fourthly, by factually evaluating individuals, the schema of the norm also specifies the adjustments and corrections that are necessary for those who fall away from the norm, thereby targeting them for programs of normalisation. (Covaleski, 1998: 295-6) The system of management development, and particularly management development qualifications such as the MBA seem an ideal fit for this explanation of the process of ‘normalisation’, both in the sense that the MBA can then be seen as ‘desired’ internally by prospective candidates as ‘the jewel in the crown of management studies’ (Baruch and Leeming, 2001) – that it will ‘differentiate’ them – and then that the whole system of business school ‘ranking’ also acts as a normalised categorisation process for indicating who claiming an MBA identity is ‘better’ or ‘worse’ on a carefully gradated scale. The MBA becomes an identity of worth precisely because – as Townley (1993) asserts in relation to the related ‘professional’ expertise – the discourse develops ‘systems of measurement, classification, recording, and calculation [which] become defined as legitimate knowledge and are disseminated and reinforced through publications, professional journals, meetings, and the operation of professional associations’ (Townley, 1993: 539). Here, then, is a possible explanation of the techniques through which we can see particular types of identities being created, and the kind of power being deployed to create those changes of identity – by giving a sense of a trajectory of identity to individuals, to which they will discipline themselves to become continually re-categorised as ‘good’, ‘competent’, ‘qualified’, or ‘outstanding’. With such discursive practices in place, the need to sense that one has secured an identity in these categories can be seen as an ongoing concern: the MBA may confer a certain type of identity but given that in a poststructuralist perspective identity is always slippery, the qualification cannot continue to confer security. Constant vigilance to one’s disciplined behaviour is required to gain a continued attribution of an appropriate identity, creating whole apparatuses both within organisations and in broader social discursive practice for encouraging conformation to pre-designated norms. 79

Such ongoing ‘technologies of the self’ (Foucault, 1990a; Kosmala and Herrbach, 2006) can be seen in other broad discourses for which the MBA is clearly perceived as a part, such as career and selfdevelopment discourses (Grey, 1994; McKinley, 2002). Management qualification are an increasingly influential part of the systems of notation and categorisation within structures of a ‘career advancement’ discourse and are central to the upkeep of that ‘appropriate’ identity, as Alvesson (2001: 887) summarises: Hierarchy and the prospect of making a career involve regulating identity through the creation and maintenance of a particular career mentality. Identity thus becomes significant to accomplish a ‘subjectivity base’ for the right kind of action, including whatever is in line with the image, rhetoric and orchestration of social interaction deemed to be appropriate. How particular identities / subjectivities come to be created is therefore a continuous disciplinary procedure of which the MBA represents a particular and specific technology of the self; one which constitutes but a small part of the process through which the individual-as-outcome perceives as an internal need to ‘self-develop’, to the point where ‘the now enlightened individual acts on the self on behalf of the company, even turning to the company for help in this self-improvement. And in doing so, he or she displays newly prized skills in adaptation and continuous learning’ (Deetz, 2002: 38-9). A Foucauldian concept of power – or rather power / knowledge – in relation to identity changes around the MBA is compelling in its explanatory power, and, in the context of a discussion of identity and learning, reinforces ‘the importance of both identity and identitysecuring strategies in the reproduction of power-relations’ (Townley, 1993: 522). By shifting the determining role in identity change from individual to discourse and discursive practices, Foucault’s ideas create a distinctly different perspective on how we might conceptualise and explore MBA identities in the workplace.

2.4.2.3

Foucault as panacea?

Although Foucault’s ideas have considerable resonance when applied to discourses such as learning and management development, and to qualifications such as the MBA, this does not mean either a) that the reading of Foucault outlined above is itself incontestable or uncontroversial, or b) that the way in which Foucault has been used in such a reading entirely captures the workings of his ideas in relation to identity and power. Indeed the arguments over the way in which Foucault’s ideas have been ‘taken up’ within organisation studies have been so vehement and confrontational that Fleming and Sewell (2002) actually term them ‘the Foucault wars’. At heart there are two major criticisms of much of the literature referenced in the preceding section. Firstly that Foucault’s work has been drawn on selectively and for the purposes of particular authors’ existing concerns, rather than his work being seen in as a consistent oeuvre (Fleming, 2001); this can be termed a problem with the adoption of Foucault within a particular discipline (Jones, 2002; Knights, 2002). The second main criticism is that Foucault’s thought errs too much on the side of structure – discourse – in determining and explaining identity, to the degree that any concept of ‘agency’ is collapsed within the structurally-dominated ideas of ‘discursive practices’. Although they are related, I will deal with these two issues in turn.

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Prichard and Alvehus (2003: 234) note that ‘the way that Foucault has been taken up to-date in organisation studies is the result of a number of decisions about how to inherit his work’. By this they mean that much of Foucault’s own work did not look directly at work organisations, but that his concern with power has resulted in his use for examining organisations primarily by those whose research into organisations already investigated power directly. Given that power and ‘politics’ are viewed only as something to be suppressed or ignored within mainstream management studies (Alvesson and Willmott, 1992a; 1996), it is hardly surprising that it was those who were heavily invested in organisational explanations of class and role as a power differentiator, such as neo-Marxists and feminists, who first adopted and developed Foucault within organisation studies (Ackroyd and Thompson, 1999; Burrell, 1988). Critics of much of the use of Foucault within organisation studies suggest that this route has resulted in a partial and selective take-up of Foucault’s thought, to the degree that it now constitutes an ‘absurd … caricature’ (Fleming, 2001; see also Jones, 2002). Critics further contend that because the primary source of Foucauldian theory within organisation studies has been those associated with the Labour Process Theory school (Fleming, 2001; Knights, 2002), it has concentrated on certain concepts within Foucauldian theory – particularly discipline and surveillance, and one core text: Discipline and Punish (Foucault, 1977) – which fit within the existing assumptions of Labour Process Theory. They suggest that this has been to the exclusion of Foucault’s wider gamut of ideas –‘marginalising certain features of his thought in recent debate’ (Barratt, 2002: 189) – and has truncated his potential influence to accord with narrower preexisting theoretical concerns. The suggestion is therefore that a range of Foucault’s ideas, such as his genealogical method (Kendall, 1999), askesis (Barratt, 2003), and care of the self (Foucault, 1990a) have been ignored because they relate less easily to the immediate concerns of those areas of organisation studies interested in studying concepts of power. While the plurality of Foucauldian work in organisation studies undoubtedly has concentrated on exploring the concepts of discipline and power / knowledge (see Starkey and McKinlay, 1997; Knights, 2002) and there may indeed be important ways currently-neglected areas of Foucault’s thought might illuminate some dark corners of organisation studies, it seems a step too far to suggest this flaw invalidates the premises of the Foucauldian work drawn through a Labour Process Theory lens. There certainly appears to be a strong prima facie case for the application of Foucauldian discipline and power / knowledge in attempting to understand the relationship between discourse and identity. There is also clear precedent for treating Foucault’s lifetime body of work as a number of more or less discrete ‘periods’ which don’t necessarily take account of work in other periods, rather than single arc of philosophical work (Townley, 2005). Indeed, Foucault himself has indicated he did not expect his work to be taken up as a whole, but rather used as a ‘tool box in which others can rummage’, and tended to assert his right to contradict his early work in later writings, famously replying to a question regarding his level of self-contradiction over time with: ‘Well, do you think I have worked like a dog all those years to say the same thing and not to be changed?’ (Foucault, 1990b: 14). It therefore appears sensible to allow ‘organisation studies to be written into Foucault’ as Knights (2002: 575) terms it, in a number of different legitimate ways, including the partial reading of discourse and power / knowledge which has filtered through into relatively mainstream organisation studies.

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The critique of organisation studies’ partial take-up of Foucault therefore appears misguided. However, it potentially has greater strength if it could be suggested that the use of Foucault’s power / knowledge and discipline is itself problematic for understanding identities in organisations. Some critics, particularly those who oppose some of the broader poststructuralist theoretical moves in which I have placed Foucault’s work (e.g. Reed, 2000; Sayer, 2000), have suggested that Foucault, especially in his ‘discipline and punish’ period, over-emphasises the role of structure, and of discursive practice in determining identity. These critics reject the idea that individuals are purely at the whim of, or determined by discourse – they assert that both empirically and theoretically all kinds of resistance to discursive authority are visible and conceivable (Newton, 1998; Fleming and Sewell, 2002). Most critics consider that Foucault’s concepts do not entirely close the door on resistance to discursive power / knowledge, but do feel that any concept of resistance to discourse: ...is under-theorised and the dice are loaded against it … in the desire to avoid explanations at the level of the subject, human agency gets lost in the constitution of the subject solely through discourse. (Ackroyd and Thompson, 1999: 157-8) The collapse or subsuming of any sense of agency that might resist discourse within discursive practices themselves some see as a problem as great as the over-powerful sense of agency perceived within ‘identity projects’, because, although discourse clearly has a disciplining action, ‘there remains a need to explain how subjects relate to and “manoeuvre” around discourse’ (Newton, 1996: 139). This manoeuvring has to be undertaken by something, or someone, and there is no such ‘someone’ to be undertaking such agentic actions within the reading of Foucault presented above. This leads to a concern that some perhaps surprising philosophical concepts – such as the idea that people are ‘blank slates’ written on by culture – are sneaking in by the back door within Foucauldian analysis, as ‘a kind of Lockean tabula rasa in latter-day Foucauldian garb’ (Newton, 1996: 139). Furthermore, ‘by denying any ontological or analytical differentiation between agency and structure, Foucauldian discourse analysis ends up with an explanatory theory that is ‘unable to distinguish between what Denis Smith (1991) once called “open doors” and “brick walls”, or to account for the complex points of intersection between agency and structure’ (Reed, 2000: 526). Defenders of Foucault from such critique argue that, in the round, his thought does not exclude some concept of agency or resistance to discursive determination, suggesting for example that although ‘the dividing practices, broadly speaking, are techniques of domination … with the third mode [of discursive power] – ‘subjectification’ – Foucault looks at those processes of self-formation in which the person is active’ (Rabinow, 1986: 10-11, my emphasis). They furthermore would contend that, as Brewis (1998: 96) explains: For Foucault knowledge is never all-powerful, it is never totalising, because it is we humans who settle ourselves among particular subject positions and therefore we are always able to resist particular definitions offered to us. Foucauldian power is, as we have seen, local, and therefore some readings of Foucault suggest that these multiple local discourses are always ‘fragmented’, creating ‘a more or less clustered 82

coordination of relations’ which are always open to ‘re-articulation’ in certain ways by the subjects of those discourses (see Brewis, 1998: 96).

2.4.2.4

Conclusion

Foucauldian approaches to identity provide a structurally cohesive argument on the ideas of constraint and production of identity and of identity change. Furthermore it is one which certainly goes some way to answering the criticisms of both identity projects and Communities of Practice theory as to how power and identity change is conceptualised. However Foucauldian theory has itself be subject to some fairly strong critique. While it is clear that the critics and supporters of Foucault’s position on the question of agency and resistance cannot both be right, it is true that many of the assertions of a form of resistant agency within Foucault do come from references to work outside those core texts drawn on in the ‘organisation studies approach’ to Foucault, and many of the most vehement statements of the determining power of discourse emanate from his pronouncements in the discipline and power / knowledge period. Therefore, while Foucauldian approaches offer an important perspective in understanding the production of certain types of identities, and the changes in identity made possible through determination of ‘qualified’ status, the critiques of Foucault indicate that further exploration outside of Foucault’s own conceptualisation is required on this central aspect of the ‘work done’ in balancing issues structure and agency within MBA learning and identity. The final section of this literature review, one which continues the discussion of identity as a central organising concept, therefore sets out to examine one particular approach which goes some way to marrying the language, role and learning concepts of Communities of Practice with the power/knowledge and structural discursive change explanations of Foucauldian and post-structuralist identity theories (Fox, 2000; Prichard, 1999). The idea of a concept of ‘identity work’ as a potential frame which can take account of both approaches is not necessarily a new one, but one which has gained influence in recent years, particularly for understanding identities at work. It is therefore the concept of identity work which will be used to form the main elements of the loose frame of literature for the subsequent empirical study in this thesis, and will therefore also be the focus of the final ‘identity’ section of the literature review chapter.

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2.5 Identity Work The previous section examined the ways in which ideas of identity have been transformed through the development of post-modernist approaches. It concluded, however, that despite the distinct approach to understanding identity changes that a variety of poststructuralist perspectives provides, criticisms remained over the way in which poststructuralist approaches, particularly those informed by a Foucault’s work, dealt with the possibility of ‘individual’ agency in creating identity change. This led to a conjecture that ‘identity work’ as a concept might offer some insight into the difficult area between some of the more agency-driven approaches to identity encapsulated by communities of practice terms such as ‘boundary workers’, and the more discursively-determined ideas of poststructuralist identities. This final section of the literature review will explore identity work as a concept for unpacking the nexus of issues surrounding learning, identity and identity change among MBA graduates. It will begin by outlining some of the basic tenets of what has come to be called identity work, focusing particularly on twenty-first century scholarship in organisation studies. It then relates this concept more closely to the communities of practice and poststructuralist identity ideas already discussed, through a focus on some of the structure / agency issues in identity work, and some of the temporary resolutions posited for applying the concepts to particular empirical situations. This section will then explore briefly how identity might applied to MBAs a concept and a group, before finally offering identity work as a broad frame (Hart, 2000) through which to develop an empirical understanding of MBA identity work in its wider organisational and social context.

2.5.1 Developing identity work Despite an attempt by some recent US writers to retro-actively claim ‘identity work’ (with and without the hyphen) as something emanating from US sociology in the 1970s (see Kreiner, et al., 2006b: 1032, reference to Snow and Anderson, 1987: 1348, see also Snow and McAdam, 2000), it seems most authors in the field would count ‘identity work’ within organisation studies as a relatively new term, deriving from European-centric organisation studies’ broader interests in identity outlined in previous sections, and achieving its most high-profile treatments to-date only in the 21st century (Alvesson and Willmott, 2002; Kreiner, et al., 2006c; Pratt, et al., 2006; Blenkinsopp and Stalker, 2004; Corley and Gioia, 2004; Kornberger and Brown, 2007; Kitay and Wright, 2007; Musson and Duberly, 2007; Chreim, et al., 2007; Beech, 2008; Watson, 2007; Watson, 2008). While an unequivocal delineation of identity work as a concept entirely distinct from the myriad other ideas within the ‘blockbuster’ issue of identity is doomed to failure, nonetheless it has developed as a prominent term for conceptualisations of identity which combine a) the reflexivity of the identity projects approach, b) the interest in linguistic structure of the poststructuralists, and c) the concern for practice and ‘learning an identity’ of the communities of practice advocates. This picture is further complicated because I wish to hold open, at least until after the empirical phase, the nature of the relationship between identity work as explored here as a concept, and the communities of practice and post-structuralist identity approaches already covered. In the thesis 84

map in Chapter 1 this section occupies a rather ambiguous and liminal position ‘hovering’ below and in-between the two, but I think identity work can legitimately be seen variously as a complement to those approaches, an amalgam or synthesis of them; a continuation or extension of their ideas, or a refutation of aspects of them. Despite these difficulties in placing identity work within a stable typology of concepts, some definitional approaches to identity work are useful, with Tony Watson, 2007: 136) describing it as ‘the mutually constitutive set of processes whereby people strive to shape a relatively coherent and distinctive notion of personal self-identity’ (see also Watson, 2008)10. A number of important aspects are picked up in Watson’s definition, foremost amongst which are: ‘Process’: Identity work is interested in ‘the process of identity negotiation, how identification waxes and wanes as individuals and their contexts evolve’ (Kreiner, et al., 2006c:1032, emphasis in original). This links it to both the legitimate peripheral participation aspects of communities of practice, and the ‘projects’ aspect of identity projects. ‘Mutually constitutive’: Identity work wants to examine the interplay of people’s actions and their context on identity, acknowledging both that ‘an identity cannot be decided on solely by an individual, as a personal act of choice and will, but must always be subject to affirmation (or disaffirmation) by others’ (Holmes, 1995a: 14), and also that any identity ‘is negotiated, open, shifting, ambiguous, the result of culturally available meanings and the open-ended, power-laden enactments of those meanings in everyday situations’ (Kondo, 1990: 24). In this it sees a key role for discursive and social power – those ‘culturally available meanings’ in determining identity and giving rise to the need for identity work. ‘Striving’: Identity work involves work to accomplish any identity; it assumes, rather than the individual as a passive ‘subject’ created from discourse, that ‘work’ is being done by both the individual or group and their context to create identity. The nature of that ‘striving’ then takes centre stage in the construction of identity, including: The stories told, the beliefs expressed, the plots cherished, the story-lines chosen, the explanatory themes favoured and – overall – the processes of knitting these elements together into a sense of self; the conversations, the rehearsals, the public stances, the private dialogues, the feed-back loops, and the continuous inflow of commentary about identity made by significant others. (Kärreman and Alvesson, 2001: 61) ‘Coherence and distinctiveness’: From an identity work perspective, the identity ‘accomplished’ through ‘striving’ maintains many of the aspects of a poststructuralist conceptualisation – that is, it is fluid and both its coherence and distinctiveness require constant reaffirming by drawing on the discursive resources which surround them; that is, ‘the discursive regimes within which individual and collective identities are constituted provide social actors with important symbolic resources for identity negotiation’ (Read and Bartowski, 2000: 398). 10

Watson clearly owes a definitional debt here to both Alvesson and Willmott (2002: 626) and Sveningsson and Alvesson (2003: 1165), both elaborated upon below.

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Particularly clear from these aspects of identity work as a concept is that, compared to individuals as a pure subject and outcome of discursive power in some Foucauldian conceptualisation of identity, identity work perceives a role for the individual as actively ‘striving’ to achieve (an) identity, ‘as a struggling, interacting, feeling, thinking, and suffering subject, one capable of obeying and disobeying, controlling and being controlled, losing control and escaping control, defining and redefining control for itself and for others’ (Gabriel, 1999: 199). This is not, however, a return to a Cartesian transcendental subject, but rather ‘an individual’ is seen as ‘a complex subject, a subject who is at once dispersed among many and competing institutions and unified as an integrated identity across inter-relatable institutions’ (Deetz, 2002: 34). It is because of this ‘complex subject’ – enmeshed in multiple discourses, striving to ‘accomplish a precarious identity’ – that ongoing identity work is required; that ‘continuous engagement in forming, maintaining, strengthening or revising the constructions that are productive of a precarious sense of coherence and distinctiveness’ (Alvesson and Willmott, 2002: 626; Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2003: 1165). As Deetz (2002: 34) notes above, a key context for identity work processes – forming, maintaining, constructing, etc. – are the social institutions with which, and within which, individuals interact. Although they are only one such type of social institution, work organisations, and the complex and extensive discursive resources they provide for identity work, are particularly relevant to this thesis because of the ways in which they ‘regulate’ and control, or attempt to control, the available identities for individuals. Alvesson and Willmott (2002) usefully provide a theorisation of the relationship between organisations’ attempt to regulate identity, the identity work undertaken by individuals, and a particular self-identity as outcome (see Figure 4 below). Alvesson and Willmott (2002) posit that all three aspects are inter-related, with contextual / organisational regulation and control of identity being played off against the construction of identities – through identity work – undertaken by individuals and groups. The self-identity of individuals is then the always-temporary and mediated outcome of those two processes. They indicate their model’s adherence to the ‘mutually constitutive’ aspect of the definition suggested by Watson above when they suggest that organisations’: mechanisms and practices of control – rewards, leadership, division of labour, hierarchies, management accounting, etc – do not work ‘outside’ the individual’s quest(s) for selfdefinition(s), coherence(s) and meaning(s). Instead they interact, and indeed are fused, with ... the identity work of organisational members. (Alvesson and Willmott, 2002: 622)

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IDENTITY REGULATION Discursive practices concerned with identity definition that condition processes of identity formation and transformation

IDENTITY WORK prompts

infor ms responsive or resistant to

Interpretive activity involved in reproducing and transforming selfidentity induces

accompli shed though

SELF-IDENTITY

Identity regulation, identity work and self-identity

re-works

Precarious outcome of identity work compromising narratives of self

Figure4: Identity regulation, identity work and self-identity (from Alvesson and Willmott, 2002: 624) While identity work as a conceptualisation has already been discussed in some detail, it is worth focusing briefly upon the structural / control aspect of identity construction, which Alvesson and Willmott (2002) term ‘identity regulation’, defined as ‘the more or less intentional effects of social practices upon processes of identity construction and reconstruction’ (Alvesson and Willmott, 2002: 625). Their conceptualisation draws heavily on Foucauldian discursive power, including regulation of available identities by the internalisation of organisational control, which through ‘selection, training and experience translates in the individual’s ‘self-regulation’ and ‘selfsurveillance’’ (Alvesson and Willmott, 2002: 625). However, although the ability of institutional and organisational discourses to regulate identity is powerful, identity regulation in this conceptualisation must be imbued with meaning by the social actors within its purview to have its force: for its ‘fixing and framing [to be of significance,]... the regulation of identity, practices and discourses must have valency’ (Alvesson and Willmott, 2002: 632, my emphasis). While Foucault is also concerned about the way in which meaning locally grounded in discursive practices, here discursive control is seen as tempered by individual agency, which attempts to re-interpret its direction and force; that is, to influence in some way the ‘valency’ of that regulatory control. Any specific attempt to entirely regulate or determine identity is therefore impossible, because ‘control can never be secured, in part because of agency. It will be open to erosion and undercutting by the active, embodied agency of those people who are its object (Clegg, 1989: 193). So while the ‘discursive resources’ through which a ‘coherent and distinctive’ MBA self-identity are likely to be constructed are, first and foremost, those provided by the hierarchy and social structure of a work organisation, in analysing identities within Alvesson and Willmott’s (2002) conceptualisation this must be balanced with identity work:

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No [single] discourse is sufficiently strongly backed up by material and social support to offer a powerful grip over the subject. This makes identity constructions precarious and calls for on-going identity work’ (Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2003: 1167). Alvesson and Willmott’s (2002) conceptualisation therefore sees a balance between identity work and identity regulation in ‘producing’ a specific individual self-identity. But the driving force the operation of this model Alvesson and Willmott see as the need for social institutions to be able to securely ‘position’ (similar to the Foucauldian term) individuals by regulating them within comparative systems – e.g. ‘qualified / unqualified’ – and the desire of individuals to secure particular identities through their identity work. The inherent instability and malleability of identity is then both the cause and ‘outcome of uncertainties, insecurities and anxieties about who we are, how we should live, what ‘significant others’ think of us’ (Collinson, 2003: 529; see also Collinson, 1994: 56). Identity work is therefore an implicit social response to the problem of identity insecurity; an attempt to negotiate, or broker, a social positive identity with some stability, because, for example, ‘feelings of competence [tend to] occur when one’s identity beliefs are relatively stable and are undergoing [only] nuanced changes’ (Pratt, et al., 2006: 252). This need for security of identity stems from two major sources. Firstly, a scarcity of supported identity resources from organisational regulatory systems (we cannot all (legitimately) claim ourselves the chief executive of the organisation / in the top tier of our performance management system scorecard), and secondly, ‘from the impossibility of controlling the conditions that support a stable sense of identity’ (Knights and Willmott, 1999: 19). For Alvesson and Willmott (2002: 626) striving for a securely acknowledged identity therefore requires individuals to draw on available discursively regulated identities, but this ‘submission’, caused by ‘the fluidity and fragmentation of identity ... may render employees more vulnerable to the appeal of corporate identifications’. Although Alvesson and Willmott (2002: 624) caution that that ‘there is a danger of exaggerating the fragility and ‘vulnerability’ of subjects to the discourses through and within which they are allegedly constituted’, nonetheless they see the iterative drawing on regulating discursive resources through identity work as a crucial engine of social exchange, as shifts in social context cause ‘with the sensation of ‘being myself’ to become unsettled’ (Alvesson and Willmott, 2002: 624) Identity work as it has been outlined here within Alvesson and Willmott’s (2002) framework, is an elaboration of Watson’s definition. It can therefore be positioned as a deliberative, but circumscribed process undertaken by individuals to secure stable and recognised identities. Identity work can, however, only be undertaken through ‘mutually constitutive’ interplay with discursive structural regulatory systems, the operations of which are often at odds with the strivings of the individual. Thus a secure identity remains precarious, or out of reach as the individual passes through myriad social situations, rendering identity work necessary to both affirm, and potentially deny the possible identities thrust upon it. As Kornberger and Brown (2007: 500) conclude, we must see an accomplished identity as always ‘contingent and fragile, no more 88

than temporary marshalling yards of power / knowledge that endeavour to endure in a congenitally failing battle with a bewildering array of multifarious potential allies and assailants’. While the weighty role of ‘a desire to secure’ an identity in frameworks similar to Alvesson and Willmott’s has been sharply criticised in some quarters (Newton, 1998) the model provides a powerful conceptualisation of the role of identity work in capturing some of the most interesting elements of both theories of learning and change in individual identity ‘negotiation’ – such as those communities of practice theory emphasises – and also the strong controlling force of discursive structures suggested by poststructuralist ideas of power / knowledge (Fox, 2000). Certain weaknesses were identified in theories discussed earlier in this literature review: around power and power structures, in the case of communities of practice theory, and around the role of individual resistance to power – the role of agency – in the case of Foucauldian theory. Therefore the way in which identity work combines a focus on changes in identity (achieved by both identity regulation and identity work), and how those changes come about, is particularly helpful. Doing so can help to articulate both the role of discursive structures around the MBA – e.g. around learning, investing in oneself, signalling superior performance, etc. – and the role of the individual agent in creating that discourse of what an MBA means. The next section therefore unpacks in a little more detail some the issues of structure and agency in conceptualising identity work.

2.5.2 ‘Balancing’ structure and agency in identity work The … self walks a knife-edged ridge. A slip of the foot to one side casts ‘it’ down among earlier casualties of ‘over-socialisation’. The temptation on the other side is to imagine one can take wing and soar away into freedom. (Lovell, 2003: 1-2) Arguments over the relative power of social structure or individual action to effect change are of course hardly restricted to recent discussions of identity. Indeed it can be seen as a foundational issue for social theory (Layder, 1994). However structure – agency concerns have dogged discussions of identity in particular (Willmott, 1994; O'Doherty, 1998) and, furthermore, many of the more trenchant discussions and critiques within the literature cited in this literature review can be understood in terms of discussion between structure and agency: critiques of communities of practice for its lack of theorisation of structural power; critiques of identity projects for their ‘under-socialised’ conceptualisation; and critiques of Foucault which allege he leaves no space for agentic resistance to structural power at all. Because structure – agency concerns underlie so many of the areas of interest for this thesis, despite covering them in their own literature ‘domains’, it is worth using a brief section addressing how discussions of structure – agency are conceptualised in identity work. Identity work’s ‘insistence on the need to combine subject and object, structure and action, power and subjectivity’ positions it within post-structuralist approaches in identity scholarship (Collinson, 2003: 528; see also Alvesson, et al., 2008), which emphasise the role of language in social construction. In and of itself this places it only in a fairly broad theoretical category, although for 89

some authors even this ‘balancing’ of structure – agency excludes a great deal, with Collinson (2003: 529), for example, dismissing ‘existentialism, phenomenology, sociological perspectives of symbolic interactionalism, interpretive sociology, social anthropology, the social psychological orientations of developmental psychology, and psychoanalysis [as] producing overly voluntaristic accounts of subjectivity that exaggerate autonomy and under-emphasise the significance of its conditions, processes and consequences’. A proper theoretical care for the balance of structure and agency is clearly difficult to come by. However, the post-structuralist scholarship – including identity work – which addresses the issue directly does so by placing and ‘balancing’ the structure – agency relationship at the centre of its concerns, albeit a relationship which makes things harder, rather than easier, for the would-be analyst: The politics of identity and identity representation is the deepest and most suppressed struggle in the workplace and, hence, the ‘site’ where domination and responsive agency are most difficult to unravel. (Deetz, 2002: 27) So although identity work is only one of a number of post-structuralist approaches to identity which share a key concern over structure – agency issues, it is particularly useful as it forces a focus upon this ‘balancing’ act when examining how identity work is done in context, making it highly appropriate for examining individuals in ‘regulatory’ social settings like work organisations. Research undertaken to investigate identity work in organisations, therefore, strikes that balance by assuming that ‘organisations are polyphonic and that managers, rather than being onedimensional dummies speaking the lines that structural ventriloquism allows them, are talented and creative players in many simultaneous and complex games’ (Clegg, et al., 2006: 19). Investigations of identity work in the workplace attribute a number of important actions in creating identity to the individual, and see it – at least in part – as within their locus of control. It looks for a range of deliberative actions through which individuals in their workplace attempt to secure an identity. In addition to employing language in order to achieve personal goals and signal membership of particular communities, the ‘intentional, rhetorical nature of language use … allows the critic to view actors / agents as capable of a great many [other] things: [including the] creation of patterned social relations that meet their assumed needs and /or fulfil their desires; or interaction in concert with others to construct social structures including organisations’ (Conrad, 2004: 435). However, an investigation of identity work would want to avoid slipping into an ‘overlyvoluntaristic’ assumptions over individuals’ ability to shape their desired identities by acknowledging the ‘naïvety’ of assuming that ‘identity can be pushed in any direction without inertia, pain, resistance, and unintended consequences’ (Alvesson and Willmott, 2002: 637), and asserting instead that, rather than picking an identity ‘from a shopping list; consciously choosing from a menu of options, [individuals] form identities as an exercise of social power’ (Thomas and Linstead, 2002: 75). It is therefore through a close attention to structure and agency issues that an analyst can have some access to ‘unravel’ their relative influence in context in constructing identities within organisations. It can also ‘balance’ some of the key emphases of other conceptualisations. Firstly it shares a Foucauldian concern to see the discourses which regulate identity as both repressive and productive, with ‘identity regulation in contemporary organisations … both rendered possible and 90

yet resisted as the members actively take up and deploy ‘managerially inspired’ discourses in their accounts of their experiences’ (Coupland, 2003: 2). Also it shares with communities of practice ideas an interest in how individuals engage with particular communities’ rules over time, and alter their identities in those contexts by their repeated engagement in practice. But it is precisely that repeated practice which additionally gives them the opportunity to alter the community norms: identity work recognises the same ‘compulsion to repeat’ practices and renew meanings in interaction, but also that ‘rules governing signification not only restrict, but also enable the assertion of alternative domains of intelligibility ... agency is to repeat with a difference, to remake and to subvert’ (Schreven, 2003; see also Butler, 1990). Furthermore, the agency conceived of by identity work is one in which it is the very instability of identity in social engagement (Sandel, 1992) – and the need for identity work that this causes – which creates the space for individual actions to effect changes to identity: Agency as a function of ensemble performances – often with a very large cast of others … lies in the interstices of interaction … rather than in the fissures of a never-fullyconstituted self, or in the always open-ended character of speech and language, although these instabilities of language and the self are indeed among the conditions of possibility of agency. (Lovell, 2003: 2) Exactly how space for identity work is created through the impossibility of closure within regulatory discourses is therefore another point at which identity work can contribute to understandings of identity; and this is a focus which maintains each element of Watson’s definition – process, mutual constitution, ‘striving’, and the coherence and distinctiveness of the outcome. To analyse the process of the identity construction, therefore, is at heart an attempt to see how structural or agentic powers shift over time and context in legitimately particular cohesive or distinctive identities: The ‘choices’ actors make about time at work are shaped by the array of discursive possibilities available for identity construction. This array can display a 'tilt' molded by the organisation and locale, towards either structure or agency. Thus, actors do not select discursive resources as if arranged on a menu, but rather employ accounts that align with their own self-narratives and the expectations of relevant others in the workplace. (Kuhn, 2006: 1354) Before looking at MBA identity work, two further related points are worth making regarding structure and agency in identity work – one regarding ‘hierarchy’ of identity, and one regarding the construction of accounts of identity work (Brown and Coupland, 2005, Coupland, 2001). While identities are constructed, malleable, precarious, and temporary, and identity work explicitly gives room for deliberative identity construction of particular self-identities, this does not mean that the self-identity which emerges within any particular context can be something other than that which is socially legitimated through interaction between the available discursive resources and that identity work. By this I mean that there is not an identity being ‘striven’ for by individuals, and one somehow being ‘held back’, or as noted above ‘picked from a menu’. There is in identity work no ‘hierarchy’ of identities between those being worked on, and some other identity that somehow exists separately ‘behind’ the ‘facade’ of others (Hewlin, 2003); no ‘major and minor’ identities 91

existing simultaneously except that different identities are perceived by different observers drawing on different discursive resources to make their attributions of others’ identities. The socially constructed identity, through the ‘tilt’ between regulatory practices and identity work, is all that exists of identity. However, having said that, accessing individuals’ identity work is very often done through the accounts individuals give of themselves, and, despite the assertions of post-structuralist identity theories like identity work above, precisely in order to construct for others a ‘coherent and distinctive’ self, individuals retain an argument which divides ‘real’ from ‘false’ self-identities (Tracy and Trethewey, 2005). If individuals are reflexively engaging in identity work which structures narratives about themselves (Brown, 2006; Ezzy, 1998) by employing ideas of ‘real’ and ‘fake’ identities, then the social concepts of learning inherent in identity work require that this particular use of discursive resources is seriously analysed through an identity work lens as part of the identity work process, even if theoretically it is rejecting this conceptualisation. Precisely because identity work is interested in how individuals meaningfully construct identity in context, their interpretations and their sense-making cannot be ignored, but at the same time the analysis must go beyond that to pick up on the kinds of discursive resources they are using to make that argument (Smith and Sparkes, 2008; Alvesson, 2003, Alvesson, et al., 2008). This point is picked up in greater detail in the Chapter 3 below.

2.5.3 MBA identity work? The discussion of identity work, and of its approach to the structure- agency question, has examined how a number of complex issues – which have exercised research and social science in both the learning and identity fields – operate together, and gives some handle on how people are who they are in organisational contexts. This brief section links the theoretical aspects of identity work to some of the more specific concerns of MBAs. Identity work is a relatively new concept, but it has been picked up within organisation studies in particular to examine identity in a wide range of specific organisational contexts, including doctors (Pratt, et al., 2006; Iedema, et al., 2004: 28), priests (Kreiner, et al., 2006b, Kreiner, et al., 2006c), academics (Blenkinsopp and Stalker, 2004), graduate trainees (Brown and Coupland, 2005, Coupland, 2001), middle managers going through organisational change (Whittle, 2005; Corley and Gioia, 2004; Thomas and Linstead, 2002; Pullen, 2005), professionals more generally (Chreim, et al., 2007), as well as MBAs specifically (Sturdy, et al., 2006a). This suggests that, in attempting to understand identity construction, identity work has been found to have a great deal of analytical purchase and to provide good insight into what Deetz (2002) notes are some fairly intractable problems. This suggests that investigating the constitution of MBAs as a specific group (and symbol) within organisations through an identity work approach is likely to be fruitful. The nature of the MBA within the broader discourse of learning was examined at length in Chapter 1. It sets the backdrop of the kind of broader discursive resources (and regulatory practices) surrounding the MBA which are likely to be available to the MBAs in undertaking identity work. Of course, as noted in those sections, the MBAs’ ability to provide a stable positive symbol is far from certain, and this is before the broader discourse has been filtered through the identity-regulating practices of any particular organisational context an individual might find themselves within. The 92

degree to which the MBA enhances or disrupts the desired identities of MBAs will therefore be at the centre of any analysis of MBA identity work qua MBAs. Christine Coupland (2003) provides a nice analogous example of what may be found within data concerning MBAs. Her research reports a development programme which is supposed to result in behaviours which lead to promotion, but that discourse isn’t believed by individuals: the ‘desired values and behaviour should lead to promotion but the participant ends with acknowledging that they do not ... [This] illustrates how, even when a vocabulary of motives is made explicit, it is in its take-up and deployment that either resistance or identification may occur’ (Coupland, 2003: 8). The degree to which ‘resistance or identification’ occurs in relation to the MBA will be an important part of understanding identity work around the MBA. From identity work research in organisations, several other key aspects indicate how MBAs might be able to move between different discourses on the MBA in different contexts. Iedema, et al., 2004: 28) show doctors who are also managers negotiating their way between these two discursively constructed identities from moment to moment: Each of these three occasions [where Iedema et al present data] showed that the pressure to acknowledge and reproduce competing claims, and to 'square the circle' by accommodating incommensurable discourses, is a recurring characteristic of the doctormanagers' self-presentation, irrespective of the occasion of interaction. (Iedema, et al., 2004: 28) As the doctor-manager moved through the different identities which others place on him, Iedema et al (2004: 29) found that his discourse is never quite allowed to settle on any one of specific discourse or mode of identification: ‘Sometimes we can glimpse rapid transitions across these personae, even within the same turn, or even utterance’. The studied manager’s ‘self-presentation [is] a matter of bricolage, creatively fusing multiple and sometimes contradictory positions in their turns and their utterances’ (Iedema, et al., 2004: 29). It may be that as MBAs move between academic and organisational contexts, similar kinds of complex identity work is required. Finally, Sturdy, et al. (2006a: 853), investigating MBA identity work specifically, gives important clues as to how MBAs might understand the relationship between their (prior) managerial and MBA identities: For some students, multiple and fragmented identities may be closer to their experience and desire in 'parallel worlds'. But this is not a product of some form of free-floating decision, for identity and its emotional-discursive processes arise from social relationships and interdependence. Within these managerial identity work studies there are a number of more specifically-designated identity work processes identified by identity work research in their specific contexts. For example Pratt, et al. (2006) posit ‘patching, enriching and splinting’ as the way their doctors made sense of their identities over time. A distinct new vocabulary is unfolding as these empirical research studies in identity work, an area in which this thesis expects to be able to make a contribution.

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However, I will not investigate these specific processes in detail here, as the role I want the literature review to take is, as I noted above, one which provides a ‘loose frame’ for the research (Hart, 2000) rather than defining specific terms in advance of the empirical work. I will be taking many of the key issues discussed both here and in Sections 2.2. and 2.4 forward to give me some ‘sensitising concepts’ through which to make sense of MBA identity work. Armed, therefore, with identity work’s deep concern with identity construction processes and preoccupation with structure and agency issues; with Communities of Practice’ concern with negotiation, brokering, and learning an identity; identity projects’ interest in reflexivity and narrative, and poststructuralist identities concern with power, regulation and control, I approach the empirical phase of this thesis.

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3.

Methodology

The preceding chapter discussed many of the key theories and conceptualisations which will be brought to bear in attempting to answer the research question(s) set out at the end of Chapter 1. In doing so it set a loose frame for the research to follow (Hart, 2000; Dunleavy, 2003). The theories which have been discussed guide the research, but do not dictate in advance everything that will be looked for or might be investigated. This chapter will therefore discuss the methods that might be appropriate in constructing answers to the research questions regarding the practices, recognition and constitution of the MBA in the workplace. It will first of all examine what overall approach to research might square with the foregoing literature and the arguments which were made regarding it, before examining in greater detail the kinds of methodologies for collecting data which fit within that methodological frame. Then it will report on the actual methods employed in collecting data for this particular study, including issues of sampling strategy and sample. Finally it will examine the analytical techniques to be employed on the data. The structure of this chapter therefore follows Saunders, et al. (2007) in conceptually dividing research between broader philosophical issues such as epistemology and degree of inductivity – the methodological frame (Section 3.1) – from the methodologies which might be appropriate to collecting data within that frame (Section 3.2) and the methods employed to collect data in this particular instance (Section 3.3).

3.1 Methodological frame While clearly it is important to discuss the philosophical background to the study in relation to the methodology specifically, I would argue that much of the philosophical ‘heavy lifting’ has already been done in the literature review. The discussions of the nature, perspectives and approaches to learning and identity, particularly in Sections 2.2, 2.4 and 2.5, touch upon philosophical issues which for many theses would be the preserve of methodological discussion only. The interpretive dimension of social learning and Communities of Practice, and the ‘post-linguistic turn’ approach to identity construction in identity work both draw strongly on certain philosophical assumptions which themselves strongly guide and delimit what kinds of methodological frame and methodology are likely to be appropriate. I therefore do not intend to go over the same ground again when discussing the methodological frame for the research. Instead I will draw heavily on the later sections of the literature review to support the methodological frame for the research, while using this section of the methodology chapter to more directly ‘position’ the research in relation to the philosophical issues, and to lead on to the selection of appropriate methodologies in Section 3.2 below. Several inter-related aspects need to be dealt with here. Firstly, how the research design (and particularly the ideas of learning and identity I have chosen to help answer my research questions) relates to other approaches to research within the organisation studies / business and management field. To do this I will employ a framework for understanding research proposed by Alvesson and Deetz, 2000). Secondly, I will discuss some aspects of the study’s position on a ‘deductive / inductive’ scale, which will become particularly important in choosing an approach to data analysis in Section 3.4. 95

3.1.1

Mapping management research

Alvesson and Deetz’s (2000) framework offers categories for research studies in organisation studies / business and management according to their ontological / epistemological assumptions. The framework – first described in Deetz (1996) and then extended in Alvesson and Deetz (2000) – explicitly draws on, but also critiques Burrell and Morgan's (1979) earlier influential framework for mapping organisation research. Alvesson and Deetz distinguish research by positioning any particular study at a point along two separate axes. The first ranges from what they term an ‘elite / a priori’ perspective to a ‘local / emergent’ perspective. The second axis stretches from assumptions that there is ‘consensus’ viewpoint which can be reached a) between researchers and subjects and b) between subjects, and assumptions of ‘dissensus’, which uncover or flag up those points which are like to indicate disagreement or multiple alternative perspectives. When the two axes are positioned perpendicular to each other, this creates a ‘two-by-two’ matrix structure, yielding four main ‘categories’ of research distinguishable from each other by their positions on the axes; what they term ‘normative’, ‘interpretive’, ‘critical’ and ‘dialogic’ approaches to research (see Figure 5 below).

Dissensus

Dialogic

Critical Elite / A priori

Local / Emergent

Interpretive

Normative

Consensus Deetz (1996); Alvesson and Deetz (2000)

Figure5: Positioning Management Research I will not present Alvesson and Deetz’s definitions and explanations of each of these terms in full, but some are worth discussing because of the relevance to the methodological frame of this thesis. The a priori / emergent axis is important because a research study’s position on this axis indicates the degree to which an outcome from the research is theorised or expected in advance of the research, and whether the research data is then compared to that theory to establish how well it fits that a priori researcher-led conceptualisation. Much business and management research, as Alvesson and Deetz indicate, falls into the normative category because it employs a logic which 96

links certain forces, actions or behaviours to certain pre-defined and desired outcomes. In the normative areas of research, this pre-defined outcome is very often the ‘performance’ of a / the organisation, often reified as financial performance or a proxy (Alvesson and Willmott, 1996). It is termed ‘normative’ because it tends to privilege the language system of the researcher over that of the research subjects. Normative research therefore assumes that it represents the situation ‘better’ than the local systems of meaning, and in ‘privileging a language system there is further a tendency to universalise and justify such moves by appeals to foundations or essentialist assumptions’ (Deetz, 1996: 196). Because normative research is positioned at the ‘consensus’ end of the ‘consensus / dissensus’ axis, it also assumes that all stakeholders would also be (naturally) keen to understand what drives performance and implement policy changes to ‘improve’ that ‘performance’. The ‘value chain’ of management development outlined in Chapter 1 from individual
organisation
country is an example of a normative approach to theorising and to research, as is much of the ‘transfer of training’ literature from Section 2.1 which takes learning as the researcher’s ‘object’ to be measured, transferred and related to job and organisational performance. ‘Critical’ research maintains normative research’s a priori theorising, but assumes ‘dissensus’; that is, that different groups might have very different ideas about what constitute those desired predetermined outcomes. As Alvesson and Deetz (2000: 9) suggest, research with a dissensus assumption is ‘oriented towards challenging rather than confirming … disrupting rather than reproducing… [and] encourages productive dissensus rather than taking surface consensus as the point of departure’ (Alvesson and Deetz, 2000: 9). Because of its interest in structural inequalities in social and economic conditions – often with a research aim of trying to change or reverse those relations from their current condition rather than further the status quo – much neo-Marxist, much feminist, and some post-colonial research would fall into the ‘critical’ category for Alvesson and Deetz. What Alvesson and Deetz term ‘interpretive’ research sits at the ‘local / emergent’ end of the a priori / emergent axis. In contrast to the analyst- / researcher-centred a priori theorising of normative or critical research, interpretive research begins by trying to grasp how the communities, groups and stakeholders being researched understand and conceptualise the world around them. As Norman Denzin (1983: 145) notes, ‘the interpretivist [researcher] attempts to bring the life-world [of research subjects] alive in full vivid detail. The networks of social relationships, as ensembles that connect interactants into webs of meaningful experience and actualised structural practices, must be captured’. The move between elite / a priori and local / emergent approaches to research is therefore one which shifts from privileging the researchers’ conceptualisation to one which explores how others involved in a situation construct knowledge and practice for themselves (Sandberg, 2005: 47). An example of this distinction is therefore the move between a normative approach to understanding MBAs and MBA ‘value’ as underpinned by a ‘transfer of training’ conceptualisation (Section 2.1), and an interpretive approach taken by Communities of Practice theory which investigates how knowledge and practice is developed and legitimised locally among individuals and groups (Section 2.2). As my argument within the first half of the literature review was that Communities of Practice is likely to be a more insightful way of understanding MBAs than transfer of training-influenced approaches, it is appropriate to place my own preferred approach to researching MBAs within the local / emergent pole of Alvesson and 97

Deetz’s axis, and to see at least some affinities with the overall interpretive viewpoint on meaning construction and knowledge negotiation. The final perspective on research within Alvesson and Deetz’s framework is termed ‘dialogic’. This approach maintains interpretive research’s focus on the emergence of meaning among those being researched, with the researcher as ‘more a skilled collaborator in knowledge production than an expert observer’ (Deetz, 1996: 196). However, instead of attempting to understand how meaning is negotiated together to reach a relative (albeit changeable) consensus – as in interpretive research – by contrast dialogic research concentrates on how the construction of language and meaning positions social subjects in ways which separate them from each other; how the slipperiness of language automatically creates dissensus between communities of meaning. Dialogic research takes seriously the ‘linguistic turn’ in organisational research, and attempts to uncover how language structure, operating at both local and macro levels (Alvesson and Kärreman, 2000a; b), shapes people’s understandings. The separation between researcher and researched is collapsed, but interpretive research’s distinction between the meaning created between researcher / researched and the rest of discourse is also collapsed. Dialogic research is therefore classed as ‘dissensual’, because it does not assume that stability of meaning is reached between groups as it might be within interpretive approaches. The discussion of identity in relation to ideas of poststructuralism in Section 2.4, and the identity work approach to identity in Section 2.5, both draw strongly on a dialogic (in Alvesson and Deetz’s terms) tradition, because they emphasise the role of language in separating the world into meaning, creating individuals (or identities, or identity positions) in the process. It must be said that the structure of Alvesson and Deetz’s (2000) framework is clearly influenced by the authors’ prejudices concerning what they consider ‘good’ research; something they themselves acknowledge when they note that ‘conceptions are always contests for meaning’ (Alvesson and Deetz, 2000: 192). In particular, according to them, most research in business and management (in terms of, for example, number of articles published) would fall into one category – ‘normative’. With 80% of any particular field’s published research all being lumped together (Schultze and Leidner, 2002; Schultze and Stabell, 2004) in this category it seems certain that an awful lot of more subtle variety in approach and understanding is being obscured. However, such a categorisation does draw attention to the relatively narrow range of ontological and epistemological assumptions made by much business and management research. Such an categorisation, Alvesson and Deetz point out, replaces Burrell and Morgan’s (1979) approach – whereby each category holds a ‘separate but equal’ status (see Alvesson and Deetz 2000: 191) – with one which leaves open the possibility for valid epistemological critique of one approach using another. As my own argument in relation to identity and learning has been largely one of a critique of the underlying approaches to understanding MBAs, it is surely appropriate to position the research in relation to a framework that also tries to highlight the relatively ‘blinkered’ view to subjects adopted by the vast majority of management-oriented research.

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3.1.2

Positioning the empirical work

My own approach to learning and identity theories, and the appropriate positioning of the research within this thesis, then, can be tentatively and provisionally ‘mapped’ onto Alvesson and Deetz (2000) framework (See Figure 6 below). The positioning of the ‘identity work’ (Section 2.5) aspect is perhaps most controversial, but my sense is that much of the literature in this still-growing area straddles a number of linguistic-turn-informed and more ‘traditional’ interpretive modes.

Dissensus

Dialogic Postmodernity and identity (2.4) Local / Emergent

Critical Elite / A priori

Identity work (2.5) Communities of practice (2.2)

Functional identity (2.3) Transfer of training (2.1)

Interpretive

Normative Consensus Adapted from Deetz (1996); Alvesson and Deetz (2000)

Figure 6: Positioning the research of this thesis I have here used the Alvesson and Deetz framework to help situate both the theories I have been discussing in Chapter 2, and to indicate the kind of methodological approach(es) which are likely to dovetail with those theories. Drawing on the positions of the theories which I have supported in the literature review, and their position in relation to those they critique, allows the plethora of methodological issues to be narrowed somewhat. The Communities of Practice, poststructuralist identities, and identity work perspectives all sit at the ‘local / emergent’ end of one axis. Methodologies which emphasised or elicited the interpretations and constructions of those involved in a situation are therefore more likely to be appropriate within this thesis than, say, hypothesis-testing approaches. The Communities of Practice theory sits, in the main, within the ‘interpretive’ box within the categorisation. This suggests that ways of investigating learning from a Communities of Practice perspective are going to be most fruitful if they allow insight into the complexity of concepts of learning from the learners’ perspective (Marton, et al., 1993), taking seriously Antonacopoulou's (2006: 460) point that:

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Any approach which seeks to study learning is confronted with a number of methodological challenges not least of which is how to identify learning when you see it. Considering that learning is as much unconscious as it is conscious there would be a number of epistemological and ontological challenges to overcome. Any approach to investigating learning which is ‘true’ to the tenets of Communities of Practice / situated learning must therefore confront the ways in which learning can be articulated; that is, the ways in which concepts of learning constructed by those doing the learning in situ can be understood for the purposes of an interpretive study. This is a particular problem because not only might learning be considered ‘as much unconscious as it is conscious’, but also that ‘one might readily concede that it is often difficult to articulate specifically what one has learned, even with probing’ (Sturdy, et al., 2006a: 848). It is therefore likely that only methodological approaches which give considerable leeway to individuals to at least attempt to ‘freely’ articulate their experiences will be appropriate. Postmodern identity theories and ideas of identity work sit either in the dialogic category, or straddling the dialogic and interpretive categories. Similarly to Communities of Practice above, these approaches are also best aligned with a flexible design (Robson, 2002) which allows for the understandings and conceptualisations of participants to be interpreted, rather than ‘fixed’ by the researcher in advance. However these approaches additionally require a focus on the broader discourses which surround and either inform or determine those conceptualisations. The dialogic addition is to look beyond the researcher-researched ‘dyad’ and beyond their organisation to ‘consider how arrays, or sets, of organisational discourses influence identity formation, and even more rarely attend to discourses beyond the artificial boundaries of the organisation’ (Kuhn, 2006: 1342), something Kuhn suggests academic studies ‘rarely’ investigate. Because identity work studies draw in dialogic aspects of linguistic analysis, for example examining the effect of broader discourses of ‘value’ and ‘learning’ on locally-negotiated, socially constructed MBA identities, they focus less upon potential ‘internal’ discourses in a ‘psychoanalytic’ sense than ‘external’ social (i.e. interpersonal) constructions (Pullen, 2005; Gabriel, 1999). However, a dialogic approach in Alvesson and Deetz’s sense would still reject the assumption of a researcher-led ‘right’ way of understanding identity construction, because ‘attempts to build an ‘etic’ or analyst-centred account of organisational discourse is seen to downplay the importance and prominence of individuals’ personal experiences, the tentativeness of their interpretations, and the inchoate nature of their meaning making’ (Iedema, et al., 2004: 18). Identity work therefore requires an approach which pays particular attention to linguistic and discursive constructions but draws these from both evidence within broader discourses and from the meaning those undertaking identity work derive from their practice in situ, and their articulations regarding that practice. Meaning is therefore:

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… to a considerable extent retrievable from what people do and say and where they do so. People’s ‘meaning makings’, if you like, tell us not merely about their background knowledge and assumptions but also about the relevance of different aspects of the material context. After all, only rarely are social and organisational life beholden to uncertainty and unpredictability to such an extent that making sense becomes totally impossible. (Iedema, 2003: 57) By investigating people’s ‘meaning makings’ in context – particularly their immediate and broader discursive context, something of the process of identity construction and maintenance can be recovered or uncovered.

3.1.3

Inductive and qualitative

In attempting to make use of several theories which share some aspects of their epistemological and ontological predilections, but differ in others, this thesis requires a broadly ‘inductive’ approach which investigates emergent meaning, but within its wider discursive context. As such it will need to work ‘outwards’: from the more specific empirical point, to a critique which relate the broader discursive issues discussed in Chapter 1, to the specific research questions posed at the end of that chapter. A broadly inductive approach (although see Section 4.1.1 for a slight exception) would therefore assume such insights as it might glean would be ‘particularistic regarding both time and place even though the emerging analytic frame is designed to aid the deeper understanding of other particular settings. Cumulative understanding [therefore] happens in providing stories or accounts which may provide insight into other sites rather than cumulative universal aspiring claims’ (Deetz, 1996: 196). The general methodological frame of this research can therefore be suitably termed as one which is interested in the understandings and interpretations which research subjects place on the concepts of learning and their MBA, but also one which is alive to the dialogic perspective’s concern with the discourses surrounding, interpenetrating and perhaps determining the talk and accounts of those research subjects. Methodological approaches suitable for employment within this frame are therefore those which give research participants an opportunity to articulate both their opinions and their understandings freely, and also provide ‘rich’ or ‘thick’ data regarding these understandings. It is for these reasons that qualitative methodologies, which ‘attempts to make sense of, or interpret, phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them’ (Denzin and Lincoln, 2000: 3) will be used within this thesis. Qualitative approaches allow the flexibility in design to take account of locally-produced or emergent accounts of phenomena, and also emphasise the ‘co-producer’ role for the researcher within the research process. A qualitative methodological approach additionally ties in with the categories cited for the relevant theories within the Alvesson and Deetz (2000) framework, the authors noting that for interpretive and dialogic studies, qualitative approaches are likely to be particularly pertinent. A further aspect which makes qualitative methodologies appropriate is that they tend to emphasise a level of ‘reflexivity’ on the part of the researcher towards their own theoretical orientation. As Cassell, et al., 2006a: 4) note, in a world where qualitative researchers have to justify their approaches both 101

epistemologically and ethically, we expect them to have an understanding of the philosophical assumptions that underpin their approach’. As this thesis has taken considerable time to delineate the epistemological concerns of its relative theories in relation to more ‘mainstream’ approaches to understanding MBAs, qualitative approaches which encourage such a level of reflection are likely to support and enhance the data collection and analysis rather than disrupt it. Within the emerging qualitative, flexible, interpretive / dialogic, broadly inductive frame outlined above, some more tangible methodologies for interpreting the research question against the experiences of those ‘being MBAs’ in the workplace are required. Because of its importance and centrality to the overall qualitative methodology, ‘interviews’ seemed a sensible point to begin the process of investigation (Seale, 1998; Kvale, 1997). The appropriateness or otherwise particular qualitative methodologies within the qualitative approach is discussed in more detail in the next section. Before moving on discuss interviews in more detail, it is worth just returning to the Alvesson and Deetz (2000) framework to make a point regarding the ‘rigidity’ of the categorisations in relation to the methodological framework outlined above. From Figure 6 above it might appear that the ‘critical’ approach has no place or relevance to the study being undertaken within this thesis. However, a number of aspects attributed to ‘critical’ perspectives within the frame would appear to be pertinent. In joining a concern for broader discourse to interpretive approaches’ interest in inter-subjective meaning, the frame I have chosen sounds remarkably similar to John Jermier, 1998: 242) description of a hallmark of critical research as ‘the blending of informants’ words, impressions, and activities with an analysis of the historical and structural forces that shape the social world under investigation’. Furthermore, Alvesson and Deetz themselves seem to consider more ‘blended’ approaches to have considerable value when they note that: Without considering postmodern [dialogic] themes, critical theory easily becomes unreflective with regard to cultural elitism and modern conditions of power; without incorporating some measure of critical theory thought – or something similar that provides direction and social relevance – postmodernism [dialogism] simply becomes esoteric. (Alvesson and Deetz, 2000: 108) This apparent eclecticism from a text designed to delineate differences between research approaches might seem perverse, but in fact underlines Alvesson and Deetz’s own point that the divisions are more about understanding all such categorizations as moves in a discursive ‘game’, within which it is more important to understand how the divisions are created and maintained, and the implications of doing so, than aiming for some conceptual or methodological purity within any particular category (Alvesson and Deetz, 2000: 32).

This section of the methodology chapter has set the broad methodological frame for the research to follow. It has spent less space outlining these positions than other theses might have done because of the degree of attention given to epistemological issues within the theoretical discussions of the literature review (Chapter 2). It tentatively ‘mapped’ the research against a 102

framework of alternative approaches designated by their ontological and epistemological preconceptions, situating this research primarily within the ‘interpretive’ and ‘dialogic’ categories. This led to the selection of, firstly, qualitative methodologies as a vehicle for investigating the research question, and within that, interviews, and, to a lesser extent, observation, as methodologies to examine in more detail.

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3.2 Methodologies As noted above, this thesis follows Saunders, et al. (2007) in separating the methodological frame for the research from the methodology. The methodology in these terms consists of the link between the research, the actual data used to respond to the research question, and the justification for that approach to data collection within the methodological frame. Because the conclusion to Section 3.1 was that only qualitative approaches to research would be appropriate to investigate the kind of research question posed in this thesis, this section therefore examines the two of the main approaches or methodologies of qualitative investigation – interviews, in Section 3.2.1, and observation, in Section 3.2.2.

3.2.1 Interviews Gubrium and Holstein (2002) describe modern western society as ‘an interview society’, one in which the generalised format of the interview – question and (open-ended) answer – is a central interrogative method not just within social science research, but in how society makes reflects on, makes sense of, and furthers, itself. Interviews are ‘the central resource through which contemporary science (and society) engages with issues that concern it’ (Rapley, 2001: 303-4, emphasis in original). The sheer range of modern interview situations – job interviews, chat-show interviews, police interviews, vox pops, even confession – has ensured that this approach to meaning elicitation has prepared us ‘as both questioners and answerers to produce readily the society of which we are a part. The modern temper gives us the interview as a significant means for realising that subjectivity and the social contexts that bring it about’ (Gubrium and Holstein, 2002: 9). Interviews in this sense probe subjectivity; they presume an interest in what people have to say, and how they say it. Interviews therefore have, in their open-ended form, strong interpretive overtones because they give people the opportunity to express themselves as they ‘choose’. They offer, at least potentially, an ‘attempt to understand the world from the subject’s point of view, to unfold the meaning of people’s experience’ (Kvale, 1997: 1). But precisely because interviews are a part of interpretive practice, they are not a straight-forward conduit of meaning (as in the conduit metaphor) from interviewee to interviewer. What can be ‘extracted’ from research interviews is considerably more modest: As a researcher I [can] observe people doing managerial work. And I can draw limited inferences from this. But these are likely to be very limited. All that I can really do – like any other social investigator – is to listen to what my ‘subjects’ have to say and attempt to make a ‘reading’ of their words in the light of my own theoretical predispositions and concerns.’ (Watson, 1997: 140) Interviews are then a form of conversation, ‘the art of asking questions and listening [within which] …at least two people create the reality of the interview situation’ (Denzin and Lincoln, 2000: 633) and produce a discourse which can be analysed firstly as discourse (Phillips and Jorgensen, 2002: 104

122-124), and also, importantly for this thesis, as accounts which are expressions of, or constitutive of identity. Because ‘identities frame and structure how we provide accounts of complex phenomena, they affect what we focus on, what we neglect and how we describe what we focus on’ (Alvesson and Deetz, 2000: 124), interviews therefore constitute accounts of, and about, identity. Such accounts and stories can be viewed as ‘a highly effective way of analysing how identities are continuously constructed, how they become fragmented, and how they are reconstructed’ (Gabriel, 1999: 196). However, although identities are, at the very least, ‘co-constructed’ within interview situations (Taylor and Robichaud, 2004), ‘interviewees’ talk should never be seen as merely a reflection of life outside the interview’ (Rapley, 2001: 308), or of the identities which the interviewee might present or hold outside of the interview situation. Indeed, if we are to assume that identity is emergent from all social situations, then we must consider interviews ‘problematic as media for the communication of “truths” or “genuine experiences” because of the existence of a multitude of contextual influences such as social norms, scripts for talking, value-laden language, expectations of both the interview and the interviewer, political interests’ (Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2003: 1170). The identity work done in the interview may be viewed as precisely that: creating an identity within the interview, one which perhaps only exists for the interviewer and interviewee together (Wray-Bliss, 2003). This problem has been glossed by some methodologists as one of viewing interview data as ‘resource’, or viewing it as ‘topic’ (Seale, 1998; Hammersley and Atkinson, 1995). Interviews can therefore constitute a kind of ‘resource’ for understanding actions, meanings and activities which are described in the interview accounts but which (have) take(n) place outside the interview – the interview ‘conversation as a pipeline for transmitting knowledge’ (Holstein and Gubrium, 1997: 113). Or interviews are instead a ‘topic’ for analysis in and of themselves, in which they are ‘better understood as the product of the local context or self-presentation concerns’ (Kuhn, 2006: 1344), with statements and analysis about the kinds of identities and identity work present restricted to the ‘local accomplishments’ (Seale, 1999) of the interview situation. Because, as noted above, poststructuralist approaches to identity are so sensitive to context and shifting identities, the topic / resource issue represents a particular problem for those approaches. Mats Alvesson (2003: 14), a key figure in the identity and interview debates, concludes that to ‘regard interviews as a superior technique for tapping subjects on their knowledge about their experiences and / or social practices neglects the interview situation as a socially and linguistically complex situation’. Although to an outsider the idea that interviews tell us nothing except about interviews may seem trivial or absurd, important epistemological issues are in play here. It only takes one tiny quote from my own interview data – and this very much an aside from the interviewee – to illustrate the topic / resource tension: I probably thought – I can’t remember consciously thinking this, but I would have imagined that I would have thought um … (16: 92-3)11

11

The presentation format of interview quotes here is: ‘verbatim quote from interview transcript’ (interview number: line number(s) from interview transcript).

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Analysed with the interview as a ‘topic’, things could be said about the interviewee creating an identity for themselves here as thoughtful and reflective, able to reassess issues in the light of complex phenomena like hindsight and recall. The question of the truth-value of the statement is placed beyond the analysis, and indeed, would be considered pointless and redundant. However, analysed as a ‘resource’ the quote presents considerable problems (if taken seriously), particularly with regard to the epistemological status of other prior or subsequent aspects of her account of being an MBA in the workplace. If she only ‘imagines [she] would have thought’ something, how much of the rest of her account reflects not the identities she might have been creating or avoiding when experiencing her recounted experience (of being an MBA in the workplace), but the identities she describes now as ones she thinks she would have thought about thinking about at the time? What then does that say for any analysis which is trying to say something about the identity work done by MBAs in the workplace, not just in the interview? While clearly the topic / resource distinction is a very important issue for examining identity work, many methodologists consider that is it a continuum rather than the dichotomy indicated in the above worked example. The central issue appears to be one of reflexivity – if the analyst is aware of the issue, then they can be conscious as to the problems it causes, potentially juxtaposing alternative readings when faced with thorny examples such as from interviewee 16 above. As Alvesson (2003: 14) notes, ‘the interview as a complex social event calls for a theoretical understanding or, rather, a reflexive approach in which a set of various theoretical viewpoints can be considered and, when there are reasons for doing so, applied.’ By being reflexively aware of the ‘local’ issues surrounding interviews and identity work, the accounts produced in interviews can be seen not as conduits to ‘truth’, but as ‘discursive resources’ which ‘are informed by, and inform, identity formation in organisational settings well beyond the interview’ (Kuhn, 2006: 1344). Keeping in mind that identity work is going on in the interview – regardless of what other aspects of method are being ‘controlled for’ – therefore leaves open the possibility for saying ‘something’ beyond the interview, or at least feeling that interviewees’ accounts produced through deliberative reflection on their experiences can be understood as a form of ‘thinking aloud’ on the issue of who they are in the workplace (Burgoyne, 1975: 543). Because, as Christine Coupland (2001: 1105) notes, it is in interview-derived accounts ‘that versions of institutionalised arrangements are reproduced and challenged’, then the kinds of discourses within organisations must at some level be reproduced in the interview situation. Indeed, a number of investigations of MBAs’ experiences take precisely this view when trying to understand what being an MBA is in different contexts (Hay and Hodgkinson, 20058; Sturdy, et al., 2006a; Collin, 1996; Elliott, 2004). Even Alvesson (2003: 2930) is prepared to relent somewhat on his ‘localist’ ‘interviews as topic’ stance when close attention is paid to identity work as a core of the interview analytical strategy: The discursive act [of identity work], whether espoused or produced in a mute dialogue that the subject has with himself, is then part of a particular [identity] project. ... This kind of interpretation ... reduces the gap between the interview situation as an empirical example and the possibility of going beyond this and referring to something broader and more ‘extra-situational’. ... the ‘mobilisation’ of [the interviewee] along the outlined trajectory is what takes place – in the interview and possibly in other settings.

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Alvesson here emphasises that both reflexivity on the part of the interviewer, and a focus on understanding identity issues are required, if interview accounts are legitimately to be used to explore identity work which is ‘extra-situational’ to the interview itself. Acknowledging that interviews ‘do not measure the “truth” of identity but interactively provoke its articulation’ (Sturdy, et al., 2006a: 855) doesn’t dismiss the epistemological issues related to understanding and interpreting identity work through interviews, but provides an argument which fits the approach to be taken by the research in this thesis. It is on these grounds that I would legitimise the use of interviews in such research situations and, supported by Kuhn (2006: 1341) below, why I believe the accounts the MBAs give regarding being an MBA provide a strong source of information regarding MBAs identity work in the workplace: The accounts actors provide [in interviews] display how actors perceive their action to be intelligible and warrantable. Accounts are commentaries on behaviour that reveal the discourses acting upon, and sanctioning, particular identities while also exposing rules for appropriate activity. Despite this argument, key authors including Alvesson seem to waver on the matter. Sometimes he seems to cautiously support single semi-structured interviews for assessing identity (‘Methodologically, our discussion suggests the relevance of in-depth and longitudinal studies based upon participant observation, or at least semi-structured interviews, for investigating processes of identity regulation’ (Alvesson and Willmott, 2002: 638, my emphasis)) and at other times to rule it out (‘We assume that identity lacks sufficient substance and discreteness to be captured in questionnaires or single interviews and to be measured and counted’ (Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2003: 1165, my emphasis)). It was largely because of these inconsistencies in the methodological literature that I decided to undertake a smaller sample of data collection utilising a different approach – observation – to explore how and why it might alter, affect or contradict the main interview data.

3.2.2 Observation The move to include an element of observation within the methods employed within this thesis was, as noted above, primarily because of apparent shifts in advice or recommendations in the methodological literature regarding the appropriateness of interviews (Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2003; Whittle, 2005) rather than a personal perception that the data I was getting from my interviews was either insufficient in depth or breadth, or was failing to offer me insight into the issues raised by the research questions. Therefore, although some studies have found that ‘during the research process it became clear that interviews alone would not generate the depth of data required to fully understand and investigate the topic’ (Jack, 2005: 1239). In this case the move to include observation was as a potential ‘check’ on the interpretive validity of the interview accounts I was collecting. Observation was therefore always a secondary method within the research methodology, and will not receive the detailed treatment given to interviews, the main method, above. Observation was primarily included as it potentially allowed a more ‘ethnographic’ take on the aspects of ‘being an MBA in the workplace’, and also to examine practice directly as a researcher 107

rather than relying on subsequent recalled accounts by the participants in interview situations. By observing practice in context, I could potentially be in a better position to understand how the MBA manifested itself, and in what ways, in managerial practice. Observing the MBAs in their workplace situation could be described as a more ‘naturalistic’ mode of data collection (Hammersley and Atkinson, 1995) than the interviews, particularly if we take seriously the issue of ‘interview as topic’ rehearsed above. Observation also allows access to the broader context; the observer can notice, at least potentially, more details about the physical and tangible context of MBA’s practice than is likely to be conveyed within the confines of an interview. Compared to an interview, where, as noted above, some researchers feel an interview’s ‘relationship to any “real” experience is not merely unknown but in some senses unknowable’ (Dingwall, 1997: 56), through observation, practice can be witnessed at first hand and in directly in the context I’m trying to study it – day-to-day at work. The main methods of observation are ‘participant observation’ and ‘non-participant observation’. Although the distinctions are not clear-cut across the literature, one interpretation of nonparticipant observation is that those observed are not aware they are being observed (Nason and Golding, 1998). This would clearly not be possibly within the MBAs’ workplaces for hours at a time, and furthermore there would be considerable ethical concerns. On the other hand one interpretation of participant observation is that the researcher is part of the phenomenon observed (Nason and Golding, 1998), and in these observations of MBAs I would not be a direct part of the phenomenon in the way I might be if I was undertaking ethnography similar to Watson, (1994) where the observer had a designated role within the organisation beyond that of observer. My approach to observation therefore sits somewhere between these two, with the permission of the observees gained for the observation, and they were briefed extensively on my purpose for being with them, but I was not participating or contributing to their day-to-day practice. This is not to say it is inappropriate to talk with observees about their practice during the observation – indeed it is through the toggling between observing practice and discussing that practice with the MBAs that I expect to gain the additional insights unavailable in an interview. So, while the observation was conceived to act as a check on the interview data – for example I was assuming that if the interviewees said they never mentioned the MBA at work, and I observed them mentioning it all the time, this would be an interesting finding in and of itself. This is not to say that the notes I would take in the observation would be taken as gospel – indeed as Atkinson and Coffey (2002) point out, the notes taken within observation or ethnography are just as much a construction as an interview transcript. There is the additional concern within the observational method I have selected that the MBA would be ‘forced’ to the surface both for the observee MBA and for those around them, because of the repeated need to explain my presence in each new social situation where I was observing. Clearly I could have chosen a different story to explain my presence, both to the observee MBA and to those others in their workplaces who might ask, but I felt this would be ethically inappropriate.

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3.3 Method The penultimate section of the methodology chapter focuses on the method used to collected data from the specific sites chosen. It therefore covers aspects such as the sites from which data was collected, the sampling strategy and sample chosen (Section 3.3.1) and the details of undertaking the interviews (Section 3.3.2) and the observation (Section 3.3.3) The empirical research for this thesis was undertaken in two main phases. This two-stage approach was not employed for any particular methodological reasoning, e.g., to produce some kind of ‘longitudinal’ study of the phenomena, but rather because of the diktats of 1) the original research project on which this thesis is based, and 2) the gradual evolution of my thinking on the theoretical elements of the thesis. A distinct shift in my theoretical position during the development process necessitated the collection of a second dataset which had a greater focus on particular issues in which I had become interested. The bulk of the research, and indeed the whole of the ‘first phase’, was conducted within a single organisation – a very large multinational automotive manufacturer which will here by represented by the pseudonym AutoMaker. A range of salient demographic facts about the organisation are presented in the left-hand column of Table 3 below. Organisation Sector No. of employees Revenue / budget per annum

Number of MBA graduates employed

AutoMaker Private 384,684 (119,552 in Europe) $172 billion US (£89 billion)

Unknown12

GovDept Public Approx 130,000 (in the UK) Approx £199 billion (this includes payments to UK individual recipients, to whom distribution is managed by GovDept) Unknown

Table 3: description of data collection organisations However, during the course of the research, an access problem arose – a common occurrence in all business research which is dependent on the goodwill of organisations (Easterby-Smith, et al., 2002). I was forced to abandon the ‘single organisation’ approach, and to find another organisation / organisations within which to complete the data collection. While it was never part of my original planning to collect data from two organisations, I did attempt to select a second organisation whose general trends with regard to MBA sponsorship, investments in development, and overall organisational culture towards qualifications were similar. The second organisation I selected is a large operationally-directed public sector department. For the purposes of this thesis it will be termed GovDept. Salient details for GovDept are in the right-hand column of Table 3 above.

12

Tellingly, neither company’s HR database had these figures collated

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While clearly the two organisations can be considered antithetical on some major criteria – public vs. private, (primarily) manufacturing vs. service sector, tangible products vs. intangible products etc. – I felt that some of the similarities in relation to the MBA programme made GovDept a suitable ‘mirror’ site for completing the data collection. Both organisations are very large, with the consequent concern for co-ordination of multiple business units / a multi-divisional structure. Both organisations are seen as rather ‘traditional’ in their working practices (at least by their employees), and both have seen period of rapid change and internal reorganisation in the last 10 years. Although slightly unorthodox, to support my statements concerning the congruence of the workplace changes I here present two quotes from my interviews, who were being asked about their workplaces and organisations, rather than to comment on the connections between the organisations: I think it’s worth mentioning our [GovDept] culture has really changed in the last 5 years, I would say, we are much more business-focused, we do a lot more, branding, things like that, we’ve got logos, things like that, which makes us a little bit more akin to private sector organisations, or other public sector organisations. We’re no longer the poor relation, um, of, of er… of employment. I mean, I can remember years and years and years ago, when I first started work in the civil service, personal friends and relatives, I mean, I’m sure as a joke, would say ‘oh my goodness, you’re not going to get married to a civil servant, are you?’ um, you know, ‘I know it’d be good for your work to broaden your horizons, but, I’m sure that when they saw where you work they’d just put your application in the bin’. I’m sure slightly in jest, obviously, but it’s interesting that people did perceive us as an organisation, as a bit of a, as I said, the poor relation. So, consequently, I was almost a bit loath to tell people where I worked and what I did. I did feel as if my job, I was happy with it, but I didn’t feel it was of interest to anyone else. Don’t forget that of course, in those days I was probably a front-line, [unclear, possibly ‘eager’] manager, or even an admin person working with the public, um, in a climate of, I think we talked about Bread earlier on, in that sort of era. (17: 214-24) The company rationale was, very simply, that [AutoMaker] has always traditionally bred its own management, so you start as a graduate aged 21 and you work your way through the company. The view was that we should really get in some people who had external expertise, experience at the first stage of management, so they could bring different thoughts, ideas, different approaches, and supplement, what we had. The view was that it wasn’t just good enough to just go and headhunt people from other companies, but actually a better way of doing it would be to go via the MBA schools because they would have well, good grounding in business, plus experience as well, and would have got a good cross-fertilisation of ideas and input that we could then bring in. (26: 61-70) I would argue, as both the quotes above hint at, that both organisations are making relatively slow transitions between ‘dead man’s shoes’ approaches to promotion and advancement, where you wait patiently for your boss to be promoted before taking up, as of right, his job, to one in which performance management is more prevalent, and role-filling is more competitive. One upshot of these changes is that people with ways of indicating superior, or potentially superior performance, such as those that hold MBA degrees, have the opportunity to leapfrog ahead of other colleagues more settled in the ‘dead man’s shoes’ traditions of the organisations. As will be seen in the data, 110

the sense that those in the two organisations using the MBA to promote themselves (in both senses of the word) are therefore at least partially seen as ‘gaming’ the system is important in creating relatively similar discourses of ‘MBAs’ within the organisations.

3.3.1 Sampling The original planned sample for this study was a carefully controlled group. However, all did not go quite to plan on the sampling front (see issues of access above). The original sample was to be drawn entirely from a population of people who had completed, or were about to complete, an MBA programme at a single business school, and all had been sponsored by AutoMaker. For the purposes of this thesis the business school attended by the AutoMaker MBAs will be termed ‘Thames Business School’. I was provided by AutoMaker a full list of all MBA graduates who had been sponsored to complete an MBA programme at Thames Business School. This comprised 78 individuals. I emailed all with a request to interview them. 20 responded, and I was able to arrange 1 – 1½ interviews with 15 of them. These 15 interviews employed a single standardised semistructured interview schedule. My original data collection plan was to follow up the earlier interviews with a series of observations with AutoMaker employees drawn from the same 15 originally interviewed. However, following the withdrawal of access consent from AutoMaker, I altered the data collection plan to include a second round interview with members drawn from the original sample of 15. These second round interviews would focus to a greater extent on the questions of identity and the MBA, in line with the development of my theoretical thinking in relation to analysis of the first set of interviews. Because of the access withdrawal, these second-round interviews with AutoMaker MBAs had to be accomplished ‘under the radar’ of the organisation. Therefore, not all 15 were still contactable, or willing to take part under the specific circumstances. However, 6 ‘second round’ interviews, all utilising the ‘new’ standardised interview schedule, were conducted. Data source AutoMaker Type of data Interview (Female, Male) Observation (Female, Male)

21 (7F, 14M) 0

GovDept 5 (3F, 2M) 4 (3F, 1M) Table 4: Data collection matrix

In the light of the access problem, as noted above, I had to choose a sample from another organisation to augment the existing data and to trial observation as an alternative methodological approach to addressing the problem. GovDept gave me a list of all MBA graduates in their employment who had been sponsored by GovDept to undertake an MBA. I emailed all the individuals on this list, and arranged with the respondents either to interview them only, or to interview them and complete a 1-working-week observation period with them. All the GovDept MBAs had completed an MBA at the same Business School – to be termed here ‘Midlands Business School’ – and all were sponsored by GovDept to undertake the MBA. Table 4 above presents a summary of the data for the data collection. 111

There are several potential concerns and limiting factors related to the particular sampling strategy employed: Firstly, there is the issue of response-bias in a self-selection strategy. While in qualitative research there are of course no particular concerns about a positive rather than a random sample (Bryman and Bell, 2003), it must be acknowledged that a self-selecting sample of MBA graduates may well have personally meaningful reasons for taking part – for example that the MBA has been particularly successful, or unsuccessful for them. While from the analysis it would seem that, in career terms at least, the sample chosen feel themselves to be ‘less successful’ than average (for an MBA graduate) this was not a strong or over-riding factor coming through the dataset. Secondly, it must be acknowledged that many MBA graduates move from their organisation within a short period of time after graduating – indeed this is one of their stereotypically defining characteristics (Golzen, 2001). The sample selected for this thesis were selectable because they are still with the organisations which sponsored them to complete their courses. This of course may mean they represent a certain characteristic of MBA student not generalisable to a broader range (see the limitations section in Chapter 5) However, as I was examining the practices of being an MBA in the workplace and not trying to make particular comparisons of the ‘type’ of people that MBAs are, then I do not believe that this concern impinges too greatly on the validity of the conclusions reached. Thirdly, the proportion of female respondents and participants in the research is noticeably larger than the relative proportion of: a) female managers in AutoMaker; b) female MBA graduates at either AutoMaker or GovDept; c) females taking their MBA at Thames Business School; d) female MBA students in the UK. If the female experience of being an MBA (and of the other accoutrements such as salary, progression and status often associated with the MBA) is noticeably different from the male one, as some have suggested (Simpson, 2000a; b) then this represents a severe blow to the generalisability, and perhaps the validity of the research in examining ‘MBA-ness’. This is undoubtedly a genuine threat to validity, to be discussed further in the limitations of the whole thesis (See Chapter 5). However, there was no discernable stable pattern to the kinds, or magnitude, of specific responses to the issues addressed in the interviews which could be unequivocally attributed to gender. Therefore I believe the sample presents at least an acceptable prima facie validity to be explored as an ‘MBA’ experience which alters according to context, rather than requiring the utilisation of gender as a primary discriminator in the analysis. Fourthly, the sample is comprised entirely of UK nationals, working (primarily) in the UK. At a time when the majority of MBA programmes are highly international in make-up (Mintzberg, 2004), this is another threat to the thesis’ ability to draw conclusions about ‘MBA graduates’ in general. The thesis’ aim of exploring practicing as an MBA, and the methodology focusing on meaning and practice in context, both mitigate the need for a broad or representative range within the data set. It seems likely that, for example, operating primarily in a second tongue during business practice 112

might considerably alter the kinds of linguistic subtlety available to those who both learned and practice in their mother tongue.

3.3.2 Undertaking the data collection - interviews The vast majority of the semi-structured interviews took place somewhere in the office buildings of the interviewee. The interviews were all tape recorded, and I took notes in the interview. No interview was longer than 80 minutes, and no interview was shorter than 45 minutes. As the literature clearly suggests (e.g. Denzin and Lincoln, 2005) this is an appropriate length and location to ensure depth of responses, and the likely comfort of the individuals to talk freely. All the interviews at the workplace of the interviewee were conducted in a private room, ostensibly for the purpose of the recording, but also if the individual was likely to be critical of their organisation, I felt it prudent that they should feel they would not be overheard. The interviewees were informed in advance what the general topic of the interview would be – their MBA – and were informed that the interview would be recorded for transcription purposes. No interviewees refused to be recorded. The interviewees were informed who would see the original transcripts (me, my supervisors, potentially my examiners) and that others in their organisation would not see the transcripts. They were told that individual verbatim contributions presented in the analysis of the thesis would be anonymised, as would their affiliations. The guiding principal in the interviews was to give interviewees as long as they wanted to respond to any particular prompt, question or issue, with only a relatively short list of ‘main’ topics planned to be covered (the model was Ibarra, 1999). In general I tried to hold back with my own comments, although I would ask follow up questions when I felt I didn’t understand their response or to try and probe a particular area. There were no outstandingly different patterns of responses to the three interviews I undertook at the Thames Business School location, or the one I undertook over the phone, to suggest that there was a serious effect on the data (see Sturges and Hanrahan, 2004).

3.3.3 Undertaking the data collection - observation The observation was undertaken in four 5-day periods. Each 5-day period was spent observing a single MBA graduate from GovDept, both in their office / main work environment, and whenever they went elsewhere on a work-related journey. This constituted a total of approximately 120 hours of observation. There were two periods of exclusion from observation, both of approximately 90 minutes, and both due to the subject’s involvement in confidential discussions of disciplinary matters. I took notes and relevant documentation where available related to the specific tasks being undertaken by the MBA graduate at the time of observation. Wherever possible the research subjects were observed even in relatively informal situations with work colleagues, including lunch with colleagues away from the office, but not following them to the toilet, to social engagements with non-work colleagues, or into home life.

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3.4 Analytical techniques Chapter 3 ends by outlining and elucidating the analytical approach and procedure employed to make sense of the interview and observational data. The approach chosen employs a number of different metaphors as lenses through which to view the data. The implications and issues involved in using metaphors in analysis are covered in Section 3.4.1. The choices around how the analysis should be presented are discussed in Section 3.4.2, and the ‘nuts and bolts’ of the analytical procedure outlined in Section 3.4.3.

3.4.1 Metaphors The main analytical framework used in this thesis is one of multiple metaphors through which the data has been viewed. Given that the primary approach of the methodology (as outlined in Section 3.1) is inductive, then the deductive imposition of a particular frame upon the data – ‘the essence of metaphor being understanding and experiencing one thing in terms of another’ (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980: 5) – warrants some discussion and justification. The first justification for employing a number of different metaphors in a relatively deductive manner is that this approach does some justice to the theories which have been explored in the literature review. While those ideas form a ‘loose frame’ for the data (Easterby-Smith, et al., 2002) rather than a specifically defined model to be ‘operationalised’ (Remenyi, et al., 1998), it is naïve to assume I did or could approach the data as a ‘blank slate’, unencumbered by those theories and ideas I have discussed at length around the issues of learning and identity. So instead of approaching the data in a purely ‘grounded’ manner, metaphor can be used to bring theory to bear on the data while retaining flexibility of thought, as Becker (1986: 167) notes: Using a metaphor is a serious theoretical exercise in which you assert that two different empirical phenomena belong to the same general class, and general classes always imply a theory. Not only is employing a metaphor a serious theoretical exercise, for some it is inevitable in any process of comprehension; a ‘primal, generative process that is fundamental to the creation of human understanding and meaning in all aspects of life’ (Morgan, 1996: 18). If this is the case, then viewing reality through metaphors is likely to occur regardless of any attempts to clear one’s mind of them when approaching analysis. A conscious decision to examine the metaphors employed in examining the data, even selecting them for that they may say about the data, is then a way to ‘draw attention to implicit aspects and may function as powerful starting points for new ways of seeing … indicat[ing] what is illuminated and what is hidden in different perspectives and vocabularies’ (Alvesson, 2003: 18). Several key contributions to ‘seeing’ organisation theory and practice anew have adopted specifically metaphorical, and specifically multiple-metaphor tactics for analysing the field, most famously Morgan (1986) who saw how different aspects of a concept are alternatively foregrounded or hidden as different underlying metaphors are brought to bear on the data. Using multiple metaphors therefore constitutes a method of jolting the analyst from their comfort zone; of forcing them to see the data in a different light, or from a different angle. As such, it can be said to be part of the reflexive process appropriate for interpretive or post-structuralist social science study which is highly concerned with issues of representation and researcher-role (see 114

Section 3.1 above). The connection between reflexivity and multiple perspectives is summarised by Alvesson, 2003: 25): Reflexivity for me stands for conscious and consistent efforts to view the subject matter from different angles and avoid or strongly a priori privilege a single, favoured angle and vocabulary ... one approach is to move between different lines of interpretation, varying and confronting an earlier-used vocabulary with a line of interpretation that offers a different angle with a different vocabulary. Altering the metaphors through which one approaches the data is therefore a powerful tool because it forces a change of register in the analysis, and allows the kinds of vocabulary which might ‘best’ describe or theorise the data to be contested. While using only one metaphor risks it becoming reified and the analysis portrayed as a ‘true’ reflection of reality, shutting out or down those other options and readings which do not conform to the topological elements of the metaphor source, employing multiple metaphors ‘highlights how meaning is managed – for example, by portraying organisations [sequentially] as ‘communities’, or ‘battlegrounds’’ (Alvesson and Willmott, 1996: 92). By juxtaposing alternative approaches to ‘seeing’ the same interview data, as, for example, Gomm (2004) does, allows the analyst to indicate they are reflexively aware of their relationship to the data, and open to alternatives. This is not to say that there are no downsides to the ‘multiple’ metaphor approach. If used injudiciously, it can become an end in its own right, as though merely by piling up the perspectives one automatically gets closer to a ‘total’ picture, like the collected views of the men feeling the elephant through a hole in a sheet in the famous fable. Such an approach privileges a consumptive form of agency on the part of the analyst – that it’s a simple matter of picking and choosing metaphors without there being any particular implications to any smorgasbord of choices; a ‘supermarket’ approach which treats ‘metaphors as elements of a common jigsaw’ (Alvesson and Willmott, 1996: 93-4). The selection of the metaphors, then, is central to the efficacy of the analysis, and to what is revealed by juxtaposing them. It is for this reason that the multiple metaphor approach is relatively deductive, requiring careful and cautious decision-making on the part of the analyst. In my case there were several elements to the selection process. Firstly, to avoid the pick’n’mix problems of simply asking, for example, ‘how is being an MBA like wearing a mask?’, following multiple readings of the data I consciously selected a particular metaphor as a frame and asked: ‘If we depict being an MBA as wearing a mask, are we able to see something new in it and can we gain new insights into things about it that we already know?’ (see Habermas, 1971). Secondly, I selected the metaphors based on three aspects: the degree to which I felt the metaphor jibed with a particular theoretical approach to the MBA, as evidenced by the literature discussed in the literature review; the degree to which a conceptualisation similar to the metaphor was present in the data, that is, that I felt the interviewees were viewing their MBA, or who-they-are-as-MBAs at least partially from a congruent perspective; and finally my own sense that the metaphor’s image had resonance for me. The analysis of the data in this thesis therefore used multiple metaphors as a way of making sense of the data while maintaining a sense of provisionality to the conclusions drawn. It also uses 115

multiple metaphors as way of improving the degree of reflexivity present in the analysis and the research overall. The multiple metaphors additionally provide the central organising logic for the data presentation.

3.4.2 Data presentation A number of approaches to presenting the interview and observational data within the thesis were considered. I follow Miles and Huberman (1994) in viewing data presentation as an integral part of the iterative process of qualitative research, one which is used as part of the sense-making process by the analyst as well as a way of demonstrating and justifying conclusions to a subsequent audience. I rejected at an early stage of the data collection and analysis any content analytical procedure which would involve transforming the qualitative data into quantitative variables (e.g. Neuendorf, 2001), considering this inappropriate to the more interpretive overall approach I am taking in the thesis. I considered a number of alternative approaches to the qualitative presentation of data within the thesis, at an earlier stage being particularly taken with the idea of a more integrated narrative which would combine the experiences of all the MBAs into a ‘prototypical’ set of experiences. This approach would have drawn on Wenger’s (1998) ‘vignette’ approach to data presentation, and also would have acknowledged Watson's (2000) ‘ethnographic fiction science’ which used a similar process to Wenger’s, but represents multiple experiences of several ‘real’ individuals as though they were contiguous, rather than synthesising the subjects (see also Down, 2006). After reflection I felt that these approaches would fail to do justice to the individual voices of the interviewees, and was for me an insufficiently ‘low inference’ (Seale, 1999) way of describing and displaying the kinds of responses made by the interviewees. Another related approach to presenting data which was considered was to ‘follow’ one or more individuals through a number of data points, including both their verbatim speech and field note descriptions of their actions and reactions. This approach has been glossed as taking each individual as a ‘case’ in the data presentation, as for example in Thomas and Linstead (2002). Other studies focusing on identity work have successfully used this approach, with Sveningsson and Alvesson (2003) and Costas and Fleming (2007) focusing on a single individual, and Thomas and Linstead (2002) tracing a small number of individuals over multiple data points from their interview transcripts. I felt that although this might have been possible with the observational data collected for this thesis, the quality of the verbatim text from these individuals during the observation was not always of sufficient length to represent accurately the kinds of ways in which these individuals were speaking about their actions and experiences – something central to the metaphorical analysis approach I wished to adopt. Also, the space required for sustained analysis of a smaller number of individuals – although clearly sensible for a short article – might not have allowed use of the breadth of interview data available to me. There are several other approaches used by a number of qualitative studies examining identity work of one form or another. Some have moved lower along the ‘inference spectrum’ to undertake a form of analysis closer to ‘conversation analysis’ (Hardy, et al., 2005; ten Have, 2007) than the other references noted above. These approaches, including Kärreman and Alvesson (2001), SamraFredericks (2005), Iedema, et al. (2004), and especially Coupland (2001) have focused closely on 116

the functional grammatical aspects of the language used in context, with Coupland (2001) also presenting the data using conversation analytic conventions for representing speech turn-taking and pauses. This approach to data presentation was considered, but I felt, as with the focus on ‘following’ a few individuals, that it would have considerably reduced the breadth of data I could present in the analysis. After consideration, I decided that a relatively straight-forward presentation of quotations and chunks of ‘simplified’ verbatim transcript – that is, every word spoken by the interviewee including representations of ‘pause’ or ‘holding’ markers such as ‘um’, ‘er’, etc., but not to note overlapping speech between interviewee and interviewer, or timed pauses between utterances. Quotations are drawn from a number of different interviews to illustrate a particular category or concept. This is the approach taken by a large number of studies investigating identity and identity work in the organisation studies field (e.g. Coupland, 2003; Brown and Coupland, 2005; Cassell, 2005; Pullen, 2005; Whittle, 2005; Kosmala and Herrbach, 2006; Sturdy, et al., 2006a). The data presentation therefore follows, as a rule, most of Silverman’s (2000) prescriptions for presenting interview data, using, in general, extensive or extended quotations to illustrate the argument; ‘top-ing and tail-ing’ each quotation to show how it fits in to the analysis; presenting quotes where possible that cut across the prevailing analysis; and trying to indicate, where appropriate, the limitations of both the data and the analysis. The resulting presentation is, to my mind, quite ‘data-heavy’, but I believe this is as a result of following Wolcott's (1994) prescription that as much of the detail and nuance should be left in for as long as possible, rather than a knee-jerk resorting to a ‘heaping’ or ‘dumptruck’ approach to presenting description and data (Wolcott, 1994: 16). Interestingly, some identity work studies have chosen to present the interview data in one or more matrix or tabular forms to indicate the cross-categorisations (Miles and Huberman, 1994). Articles taking this approach to identity work include Brown and Coupland (2005), Pratt, et al. (2006), Ibarra (1999) and two articles by Kreiner et al. utilising the same data (Kreiner, et al., 2006c; Kreiner, et al., 2006b). This approach seems to work well when the purpose is to visually underline a separation between groups, either by opinion / conceptualisation, or some real-world distinction such as role, seniority, or age (Dunleavy, 2003). For subsequent reanalysis of my dataset, or for brevity within an article I might consider such an approach to data presentation, but the metaphorbased analytical framework does not lend itself to matrix presentation, as there aren’t equivalent subcategories within each metaphor, and additionally I did not find distinct ‘real world’ group differences in responses such as male/ female which might have better lent itself to matrix presentation.

3.4.3 Data analysis procedure The procedure for analysing the data drew on a number of interpretive traditions, and in general was mindful of Watling's (2002: 262) comment that qualitative data analysis is ‘the researcher’s equivalent of alchemy – the elusive process by which you hope you can turn your raw data into nuggets of pure gold. And like alchemy, such magic calls for science and art in equal measure’. The analytical process was primarily one of me, on my own, reading and re-reading the transcripts of the interviews and field notes, and attempting to interpret and make sense of them in the light of each other, and the chosen metaphorical ‘lenses’ outlined in Section 3.4.1. It was therefore a 117

highly iterative process (see Sandberg, 2000 for a close description of this process), with pieces of data ranging from a phrase to several paragraphs being labelled and coded as having expressed a particular view, opinion or meaning, and then coded data being considered against other bit of data coded the same way, to see if these data sections were representing the same concept or idea, or required a new code (Silverman, 2000; Strauss and Corbin, 1998). The process also involved comparing ‘parts and wholes’; that is, considering whether selections of chunks of data continued to support the overall metaphor which was guiding the analysis, or would require an alternative perspective (Lee, 1991; Miles and Huberman, 1994): Not only is the underlying pattern derived from its individual documentary evidences, but the individual documentary evidences, in their turn, are interpreted on the basis of ‘what it known’ about the underlying pattern. Each is used to elaborate the other. (Garfinkel, 1987: 78) As such it was a relatively inductive process which at many times ‘reflected ad hoc meaning condensation’ (Kvale, 1997: 27). However, I tried to remain aware of my own role in the decision-making, so that while clearly influenced by the theoretical perspectives I was interested in (represented by the metaphors) I hoped not to ‘force’ interviewee’s accounts into a pre-determined strait-jacket, but let individual voices and idiomatic representations and presentations speak when they occurred and be categorised accordingly (Rapley, 2001). To manage the interview and observational data I used the qualitative data analysis software Atlas.ti. The use of qualitative software is relatively controversial as some believe it is used as a prop or substitute for thoughtful analysis, and some that it creates a distance between the interpreter and the data – negating a traditional strength of qualitative ‘grounded’ analysis (MacMillan and Koenig, 2004; Strauss and Corbin, 1998). However, I used the software for managing the data and keeping track of the coding rather than the later phases of comparing across codes, and selecting exemplars for presentation, which was done by hand. While analysing, I was trying to keep in mind that I was both building a number of ‘pictures’ of the data and also constructing an argument which I believed would convince the reader – undertaking analysis as ‘an artful process of selective re-appropriation designed to produce a representation that others will find authentic, plausible and verisimilitudinous’ (Humphreys and Brown, 2002: 427). Twenty-seven main codes were produced in a first pass of the data, which occurred prior to all the data being collected (Dey, 1993). These codes were then compared against each other and the uncategorised new data to see whether new themes and issues emerged (Silverman, 1993). The coded themes were then positioned within the overarching structure of the metaphors to create an argument for ‘seeing’ each perspective from within the data, or were re-analysed and recategorised as the analysis continued. The ‘final’ main code list, comprising seventeen codes, is represented in the data through the ‘4th level’ sub-headings (e.g. ‘4.2.2.3’ of Sections 4.1, 4.2 and 4.3 of Chapter 4). The analysis has therefore tried to balance the use of the ‘raw’ data – through presenting verbatim quotations from it – against the interpretation and analysis which has been 118

laid over it by me, the researcher. In doing so it has tried to be true to Wolcott's (1994: 36) description of a qualitative data analysis as ‘a see-saw, with description as the fulcrum, and analysis and interpretation being at the ends’.

3.5

Validity

Before presenting the data from this research, it is important to explicitly consider issues of validity. This is something implicit in the explanations given in this chapter regarding particular methodological decisions, but here I deal with a number of areas salient to the term ‘validity’ in qualitative research. The Handbook of Qualitative Research suggests a number of alternatives in terms of criteria by which the validity of qualitative and non-normative research might be appraised. These include ‘trustworthiness and authenticity’ (Lincoln and Guba, 2000: 167), to which Smith and Deemer, (2000) add ‘plausibility, credibility and relevance’. Given that these terms remain arguably as abstract as the ‘validity’ to which they pertain, there is a certain extent to which even experts acknowledge that the degree of fulfilment of them remains in the eye of the beholder, or rather reader (Cassell, et al., 2006b). However, while providing a convincing account is certainly implicit within the qualitative criteria noted above, some more deliberative procedural aspects, aimed at increasing the research’s validity, are worth discussing here. 1)

Trust and credibility: I have attempted to create a trustworthy and credible account within the research by indicating clearly my decisions at each stage of the process, and my reasons for taking them. This is because I acknowledge each as an interpretive designation which serves to construct a particular argument and exclude others. Examples that stand out clearly in my mind include the positioning of the research questions within the broader discourse of learning and learning evaluation (Chapter 1); the selection of learning and identity as the key concepts (Chapter 2); the designation of interviews and observation as appropriate methods to address the research question (Section 3.1), and the selection of the three metaphors through which to analyse the data (Section 3.4, and below in the introduction to each section of Chapter 4). Surrounding each of these major decisionpoints there is extensive discussion, indicating how these decisions reflect and resonate with the broader literature on the topic, and which serve to ground the research as credible to investigate in terms of topic, questions to undertake, sample to select and analytical process to apply.

2)

Constructing a plausible, convincing account: Despite this general heavy reliance on the literature, I have aimed for a plausible account through holding open my opinions as to the kinds of experiences which would be created and expressed in and by the data. In an overlap with issues of reliability below, I have tried to employ, as often as possible, extended chunks of the actual words and phrases used by the MBAs in my conversations with them. By placing particular words and phrases from the interviewees in their broader discursive context as often as possible – either of the interview or the observed conversation – I have hoped to allow individuals the scope to discuss their experiences in

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their own words. In general I consider I have achieved a reasonable balance, given the data, between description, interpretation and analysis (Wolcott, 1994) – certainly of a piece with similar studies of identity utilising similar methods (see, particularly, Pullen, 2005, but also Gagnon, 2008). 3)

Respondent validation: A distinct possibility for increasing validity within qualitative research using interviews / observation is ‘respondent validation’ (Maxwell, 1996: 4-5). This technique involves returning, firstly, the data such as a transcript, and secondly, the analysis of the data, to the interviewees for their confirmation that it continues to reflect their experience and understanding of the issues discussed. From an interpretive point of view, emphasising the perspective of the researched rather than the researcher, this makes a great deal of sense. However, in relation to identity work, and its element of dialogic as well as interpretive study, respondent validation is highly problematic. This is because identity work involves reading into the data things that the interviewees might not see or acknowledge. While I have been at pains to ground the metaphor selection in both relevant external literature and the kinds of comments made by the interviewees, the style and nature of the conclusions is more a reading into the data than a pure reflection of it – something I acknowledged in Section 3.4.3. As I go on to discuss in Section 5.1 towards the end of this thesis, I consider the inclusion of broader discursive data concerning MBAs important for interpreting the interview data, and this leads to problems with a ‘pure’ interpretive stance. A short example can illustrate this problem. From one interviewee describing motivations to undertake an MBA: It was not for 'would I get any more money for doing an MBA?', or guaranteed career progression, there was none of that. (4: 21-22) Here a strongly interpretive analysis would probably accept the construction by the interviewee of a particular narrative which de-emphasised the monetary or career advantages of an MBA. However, the specific selection of these as not reasons (and not listing other not reasons) seems to me to require an analysis within which the interviewee is responding to her expectations of my (the interviewer’s) expectations about why individuals undertake MBAs – e.g. is showing an awareness of the broader thrust of the MBA discourse within which she is undertaking identity work. Her response must then be understood within that context, and her own narrative only be seen as an agentic response to the available discourses – in this case reaffirming the discourse’s power by the required denial of it13. Such an analysis resonates with the adaption process I am propounding, but more or less rules out respondent validation as a possible quality-control process for the research.

4)

13

A homogenous sample: A number of limitations of the sample used in the research were acknowledged in Section 3.3.1 above, most of which affect primarily the generalisability,

The distinction here is between a ‘romantic’ and a more ‘localist’ reading in Alvesson (2003) terms

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rather than validity directly – these issues are covered in Section 5.2.1.1 toward the end of the thesis. However, an important analytical decision related to the sampling was the decision to ‘hold’ the sample as relatively coherent through the analysis – e.g. that all of the interviewees’ responses to becoming an MBA can be understood in a similar manner within the expatriate – mask – adaption framework. The sample could ‘reasonably’ have been split (particularly in two) a number of ways: by employer, by gender, by general attitude to the MBA, by perceived ability to ‘use’ the MBA, etc, to create a more ‘comparative’ approach (Miles and Huberman, 1994). As noted in the methodology chapter, the analytical process was iterative, and I kept an eye out for the possibility of a major divide emerging in approaches or opinions that could be tied to particular sampling distinctions. For me, while there clearly was ‘dissent’ or variance to the main ‘narrative’ of the presented analysis, I feel comfortable with the decision to treat the sample as homogenous because, firstly, I have done my best to present deviance where it occurred, and secondly, I feel that adaption is a process of becoming an MBA in the workplace which encompasses a wide range of contexts and approaches, which maintains the validity of the conceptualisation while acknowledging the spread of the data.

3.6 Conclusions to methodology This methodology chapter has positioned the research study in relation to both the foregoing theoretical discussion and the plurality of existing management research utilising the framework described by Alvesson and Deetz (2000). I argue in this chapter that the methodological frame for this research is most fruitfully seen as one based in an interpretive approach, but with considerable attention given to the concerns of dialogic approaches. Such a frame is best served by a qualitative approach whose stance towards theory and evidence is broadly inductive. The methodologies chosen to gather evidence within this frame were interviews, and, as a secondary methodology, observation. Interviews were seen as a potentially problematic, but ultimately appropriate approach to investigating issues of identity. Observation was seen as an appropriate methodology to support and elaborate the interview work. The data was collected through interviews and observations with a small sample of MBA graduates who worked for two large organisations in the UK, and had been sponsored to complete their MBA by their organisation. A process of data analysis through multiple metaphors was described, and the presentation of the findings from that data analysis is therefore the main purpose of Chapter 4.

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4.

Findings

This chapter of the thesis presents the main analysis of the interview and observational data, the collection of which was covered in Chapter 3 above. As explained in Section 3.4 above, the data will be examined in three sections, each employing a different metaphor as a lens through which to view the data. Section 4.1 approaches the data through the metaphor of the MBA as Expatriate, focusing on the ways in which MBAs practice as MBAs in the workplace. Section 4.2 uses the metaphor the MBA as Mask to examine how MBA come to be recognised and identified at work. Section 4.3’s metaphor introduces a new term by looking at the MBA as Adaption. This section examines how MBAs are constituted at work. Details of the choice of metaphor and the implications are presented in their respective sections within Chapter 4.

4.1 The MBA as Expatriate A person has no internal sovereign territory, he is wholly and always on the boundary: looking inside himself, he looks into the eyes of another or with the eyes of another....I cannot manage without another, I cannot become myself without another; I must find myself in another by finding another in myself. (Bakhtin, 1984: 287)

4.1.1 Introduction: The expatriate metaphor By approaching data from multiple, inevitably-partial ‘takes’, different elements of interest can be highlighted and explored. Within the data analysis undertaken for this thesis, this process is primarily achieved through the employment of a particular metaphor in relation to the MBA, each of which inevitably flags-up certain aspects of the concept, while occluding others. As noted in the conclusion to the previous section, the metaphor to be employed in this first section of the analysis is that of the MBA as Expatriate and perhaps more particularly, as a repatriate. Before launching into the data itself to examine what the MBA as Expatriate might entail, it is important to briefly delineate some of the central elements of the source domain of the metaphor – the expatriate – and to note some of the interactions between the expatriate concept and some of those aspects explored in detail in the literature review (see Chapter 2). First of all I wish to emphasise that I mean a relatively precisely-defined form of expatriate: that of the organisational employee ‘sent’ by an organisation on a work assignment in foreign country, with the relatively clear assumption that this would be for a finite period of time. I am not, therefore, suggesting that the MBA can be viewed through the lens of a British retiree to the Costa del Sol, although this in itself might make for some interesting observations. There is a large academic literature on the ‘business’ expatriate, but it is one which I will not explore further than is necessary to sketch the bare bones of the source domain of the metaphor. As a starting point, Ashamalla (1998; see also Ashamalla and Crocitto, 1997) usefully theorises the expatriate experience as being comprised of three sections: the ‘before’ - in the ‘home’ cultural and organisational context; the ‘away’ – in the ‘foreign’ cultural and organisational context; and the 122

‘after’ – ‘back’ in the ‘home’ cultural and organisational context. If, as is posited by the Communities of Practice theory (see Section 2.2 above), learning can be constituted as the adherence to a particular regime of competence within a specific community, the expatriate can be said to be learning to practice as a manager in these three contexts within two communities, as Figure 7 below indicates.

1. Within the ‘home’ context

2. Within the ‘foreign’ community 3. And then is also experiencing a trajectory of learning – and consequent change of identity – when they are repatriated back to the ‘home’ organisation

Figure 7: the process of managerial expatriation and repatriation The expatriate’s very obvious physical change of location, perhaps half a world away, leaves one in little doubt that they are being asked to operate within different communities, and adhering to possibly radically different forms of social practice. However, as was argued in Section 2.2, following the tenets of Communities of Practice theory, we can map the expatriate’s experience onto that of the MBA student, with the MBA students’ individual employment / organisational context standing as the ‘home’ community, and the ‘academic’ context within which they undertake their MBA, as the ‘away’ community. An MBA student’s physical dislocation may well be less than that of an expatriate, but this is not an aspect to be taken into consideration if we are viewing learning not as a tangible ‘transferable’ concept, but rather as the re-negotiation and construction of meaning in context. A social learning approach to the issue would then perceive the experience of being an MBA, of attempting to practice as an MBA in the ‘home’ context as analogous to a repatriate attempting to ‘bring’ their experience of a foreign context to the workplace in a meaningful way. The metaphor is supported conceptually by some remarkable parallels between the ‘mainstream’ managerial and academic discourse surrounding expatriates and MBA students. For example, there is an increasing concern that expatriate managers feel ‘demoralised’ at work upon their repatriation, largely because they sense that what their foreign experience can bring to their ‘home’ context is not considered valuable or meaningful by the ‘home’ context (MacDonald, 1993; see also earlier studies by Gomez-Mejia, 19827; Harvey, 1989b). Coupled with high rates of departure from the home organisation within 3 years of returning (Ashamalla, 1998; Black and Gregersen, 1999) the expatriate literature rather neatly echoes the concerns of literature concerning the ‘value’ companies gain from MBAs’ ‘academic’ knowledge and experience (see, for 123

example, Golzen, 2001 and Chapter 1). Some authors even directly note the conceptual ties between the source and target domains of the metaphor, Ariane Berthoin-Antal (2001; 2000) explicitly focusing on the ‘boundary-crossing’ nature of repatriated managers, suggesting that ‘the resistance to new ideas experienced by returning expatriates is a problem faced by many other employees’ (Berthoin-Antal, 2001: 66), and name-checking MBA graduates specifically (2001: 79). Applying the metaphor ‘the MBA as Expatriate’ heightens the salience of examining the ‘cultural’ practices related to ‘repatriating’ an MBA back into their ‘home’ organisational context. Terms now relatively common in the discourse of expatriate managers’ experiences, such as ‘culture shock’, or ‘cultural dislocation’ (Gregersen and Black, 1996) would, assuming the metaphor holds, also therefore be relevant to MBA graduates in the workplace. This is particularly the case if we focus closely on the kinds of practices involved in ‘crossing’ the boundaries between the different meaning communities, that is, concentrating on the concerns of MBA students and graduates in relation to their practice as MBAs in a work context. As the famous academic hoaxer Alain Sokal notes, ‘transgressing disciplinary boundaries … [is] a subversive undertaking since it is likely to violate the sanctuaries of accepted ways of perceiving’ (Sokal, 1996: 218). In the context of the MBA this can be taken as a trigger point to examine the data for difficulties and tensions for MBAs in this ‘boundary-crossing’ role. If, as Sokal seems to indicate, MBAs’ actions in crossing boundaries can be seen as transgressive, then perhaps they can also be seen as ameliorative – for example as ‘translators’ who can ‘frame the interests of one community in terms of another community's perspective’ (Brown and Duguid, 1998: 105; see also Berglund and Werr, 2000). Viewing the MBA as Expatriate is likely to bring to the fore boundary-spanning and -crossing practices, emphasizing the MBAs’ role as a ‘broker’ (see Section 2.2.3) – their liminal position between Communities of Practice. This liminality – of being ‘between’ positions, is, suggest Czarniawska and Mazza (2003; see also Rottenburg, 2000; Sturdy, et al., 2006b) both a powerful and a difficult position. To lead us into the data I present here a final quote from Wenger (2000), in which he describes learning as moving between Communities of Practice in terms which clearly reinforce the legitimacy of the expatriate metaphor in relation to the broker role and the liminal position of such brokers: We have been with a community for a long time. We know the ropes. We are thoroughly competent, in our own eyes and in the eyes of our peers. But something happens. We are sent overseas. We go to a conference. We visit another department. We meet a 'stranger' with a completely different perspective. Or we just take a long walk or engage in a deep conversation with a friend. Whatever the case may be, we have an experience that opens our eyes to a new way of looking at the world. This experience does not fully fit in the current practice of our home communities. We now see the limitations we were not aware of before. We come back to our peers, try to communicate our experience, attempt to explain what we have discovered, so they too can expand their horizon. In the process, we are trying to change how our community defines competence (and we are actually deepening our own experience). We are using our experience to pull our community's competence along. (Wenger and Snyder, 2000: 227)

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While Wenger’s (2000) account of the elements of the process might be seen as over-optimistically positive regarding a broker’s ability to smoothly negotiate between communities, it supports the idea of the expatriate as a powerful lens through which to examine some particular elements of the MBA concept.

4.1.2

Data analysis: the MBA as Expatriate ‘I mean, the learning just happened, the way that learning does.’ (10: 169)14

4.1.2.1

Social learning and differentiating communities

For the metaphor of the expatriate to have ‘power’ it must first be established that there is basic consonance, or perhaps congruence, between the two experiences of expatriation and becoming an MBA. Theoretical conjecture, for example from Berthoin-Antal (2001) above, suggests that this should be the case, but is this grounded in the data collected for this study? Crucially, for the MBA to be a ‘boundary-crosser’, spanning multiple communities, they must have a sense that there is a meaningful distinction between the communities I am positing as equivalent: the ‘home’ / ‘organisational’ and the ‘foreign’ / ‘academic’ communities. Prior even to that point, there needs to be some sense from those practicing as MBAs that becoming an MBA was part of a socialisation process. This point will be addressed first, followed by examination of the idea of ‘multiple communities’ in the data. There is evidence that the MBAs interviewed for the study were keenly aware of the social / interactive nature of learning, although the language employed to describe it often remained couched in transfer / ‘conduit metaphor’ terms, such as the use of ‘armed’ below15: Armed with that workshop [at the business school] you then go and bounce off either within your people from work or from within the same syndicate. It was, that was, where I got most of my benefits from, I think. (22: 162-4) All the MBAs in the research were experienced managers (a minimum three years) before they even began the course, and therefore had brought expectations relating the very social practice of management (see Section 2.4 above) to their process of learning. Within the data, this was reflected largely through apparent assumptions that ‘greater’ learning was gained from interaction and discussion rather than from texts. The quote below serves to strongly emphasise the

14

The referencing shorthand I will be using for the data analysis consists of: For interview data: 1) the interview number, 2) the line number from the interview. The interviews were ordered according to interviewee surname, so the numberings do not represent any particular meaningful ordering, e.g. chronology. The line numberings are to the original transcripts, therefore line numbers may not correspond precisely to the number of lines as presented in this write-up. For observational / ethnographic data: 1) a two letter code representing the individual MBA observed, the day of observation (of 5, for each) and the page of the observation notes where it was originally recorded.) 15 Syndicate: the term used within Thames Business School (and therefore by the students) to, somewhat confusingly, describe both: a) all the people on an intake of a particular programme, and b) the small work groups of 5 or 6 within which a lot of assignment work must be completed.

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individual’s sense of a sharp distinction between ‘live’ social interaction and ‘dry’ ‘presentation’ of information and textbooks: I think for me I quite enjoy working in a group with live people, so, I think the thing that keeps you going is the regular workshops, and I think they're a chance to meet with people because otherwise a lot of this course is quite dry, in some ways. (3: 117-120) In building a picture of the MBAs’ conceptions of learning on the course, the sense of socialising into a community seems to play an integral part, but, perhaps because of the hegemonic grip of the ‘transferable’ nature of learning, they sometimes disassociated the ‘socialising’ from the ‘course’: Aside from the course itself the interaction with other syndicate members was also a great learning experience, which was also away from the academic field, but it was still very valuable experience. (8: 384-6) The interesting use of ‘aside’ here clearly attempts to separate the ‘programmatic’ – perhaps the ‘dry’ elements from the previous quote – aspects of the structured delivery of the course from the interactions between MBA students as they become used to adhering to a particular regime of competence required to practice as an MBA student. Also important to note, because it will be explored in much more detail later on, is the acknowledgement that this MBA community (whether of other individuals in the syndicate, or of the ‘course’) operates on a different basis, and can be labelled as such: an ‘academic field’. A social, interactive element to learning at the level of informal contact and speech is therefore conceived as central to the process of becoming an MBA student. One indication of this is the ‘dislocation’ some feel when the process of socialisation is interrupted by changes in the structure of the groupings. This is not to suggest that there is some relation between ‘degree’ of learning and the stability of groups – in fact the reverse may be true – but rather to reinforce the perception of ‘learning to practice as an MBA student’ being a primarily social affair: So [as an MBA student] you formed a relationship with one group, then you had to form another relationship with another group, then the same happened again in the final year, so to be very blunt, by the final year you had met lots of different people, but you hadn't really got that firm basis of a relationship that you would have had if they'd continued all the way through. (4: 154-57) In addition to a sense of learning as a social process, some of the MBAs also understood that certain ways of meaning were limited to particular social contexts: that knowledge was ‘different’ depending on where you were trying to deploy it: You're doing the MBA in your own time, erm, and you're always, or I was always reflecting, always exploring what it meant in different contexts. (2: 190-192)

Crucially in relation to the ‘expatriate’ metaphor, this sense of ‘seeing things differently in different contexts’ extends to ways of thinking about the ‘repatriation’ element of the metaphor as I have portrayed it; that is, when the MBAs try to understand the processes going on when they ‘return’ to their workplace:

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Interviewer: What have you tried to do, to try and help the people around you then, understand those? Well basically try and put it in a way that they can relate to, but it is very hard, because often the tools are a way of looking at things that has become the norm as you go through the course – it's not their normal way of looking at things. (3: 145-50) This last quote begins, already, to touch upon what will be the central concept to be explored in this section: the way in which the MBA is ‘practiced’ in the workplace. It combines awareness that learning is a process of social negotiation, with a sense that the ‘academic’ context is salient, and meaningfully distinguishable from the ‘workplace’ context. These foundations lead to a more specific exploration of a sense that the MBA process is one of a ‘going away and a coming back’ for the MBAs, and the related consequences this has for understanding the practices of each community.

4.1.2.2

There and back again: An MBA’s tale

For some of the MBAs the basic distinctions between the two communities – academia and workplace – were relatively clear, and their discussions of the types of knowledge / practice propounded by each community fell into familiar tropes. As an example, while pondering the virtues of full-time over part-time MBA programmes, one interviewee noted: Doing a part-time [MBA], you're not disconnected from the business environment. Doing a full-time [MBA] in an academic environment completely for a year, a year and a half or whatever, you tend to become more academic, more working with case-studies, rather than real-world, and there's always a danger of going too theoretical… (8: 663-667) The interviewee is clearly making a delineation in terms of knowledge and practice between what one does in the workplace, and what one does on an MBA programme. The specific claim they imply, contrasting a ‘theoretical’ academic knowledge to ‘practical’ business, seems likely to be a reflection or instantiation of wider concerns / prejudices concerning the ‘relevance’ of academia to business. The broader concern of a discourse of ‘relevance’ within management education was explored in Chapter 1. Here it is as important because, firstly, those issues are reproduced in microcosm here, and secondly that there is a certain sense in which the interviewee is defending a personal decision to study the MBA part-time. It is, however, important also to note that the relationship between the two communities is not universally seen by the MBAs within the narrow terms of the academic community’s ‘relevance’ to the workplace community. Rather, it is sometimes alluded to in terms of a movement or journey: something of the journeying expatriate. One interviewee interestingly recollects his nervousness at entering what he saw as the: …big bad world out in Thames Business School (9: 401-402) The ‘stereotype’ of academia as the hermetic ivory tower, while business is the ‘real world’ (see Fournier and Grey, 2000) is here reversed by the MBA, who contrasts his monolithic employer with the range of people from different organisations he encountered on the MBA programme. So while 127

there is evidence of a consistent theme of ‘difference’ between the communities, this should not be seen as a blanket value-judgement about the systems of meaning in play. This sense of conceptual ‘travel’ between the two communities is created in the way that the MBAs talked both about consciously managing their practice in the different communities, and their reflections on that management role. Psychological terms such as ‘compartmentalising’ were employed, especially in relation to the management of time: You've got the perfect students who will work in bursts, every week, doing their ten hours and get through the course … but in reality, when you've got to weigh up personal time and work time, especially if you've got a more challenging role in your firm, um you have to, um, you just have to compartmentalise (14: 403-7) For this individual, doing MBA work, whether at the business school site, or merely concentrating on that work at home, or even in the workplace, required mentally ‘moving’ to a different space. One of the other interviewees talked at length about his sense of ‘going away’ when undertaking the MBA programme. His discussion of the ‘academic learning’ encompasses several elements, centred on the distinctions in the ways you have to operate between the communities: Well I think [that] the academic learning [is] different for the reason that you have to isolate yourself from the things that are happening in your work and that actually takes a little while to do. I mean, yeah, OK, I can get in the car and go to Thames Business School today, but it's probably going to be tomorrow afternoon before I begin to feel comfortable with that environment, begin to forget about things that are happening at work, so there's a little bit of a bedding-in period I think, and I think that's important, I think you need that to be able to get the mindset right and get the mind receptive to new thoughts and new concepts, and get them to stay in your mind as well … (6: 639-47) Phrases such as ‘bedding-in’ to a particular community ‘mindset’ certainly seem to suggest an adjustment period, a dislocation of some description; an alteration from the modes of practice to which the individual is used. The individual above seems clear that the mind has to be ‘receptive’ to difference for the ‘MBA programme’ community, but he also chooses to position the MBA community has having specifically different priorities and requirements for practice. The quote below illustrates how he feels different value and knowledge systems are in play between the communities: I think that at [Thames Business School] it's an artificial environment anyway, um, as I say you're all kind of round-about at the same kind of mental level, um, all focused on the same problem, have the same background knowledge from the same book, and at the end of the day, if you agree to disagree, it's not a problem, you know, there isn't a major financial risk here at stake or a big strategic decision for the company at risk, you go your separate ways, you agree to disagree. In the business place you've got to make a decision, one way or the other, and fine it's great having those tools at your fingertips, but at the end of the day you can bet there's a senior manager somewhere in AutoMaker who'll say 'no, that's what I want to do. I know the data says I should do that, but we're going to do it that way', and at the end of the day, fine, that's the decision. (6: 602-11) The interviewee above suggests specific objects, such as books, and approaches, such as risk analysis, around which the practices of doing an MBA and being in the workplace are not 128

immediately negotiable or comparable. Taking the two previous quotes together, there is a strong sense that this individual understands the experience of undertaking an MBA as one of moving across boundaries, and over time, between communities whose value systems and practice are sometimes at odds with each other. This sense of a separation of practices is reflected by another interviewee, who describes that separation in terms of a sense of ‘integration’ with the different practices: I mean, I guess I didn't feel at all integrated into AutoMaker as an MBA, I felt very integrated into Thames Business School. So I felt the people from Thames Business School knew I was doing an MBA, the people at AutoMaker didn't know, and were disinterested largely. (2: 250-3)

Two important elements are highlighted by this quote. Firstly, this MBA views operating in the different communities as a degree of ‘integration’ or perhaps ‘competence’ at practicing within different regimes and systems of meaning. Secondly, this quote starts to re-articulate, albeit indirectly, the assumption that these two communities are not just different, but that there is an expectation or assumption that practices in the two communities could, or should, but reconciled in some way. This obviously recapitulates the earlier point that an overarching discourse on management learning assumes that one community’s practice (academia) should have ‘relevance’ in terms of the value system of other (business). Given that the broader discourse of the ‘value’ of MBA qualifications is largely positioned as an ability to practice successfully in one community (see Chapter 1) this is perhaps unsurprising. However, it is precisely this assumption which gives depth to the expatriate metaphor, as the MBAs attempt to demonstrate an ability to practice in one community in the day-to-day practice of another: Um, the… academic side I found… interesting because it was comparing and contrasting all the time, um, as far as my work, that didn’t really cross over into it at all, other than, you know, er.. I… I’d sort of er… ferret round and find out. (22: 326-9) The example quote above is one of many, some of which will be presented later on in this analysis, which show the MBAs themselves have a concern to relate the practice of the academic community to the practice of the business community. However this one in particular was chosen because it emphasises both the sense of boundary, of ‘crossing over’ (or lack of it) and also the sense of work, of ‘action’, of ‘ferreting around’ required on the part of the individual MBA for that ‘crossing’ to happen at all. Therefore, by viewing the MBA as an expatriate, the process of individuals’ active attempts to ‘repatriate’ themselves into their ‘organisational’ community becomes the most visible and salient process. Furthermore, because they have developed an ability to practice in another community, their ability to position themselves in their repatriation as ‘different’, or able to practice ‘differently’, becomes simultaneously a source of mastery and a cause of tension and concern for them (e.g. Alvesson and Willmott, 2002). That ‘sense’ of an ability to practice differently in the organisational context because you have been practicing differently elsewhere marks you out as different, for example as ‘a fresh pair of eyes’:

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I think everyone's got problems in their own areas which would help on, which, from a senior management level, they would like to see, and use, MBA students, not so much a fresh pair of eyes but to have a different approach on particular projects (1: 383-386) However, the ability to negotiate meaningfully in this repertoire of practice requires some crossover of meaning – some negotiability – of this practice between the MBA and others in their organisational community context (Lotman, 1990). If this is not possible; if the MBAs cannot make it possible, then their practice from the academic community can only be shallowly interpreted, or only by those who have had the same experiences: The only time I actually relate to [the MBA] is actually if you have discussions about it, either about your student life as an MBA student, or something specifically, ‘oh I learned about that on my MBA’ and we start to talk about it. (17: 183-5) The first two sections of this analysis have attempted to ground the ‘expatriate’ metaphor in the data from the MBA graduates. This has been done principally by examining the extent to which the MBAs viewed the process of becoming an MBA: firstly, as a social / socialisation issue, and secondly, as a form of ‘travelling’; of ‘going away and coming back’. I would suggest that, with remarkably few clear exceptions, this view is broadly substantiated by the data, with many of the interviewees describing their experiences in terms of journeys and travel. They could be said almost to be flitting back and forth between the ‘academic’ and ‘organisational’ communities, even though, in ‘real’ space-time, they may not be moving from their desks. By selecting the metaphor of ‘expatriate’ to analyse the data, these first sections have additionally begun to indicate the importance of the ‘repatriation’ process for the MBAs – the sense in which the MBAs feel that they are attempting to negotiate one repertoire of practice in the regime of competence of another: I think that you change in that you have a different mindset because you've had different influences, if people inside of the organisation haven't had that then there isn't necessarily going to be that development with everybody in the organisation. (5: 630-633) If the expatriate metaphor is to provide further illumination of the process of becoming an MBA, then the deliberate negotiation of ‘positions’ and of legitimacy of practice must be addressed in much greater detail. For example, viewing becoming an MBA as a social process necessarily entails the views and opinions of other social actors in designating an ‘MBA practice’ as legitimate within context. So, while the ‘academic’ / ‘organisational’ community dialectic may be the most salient for substantiating the expatriate metaphor, it clearly represents a vast oversimplification of the range of communities regularly experienced by these individuals. Therefore it is to the elements of multiple communities, that the next section of the analysis will turn.

4.1.2.3

Multiple communities

Having already noted above that the MBAs are often seeing the relationship between their academic community and organisational community as conceptually and occasionally geographically linked, it is important also to break down the conceptual solidity of those two communities.

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The ‘academic community’ within which the MBAs studied for their degrees are clearly far from hermetically sealed ‘ivory towers’. The groups within which the MBAs study for their degrees are made up of others from many backgrounds and organisational contexts. A social conception of learning – one of developing practice as ‘students / academics’ through interaction – would emphasise and explore the ways in which different regimes of competence and forms of legitimacy were brought into negotiation through the process of becoming an MBA: I mean, I, I, I think one of the big things I got from [the programme] was the intercompany nature of the programme that I did. I think that was quite valuable, you know, having exposure to senior managers in… Bird’s Eye Walls, or Unilever, and, and that type of thing I thought was, was very useful and very valuable in the long-run. I mean, some of the conversations you have with these people are, I guess they don’t really shape your career or anything, but they, they help galvanise certain views and thoughts and ways in which you might like to act so, er… (20: 545-551) Personally speaking I got the most benefit from the syndicate. OK, I’ve worked with the company for, at that time, 15, 20 years; very set in my ways, the [AutoMaker] way. Um, it was very good looking at the same problems, but from a service sector perspective, or from, you know, British Aerospace – technology driven, and it was good looking at how different organisations tackle the same problem. (22: 139-44) The interviewees above explicitly note the importance, firstly, of negotiating with others over their shared and differing experiences and, secondly, how discussing their differing practices ‘help[s] galvanise certain views and thoughts and way in which you might like to act’. These two examples above both emphasise the differing community practices between different organisations, but the picture is further complicated by the many different communities within each organisation. The interviewees seem acutely aware of, on the one hand, constant dealings with different communities’ practices within their organisations, and on the other, of the varying way in which different kinds of practices from their ‘academic’ community might relate to those different organisational Communities of Practice. The example below comments specifically on the relationship between the understanding of practicing in an academic context (for example embracing the idea of academic ‘disciplines’) and the multiple communities interacted within in an organisational setting: Cos you're dealing with separate subjects [on the MBA programme] it's OK to deal with them separately [in the organisation], and for some people of course it'd be their whole discipline, so you could say if you're in HR be you're mostly dealing with Managing People [the Thames Business School Human Resources module]. With accountants they're mostly dealing with managing finance, and then you at the end of it have got to kind of pull them all together in your own mind, how you want to see things fit together. (12: 105-110) The repatriate analogy is strongly resonant in this quote. The interviewee attempts to ‘marry’ ‘academic’ community ‘disciplines’ within specific organisational practices. The logic operates by suggesting that, just as the organisation is a range of different Communities of Practice – for example HR, or Finance – so developing practice in academia can be understood as understanding where different, and possibly parallel, Communities of Practice exist. The interviewee therefore legitimates their ‘academic’ practice by ‘matching’ it to the appropriate aspect of ‘academic’ 131

practice. However, having outlined this mode of negotiation, they go on to suggest that this is not a neat process extraction and embedding of ‘parallel’ information. Rather first of all it ‘all’ has to be incorporated somehow into the practice of the MBA student as ‘at the end of [they] kind of pull them all together in [their] own mind, how [they] want to see things fit together’. The following extended quote covers an interchange between an interviewee and interviewer. The extract expands on several issues touched upon above, including the ‘position’ of the MBA in relation to multiple ‘other’ communities, the mode of negotiation they undertake in order to participate in different practices, and the role of the MBA in that process: I think it's all about having the forums the way you can use it, it's where AutoMaker needs to do a bit more work. Having said that it's very difficult to marry the technological … I mean here in [AutoMaker site] for example, my job is very involved with the technical community. The technical community really, for reasons of their job, don't really have any day-to-day need to think about things in a business manner. It's all about testing vehicles, getting the results of those vehicles, acting on those results, improving quality. Most of them would not really have any kind of requirement for a broader viewpoint. But if you're dealing with them in a, you know, from a, trying to bring things in from an MBA point of view, then … Well, it's more I'm using their input to facilitate my thinking. It's very rarely the other way round. [Interviewer:] Right. So you feel that you can work within, kind of between those two communities? Yeah, my job is very much as kind of cross-over role between the technical and the business. [Interviewer:] Right. And do you feel that the MBA has facilitated that? Well, I couldn't have done the business bit without an MBA, probably, because before doing the MBA I too was in a very technical, sort of, job arena. (3: 159-84) The MBA sees himself, and quite deliberately positions himself to the interviewer, as being in ‘a cross-over role’, one which has the ‘requirement for a broader viewpoint.’ The interviewee demonstrates deliberate positioning of themselves as a go-between, who can influence practice in differing organisational communities, and can attempt to do so in relation to practice developed in the academic community. He also begins to elucidate something of that deliberate process of negotiation, something he undertakes from his position between or on the boundary of several organisational communities. The benefit of the MBA (qualification) is far from completely explicit here, but definitely appears to have a role in this process of moving between multiple work communities. One possible role it could play is in providing a mutual point of negotiation of practice through quite specific ‘tools’ of practice taken from the academic community. The extract below illustrates one such case where particular objects, in this case ‘models’ from the MBA programme, could act as a ‘bridge’ or boundary object (Bowker and Star, 2000) to assist interactions between the interviewee and several identified organisational communities:

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I'd be working with marketing colleagues and engineering colleagues … quite frankly their marketing experience had been built up in the company, but they obviously didn't have any academic training, so I could lift stuff from the MBA and introduce it into discussion that we'd have and bring it out that way (14: 282-286) While the process as elucidated here appears to be a remarkably pain-free ‘transfer’ – not a sentiment reflected by most of the interviewees – it does serve to illustrate that introducing a shared specific practice, around a particular model from the MBA programme, can allow the different organisational communities to negotiate more meaningfully. The interviewee here appears to have reintroduced themselves, and their MBA practice, into multiple organisational communities. This ‘repatriation’ has moreover been ‘smoothed’ by the interviewee’s decision to deliberately select a particular object to assist him in crossing this boundary. If one element of the process of working between multiple organisational communities is drawing on shared practice, then a second might be characterised as the MBA providing a sense of legitimacy as the interviewees attempt to step between different communities: legitimately ‘repatriating’ themselves into organisational communities: I mean, um, for instance if you take the models [from the MBA programme], I haven't used them quite as much as the actual business knowledge. We do work, obviously, with a number of different consultants here, and it tends to be the models come into play more when they're here, surprise, so in that respect it was useful because I was able to understand where they were driving at, whereas perhaps if I hadn't done the MBA, it would have been new to me, I would have had to familiarise myself with what they were talking about. (11: 252:258) Here the MBA provides assistance to the interviewee in dealing with multiple organisational communities, this time glossed as various groups of ‘consultants’. Here the MBA is positioned somewhat more as on the boundary between various organisational communities, and moreover as the ‘facilitator’ of negotiation between several organisational communities and external consultants. This section has shown that the ‘repatriation’ of MBAs into organisational communities is complicated considerably by the multiplicitous nature of the Communities of Practice to whom they now, albeit marginally in most cases, belong. It is in this way, between and among communities in both their academic and organisational setting, that the MBAs learn to practice as an MBA in many different communities. As the interviewee below indicates, they must simultaneously find ways of legitimising their organisational positions to those drawn from many communities they encounter in their academic context, whilst also legitimising that ‘MBA’ regime of competence to the many organisational communities with whom they interact. Furthermore, in their organisational contexts they may have little shared ‘MBA’ practice with others, unlike more clearly identifiable Communities of Practice: Yeah, might do, it’s interesting, it’s because the accountants group together in a little accountancy group, really, that’s what make them a professional body, it’s because they group together, whereas the MBAs are quite disparate, and you wouldn’t know necessarily… (24: 361-4) 133

By presenting a complex picture of multiple communities – one in which the MBAs ‘repatriate’ themselves in different way to those different communities – this analysis emphases the ‘boundary learner’ role of the MBAs (Elliott and Reynolds, 2001). It displays for the extent of the MBA’s shifting, liminal positions. While, as Paulsen and Hernes, 2003: 6) suggest, this may not necessarily be cause to single out MBAs as different, it very clearly offers a particular way of understanding the MBA’s role: that of the MBA as repatriate, negotiating their way across multiple boundaries. Having delineated something of the liminal, shifting position taken up by MBAs as they repatriate themselves into organisational communities, it is now important to delve deeper into understanding how this position is reached, maintained, and, of course on occasion, denied. Understanding becoming an MBA will require a focus on the language through which this liminal ‘brokering’ role between communities is negotiated.

4.1.2.4

You speak MBA?

One important element of practice through which the MBA ‘brokerage’ is negotiated is through language, and the particular language games of various communities. Firstly, it is simple to establish that the interviewees, and those around them, tend to see the MBA, at least some of the time, in terms of its language. When I was observing one of the MBAs, she laughs as she describes the MBA as a ‘different language… my husband reckons that it’s all acronyms…’ (3, Day 1, 1:15). At another point, one of the same MBA’s colleagues said to me she felt that ‘we [GovDept] should be encouraging people to do the MBA, because it gives you credibility, allows you to speak the language’. (3, Day 3, p5) Some of the MBAs are aware that it is often through a ‘lingo’ that the MBA identity is propagated, and that ‘practicing’ within an MBA community gives you an ‘elite’ language which both identifies you and excludes others: Oh, OK now I remember my point – my point started out that yeah, basically sort of a whole lingo, a whole bunch of knowledge that we didn’t know that was going to give us a big, a big, you know a big one over your average employee (24: 54-6) ‘It’s part of, yes it’s [laughs], yes I can now speak the language that – you join an elite and you all speak a different language. It’s like IT people speak in IT language, and if you’re not a techie then you don’t speak that language and you’re excluded from that circle. Well I’m in the MBA club. (25: 108-11) This second quote emphasises the MBAs’ awareness that the ‘lingoes’ of communities are various and complicated – paralleling the complexity of the different communities they note in the previous Section. Several of the interviewees noted that their own organisations tended to have their own way of speaking – Interviewee 4 in particular making multiple use of a term he called ‘[AutoMaker]-speak’. For some of the MBAs, being aware of this ‘lingo’ change was an important part of their process of making use of the MBA. An awareness that language change plays a role in practicing within a community, and an ability to know when particular ‘lingoes’ are to be deployed was seen as part of becoming an MBA. This is the case both for a multitude of occasions within the data when the 134

MBAs are speaking of using the MBA, and also, as below, when speaking of problems in talking like an MBA: You talk about applying them in the worksetting, what I find is that I can apply them myself, to help me put things in perspective, but often because colleagues haven't got the same language, or in fact the corporate language significantly differs from Thames Business School's language, it's very hard to actually use the tools publicly, if you like. (3: 127-31) Part of the process of brokering therefore becomes one of understanding how and where such ‘MBA-speak’ can best be deployed – a kind of ‘management’ of the language of the MBA, wherein the MBAs might use the MBA language as the MBA content, to portray themselves in certain ways in certain situations, so that the MBAs are reflexively aware of how the discursive practices which surround the MBA might affect people’s responses to it: I felt a bit pompous going in [to the meeting] with my PowerPoint presentation. (1, day 1, 12:20) There is also an awareness that this decision-making around the use of the ‘language’ of the MBA is extremely context-sensitive, with decisions about how certain language and symbols related to the MBA will ‘play’ being taken all the time by the MBAs. From field notes, one of the MBAs switches style, and a sense of confidence, very noticeably when moving from talking face-to-face to colleagues in her new head office job, to talking on the phone to old colleagues in the district office she used to run: [She] switches from [HR] cases to gossip on the phone – is very animated in talking about her old district: ‘leave the knowing to me’ – confident in her local knowledge – much less of the cloak of seriousness… (4, day 2, page 11) A few minutes later, talking to me about the preceding phone call, the field notes expand on this point: [She] very clearly identifies to a greater extent with her old district job …on the issue of self-presentation [in her old district job] she felt with the MBA she could ‘talk about a wide range’, or could articulate better what she ‘was able to do anyway.’ But she felt comfortable doing this because ‘we [the district people] haven’t come from a culture where we’re encouraged to market ourselves’ – clearly intending a comparison to others [MBAs, head office staff] who have. (4, day 2, page 11) Here a combination of elements are woven together: on the one hand a sense of confidence and comfort in the specifics of the context, and on the other a way of speaking about the MBA which she felt would both give her ‘a wide range’ but also not step beyond the bounds of what she ‘was able to do anyway’. This sense of congruence between how she would like to speak about the MBA, and how it will be perceived in different communities she moves between, is clearly influencing the ability of the MBA (qualification) to assist or restrict her ‘brokering’ role between these multiple communities. Her final point, that of ‘marketing oneself’, especially in the relation to the MBA, offers one possible process for ‘brokering’ through the MBA; that of using the language of the MBA to practice specialist knowledge. While for the MBA above this is something she clearly disapproves of in others (at least within her sense of continued belonging to the Community of Practice of the ‘district office’), for some of the MBAs, rather than a potential hindrance, the 135

language of the MBA will give the legitimacy required to undertake successful brokering. After questioning some of an MBA’s colleagues about the MBA graduate, and finding them remarkably well-informed on the broader brush-strokes of the MBA curriculum, I asked the MBA graduate about this: Maybe it just tells you how well I’ve marketed it to them [colleagues], and their perception now based on my marketing of it to them … – because let’s face it, a lot about an MBA is that those of who have done it tell others how worthwhile and valuable it is, because we’re not going to put all of that effort in, not to do so. (25: 212-15) The use of the ‘language’ of the MBA as a way of brokering between an MBA community and a workplace community is clearly not a matter of one-way traffic. The MBAs in this study seem very careful and cautious about managing how they are expecting to be perceived, particularly in relation to language they feel will be associated with the practice of a particular community. Having explored this issue of speaking like an MBA, it is important to delve deeper into the ways this is deployed in the service of a brokering role. The process of ‘repatriating’ themselves in an organisational community is clearly about a combination of brokering related to both language-use and decision-making concerning what varying communities’ Communities of Practice are likely to find legitimate: It is a language-based thing; it is the way you'd approach it, and er, it generally is determined by feedback. Normally when I'm telling somebody it's, 'do you understand that?', or 'no', and try and explain it some other way, and keep going back and checking that the message is going across. (8: 357-360)

4.1.2.5

Translation

The central concept of the MBA as Expatriate is one of translation, and this term will constitute the core of the remainder of this section of the analysis. Translation will be used to describe the deliberate and deliberative process through which the MBAs are practicing, and attempting to practice, as MBAs in their multiple communities. Translation is a crucial concept because it is the embodiment of the repatriate metaphor; drawing on the idea of moving between communities, but focusing on the process through which legitimate participation is achieved in a community while also attempting to ‘translate’ practices from another community into that community. As (Clegg, et al., 2006: 20) note, ‘using translation as an adequate means of understanding and conceptualising management work means being concerned not with one language but with the differences between languages’. The process of ‘translation’ also grasps together several of the other aspects which I have examined in relation to the expatriate metaphor, including: ‘Position’:

the position of the MBAs as ‘liminal’, or on the boundary between communities, at least in relation to their MBA practice; translation is the process through which legitimacy in this liminal position is negotiated and maintained.

Role:

the role of the MBAs within their communities as ‘brokers’ who are repatriating practices; translation is the process through which communities are introduced to new practices and the regimes of competence of a community adhered to, but also altered.

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Language:

the centrality of language and language use; most of the obvious practice manifestations of the MBA’s translations are through language use, and alterations in language use.

Agency:

as repatriates, the MBAs are making cautious and careful, but definitely calculated decisions (Covaleski, 1998) about how to practice as MBAs, particularly in workplace community settings; translation emphasise that deliberative aspect of the process of negotiating legitimacy.

Furthermore employing translation also extends and enriches the Community of Practice concept by providing a detailed examination of the mechanism through which individuals are negotiating boundary and brokerage roles; how they are attempting to ‘move’ or translate practice from one community to another. The final aspect of the ‘translation’ process which will be examined here is its link to ideas and concepts of identity. It is through this concept of translation and identity that the second aspect of the analysis will be introduced (see Section 4.2 below). However, before making the direct link to identity, the main concepts related to MBA ‘translation’, in the context of ‘repatriation’ will be examined. These areas will be: 1)

Preparing for translation

2)

Translation as finding a ‘space’ for repatriation

3)

Translating concepts and practices

4)

Brokering the MBA

As these aspects are the ‘heart’ of this section of the analysis, in relation to the repatriation metaphor, they will make heavier use of longer quotes from interviews and field notes, to give a better sense of both the complexity of the issues at stake, and a little more of the immediate discursive context.

4.1.2.6

Preparing for translation

For many of the MBAs the process of translation required some considerable thought and effort. This is particularly the case when they were attempting to ‘blend’ the appropriate concepts and language with the particular Communities of Practice in play in their immediate surroundings. The quote below indicates a fairly straight-forward discussion of how something of the ideas / content of the MBA might be brought into work practice, and represents here a number of similar responses from the interviewees:

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I think a lot of the models were fairly simplistic, um, there's always a danger that you feel that you could be speaking in terms of MBA terms, you had to kind of change the language so that it didn’t patronise or offend or… [In what way?] … I guess the same way you would any academic discipline to real life. [Which is….?] … Erm, you'd just modify it or adjust it to the recipient of that information. (2: 303-309) An important element of preparing for translation is therefore a certain reflectiveness about the context and the particular regimes of competence in play in an MBA’s immediate circumstances. Understanding and intuiting what is likely to ‘play’ as legitimate in a particular context, especially in relation to the MBA ‘knowledge’, is a central part of working a ‘liminal’ position to any perceived advantage. One way in which several of the interviewees indicated that they were ‘preparing’ for translation is through a focus on that liminal position and the range of practices in the communities in which they participate. This particularly tended to manifest itself in talk of a ‘broader’ view of issues (see Marton, et al., 1993) – i.e. one which could ‘step back’ and ‘mediate’ between different communities: The biggest thing, actually, that I think I will bring to it is a much broader view, sorry I'm just thinking off the top of my head, much broader view because I have not just worked with people who work in AutoMaker. And that doesn't mean that tomorrow I'm going to go and leave AutoMaker, but what it means is that I can bring much more breadth of experience and understanding into the way which I handle things, I'm not going to automatically think that the way we do things is this. (5: 366-72) Having recognised that they can, or feel compelled to, ‘translate’ this ‘broader view’ into something palatable to their immediate organisational context, they then have to consider how to fabricate, perhaps to ‘bricoleur’, an approach than can link this rather amorphous ‘broader’ view to more concrete practices. The quote below illustrates nicely the rather helter-skelter sense of many things happening at once within this process: A lot of these things just came out of the blue, things happened in the programme – haven't got enough resources – what do we need to do? We need to find some more offset – how do we go about doing that? Well we need to go and talk to the people who go and put that feature in in the first place and do a trade-off, make some trade-off decisions, so I think one of the things the MBA gave me is the ability to see things more from a kind of helicopter view, if you like, more of a holistic view (6: 495-500) The quote below works together the idea of preparing for translation as a being about a sense of ‘understanding’ which is ‘wider’ than previous, as above, with the idea of ‘positioning’ – of moving to the boundary – as a preparatory step. The strength of the spatial metaphor in interviewees’ conceptualisations of these ideas is also prominent here: Yes, I felt that coming back to this idea of a 'comfort zone'. That my comfort zone [postMBA] was now much wider, much larger than it had been, but I wasn't expected to operate in a larger comfort zone than I had been previously. Certainly not expected to operate right on the boundary, which is where you want to be, you feel that you're learning things new, you're stretching yourself intellectually, and from an organisation, a task management perspective as well. (10: 465:470)

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Having recognised that they might be able to broker across Communities of Practice, and considered how to position themselves, at the boundary of practice, the MBAs then consider more detailed ‘format’ of practice which is likely to be acceptable: You can't just say 'oh on my MBA we were told to do this’ because that just turns a lot people off, you've got to couch it a different format and use the tools and try and encourage people while you're using them. (1: 229-231) In doing so they are trying to find a ‘space’ where their sense of ‘successful’ practice from the MBA sphere might assist them in legitimate practice in another sphere.

4.1.2.7

Translation as finding a ‘space’ for repatriation

In terms of brokering a space within which different practices from different regimes of competence can mix, some interviewees talked in ways which are potentially interpretable from a ‘transfer of training’ perspective. This is particularly the case when they suggest that finding ‘space’ to translate from one community to another is more straightforward when there is a greater congruence between the communities’ practices. However, although the examples below indicate social spaces where MBA-community skills were relatively painlessly ‘translated’, within the expatriate metaphor it can be argued that this is because the MBAs were employing their MBA practices from within the academic community, not that they had unproblematically ‘transferred’ the knowledge across contextually similar or diverse situations: Oh, no, I tell you where I find myself very much coming back to demonstrating [use of my MBA, in my] mentoring role for a[n other Business School] MBA programme – drawing directly on models, drawing back on exam technique … That’s where I’m most conscious of drawing back on every assignment [my mentee] does – “What do I as an MBA know, that I can suggest to him in terms of the assignment he’s working on, and what can I suggest that he might do in his workplace in terms of improving his situation”. That’s where I most specifically recall and use my MBA … (25: 332-7) Yeah. It’s interesting one area where we do use our MBAs is that I’m a mentor to a couple of MBAs, so I’m helping them with their studies, their analysis, for their MBAs… (26: 3646) It is precisely because it is situated learning taking place, under community practices which have some congruence, that these spaces for ‘translation’ are perceived as easier – not because the ‘knowledge’ is similar. Finding a place for repatriating new practices into a community may precisely involve identifying those areas where the regimes of competence are more in tune, and have greater comprehensibility: I've actually picked up that info and almost tutored others, so in that way AutoMaker has got some payback through educating others, and also from that, encouraged others to be interested, linked to the business, made them understand how value-add I've found AutoMaker-experience verses other companies (4: 378:381) Considering the appropriate ‘space’ for translating practice therefore is not necessarily one of ‘context’ in the sense of a spatial metaphor, but one of understanding the degree to which different kinds of practices are likely to be perceived as legitimate. It therefore makes sense that 139

the MBAs would search, at least at first, for conditions whereby they could undertake translation in social arenas which are unlikely to be threatened by others’ potentially radically different positions. Certainly one such approach is to look for internal spaces, that is, to attempt a process of translation in your head: If you take the financial information modules, for instance, I would say that's probably the one I've used most extensively, but again that happens to be because of the sort of level I'm at in the organisation, and the sort of output that I have to produce. Given that what I have to do is produce a lot of information for management, so it's how I handle and process that information, which is largely invisible to them, but highly visible to me, and I think that's the difference. (3: 338-343) However, in management roles clearly there are precious few tasks which can be accomplished alone, most requiring extensive interaction with others. Following the quotes in this section so far it might appear sensible to conjecture some ‘sliding scale’ of congruence between ‘simple’ translations – or brokering across ‘close or overlapping’ boundaries – and ‘distant’ boundaries. The lengthy interview quote below further undermines that thesis, and suggests a more complex relationship between the space chosen for translation and ‘distance’. Here the MBA (who had recently changed job-role within the same organisation) notes that her own level of ‘comfort’ within particular community has a strong effect on the ‘space’ into which she would choose to repatriate MBA knowledge: OK, going back to a job I was comfortable in, the job I knew, I was able to take stock on occasion. I could say ‘OK this is a problem I’ve got to resolve, not just with my MBA, but what prior knowledge have I got that I can use to sort the problem out, coach people, get people on board etc. So that would have been how I would have used it in my old job. Coming from [previous role] to this job, OK, getting a bit of a handle on what the strategic issues are, new job at HR, doing a lot of revisiting the theory, seeing if I could get my head a bit more in the right mode to do an HR job, and now it’s actually I’m using it even less than I was over the last 6 months, because, I’m at the stage well, I’ve got some of the theory, and I probably can apply it, but at the moment I’m too busy faffing about, finding my feet and shuffling paper from one side of my desk to the other, because I don’t know what to do with it. And actually, my knowledge, that I’ve acquired through MBA or any other source isn’t that helpful at the moment. It’s not a hindrance, but it’s certainly not that helpful at the moment. Now, given that pattern, it suggests I would just that in a month or so, or maybe after Christmas when I’ve got that great big pile of reading done, I might be in a situation where I’m ‘OK, I’m a bit clearer about where I’m going, I’ve got my resources and I’m getting some more, so maybe at that point in time I’ll be able to start thinking, ‘Right OK, how am I really going to crack this’. (17: 290-306)

Of course, one might have hoped that it was precisely in a new, more senior role, where deployment of MBA-learned practices might be of greatest benefit. But the MBA above clearly feels that the ‘space’ required for brokering across the communities is one which has relative calm, away from the perceived current day-to-day of ‘faffing about, finding my feet and shuffling paper from one side of the desk to the other’. Implicit in this reasoning is the sense that MBA practices are somehow firstly, more complex, requiring of translation, and secondly, are only available after the completion of a ‘great big pile or reading’ to familiarise herself with her new communities’

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standard practices. The liminal space for translating ‘MBA’ must apparently be created, not just found. The MBA above clearly thought very diligently about how to create to right ‘space’ for translation. Careful preparation was not, however, the only way the interviewees felt this could be achieved: I've been able to take back some of that learning into the working environment, as well, usually when you least expect it. It's quite interesting that you're sitting in meeting and suddenly something happens and you think 'boing!' that rings a bell with me I think this is how we should do this, so those opportunities come just out of thin air, really, you suddenly think back on something that's happened within the programme, or you think back to problems that one of your cohort members had in their particular company. (6: 390-395) This MBA clearly found creating the space for translation of MBA practices to his workplace a much more spontaneous affair – dictated by events, with opportunities occurring seemingly ‘out of thin air’. Finding a space for translation appears to be not to be something which can be undertaken by identifying a fixed set of parameters, but something which requires the apprehension of the practices of at least two communities. This process of apprehension then requires a carefully modulated response, one in which the MBAs seem always to be weighing up whether an appropriate space can be created within a community, or if it can, what can be done there: [Observed MBA’s colleague who also had an MBA] wouldn’t use the MBA with colleagues (at least so that they could identify it), but (she says) she does make extensive use of it, but ‘subtlety’. (1, day 2, page 9) Although creating a ‘space’ for brokering between communities is clearly not in itself easy, it still seems to constitute a preparatory action to the ‘subtle’ employment of practices from the MBA community in one or more of the MBA’s workplace communities. This attempted ‘subtle’ use – a term which could be a gloss for many of the interviewees’ descriptions in this section – seems to be a way the interviewees explain the process of brokering itself; the interplay of introducing new practice, or holding it back for fear of illegitimacy: Um, I would say I possibly did mention the fact that I’d acquired it in my MBA, but I certainly didn’t refer to it lots and lots of times, because I actually think, that it possibly, bear in mind I was bringing two cultures together, I would be concerned that it would be construed perhaps as intimidating. (17: 212-6) Creating or finding a space for translating MBA practice is therefore a resolutely non-trivial exercise, requiring empathy with the likely practices of multiple communities, and consideration of the level of ‘subtlety’ with which one can challenge from the boundaries of practice: When you're in an engineering environment you tend to let the bean counters do the discussions and don't challenge them. Now I feel confident that I understand what they're talking about and understand when there are some things that have been said that aren't actually quite accurate. (8: 142-146) Once the ‘ground’ is prepared, and a space – perhaps comfortable, perhaps surprising – has been created or found within which the MBAs feel they can undertake their brokering role, this still 141

leaves relatively unexplored the ‘what’ they are attempting to ‘translate’ between communities. Although touched upon obliquely in the last two sections, the process of translating concepts and practices across community boundaries forms the core of the next section.

4.1.2.8

Translating concepts and practice

Precisely how MBA graduates are translating or ‘repatriate’ practices from their MBA community into their workplace community is at the very heart of my analysis of the MBA as Expatriate. However, it also seems that discussing details of how this was done was one of the most difficult areas for the interviewed and observed MBAs. For many, articulating this process was clearly not something they had been asked to do before, and therefore responses addressing this issue specifically are some of the most extended and complex. I believe this is, of itself, important in that by articulating their views on these issues they are addressing exactly what I consider important in terms of Communities of Practice and the brokering role, without necessarily having that vocabulary to support it. While I therefore believe that their responses can be amenably analysed within the framework of Communities of Practice, brokerage and translation I have set out, many interviewees latched onto more concrete examples to illustrate the processes they felt they went through to use their MBA in the workplace. In many instances the process was reified around practices they had grown comfortable with in their academic communities; often this meant discussing the process in relation how they should make use of the MBA ‘models’, ‘frameworks’ and ‘perspectives’ they felt they had gained from the programmes. While at a surface level this would appear a further instance where a ‘transfer’ model would suffice, the way in which the interviewees articulate this process points towards alternative explanations. The quote below serves as an introduction to the section, emphasising the local decision-making involved in brokering, and a relatively straightforward use of the ‘MBA models’ trope. In response to a question regarding how, specifically, she used her MBA in the workplace: A lot of things around human resource management, leadership, and things like quality and operations. Definitely I could use them, and there’ve been times, I can’t quote you specific examples, when I’ve worked through a problem, or done a presentation let’s say, to a team, to my, my, team of people, where I’ve used some of the models, or I’ve coached them, I’ve pointed them in the direction of other models that I’ve acquired from that programme. (17: 104-108) While this quote mirrors several others in the apparent difficulty of nailing down specific occasions, it also begins to delve into the process of translating in terms of the selection of particular kinds of ideas and practices for useful deployment in multiple workplace contexts. The quotes below extend those ideas, because they emphasises that that selection is a dynamic brokering process, which require different approaches as the MBAs’ context alters:

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When I was a buyer that stuff [MBA models] was, was of relevance but not particularly interesting, now it’s of relevance and interesting and it’s become day-to-day business, so I think the grounding that it gave me in that really helped me and it’s, again, maybe it’s the perception, maybe I would have, would have picked those skills up anyway just by, by being exposed to them, but I, you know, my, my view is that that aspect of it really helped me and the actual, that kind of exposure to, to the value of, of strategy, you know, and the MOST, and all the other tools that you use, really, really helped me in the way that I structure my department and the way that I work. Very, very simple things like SWOT analysis, I, I use that on a, on a regular basis, and I, you know, the people who work for me now are MBAs or have business degrees, so it helps me in the conversing with them on the same level. (20: 237-48) I guess it was an unconscious move really, um, I had this academic toolkit that I could draw upon, and it was just really relying on that when I'd be working with marketing colleagues and engineering colleagues, because quite frankly their marketing experience had been built up in the company, but they obviously didn't have any academic training, so I could lift stuff from the MBA and introduce it into discussion that we'd have and bring it out that way. So it wasn't, it was really, it was the first time I'd really, it was probably the most exciting thing I ever did in AutoMaker, actually, although it never really got the real sponsorship it needed, because it had so much breadth, um, and I could apply the stuff from the MBA, but it was um, it wasn't, you know, a conscious move, it just happened. (14: 281-90) There are some occasions, like the one above, and the next quote below, where it seems the MBAs feel comfortable showing their full hand, so to speak, by employing a number of MBA community ideas directly in their workplace community. It seems likely that it is these kinds of usages which are relatively easily ‘spotted’ and picked up by, for example, organisational performance management systems. It is therefore all the more important that they are the exception rather than the rule. The second quote above is interesting for two further reasons. Firstly, he indicates that it was his ‘safety’ in knowing that people in his workplace community didn’t know the source of the ideas and models he was using – they obviously didn’t have any academic training’ – which caused him to deploy them. Secondly, he demonstrates a verbal trait echoed by several other quotes on this topic, whereby a relatively detailed description of the process is given caveats such that, while the process was clearly ‘directed’ by the individual, they don’t perceive each ‘step’ of the process as necessarily ordered and conscious: ‘I could apply the stuff from the MBA, but it was um, it wasn’t, you know, a conscious move, it just happened’. Much more prevalent than the two immediately preceding quotes are those which couch the translation process in terms which emphasise the need for some form of ‘subtlety’ to be palatable for the workplace community:

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People who've got an MBA and when you see them start to put a bit of the theory forward you get these blank looks and that's happened to me a couple of times, OK first thing you have to do is to make sure you have, for example, do a strategic analysis, thorough understanding of what's happening in the external environment… 'What's external environment? What's that all about?' so you can very easily slip into the idiom, slip into the kind of mindset that you had at Thames Business School, and it doesn't translate very well in the workplace because not many people are familiar with that same terminology, so I think it's, you know, coming back, um, putting yourself into isolation, and having to work with people who haven't actually been exposed to that same mindset, if you like, and then you suddenly appreciate, 'oh gosh no, I can't use that tack', and you have to soften that a little bit now, explain a little bit more about 'what does that mean', you take an alternative route and then you begin to develop an understanding, so that's happened to me a couple of times, and so you tend to sort of mellow your sort of, you way that you deliver that information forward. (6: 6-19) Several issues relevant to viewing the MBA as Expatriate are in evidence here. Firstly, a concern with language, and the problems of speaking ‘MBA’ to the workplace community. Secondly, the requirement for a process of translation, because you cannot, in the workplace community, ‘slip into the mindset you had at Thames Business School’. Thirdly, that brokering and translating are not all-or-nothing gambles, but an iterative process within which multiple ‘tacks’ and ‘routes’ may be required. And fourthly, that for many of the MBAs learning to broker effectively was a process of ‘mellowing’ – translating – the approach to practicing in the workplace community compared to developing that practice within the academic community. Later on in the interview, the same MBA expands on the quote above: Well, I mean things like for example I've used you know, some of the terminology as I explained to you earlier on and you sit in a meeting and you suddenly say 'oh you've got to do an external analysis on that, a SWOT analysis, PEST analysis, Porter's Five Forces or whatever', some people don't always appreciate what they are, you suddenly have to come down a level, and say 'what you need to do is to look at all of the influences on your company that is preventing you from actually getting into that market, what are the competitors up to, what is the cost of a customer, you know, all these key issues, you kind of have to break it down and bring it down so you do it automatically without really thinking about it, so you start at a high gear which may be inadvertently .. and then you think maybe a few blank looks round the table, you think lets go down a level, you do it mentally, it's just a mental conversion thing, you suddenly get a feel for the sort of level people are at around you and then if you don't quite pitch it right you have to make some sort of adjustments according to… (6: 524-36)

Here he elaborates by positing the process of translation as, firstly ‘a mental conversion thing’, but then acknowledges that it is a more social process than can be undertaken purely ‘internally’, requiring ‘a feel for the sort of level people are at around you’, and a sense that you must ‘pitch it right’. Repatriating as an MBA into a community whose central practice is not developing MBAs requires close attention to how people in that community are likely to undertake social learning and alter their practice:

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I may not, won’t be overt about it, but I might say ‘we could use this model from my MBA’ or, ‘I’ve used this one a number of times, I learned it on my MBA’, whatever – but only in the right circumstances. You have to build up a relationship with [other departments] before you use that tool, because otherwise they’ll think you’re being pretentious. (26: 471-5) I have suggested that this process of translation – mediated through the brokering role which MBAs are taking on – is essential for understanding how MBAs might shift workplace practices. This is not to say, however, that the process is something which has been developed on the MBA. As noted above, the MBAs learned to practice as MBAs in their academic community, not to practice, necessarily, as brokers between Communities of Practice. Understanding the practices of different social and organisational groupings is more likely to be a practice developed either in situ or, in certain MBAs, as part of their broader experiences of developing practices across communities: No, I don’t [think the ability to use the MBA at work was developed on the MBA]. I think that was probably one of the skills I did have and took with me. Because I was a training officer prior to, well, it was at about the grade before that I was a training officer, I’d always been in a position of having to take very complex material and simplify and reiterate it in a way that others could understand who hadn’t either didn’t have the ability to take in the complex stuff as I had to do and read it and interpret it, or didn’t have that opportunity. So no I think that was one of the things that I already had when I went to the MBA. Because I think there’s a danger here too much at looking at what did it give me as opposed to what did I take into in it in the first place to be successful. (25: 318-326) By looking at how the MBAs articulate the use of the MBA in the workplace we can therefore find considerable support for a view of the MBA as Expatriate, who operates on the boundaries between communities. Examining of interviewees’ use of MBA-community concepts such as models and frameworks within the workplace gives insights into the very social and contextual nature of the practices. It is therefore a reasonable inference that the same kind of processes – of translation, mediation, and brokerage – are operating for being an MBA in the workplace. Bringing peripheral practices to the centre of the workplace practice rests not just on some decontextualised measure of ‘efficacy’ of the models, but also on the interviewees’ position within the community. ‘Subtle’, ‘mellowed’ and ‘cautious’ language from the interviewees’ all support an argument that brokering the MBA is not something reducible to use of models or frameworks, but about the ways the interviewees can be legitimate brokers between communities.

4.1.2.9

Brokering the MBA

This final brief section analysing the MBA as Expatriate focuses on the extent to which the interviewees’ process of repatriation extends beyond the more specific elements of models and frameworks to encompass the overall role they take up as an MBA in the workplace. There is some evidence that this is the case, although, in keeping with the idea that there are multiple communities within the workplace, the process of brokering alters depending on the nexus of communities surrounding the MBA at any particular moment:

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I mean I work a lot with, well I work quite a lot with consultants, we have a fair number flowing through the office, and we've been hiring a lot of MBAs recently, so a lot of people know the tools and although I guess I use my learning for individual use, I will give feedback to people who are doing reports or analysis for me, and maybe talk through the frameworks that they've used and try and really sort of give them some real world experience, or some AutoMaker experience about how, why, what they've done is maybe a bit transparent. (13: 153-9) Here the MBA notes that different communities have different practices even in relation to the ‘tools’ and ‘frameworks’ he associates with the MBA community, but he brokers between those who have MBAs such as himself, those who’ve learned some of these practices in the workplace, and the process through which he thinks he brings them together. For some the act of brokering itself flagged up problems with the degree of openness and comprehensibility one set of practices could have for another community. In these cases, the process of brokering breaks down because the liminal position which is required to bridge between community practices is not possible. Although examples like the one below seem to lament the kinds of translations they would like to make, such examples are more intelligible when interpreted through a ‘repatriate’ metaphor than one which assumed that knowledge was a something cumulative and carried around unproblematically: I essentially expressed my viewpoint as coherently as I could, but I realise in some ways it’s difficult to because the actual language – you’re almost making certain assumptions to be able to express those radical types of changes I thought were necessary, and the people who hadn’t been on the MBA probably hadn’t that kind of lens – they couldn’t see those alternatives – the reality that they saw and experienced was the only reality that’s possible. (23: 72-7) The MBAs are brokering not just some concept of their ‘knowledge’, even though ‘translation’ of that knowledge is crucial to practicing as an MBA in the workplace. They are brokering the MBA – what it means to them and others – at different times and differently in different situations. That is, they are negotiating as much with their identities – about who they are – as they are translating practices between communities. The final extract shows an interviewee reflecting on times in which she felt she had made forays into translating MBA practice in the workplace which she considered to have been unsuccessful: You sort of say ‘OK, I’ll just continue being me’, so I didn’t, it’s almost as though you test the water, and if you don’t get the right results, you carry on doing what you did before anyway. (19: 187-90) This interviewee’s response almost seamlessly blends the brokering role concerned with the translation of practice across communities – of practicing as an MBA – with the spectre of failure to be socially recognised and legitimised as an MBA through that practice.

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4.1.3 Conclusions This first section of the findings has used the metaphor of the MBA as Expatriate as a lens through which to explore the experiences and reflections of the interviewee and observee MBAs. It has suggested that the accounts of experiences of being an MBA presented in this study can be usefully illuminated by considering MBAs moving between business school and day-to-day work social contexts as facing and tackling similar issues to those repatriates learning to practice within their old ‘home’ context having spent time develop routes to practice in a ‘foreign’ context. The data strongly supports a reading of the MBAs involved in a form of social learning which requires practicing in different ways in different communities. The interviewees tend to account for their experiences of learning to practice as an MBA in the workplace more in terms of ‘travel’ between different communities who speak different languages – than of problems of the ‘transfer’ of MBA knowledge. The different ‘languages’ spoken extends beyond changes in vocabulary to encompass the kinds of ways of talking, acting and practicing which are seen as legitimate. The MBAs describe ‘repatriating’ across multiple boundaries within the organisation. For the majority of them the process of repatriation in relation to the MBA is not one of moving only between two discrete but monolithic communities – the business school and the workplace – but rather they participate in interactions in multiple communities within each of those contexts, such ‘different forms of participation ... reflect[ing] the many and varied ways in which individuals negotiate their engagement with Communities of Practice’ (Handley, et al., 2006: 651). The boundaries between these multiple communities each require different kinds of practices to be developed by the MBA if they wish to try and alter the practices of that community through introducing other kinds of practices – for example those from their business school communities. Such a process is not the central practice of either community, and this ‘liminal’ position can be liberating for the MBA, but also potentially problematic (Czarniawska and Mazza, 2003). For many of the MBAs attempting to change or adapt the practice of one community according to the practice of another is clearly challenging. Handley, et al., 2006: 650, emphases in original) comment resonates, when they suggest that ‘attempts to adapt will generate tensions within individuals, and instabilities within the communities in which they participate ... the site for the development of identities and practices is not solely within a community of practice but in the spaces between multiple communities’. The MBAs therefore actively undertake, to a greater or lesser extent, and to a greater or lesser degree of success, a process of translation of practices between communities. Translation is an appropriate term because there is a linguistic element to the process, but it is equally about the ‘liminal’ role and position the MBAs take up to make their attempt at repatriation. Translation requires an active understanding the practices of both the ‘foreign’ and the ‘home’ communities, so an high degree of reflective preparation is required, before a space can be found, or indeed created, for attempts at translation. Translation is therefore the active process of a brokering role which the MBAs are taking up in relation to their MBA in the workplace. This brokering role involves the often cautious translation of practices between multiple communities. This may involve explicit ideas, frameworks and vocabulary from one community, but is likely to require subtle and continuous brokering between different groups and their differing conceptualisations of legitimacy and practice, including in many case the value and connotations those groups have for practices explicitly associated with a business school or MBA community. 147

The MBA as Expatriate metaphor constitutes a valid and powerful lens or perspective which illuminates a number of important aspects of the MBA – in particular the non-trivial way in which MBA ‘knowledge’ is of use / used in the workplace. Moreover, it is a perspective strongly instantiated by the data, and provides insight into the active process of MBAs attempting and practicing as MBAs in the workplace. However, inevitably the selection of a particular metaphor pushes some aspects of being an MBA into the background. It could be argued that the MBA as Expatriate perspective concentrates on the more active agent-driven aspects of practicing as an MBA at work at the expense of understanding how organisational or broader discourse acts to constrain and define MBAs at work either in spite of, or even because of, their efforts. While translation and brokerage are powerful terms to describe the process of practicing as an MBA at work, it is arguable – even if one does not concur entirely with Fox, 2000: 860) that ‘Communities of Practice theory tell us nothing about how, in practice, members of a community change their practice or innovate’ – that the designation of what gets translated and how practicing as an MBA is recognised through brokerage receives insufficient focus through the MBA as Expatriate. To surface some of these elements, this analysis turns to a different metaphor to illuminate the MBA at work, that of the MBA as Mask.

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4.2 The MBA as Mask In a world of honour, the individual discovers his true identity in his roles, and to turn away from the roles is to turn away from himself... [Today] the individual can only discover his true identity by emancipating himself from his socially imposed roles – the latter are only masks, entangling him in illusion. (Berger, 1983: 177, quoted in Sennett, 2003: 214) An MBA is sort of like a designer suit … an attractive status symbol that also wears well (Japanese executive, interviewed Linder and Smith, 1992: 31)

4.2.1 Introduction: the mask metaphor The previous section of the analysis explored the extent to which the data collected from MBA graduates in the study could be understood if we were to think about them in terms of the MBA as Expatriate. As was noted in the introduction to that Section, viewing the data through such a lens highlights certain aspects and perspectives of the MBA experience, but obscures and occludes others. It was argued that using such a metaphor implies a theory – a way of looking at the MBA. The MBA as Expatriate found that we can view the ‘learning’ from, or on, the MBA as a social accomplishment; an achievement mediated through interaction in (at least) both the academic and the work communities. How MBAs practiced as MBAs therefore was seen to play an important part in determining who they were in those communities. The MBA as Expatriate foregrounded aspects such as translating and brokering – conscious and considered attempts by individuals holding MBA qualifications to intervene in the practice of different communities, even as their practice is shaped by those community norms. Because a metaphor is a tool to explore theories (Morgan, 1986; Cornelisson, 2004; Becker, 1986) then, by switching the metaphor away from those aspects brought to the fore in the MBA as Expatriate, a different range of theoretical points, and a different ‘take’ on the same dataset, can be achieved. If the MBA as Expatriate has some affinities with aspects of the ‘human capital’ approach to understanding MBAs, then by altering the perspective to one more in tune with a ‘signalling’ approach to understanding MBAs, the kinds of understanding of MBAs in the workplace will also be altered (see Chapter 1). The ‘signalling’ approach to understanding the MBA qualification would, importantly, also see it as a socially mediated and interpreted concept – relying on social assessments of meaning to give it authority – but would highlight quite different facets of the same issues not least the strong potential for the ‘emperor’s new clothes’ reading of the MBA. This section therefore will employ the metaphor of the MBA as Mask on the analysis of the same dataset as the MBA as Expatriate analysis above. Similarly to that earlier section, I will set out firstly a very brief outline of how the metaphor will be used, because its theoretical power, as in the section above, comes not purely from the image – the source domain – but rather the kinds of conceptual conclusions we must reach if we believe the metaphor has validity. Just as the MBA as Expatriate made strong assumptions which tied it to Communities of Practice and situated learning conceptions of knowledge, so the MBA as Mask ‘automatically’ creates assumptions and a priori 149

perspectives which relate the dataset to those aspects of identity explored and discussed in Sections 2.3 and 2.4 of the literature review above. Once the barebones of the metaphor have been sketched, the degree to which such a perspective can be instantiated in the dataset will be explored, and the outcomes of such a viewpoint dissected. If we see the MBA as a role which the MBA plays then the MBA could be seen, as described in the quote from Berger (1983) above, as a ‘mask’ – a ‘socially imposed role’. Importantly Berger emphasises the external imposition of the potential subject position: the mask is ‘imposed’, rather than selected. Antonacopoulou and FitzGerald (1996) explicitly refers to the MBA as ‘mask’ in this sense; one in which the MBA is a filter of organisations’ perceptions of individuals and their ‘management training’. In this sense the MBA as Mask is used to indicate a particular class of signifier – a ‘symbol’ or signal of certain qualities, roles or attributes. The other quote opening this section, from Linder (1992) shows that other kinds of ‘physical’ bodily coverings can function metaphorically in the same way in relation to the MBA; that it is an outward symbol to others of something beyond that surface. But central to both Berger’s (1983) conceptualisation and that of the unidentified Japanese manager in Linder’s (1992) study is that these ‘masks’ are somehow potentially ‘false’; that the MBAs must ‘emancipate’ themselves from these ‘masks’ which ‘entangle them in illusion’ to find the ‘true’ them somehow conceptually ‘underneath’. Here Berger is close to Hewlin (2003) who uses ‘façade’ instead of mask, with its stronger connotations of ‘covering up’ the ‘real’ substance. While not necessarily commenting negatively, Linder’s interviewee can certainly be read in the same manner distinguishing appearance and reality, with the ‘suit’ or ‘mask’ of the MBA always maintaining the disturbing potential that it could be worn by someone ‘unworthy’ in Berger’s ‘world of honour’. This re-statement of the ‘emperor’s new clothes’ problem – that there might be nothing behind the mask (see Chapter 1) – is inherent in this reading of the metaphor the MBA as Mask. Its implications – of the mask being ‘imposed’ and of obscuring the ‘real’ person beneath the MBA symbol – must be teased out in the investigation of the data to follow. However, as was noted in Section 2.5 above when discussing identity and identity work, to countenance a stark distinction between the ‘real’ person and the ‘mask’ of the MBA is to make strong assumptions about the nature of identity, which are not necessarily implied by the use of the ‘mask’ metaphor more generally. Descartes may have been referenced in Section 2.3 as the epitome of approaches which distinguish mind and world – the real identities we can trust and those which can cloak that real identity – but he employs ‘mask’ imagery himself when he declares his ‘philosophical’ approach to science to be one in which, ‘like an actor wearing a mask, [he] comes forward, masked, onto the stage of the world’ (see Maritain, 1944: 23). Descartes’ declaration gives the sense that if the world is the stage, then the mask is all we can present to that world – or at least, anything we can present constitutes some form of mask. Identity in the MBA as Mask cannot be seen as singular, but neither can it be smoothly divided into ‘masks’ and ‘unmasked’, or ‘real’. Therefore, when ‘wearing a mask of [for example] “professionalism” often means acting contrary to our immediate desires and beliefs … what does it mean to refer to people as “sincere” and / or “authentic”?’ (Brown, 2001: 115). Such boundaries are blurred or rendered open to question if masks are all we can present to the world; that ‘under’ the mask is just another mask. As Pullen (2005: 6) notes, ‘masks are simultaneously false 150

representations of ‘identity’, and yet are essential to the creation of ‘selves’, and that ‘the paradoxical nature of masks suggests that masks may function to both conceal and perform the natural’. When David Boje notes that we all have sets of masks we wear socially, and that ‘each mask is politically correct to its reality, but I live between these multiple realities ... the game for me is to be a chameleon’ (Boje, 1996a: 329), he is living the masks metaphor – and hinting at its universality – but emphatically not suggesting some kind of hierarchy between those options. If ideas and claims of ‘authenticity’ and ‘sincerity’ of MBA identity are salient for the interviewed MBAs, then they must be investigated properly, but in considering the appropriateness of the metaphor, the interpretation that some non-MBA identity has some ontological priority must be resisted. It is therefore important that in investigating the MBA as Mask the analysis keeps open the idea that the MBA identity is part of a ‘de-centred entity’, in which the complexities of drawing on an MBA identity – of ‘donning the MBA mask’ – can be explored without necessarily imbuing it with negative connotations of inauthenticity: No longer tightly gathered around a core identity, no longer pledged to simple membership in an organic human community, but rather fluid, capable of metamorphosis – of donning masks, assuming roles – the self of the future may indeed be a de-centred entity. (Birkerts, 1996) This analysis of the MBA as Mask will therefore explore both the idea that the MBA qualification can be viewed and interpreted as a kind of ‘mask’, and that the MBA(s) – the letters denoting an individual or group – can be interpreted through that lens (Monte and Sollod, 1980). It will begin, as noted above, by examining the basic congruence of the metaphor in the data: does the data suggest that the interviewees view the MBA as a kind of mask? It will then move to explore how the MBAs might form a view of the connotations of the MBA mask from their perception of how others might view those who ‘wear’ the mask, following Karen Legge (1999: 259) assertion that ‘how we conceptualise and label people will both reflect and influence how we treat them – and people at work are no exception.’ It will then look in more detail at when and how ‘donning’ the mask might shift the kinds of recognised identities available to the MBAs.

4.2.2 Data analysis: the MBA as Mask The MBA’s what gets you in the door. The MBA’s what gets you in the door. (26: 533)

4.2.2.1

The MBA as symbol

Given that, as noted in Chapter 1, many of the systems for investigating MBAs and MBA ‘value’ consider the MBA a ‘symbol’ that indicates something about the wearer, it is perhaps not surprising that many of the interviewees were also able to view the MBA in the same way. It is clear that the MBA as Expatriate is not the only way in which they view the MBA, because it is not difficult to find examples of where they consider the MBA like a symbol, or at least acknowledge that they believe others do so. The mask is a quite a resonant specific image for viewing the MBA, but to begin with here it can be argued to constitute a particular image from a ‘class’ of approaches to the MBA; that is, seeing it for its symbolic aspects, and considering it somehow a ‘surface’ presentation of a particular identity. Therefore when one of the interviewees considers the MBA as ‘just a veneer’ 151

(23: 354) it exemplifies the sense that the MBA is something an individual can ‘put on’, which ‘masks’ the underneath: For me it [the MBA] was the badge – I liked the idea. It was really timely to show that there was some substance behind this person. (25: 10-11) This interviewee’s comment is interesting in that she combines a strong sense of the MBA as a symbol, but also indicates that its ‘mask’ value is only valuable for what it indicates about her – the outside as a reflection of the inside. There are a number of other ways in which the MBAs discussed in broad terms the MBA ‘mask’. One of the interviewees in fact never quite finished his MBA – moving role and country in the final year of the course – and therefore, having completed most of the ‘content’ of the programme but unable to use the qualification in the ‘mask’ sense, offers an interesting perspective on how the MBA as Mask. His tone is caught between rueful and sardonic when he notes: Yeah, I never got to have the photograph with my cap and gown on my mum’s wall… (21: 667) His inability to use the MBA as Mask may also be read into the following comment he makes, which, while denying the interest from his organisation for the ‘mask’ value – here glossed as a ‘medal’ – nonetheless supports a widespread understanding of the MBA this way; the potentiality for the MBA to be viewed as mask: AutoMaker [as an] organisation took it on as a learning opportunity rather than, you know, ‘this is something to have’: you must have that medal pinned on your chest before you become, to the next level of the organisation (21: 365-7) For the MBA to be viewed as a ‘surface’ concept, potentially – but not definitely – linked to something beyond it, places it for the interviewees within a broader set of categorisations or labels within the workplace to which meaning is attached, just as the quote from Legge (1999) in the introduction to this section suggests. By viewing the MBA as a mask, it can cause you to be categorised together with others that wear that mask, just as other masks or labels can cause you to be categorised: I have a feeling that you know what you get, that you know what you get, what an accountant’s going to be like. (24: 350-1) The position of the MBA as symbol is a social phenomenon is predicated on an understanding of how others understand that labelling. It is therefore important to investigate where the interviewees sense this, or any, view of the MBA as a symbol or mask is coming from, and how it affects the meaning they place on the concept.

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4.2.2.2

The discourse of MBAs

There is no doubt that the interviewees had a sense of what the MBA ‘was’, and what ‘being an MBA’ was before they joined the programme, and that these concerns stayed at the forefront of their minds through and after the programme. Where this sense came from, however, seemed much more difficult for them to articulate, suggesting that these perceptions are drawn by the MBAs from the broader ‘discourse’ surrounding MBAs discussed in Chapter 1. What is clear is that much of how they see the MBA as a symbol – as a mask – is gained from that discourse, and that they perceive it as a social construction created between the mask and those that see it: I don’t think the thing I, er, that I just picked up an article and suddenly was, um, from reading, I suddenly thought ‘yeah an MBA is the thing to do’ it’s just more, just, um, being absorbed, about being surrounded by people that sort of talk about qualifications, what’s good for you, um, talking to manage, senior management in terms of, you know, ‘what is a good qualification to have, and the MBA, it’s got the worldwide sort of reputation, it’s got status to it, and hence sort of, yeah it’s got kudos – yeah I don’t want to be an accountant, I didn’t want to go along a, you know, a ‘specialist’ route, the MBA tended to, was an all, covered, covered what I needed as well. (19: 27-34) This interviewee notes a number of potential sources from which her perception of the MBA’s value as a symbol may have been gleaned, but is clearly sceptical about identifying a single major source for the perception: ‘I don’t think… that I just picked up an article and … suddenly thought ‘yeah an MBA is the thing to do’. The kinds of ‘signals’ that the MBA sends – the ‘kudos’ related to it, are clearly what this interviewee was looking for. The broader media’s position on MBAs is clearly one source affecting the interviewees’ views of the qualification. All interviewees were clearly aware, at least by the point of deciding to undertake the qualification, of how it was portrayed and the kinds of ways it was being ‘sold’ (Beech and Johnson, 2005), this example being particularly clearly stated: We’d started working with the US a lot more, and I think at the time MBAs were, you know, very sought after from an American perspective so I think you know that was another thing which raised the general awareness of the value of such a qualification. So, and, and plus the fact that you read in newspapers and, you know you just read the ads in the Times or whatever and there’s always the value of this MBA and the value of that MBA, so er… (21: 99-104) The ‘value’ of the MBA qualification is being understood in a number of ways by the interviewee. Firstly theirs is social value connecting AutoMaker employees in the UK to their counterparts in the US; the MBA fulfilling an important symbolic value by ‘grouping’ them more closely with their US parent company. Secondly an explicit nod to the ‘value’ of the MBA from the newspapers, something, as Chapter 1 noted, couched almost exclusively in terms of individual salary increase / career progression. Not all of the MBAs were convinced that this broader discourse had influenced their opinion or decision-making, but that doesn’t alter their sense that the value of the MBA symbol is related to a number of external discursive factors. Above, they note the media profile, the MBA’s prevalence in the US, and it’s relation to ‘management’ as aspects of the discourse that affect the meaning 153

structures of the symbol of the MBA. The quote below adds further sources – ‘hearsay’ and ‘just picking it up’, and, although its influence isn’t rated, the ways in which the business schools talked about the qualification: I don’t really think I noticed [media reports about MBAs] so much, I think I understood which schools were good in terms of which schools had the good reputation… but more from just sort of ‘hearsay’ or just picking it up or talking to … you just sort of picked up which schools had the good reputation. I wouldn’t say that anything they put forward themselves sort of swayed [my decision to study in a particular business school]… (19: 5-8) The ‘discourse’ of MBAs, from its many and often rather amorphous sources, seems also to be affecting how their organisations view the qualification and therefore the kind of signals holders of that qualification – wearers of the MBA as Mask – send out within their organisation: It thinks it’s terribly successfully marketed by academia, and as a consequence of that, business buys into that. Our business has certainly got into it, and the fact that it’s marketed well, it’s worked in GovDept by recognising, accepting that marketing and it’s worked for me as an individual. (25: 31-34) For some there is a sense of ‘loss’ in their organisations’ drawing on the discourse of the MBA to use it as a ‘mask’, a ‘veneer’. Like those commentators in Chapter 1 who bemoan the eviscerating of the ‘content’ value of the MBA, some of the interviewees see their organisations only interested in the symbolic signals of the MBA qualification: The feeling I get is ‘we must be seen to have qualified people working’, and it’s ticks in boxes. They [the organisation / management] can now stand up and say we’ve got, you know ‘75% of our workforce are qualified to degree level, and 30% are up to MBA, and so many…’ and I think that’s the game they’re playing, they certainly, you know, any advertisement internally for job promotions, carries ‘must have or be studying for a degree’ – that’s the minimum, um, but anything over and above, um, I think it’s just a case of ‘look how good we are on the shareholders’ report at the end of the year. (22: 308-314) It is clear that the discourse on MBAs surrounding the MBAs is partly the mass media – global, even – but just as strong within their immediate influence groups. The quote below shows that what you have – an MBA, and who you are – a member of a group labelled ‘MBAs’ can assist in legitimising your position within a particular, and often a desirable, community: If you looked at our senior management lots of them have either gone away and got MBAs and come back, or that we have recruited or headhunted as MBAs, so there’s definitely a view from senior management that an MBA was ‘a thing to have’. There was also, I’ll be very honest, when you go to those MBA schools you take your existing people who have MBAs from that school with you, ‘cos it helps to attract people to the company. (26: 79-84) This MBA also notes the external social value of being recognised as belonging to a particular social grouping. The MBA is both widely-known, and has a certain reputation, but also allows you to stand out in specific circumstances; a powerful combination:

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There’s two attitudes, I mean, on the one hand you get the … ‘well everyone’s got an MBA… we’re a big company, AutoMaker, and we’ve got hundreds of doctors! An MBA…, you know, you’re no-one special, you’re not doing anything different anyone else – there’s lots of people like you’. On the other hand there is this, like I say, recognition, that it is a quali, a good qualification, when you look at it in reality, spread throughout the organisation, you haven’t got a massive group of MBAs in every department, so those people can actually add, and develop to that department, um, whether it… it’s a difficult one (18: 498-505) These ‘two attitudes’, presumably created from the perceptions of a wide range of employees, themselves influenced by the multiple channels of the discourse on MBAs, exemplify the complexity of interpreting the effect of the mask, even if, in very generalised terms, it seems to the interviewees to be positively valenced. The complexity is indicated by the following two quotes, which bring the kind of ‘appropriate’ signals down to the level of whether the MBA was gained at the ‘right’ school, and whether it is being signalled to the ‘right’ group of managers: I know that I put an awful lot of work into it and I was quite proud of actually getting through at the end of it, um, also the reputation I found outside of Thames Business School is quite, so the fact that you’ve got a Thames Business School MBA, yes that’s quite, you know, it’s recognised as being, er, a good level. (22: 96-99) Say none of the management team have done an MBA, they’re not really going to know where, what you’re talking about. They might think ‘this guy…’’ (18: 530-1) Just as the type of practices that were related to the MBA were highly situated when considering the MBA as Expatriate, the ways in which the MBA as Mask is interpreted cuts across social and group boundaries in complex ways. Although in general the quotes selected for this section so far have indicated the ways in which the MBA is positively positioned by the media, organisations and business schools, the discourse can be drawn other ways – the mask can be interpreted in other ways – something the interviewees are acutely aware of: Now I’m very conscious that a lot of people have MBAs, some have been devalued for whatever reason, so you hear acronyms: Master of Bugger All, that sort of things. Having done the course, um, I felt I gained immensely from having done it, um, I’m also aware that some people think it’s in a way it’s a key to the door, and in a way I can understand that and maybe there’s some truth in that. (23: 29-34) That the MBA can be used as ‘a key in the door’ (the same phrase as opened Section 4.2.2 from a different interviewee) stresses the way in which putting on the mask can create legitimacy, through group identification in a way not available to others. But control of which parts of the MBA discourse people draw upon is not possible; the MBA reputation can signal different things to different groups. While the quote below rejects a classic negative ‘stereotype’ of the MBA – that of the consultant – it does confirm that identifying people as MBAs is not simple: the positive reputation of the MBA alluded to above does not somehow accrue ‘automatically’: Some of them you would never imagine had done an MBA and some of the others are, there kind of the, you know, the ‘consultant’ types, as you pointed out before, so no I don’t think there is a stereotypical, to be honest. (21: 444-6) 155

The MBA as Mask can be recognised if it is ‘worn’, although the valency of that symbol in the discourse across different social contexts is highly ambivalent (see Chapter 1). This ambivalence is of even higher salience if the MBA as Mask can be recognised not only when the wearer chooses. The interviewees, aware of the swirl of discourses, are conscious of this, knowing that, mirroring the quote at the end of the last section where she felt she could identify ‘an accountant’, the same can happen to the mask they’ve chosen to put on: I just think people believe they can spot an MBA. (19: 395) So the MBA as Mask allows MBAs to be positioned in certain ways within the wider discourse of MBAs, through the mass media, organisational policy, and even managerial whim. Using the MBA is therefore something that the MBAs are obviously keen to do – to be recognised, for example, as qualified – but how they might do so remains uncertain: And these things are discussed, and if it came up: ‘Candidate X has an MBA’ then that would be a very strong ‘tick-point’ in putting that person forward [for promotion]. I would say that it’s almost strong enough to say that they should be put forward. ... The difference is that, there’s no guarantees, and that’s absolutely correct, um, because you’ve got an MBA gives you no real, I, I believe, no real advantage over someone who hasn’t – in this company. (18: 409-14) The discourses of the MBA forms the social context within which the MBA as Mask can be, and is, understood. It regulates, or even determines, albeit in non-linear and uncertain terms, how the mask is interpreted – who the MBAs are as MBAs – and whether they expect it to be a ‘key to the door’ or signal something ‘underneath’. The next section begins to consider how the MBA as Mask has operated for the interviewees in this dataset.

4.2.2.3

The MBA as mask

The interviewees are aware, at least, that the MBA can be viewed as a mask, and also of the ways in which it can act as a mask. They see it as being drawn from a disparate set of discursive resources, both macro and micro. Within this context, they can choose to use the MBA as Mask, employing its ability to trigger recognitions by others of the individual’s identity as an MBA, although not, of course, how that might be interpreted. Many want to draw very straight-forwardly on the ‘career’ discourse available from wearing the MBA mask – as something which, when recognised, opens doors: I saw it primarily as er, ‘would look good on my CV’, in terms of career progression. (24: 90) For some of the MBAs, it can be viewed as an object to be worn, or to be held in reserve for when it might be needed. To know you can put on the mask when it might be needed is very strong statement of the symbol / object view of the MBA: You know, it’s a safety net, or if your career doesn’t go too well, well you know I’ve got this thing in my back pocket which is going to help me get a job outside (21: 619-21)

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With the mask in the MBAs’ ‘possession’ – in their ‘back pocket’ – they can potentially deploy that symbol to garner the recognition they might consider due to MBAs generally. However, there is no one-to-one correlation between using it and the impression it will make – or even whether those recognising the qualification will consider it as ‘representing’ something more than its symbol: I suppose probably, and again it was 8 years ago now so it’s hard to remember what I actually was thinking, but I probably say that I would have thought that, if I was going to spend a long time studying, that I would want something at the end of it I could market myself on, I don’t know, letters after my name, I don’t know [almost exasperated at this point... – then almost whispers:] I don’t use those letters, funnily enough… (17: 96-100) This interviewee is clearly both proud of what the mask means to her – the effort that earned her right to wear it – and at the same time worried enough not to want to put the mask on for fear of the wrong impression being created. She clearly hopes that her effort and investment will be signalled by wearing the mask – part of the ‘kudos’ of being who she was with those ‘letters after [her] name’ – but her fear of being identified as somehow ‘in the wrong group’ should she explicitly put on the mask indicates she hasn’t been able to confidently do so. In observing the MBAs at work it is clear that all of the MBAs are used to working in environments where work-based labels – the masks that people wear – delineates both who they are at work and the kinds of things they would do. It is therefore not surprising that they view the MBA in the same way – and that that mask could be used both to signal who they are and also position what is ‘appropriate’ for them to do: [The MBA] is very aware of the role of badges in understanding and regulating ‘appropriate’ work. When she was in a district she was an ‘operational’ manager, a Grade 6. In that context both she and others had a very clear idea of ‘what’s a Grade 6 to do’, and would always spot when ‘you’re not doing grade 6 work’. (4, day 1: p5) Within the organisation, however, making use of the MBA in this way is complex as the MBAs negotiate across several social contexts, each may have its own determination of what an MBA is ‘supposed’ to signal. One influential thread of the discourse of Chapter 1 can clearly cause negative attributions, but of course only if people ‘know they are dealing with an MBA’. When the interview below was asked whether she thought others in her department would associate MBAs with stereotypes of management consultants, she responded: No, um I think that’s possibly because relatively few people have had a lot to do with consultants, possibly, and, and that, er, I guess one or two people have had, or strategy consultants specifically, they might, and you know that, people who are more senior who deal with strategy consultants might have a view about an MBA ‘borrowing your watch and telling you what the time is’, that type of stereotype and I suppose the majority of people I deal with day-to-day probably don’t, wouldn’t have known if they were dealing with an MBA .(24: 295-305) Who MBAs are, the kinds of things that MBAs would ‘do’, and the ways in which they would be ‘grouped’ is therefore always a temporary, and a precarious designation, with the delineations stretching down to some perhaps surprising minutiae – the interviewee below herself having a very

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clear distinction between those MBAs who did their MBA ‘externally’ (recruited post-MBA) and those, such as herself, who are ‘internal’ (were sponsored by the company to do the MBA): External MBAs do stand out, they may as well be wearing it on their T-shirts. Well, because they’re coming for 9 month assignments, initially, they’re there for a shorter period of time than anyone else. They’re doing an additional job, rather than an existing role, so they don’t really stand much chance of presenting themselves as anything different than an MBA. And as I say people from outside are unusual in this company. (19: 405-9) Some important distinctions are made in this quote: a reiteration of the ‘mask’ group of metaphors with the MBA ‘t-shirt’ ‘covering’ the individual; an indication of the relatively insular culture of large, older organisations like AutoMaker and GovDept; and perhaps most importantly, the way in which being designated as wearing the MBA when you have no other or alternative identities with which to present these groups is a problematic subject position in which to be placed. When considering the MBA as Expatriate, the way in which the MBAs chose to ‘translate’ the MBA was shown to be problematic but largely within their locus of control. Here, the MBA as Mask means that sometimes people see you wearing the mask when you choose not for that to be the case. Although the MBA as Mask always holds the potential to be positioned as a negative designation, many of the MBAs, perhaps unsurprisingly, are keen to use it to symbolise both a ‘belonging’ to a particular group, and what belonging to that particular group indicates about them personally. The quote below is interesting in that it clearly indicates that the MBA wishes to be recognised as skilled – to relate the mask and the ‘capability’ – but also to impart that it was the MBA as Mask, not just his ‘face-value … knowledge of the business’ which caused his boss to ‘sit up and take notice’ of him: No doubt about it, [the MBA’s] a badge – if you tell someone you’ve got an MBA they might look at you in a completely different way than if they didn’t know you’ve got an MBA. That’s – I can give you an example here [gestures around himself] – my line manager, when he knew that I’d got an MBA he sat up and took notice. Whereas before he would take me at face-value for my knowledge of the business, but with my MBA qualification as well, it means you have, for want of a better word, passed some sort of test, which means you’ve got a certain level of capability and should be judged accordingly. (18: 171-8) Some of these aspects come together in the following exchange with an interviewee, indicating that the MBAs a) understand that an MBA can be recognised through interpellation of the broader discourse of ‘who MBAs are’ and ‘what MBAs are like’, and b) simultaneously they are sometimes desperately keen not to have others notice the mask on them through the same discourse: Yeah, I have a bit of experience of this kind of, um, this kind of, ‘spot the MBA in the group’ kind of thing’. Interviewer: Yes, but you’re the MBA in the group… Yeah, but I don’t present myself as such. (19: 170-80)

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The position of the MBA as Mask as indicating ‘capability’ is clearly a key function for the MBAs, but also a risky strategy in social settings where the mask is somehow supposed to be demonstrated without recourse to labels or short-hands: I, AutoMaker, I don’t know of anyone who’d present their qualifications, again, apart from the Doctorate thing. There’s was a time , a guy I knew in a previous department, who used to sign his emails ‘BSc’, and I think he’d worked he’d worked his way from an hourlypaid status to BSc, he was, he was, to some extent ridiculed for that. It just didn’t go down well at all. It was a great achievement for him, but for other people it was insignificant: we’re all qualified. It’s a highly qualified place. (23: 317-22) In some cases there appears to be an entire breakdown in the recognition which the MBAs hope will link the mask, the wearing of the mask, and the attributes which the MBAs would like to signal with the mask: It’s [her perceived abilities] not attributed to any of my qualifications (26: 298) When a sense that the relationship between the mask and what it is supposed to signal has collapsed in certain contexts, then those situations where the ‘mask’ is all the information on which others can make judgments becomes more salient. In the case of the same MBA as in the previous quote, this distinction is between her current organisation’s attempts to interpret the MBA against her ‘capabilities’, and those external situations where the mask of the MBA is all that is shown: Externally, yes. If I go outside and say I’ve got an MBA then they’re like ‘excellent, good stuff’, really valued – it’s still not valued or recognised internally. (26: 123-5) Given this MBA’s perceptions of where and how the MBA as Mask is ‘valued’, it is perhaps unsurprising that she should then privilege use of the mask in those situations where it is a ‘pure’ symbol, without corollary possibilities for interpretation from other perspectives. Again, as with some of the other quotes selected above, there is a certain disappointment that the ‘mask’ aspect of the MBA should be the more ‘powerful’ or useful: There’s nothing to show it, that I have got it, so there’s nothing to remove. It’s on my profile (it’s like an online CV), it’s on my profile, it’s on that. But is there any add-value for doing that – would someone notice if I didn’t put it on? Would someone say ‘Hey, you haven’t put your MBA on.’ But nah. (26: 412-6) The MBAs in this sample certainly comprehend the MBA as Mask, and attempt to indicate a number of attributes, including belonging, capabilities and appropriateness for certain roles and tasks with it. But they are also aware that people recognising and attributing the MBA as Mask to you changes your identity to those people. The quote below shows that some MBAs are totally unprepared to risk an attribution they do not feel they control, and yet even then worry that it could be ‘recognised’ through their practice: I would never present myself as an MBA, unless it comes through subconsciously and therefore they pick it up (19: 334-5)

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Some have a very broad sense of how wearing the MBA as Mask might change them for others, and even themselves. It can act as an indication of identity in a way that represents them at work, and beyond, and not just in the way of capabilities, skills or attributes: OK maybe I don’t talk in a posh way, and maybe I don’t necessarily articulate myself as if I’m a totally intelligent person, but just that helped me think ‘yeah you are an intelligent person, because you’ve got an MBA, amongst other things’. (17: 135-7) By revealing themselves as MBAs, they are making, or failing to avoid, an identity whose connotations extend, for some, at least as far as whether you are ‘comfortable with who you are’: Why not… to be honest I don’t know why not, it’s just, I suppose, being comfortable with who you are, and I don’t suppose I’d like to present myself as ‘Oh, I’m [interviewee name] and I have an MBA’, um, people know me, and I wouldn’t want to sort of want to present myself as [otherwise]… (19: 125-7) For this MBA, placing her name alongside her MBA is grafting to herself an identity she doesn’t want to be seen as inseparable. One mask cannot be seen to occlude another. In terms of how the MBA as Mask is employed it seems a key aspect is that putting on the mask is a statement of identity – something you did indicating something you are – and that rather than one’s identity being risked, doing one’s best to avoid being seen as wearing the mask is the safest option: To be honest with my new team who I work with in marketing, I haven’t got a clue if they know if I’ve got an MBA or not. They may know because I said that you were coming in today to talk about it, but I’ve never spoken to them as a new group of people that I’ve worked with since, you know ‘this is something I did, this is who I am’. (19: 132-5) The MBA as Mask shows that these MBAs can use the MBA to indicate a number of things, including designated identities with certain social contexts, and can allude to it through other aspects, such as capabilities and attributes. They are also highly conscious that all the ways in which it is present or absent constitute effects on their identity in the workplace. The MBA as Mask they don affects what people see of them, and therefore their identities for other people. The process of showing or hiding the mask is then a central aspect of the instantiation of the MBA as Mask metaphor in this dataset.

4.2.2.4

Showing and hiding the MBA

For some of the MBAs, there seem to be no qualms about putting on the MBA mask, and even pointing it out in case people fail to notice it. The example below is probably the clearest statement of an individual explicitly linking their identity at work to the mask in the whole dataset. However, it is important to note that she uses this account to show she desires the MBA to be linked to an existing positive attribute from someone else: ‘that was excellent, you really took that meeting well’. There is no indication that she would be so explicit with the MBA without the prior indication that it was going to be attached to a positive assessment of her practice:

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If your meeting is floundering and say, ‘right, we’re going to do [Edward] de Bono’s Six Hats [exercise], and somebody will come up and say ‘that was excellent – you really took that [meeting] well’ and I say: ‘Yeah you see, having done my MBA I know how beneficial that is’, and they say ‘have you done an MBA?’… and that’s partly because you’re promoting it, and partly because you’re promoting yourself, isn’t it. (25: 228-33) While this is a strong statement of an MBA looking to encourage people to recognise the MBA mask, she also reaffirms the strong sense many of the MBAs have linking their ‘selves’ with ‘it’ – the MBA – when she says it is ‘partly because you’re promoting it, and partly because you’re promoting yourself’. More prevalent in the dataset are accounts or examples from the MBAs of either when explicit ‘showing’ of the mask is recognised as a problem for others, or when the interviewees have considered explicit showing before rejecting it: When I was doing the finance job – we’d hired these individuals and we’d brought them in, and it’s really taking them round and introducing them to key management, and we work with them to decide where we’re going to place them, and I’ve sat in a room with them and they’ve gone ‘Oh, I’m so-and-so, I’m an MBA from [Midlands Business School] or wherever, and you can see the line-manager sitting there going ‘oh-my-god’’ (26: 504-9) This quote gives a good indication of the kind of social context within which the MBAs are being recognised and positioned as MBAs. Putting on the MBA mask is clearly problematic. This means that the MBAs are likely to be fairly reticent about showing their MBA in any overt or explicit ways. Because of this reticence, there can be problems in gaining ‘kudos’ for wearing the mask even among those groups where attributions are likely to be positive. This interviewee is asked when or where he might explicitly present the MBA as Mask: Um, I think, upwards [in the organisational hierarchy] for sure. If, I mean, you developed a paper that introduces some concepts and you felt the best way of analysing a particular situation, er, people would look at that and say ‘yeah that’s good, let’s apply it to something else’. [Interviewer: Right.] ‘How did you develop it? [people might ask]’. ‘Because I learned about that on my MBA’. So I think in that respect there’s a definite recognition that, that, if you were to do a questionnaire here on a random sample, there would almost be a very high recognition that the MBA is good, shall I say. Interviewer: Sorry, I don’t want to butt in, but would you say there’s a high level of recognition of who are the MBAs [in the organisation]? Umm no. (18: 322-31) In this case, again, we see that explicit mention of the MBA would be most likely to come in relation to an already-validated example, rather than signalling the MBA as Mask outright. But this case adds the problem that a general reticence to show the mask reduces the chances of positive recognition from those groups whom the MBAs would like recognition from. This distinction between an apparently very visible ‘recognition that the MBA is good’ in general terms, while those same groups don’t recognise which specific individuals are wearing the MBA as Mask is an important aspect of the problems of showing and hiding an MBA identity.

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Showing the MBA in public seems a difficult dynamic for the interviewees, and it perhaps this that forces their sense of their MBA identity – what wearing the mask can indicate for them – inwards, so that they feel more comfortable employing the MBA almost as a signal to themselves as much as to others. The following two quotes, only about 20 transcript lines apart, indicate the careful balance of showing and hiding in relation to an inward-focused sense of self around the MBA. This interviewee is comfortable using it in a symbolic way in a very limit distribution context, such as her CV, but is keen for it to be noted as part of her more general identity at work: Well, in general it’s on my CV, so it’s obviously part of me, part that I’m proud of, in terms my qualifications and education. (26: 156-7) I don’t put any of my qualifications – I’ve got 2 degrees and I’ve got two lots of professional qualifications, and I don’t put any of those on my business card, ‘cos I just, I just don’t do that, I’ve always thought it was pretentious, that might be my perception as opposed to others, but, erm, do I try and disassociate myself from the MBA? No. I’ve done it, it was a lot of hard work, I’m proud of doing it.’ (26: 188-96) However, in the second quote, while the showing / hiding issue seems superficially similar – CV or business card? – the response is quite different. When seeking recognition from the CV a ‘career progression’ narrative appears to hold, but placing the qualifications on her business card is considered ‘pretentious’. For this interviewee the MBA as Mask should be hidden when it might influence recognition, but to see it as the designated identity position through which you might be viewed is considered t be ‘showing off’ unacceptably: Ahh no it doesn’t [appear on my business card] because that would be showing-off – that would be external, that would be showing off in a much too, you know, prominent way – that’s too much, I’m definitely going for the covert [use of the MBA]…(24: 231-3) A ‘covert’ use of the MBA seems to be required – a strong parallel with the ‘subtle’ translation of MBA practices in Section 4.1. Here, in contrast, it is the symbol of the MBA which is being shown or hidden, and in this case, using the MBA deliberately as a ‘badge’ seem most likely to be pronounced ‘showing off’, or ‘pretentious’; most likely to have the ‘the line manager sitting there going ‘oh-my-god…’’. This is despite the earlier finding that it is in the ‘pure’ symbolic uses like CVs and ‘outside’ the organisation that the MBA mask is most positively associated. Some of the MBAs seem forced to rely on the hope that the MBA, or those aspects of their identity they would like attributed to the MBA, can be recognised without any direct decisions to ‘show’ the MBA mask from the MBAs; others will pick it up ‘subconsciously’: Yeah I think people do, have, changed, not directly, but I think it's all, I think subconsciously people know you're doing a course or have got some experiences, they do look at you differently, er , I think yeah it has done. (1: 468-71) It could be said that this reinforces the sense that the MBA mask is ‘only’ a covering. However, if the MBA means here that what they can do is separated from what having the MBA shows they are, then this surely a strategy which is more hopeful than expectant, given the problems noted above with attempting to show the MBA as linked to an identity as capable. If the MBA can really be recognised ‘subconsciously’, this also leaves open two problematic possibilities for the MBAs: firstly that they are always wearing the mask – if they can be recognised as MBAs without knowing 162

it then it is not part an identity repertoire over which they have the locus of control – and secondly, if it can be noticed ‘subconsciously’ you cannot avoid being identified as an MBA. The MBAs seem to consider that the safer option is to seek to avoid recognition of the MBA as Mask in most workplace situations, so that you can avoid the negative connotations which might exist in the broader organisational discourse: Oh no, I wouldn’t dream of mentioning the MBA. I don’t think it goes down well in AutoMaker Culture [sounded like capitals]. (23: 97-8) I haven’t experienced that [being identified as an MBA when he hasn’t wanted to be] at all. I haven’t, I haven’t felt at all labelled as an MBA. But maybe that’s, that’s the way I’ve projected myself, I’ve chosen, I chosen to I suppose hide or conceal, but certainly not promote [the MBA] (23: 275-7) Although this MBA hasn’t been labelled as MBA when he didn’t want to be, the price of that strategy has been that he has ‘projected’ his self mostly while ‘hiding or concealing’ the MBA aspect of his identity; avoiding recognition of the MBA mask by avoiding all situations in which it might be recognised. One example from the observational data shows that sometimes this strategy is a direct result of advice that wearing the MBA as Mask should be avoided, even in a supposedly ‘safer’ context where the symbolic value might have been seen as an asset: Lunch with [MBA’s friend from another area of GovDept who holds an MBA]: Key point, hiding: [friend] didn’t put that she was doing an MBA on her recent review for promotion because she was advised against it. A senior person advised her that the ‘chairman of the panel doesn’t like MBAs.’ Even more interestingly, as [friend] suggested the chairman was a very open guy, they speculated together that it might be the line manager’s prejudice instead… (3, day 2, page 9) Within the specific organisational context, different discourses – the mass-media MBA image, the organisational approach, the specific manager’s attitude – are making positive recognition of the MBA as Mask to positive effect a minefield for the interviewees. With it hidden, the MBAs seem left to hoping its taking up will somehow be recognised only by those who will attribute it positively, but without deploying either the symbol, nor any language or visual clue of the MBA to any wider group(s). It is at this point that there are some strong overlaps with the ‘subtle’ translation process from the MBA as Expatriate, although again here the distinction is between translation of practice and drawing on symbolic resources. [My manager] would know that I had one [MBA], yeah, I think it is important, yes. Interviewer: And you were trying to [show her you had one]? Yes. Interviewer: Flag [it] up [to her]? Yes, without [other] people [in the room] knowing that I had one. (24: 195-203) When the MBA is shown or hidden, and whether that decision is within the individual’s locus of control, is a key part of analysing the MBA as Mask. Not wearing the MBA mask if at all possible clearly reduces the chances that recognition of the group belonging, or of relating the MBA to particular attributes or identity positions will take place. Yet for many of the interviewees this purported signalling role of the MBA mask was a central reason for undertaking the MBA to begin 163

with. The kinds of identity work involved in being recognised as an MBA is clearly being made more complex because of the showing / hiding dynamics in evidence here.

4.2.2.5

Being / doing the MBA mask

From the previous Section we have seen that whether the mask of the MBA is on display or hidden from view is an important aspect of the MBA as Mask. Recognition of it is highly contextually dependent, and the implications of its visibility or invisibility modulated according to what kinds of discourses around the MBA are being drawn on by those groups and individuals recognising the MBA mask. Furthermore, there appears to be an important distinction which the interviewees sometimes try to hold open between ‘doing’ things which are ‘MBA’ – which act as a mask which can be recognised – and ‘being’ an MBA; being recognised as the possessor of an MBA mask. It is therefore important to dig a little deeper into some of these issues, including examining the way in which interviewees’ expectations of responses to the MBA mask differ in social contexts. In particular this section will look at whether such expectations are drawn from broader ‘macro’ discourses, or from more local, organisationally-embedded discourses (Alvesson and Kärreman, 2000b), and whether discrepancies between these affect how the MBA mask is something you do by wearing it, or something you are. This quote below links to the previous element of showing and hiding, but highlights more obviously the dynamic between showing the MBA as a symbol on a form, for use externally to the ‘day-to-day’ workplace, and use within that immediate work context, where the MBA is known through other identities, other signals, than their MBA: I put it down very, you know I guess I was very happy, or very comfortable putting it on documents like that in terms of appraisals and objectives and so forth, as an internal sort of HR planning mechanism, but I got no feedback at all whatsoever from the company on its completion so therefore you say, ‘look, I’ve done this’ and if you get a brick wall, you may say it again, and then you just give up, well, not give up, but continue as you are. (19: 195-9) If the use of the MBA mask regulates the MBA to draw on more powerful discursive resources when deployed ‘outside’ the immediate work context, then it starts to make sense that a problem for the interviewees is the apparent consistency of their identities within their immediate work context. All of these interviewees studied part time: while becoming MBAs, they were in the workplace context throughout – gaining the MBA would have been only a day-to-day change for many in their immediate workplace community. It is therefore impossible for them to be recognised overnight as having a new identity on the basis of the MBA as Mask: I don’t think I’ve got to go away and learn everything and come back and present myself as an expert. (21: 102-3) On the other hand, if the MBA as Mask operates best with other identities are not available to be recognised, then in precisely the place where many of the MBAs hoped the MBA would make a difference – their immediate workplace – becomes somewhere they feel they have to leave in order to be recognised as an MBA. In order to be seen to be doing things that are MBA they must be MBAs, and cannot do that when they are ‘the same [person as] before the MBA’: 164

It may be just because it’s an internal position. Essentially I’m the same [interviewee name], who was [interviewee name] before the MBA. If you’re coming from another organisation coming from Thames Business School, fresh, it’s very different. I remember one of the interviewees for my own PhD – I interviewed a young girl she was extremely harsh, the fact that someone coming into the organisation with an MBA could work wherever they wanted. She desperately wanted to do an MBA – she would have been brilliant - wasn’t allowed to because of local management. And even if she had, she knew from my experience she wouldn’t then be able to use it, in a department where she thought she’d be able to. So it’s almost the need to come outside to be recognised. (23: 231-9)

This quote emphasises both the problem of trying to graft new recognitions to what is already constituted as a relatively consistent identity in their immediate workplace, and the dynamic of the MBA as Mask which makes it possible to be seen to do MBA if one is more seen as being an MBA. Wearing the mask of the MBA is not, seemingly, something the interviewees reflect upon as being something which affects what they do, yet being labelled as such is clearly at the forefront of their mind when they consider what they ‘appear’ to be to other people: I can’t think that I say ‘I’m an MBA graduate, this is why I think like this’, but [She places the tips of three fingers of one hand to her forehead, as if placing a badge or sticker there]… you’re going to write down that I’ve just touched my head, aren’t you… (17: 1436) For this interviewee, being an MBA graduate does not lead her to think in certain ways, but how she ‘does’ thinking is not obviously distinct from who she is when her ‘thoughts’ or ways of doing things are labelled by others as attributable to the MBA. One interviewee expressed the view that he links his MBA more do doing than to being. He was also one who was notable reticent in ‘showing’ the MBA in the previous section. His MBA is related to the workplace, whereas another qualification he holds he feels is closer to his ‘true’ self: It’s compartmentalised. I work as an engineer here, when I’m here, which is informed by my MBA, but my PhD, it’s largely, it’s myself. (23: 202-3) Most of the interviewees, however, were not able to make such stark distinctions, even when reflecting on it to themselves. For example, for some doing the MBA in the workplace seemed impossible when being recognised as being an MBA was not possible, through both the more ‘formal’ channels, such as HR systems, and the informal channels, such as line manager awareness of who holds what qualifications: AutoMaker doesn’t acknowledge or recognise that I’ve got an MBA and so-and-so hasn’t. They don’t think that way. Er… I don’t think it makes any difference to them, or the way they think, as to whether I’ve got one or not, erm…and it’s certainly not recognised, it’s not formally recognised, but informally they don’t recognise it either, which is interesting. (26: 258-62) It is of course something of an interesting irony that the failure of the organisations’ formal and informal systems to recognised the MBA – and the MBAs – could well be due to the relatively 165

systematic efforts of the MBAs, explored above, to disguise or avoid being recognised as MBAs. Viewing the MBA through the MBA as Mask metaphor prevents an easy distinction between ‘being’ (recognised) as an MBA, and ‘doing’ that which identifies one as wearing the MBA mask. But this is unfortunate as long as the immediate workplace context the MBAs seems to demand that clear distinction for the MBA to be part of ‘what you’re being paid to do’: Um, a lot of the stuff on the MBA level is very, um, crystal ball gazing – ‘what if’ scenarios and things like this. Well they weren’t interested in that: ‘don’t worry about that, that’s management’s job to worry about’, um, and we was very much sort of slapped down: ‘get on with what you’re being paid to do’ (22: 414-8) Both the quote above and the following one stress that in an immediate workplace context there seems to be an expectation that being an MBA is earned from doing as an MBA – yet signalling the MBA by putting the mask is only enough to earn the ‘tick in the box’ – an appeal to the wider ‘macro’ discourse on MBAs which is of no use in the local discursive context of the workplace: Yes I think you need to have like-minded people, and I think that’s part of the problem. If you’ve got a quite insular culture where it’s not necessarily valued, it’s expected but not necessarily valued, the people that you’re integrating with don’t, ‘that’s nice, good you’ve got an MBA’, now lets get back to talking about the business now.’ So I think… Interviewer: …They wouldn’t see it as connected to the business, or what you could offer? They would, but it’s a tick in the box. It’s not, it’s not, um, they would look at it and say ‘oh, this makes sense, this guy seems to know what he’s talking about…’ He’s got an MBA, well that reinforces it. (18: 565-74) If the MBA as Mask suggests that being and doing the MBA are not meaningfully separable – to wear the mask is to ‘do’ the MBA – then this places the MBAs in a quandary as to how to ‘signal’, while simultaneously hiding, the MBA mask. Trying to conform to the contradictory regulatory discourses surrounding the MBA is problematic as the meaning of that symbol is far from stable across contexts. A further complication can be added. If doing MBA cannot be consistently and meaningfully distinguished from being an MBA, then there is the possibility that those who are not MBAs – that is, do cannot legitimately wear the mask – can be recognised as being ‘as’ MBAs. If the MBA is expected to signal the kinds of things someone can do, then if people can do these things, then logically they must be as an MBA: If a company is choosing to invest what is a relatively significant amount of money in terms of a training budget on one individual then they will tend to pick out, I would hope, the highest potential people, so therefore by definition I think those people are the people who are going to get on anyway in the company, regardless of whether they had an MBA or not, you know, maybe the MBA would give you a couple of extra years head-start, um, but naturally I think they’re the people who will get on anyway. (21: 411-7) This section has examined how macro and micro discourses shift the ways in which the MBAs can understand and be positioned as MBAs, if we consider the MBA as Mask. Identification as an MBA has a complex relationship to ‘doing’ MBA, whether it is being hidden, or the discourses position an 166

individual as currently ‘showing’ an MBA identity. The following section draws together many of the aspects of the MBA as Mask metaphor explored so far, and puts forward the idea of ‘identification’ as an alternative position to the ‘translation’ process envisaged through the MBA as Expatriate metaphor.

4.2.2.6

Identification and the MBA as mask

This final section examining the MBA as Mask brings together some of the issues examined in earlier sections. It concentrates on some of the complexities of viewing the MBA as Mask as an issue of identification, a term which deliberately blends aspects of process and outcome. Identification of the MBA mask is, as we have seen, both a desired and undesired outcome for the interviewees in this dataset, and involves a number of aspects already explored to some extent in the sections above. These include: an understanding of the structure of the discourses of the MBA; a sense of the semiotic relationship between what the MBA shows and means; the kinds of subject positions which being identified as an MBA places those individuals in, and the idea of recognition of the MBA as Mask: Structure:

What is identified when the MBA (both the qualification and the person) is recognised is a matter of the MBA or others conforming to some of a maelstrom of discourses which swirl around the MBA. Both macro and micro-discourses regulate the meaning of the MBA in the workplace, and the MBAs are subject to the structure of those discourses both through attempts to claim the positive attribution of the MBA as Mask and through unavoidable unwanted identification with the qualification.

Semiotics:

The structure of the MBA mask in context – as a sign or symbol – is itself determined by a shifting concern with the queasy and slippery relationship between the signifier – the MBA mask – and what it signifies: for some a high level of ‘ability’ or ‘capability’, for others an arrogance, or a ‘pretentiousness’ (Holmes, 1995b). This lack of certainty extends to the MBAs themselves as well as those others in their workplace context.

Subject positions:

Being identified as an MBA, whether deliberate or otherwise, positions the MBAs as certain kinds of ‘qualified’ subjects (Davies and Harré, 1990). For both the MBAs, and others, identifying the MBA mask positions them in ways which are dependent on the kinds of discursive structures being deployed and the perceived nature of the relationship between that mask and what, if anything, is seen to be ‘behind’ it in terms of meaning.

Recognition:

The ‘meaning’ of the MBA mask is a socially-constructed one, moreover one which clearly shifts with time and social context. Perhaps even more than the MBA as Expatriate, it can be identified if it ‘signals’ something: if there are others to recognise those signals, even, of course, if that is only to the MBA reflecting on themselves.

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One way in which the interviewees can assert their sense that the MBA mask will be identified and ‘accepted’ is through talk of confidence. If we think of statements of confidence as an assertion that the ‘recognition’ process for the MBA mask will work as they desire then this provides some explanation of the ‘self-efficacy’ problem discussed in Chapter 1. Here assertions of greater confidence can be seen as a collapsing of the being / doing distinction as they have ‘confidence’ that the discourse which attributes certain qualities to the MBA mask will positively identify and interpret their use of MBA ‘signals’. The complexity of the identification process is therefore present in even apparently trivial examples: More than anything it helped me that when I wrote a paper I felt qualified to put strategy at the top of it, whereas I never dared do that before – it sounds silly, but er, that was one of the key changes to me. (16: 123-5) The sense of being ‘qualified’ – of wearing the MBA mask – allows him to indicate to himself that certain ‘doors have been opened’ which he previously felt were shut. The subject position he now identifies with is a certain type of person, the kind of person who uses terms like ‘strategy’ to identify himself as a ‘confident’ MBA. On the other hand the interviewee does not suggest in this quote that other aspects of the paper’s content might have been different if he was not identified as an MBA, or whether use of ‘strategy’ is ‘merely’ another signalling ‘mask’. This sentiment is similar to the following notes where ‘doing’ might not have changed with the ability to put on the MBA mask, but the signal she sends to herself is one of identifying herself as this ‘confident’ MBA: [MBA] says, with [colleague who also has MBA], that there are things she would have done the same before she graduated, but now having been through that she feels more confident about ‘who I am and what I’ve done’ – that she can be more ‘up-front’ about what she knows. (3, day 4, page 12) The confidence that the MBA (qualification) will position the MBA (individual) in ways that reflect well upon them is woven into their tactical attempts to ‘manage’ that identification. The interviewee below extends earlier discussions of whether individuals in the organisation place qualifications in visually prominent areas such as business cards when she is asked whether she is worried about being identified as an MBA in circumstances which might not reflect well on her: No, but then I think that’s partly down to the fact that: a) I always come across as pretty confident anyway; b) I have absolutely no problem with it. c) I actually quite like this badge. Having worked hard to get this badge: I’m quite proud of this badge. So no need to hide your light under a bushel, no need to say I didn’t get it from the MBA because I don’t need to take any credit for what others are perfectly capable of [accrediting? – unclear] so no, I’ve never hidden the fact, and in fact, I suppose - you say about the symbol - I don’t have it on my business card, but many, many people have cause and reason to come to my office, what I do have is the photo - my graduation photo up in my office – that’s a very deliberate badge, isn’t it. It’s not on my business card but it’s still there in your face – marketing [laughs]. (25: 259-72) This interviewee is not worried about the potential implications of being ‘in your face’ with the MBA mask. She seems to embrace the use of it as a ‘badge’ and a qualification, and not concern herself overly with whether the discourse is ambivalent on the relationship between valued qualification and valued capability. Being identified as an MBA when you are less ‘confident’ of that 168

relationship is more problematic. The interviewee below has some confidence in wearing the mask to others she ‘thought probably had MBAs as well’, although she clearly could not identify for certain. Within that identification of herself as ‘like them’, she modulates her response to speculate whether she was able to identify, from the way they ‘sounded’, what they ‘really’ were, or had just ‘got it out of a text-book’: I have been in a big group in a planning meeting and made contributions which are from the MBA, I can think of one example where I have done that, and I would always try, and that is where I learned who else I thought probably had MBAs as well, they were using language of, you know, PEST, and 5-forces and stuff, and they sounded as if they hadn’t got it out of a textbook, they sounded as if they had used it quite a lot. (24: 155-60) Here, then, there is a sense in which identification of an MBA is recognising those wearing the MBA as Mask, but that the relationship between the mask and its meaning is open to some doubt, and may possibly be eased by ‘sounding’ like you knew what you were doing. As this next quote suggests, if the micro-discourse already dictates that MBAs are identified as those who cannot do the ‘gutsy’, and by implication ‘real’ jobs, an identification as an MBA will automatically position an individual negatively: I said they’ll often be ‘spot the MBA in the room… I mean often it’ll be the person that gets up and writes on the whiteboard. And they’ll, I’ve heard the people next to you say ‘MBA’, just under their breath, so um, as I say, there isn’t a you’ll hear that they’re a waste of money, that they’ve sort of been given too many advantages in terms of their. I think the feeling is that they do the um, … ‘nice’ jobs, the, not the strategic, the glamorous, rather than the, not the ‘grimble’ [unclear] not the ‘guts’, ‘gutsy’ jobs. You know, if you do put an MBA into a gutsy job, in terms of it’s ‘grimble’ [unclear], or you have to understand the process, they don’t tend to succeed, but I think that’s mainly because they haven’t come up through the system, you know, the MBA is sitting at your desk saying, ‘oh can you explain this to me’ and the next day it’s in a PowerPoint presentation being presented to senior managers. I think it does sort of lead to resentment: ‘well why should I help you?’. (19: 367-78) This quote is central to the concern that MBA identification in workplace context is mediated through a discourse of being / doing which places any perception that you are using the MBA as Mask within a powerful real / fake dichotomy. The prevalence of this discourse is clearly placing the MBAs in the dataset in deeply problematic positions, such that they are forced to reflect to themselves concerning how aspects of their identities are recognised, particularly in relation to the MBA. The being / doing distinction within the discourse is therefore internalised as the MBAs position themselves in relation to their self-identification as MBAs: Yeah, yeah, no, no, I absolutely know what you mean, yeah certainly in day-to-day, everyday things I do, um, I probably do use it and would consider myself ‘an MBA’, sometimes, especially when I’m doing ‘big picture’ work, so anytime for example, the times when I use it my boss, for example, who does not have one, says ‘gosh, you’re so good at putting ‘big picture’ things into little boxes with arrows’, you know, and I’ve proactively done some things for her which are more ‘pricing strategy’, if you like, um, and there I would see myself as an MBA, and everyday stuff, probably not really, um, no, I’m still ‘spreadsheet monkey’. (24: 113-20)

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For some the issues surrounding being positioned as an MBA are rejected. They do not see it as a part of their identity on which they draw. However this is a minority view in that, as we have seen from the data, many feel that they ‘invested’ a lot in ‘becoming’ an MBA and would not want it removed as a potential identity position in the way that this interviewee seems determined to do: I guess for me personally I don’t identify myself as an MBA, and I realise, reading some of people talk about “an MBA” as a type of person, I don’t identify myself as that kind of person. I identify myself as someone who’s gained knowledge as a consequence of going through an MBA programme, otherwise they may not have gained or got … but I don’t classify myself as an MBA. (23: 54-8) The relationship of MBA and self-identification is complex and mediated, again, by how the MBA interprets the relationship between the MBA mask and who they might ‘really’ be – here pitching for a subject position which distances him from the MBA mask but attempts to maintain he can do MBA without wearing the mask. From the observational field notes, one of the MBAs discusses with me this reflexive process of evaluating the kinds of subject positions holding an MBA places you in, in relation to her perceptions of how she thought it would be interpreted: [The MBA] discusses with me the evaluation of the MBA on a personal level. In advance of the MBA she knew that it was a ‘product that I’d get, or like to get payback on…’ but she didn’t think she could have said what specifically that might be – ‘don’t think I could have said I’d Iike to have got this, or this.’ She muses that it’s easier to be recognised in more ‘concrete’ circumstances. ‘If you worked in Joe Bloggs car Co. – one with a short hierarchy – they’d know you were doing it [making use of the MBA]’, but she has nothing ‘locally’ that recognises that she’s moved jobs – achieved something. Contrasts with her own personal approach: ‘As a line manager I’d always try and make some[one] special’ with things like ‘their name in the newsletter’. (1, day 3, page 8) She here brings together a number of aspects of identification: ideas of micro- and macrodiscourse – with a) how an imagined ‘local’ social group might have recognised it, and b) how she was aware of, but rejected, a ‘payback’ concept. Also, the semiotics of the mask are interleaved with her discussion of her own practice in relation to ‘showing’ those who qualified for praise. Furthermore, she adds that she feels she needed someone to recognise the MBA while she was doing it, not, crucially, that they should have some way of automatically noticing it now she holds the MBA. Another interviewee whose talk encompasses MBA identification as outlined above is quoted below. This example is particularly interesting to conclude with as it is one of very few that recount, unprompted, issues around the MBA as Mask outside of the workplace context. This interviewee brings into the discussion how her colleagues might place her in the subject position of being a certain type of person, which they would link to the MBA, but not, she believes, in a way they would do in the workplace context:

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I’ve not had it in a work situation, but I’ve had colleagues in a social situation and it goes along the lines of: ‘well [interviewee name] would do that, wouldn’t she, because she’s got an MBA … so it’s back to that half-kidding … ‘well you’d expect that from [interviewee name] – she’s dead clever, she’s been on, she’s done an MBA’. So there is that referencing back, but no I’ve not noticed it particularly in a work situation – although it’s clearly there because it’s coming from colleagues. (25: 198-203) Identification of the MBA mask is complex outcome which is subject to a number of different interpretations by the MBAs. What seems clear is that being identified as an MBA, as wearing the MBA as Mask is, for the interviewees in the dataset, neither a straight-forward nor immediately desirable outcome. The process by which they are identified and the ways in which this is effected centre on the MBA as Mask – as object – in terms of how, from where, and in what circumstances it draws its symbolic value.

4.2.3 Conclusions This second section of the findings has used the metaphor of the MBA as Mask as a lens through which to explore the experiences and reflections of the interviewee and observee MBAs. It has suggested that the accounts of experiences of being an MBA presented in this study can be usefully illuminated by considering MBAs as wearing the MBA like a mask, covering or possibly ‘concealing’ them, as well as being the ‘face’ they might present to others. The data strongly supports a reading of the MBAs being recognised and identified as MBAs through the symbol of the MBA, and this designation either colouring or determining the identity assumed by the MBA qualification-holder in the eyes of others. The data confirm Clegg and Ross-Smith, 2003: 88) assertion that ‘management education, in particular its most popular icon, the MBA, is a powerful discourse’, moreover one which operates on several levels to inform the MBAs what the wearing of an MBA as Mask is likely to potentially signify or signal to others. The MBAs show an acute and nuanced awareness of what kinds of connotations they felt would be signalled to others by their MBA mask, both positive and negative. The MBA as Mask metaphor also captures the way in which the MBAs considered themselves on occasion labelled as wearing the mask – or being recognised as the mask – in ways they themselves would not have chosen – indicating the mask is not a simplistic linguistic symbol, ‘transferable’ like currency, but multi-dimensional in the way it recognises and defines MBAs in a manner anterior to their own self-definitional efforts. A key response by the interviewees to potential identification as an MBA (and the kinds of potentially unwanted recognition by others which might ensue) was found to be ‘hiding’ the MBA, that is, choosing not to wear the mask – make visible the symbol or label of MBA – if at all possible. This technique, if successful, prevents recognition as an MBA and interpolation by others of the negative connotations of the wider organisational and social discourse, but also blocks recognition and attribution of any positive social attribution of being ‘qualified’ and the legitimacy it might provide. Each of these aspects of the MBA as Mask can be related to the idea of identification of the mask of the MBA. This encompasses the recognition of the MBA mask; an understanding of the structure 171

of the discourses surrounding the MBA as well as a sense of the semiotic relationship between what the MBA shows and means; and the kinds of subject positions which being identified as an MBA places those individuals in. There is a complex sense of the MBA as Mask opening spaces for identification but also positioning MBAs very strongly – something reflected in the interviewees’ accounts through such rejections (even though they are an MBA) as this example noted above: ‘I guess for me personally I don’t identify myself as an MBA, and I realise, reading some of people talk about “an MBA” as a type of person, I don’t identify myself as that kind of person’. This nexus of discursive interplay involved in placing the mask of the MBA on the individual is nicely captured by Pullen, 2005: 6), discussing middle managers more generally: Identities are therefore masks that are created as resources in a project of becoming for participation in an ongoing masquerade. Foucault would argue that social analysis is a matter of revealing masks, although this is a process which reveals yet other masks behind the façade. Masks are necessary tools for individuals to achieve social and managerial success. Masks are simultaneously false representations of ‘identity’, and yet are essential to the creation of ‘selves’. They conceal, exaggerate, accelerate, displace, and separate. They enform and inform, and occasionally deform. They mark the boundary between things and define those things themselves – and often they form what is held to lie beyond or behind the masking. The masks used by managers in their performance of the self may actually enable the managers to be and say what they would fear to otherwise … This masking initiates the re-creation of managers’ identities. The MBA as Mask metaphor constitutes a valid and powerful lens or perspective which illuminates a number of important aspects of the MBA – in particular the ways in which the MBA is discursively constructed symbol whose deployment serves to signal to other groups engaged in the discourse a range of things often well outside the locus of control of the individual wearer of the mask. The MBA as Mask takes as a point of departure the idea of the MBA as symbol, but its concept of identification moves well beyond a simple transferable ‘label’ to explore the relationship between the symbol, its recognition, its position in the discursive ‘order’ and the implications self- or otheridentification of that symbol. However, while the MBA as Mask points towards a firmly discourseand structured-determined of the experience of being an MBA at work, it can be accused of failing to take into account the complex and creative ways in which the MBAs seem to be translating the MBA in different contexts in ways which move beyond the showing / hiding distinction of the MBA as Mask. It is therefore appropriate to proceed with a third ‘take’ on the data which tries to analytically capture both of these elements: the MBA as Adaption.

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4.3 The MBA as Adaption It should not, therefore, surprise us to discover that this self is a precarious construct … Identity is the flimsiest of garments, ever liable to unravel, unpicking along every ill-stitched seam. (Sayer, 2004: 75) And so the snag is no more how to discover, invent, construct, assemble (even buy) an identity, but how to prevent it from being too tight and from sticking too fast to the body. Well-sewn and durable identity is no more an asset; increasingly and ever more evidently, it becomes a liability. The hub of postmodern life strategy is not making identity stand but avoidance of being fixed. (Bauman, 1997: 89)

4.3.1 Introduction: the adaption metaphor The final perspective on the MBA to be taken by this thesis is a little different from the MBA as Expatriate and the MBA as Mask metaphors which have preceded it. The primary distinction is that ‘adaption’ is not a relatively well-established metaphor in relation to the target domain – MBAs. The opening section of the MBA as Expatriate and the MBA as Mask demonstrated some existing strong face validity relating the source domains and conceptions of the MBA. In contrast, ‘adaption’ is a neologism, coined to encapsulate a particular conception of how MBAs do MBA, or are MBAs in the workplace. As such I see it as a key contribution of this thesis to the literature on MBA identities in the workplace. Despite its inherent morphological plausibility, ‘adaption’ is not an existing construction in British or American English.16 It is a blend inspired at least in part by a striking piece of phraseology from the interview dataset, when one of the MBAs discussed, very much in the spirit of ‘translation’ from the MBA as Expatriate perspective, how she used the MBA: …because I will then take and adapt and adopt pieces that allow, the bits that work for me and use them, er, although not in its entirety. (25: 288-93) Although adaptation as a noun has an evolutionary sheen which relates to environment, adapting as a process brings to mind the sense in which something relatively ‘internal’ is manipulated, e.g. ‘she adapted it for her own purposes’. A further connotation of the term is that this adaptation is somehow put to use; demonstrated or shown. Within the MBA as Expatriate section of the analysis, numerous examples of the process of ‘translating’ or ‘brokering’ the MBA across multiple communities could be glossed as ‘adapting’, as the quote from the interview immediately above suggests. Adoption, and adopting, on the other hand, bears connotations of ‘taking on’ something ‘external’, e.g. ‘he adopted his boss’ speaking style when speaking to the management team’. The MBA as

16

It does exist in other European languages, for example German (phonetically ‘adap-tzi-own’), where it is translated into English as ‘adaptation’.

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Mask section of the analysis provided many instances of the MBAs identifying (with) the MBA as a qualification or mask they could ‘put on’, or be seen to put on, in certain circumstances. ‘Adaption’ as it will be employed within this section of the analysis is, therefore, a blend of the words ‘adoption’ and ‘adaptation’. In blending those two existing words I would suggest it would retain connotations of each, while also being distinct from each. So while the MBA as Expatriate and the MBA as Mask represented through their metaphors alternative perspectives on the MBA which are instantiated in the views of the interviewed MBAs, the MBA as Adaption is an attempt to bring together some of those aspects from each perspective, as it is clear from those earlier sections of the analysis that neither metaphor holds exclusive sway over the MBAs’ conceptualisations of being an MBA in the workplace. To reiterate, as Iedema, et al. (2004: 29) suggest, ‘we find that [an individual’s] discourse is never quite allowed to settle on any one of these discourses or modes of identification. Sometimes we can glimpse rapid transitions across these personas, even within the same turn, or even utterance’. The MBAs in the sample might often speak in ways which suggest an Expatriate or Mask metaphor, but to categorise all their talk as such does insufficient justice to either the complexity or the contradictions in their accounts of being an MBA. While not as clear-cut as the distinction between a ‘signalling’ and a ‘human capital’ conceptualisation of the MBA, the MBA as Expatriate and MBA as Mask metaphors do foreground some contradictory aspects of perceptions of being an MBA. It is therefore largely because of the tensions between the MBA as Expatriate and the MBA as Mask that I will suggest that ‘adaption’ is undertaken; as a response to the complex and contradictory discourses on MBAs and qualifications which are, to reiterate, ‘maybe difficult to ‘choose’ between, or – [if] formulated from another (poststructuralist) angle – [when] no discourse is sufficiently strongly backed up by material and social support to offer a powerful grip over the subject. [It is this process which] … make identity constructions precarious and calls for on-going identity work’ (Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2003: 1167). Adaption is therefore posited as a process of identity work which is undertaken by the MBAs, in part at least to mediate between the potentially contesting conceptions represented by the Mask and Expatriate conceptualisations. In this way the MBA as Adaption connects to, and elaborates on, many of the central concepts outlined in Section 2.5 where it discusses ‘identity work’, including both the broader conceptualisations and some of the specific vocabulary developed in more recent contributions to the literature to describe identity work processes. Those processes of identity work employed by the MBA in ‘adaption’ are the central concern of this section of the analysis. However, in contrast to the earlier two sections of the analysis, the MBA as Adaption does not present a frontal challenge to the MBA as Mask or MBA as Expatriate conceptualisations, and nor should be seen as entirely superseding or subsuming them. Instead it draws on aspects of each to focus upon how the MBAs deal with the tensions between these two conceptualisations; those points when their identities are ‘rendered fragile as discourses meet and mix with other discourses’ (Whittle, 2005: 1302). Because it draws creatively from those earlier conceptualisations, it will continue to employ such useful concepts of liminality, brokerage, identification, and drawing on ‘discursive resources’ which were key terms in the earlier sections of the analysis. 174

The concept of adaption is also linked to identity work in the way it attempts to straddle some of the broader issues of poststructuralist, fluid identities. A key concern for the multiple identity thesis propounded by a number of post-structuralist-influenced theories is where the locus of control lies (see Section 2.5.2). The literature review indicated that there are strong tensions between a more agency-driven approach to understanding identity change, and a more structurally-determined explanation. Although it is not always entirely clear cut, the social-learning and translation approach of the MBA as Expatriate leans towards careful, if constrained, active practice on the part of the individuals who hold MBAs. The MBA as Mask tended towards explanations where the legitimacy or otherwise of the Mask was regulated by the prevailing discourses of the MBAs’ particular social contexts. The MBA as Adaption tries to understand where and how the MBAs negotiate between these two positions. It sees the process of identity work done by MBAs with regard to their MBA as caught in that nexus between more structurally and more agent-orientated conceptualisations, trying to explain more fully than the Expatriate or Mask the degree to which the MBAs have some kind of ‘mastery’ of a ‘provisional language’, that is, ‘the ability to manipulate a whole variety of symbols without becoming tied to or identified with any of them’ (Alvesson and Kärreman, 2000b: 1132). The MBA as Adaption is therefore an elaboration of both the identity work theories outlined in Section 2.5, and also an extension of the data-driven discussions of the MBA as Expatriate and the MBA as Mask in the earlier analysis sections. In particular it uses the interview data to understand how the interviewees are reflexive and reflect on the process of identity work as MBAs, especially when the other metaphors seem inadequate to capture the interpretive experience which constitutes being an MBA in the workplace.

4.3.2 Data analysis: the MBA as Adaption I will then take and adapt, and adopt, pieces that allow, the bits that work for me. (25: 288) The introduction to the adaption metaphor has emphasised adaption as a process of identity work undertaken by the interviewees. The opening section of this part of the analysis therefore grounds this identity work process in the data, and also examines its relation to certain MBA self-identities. Some of the extracts coded in the dataset – especially when addressing nuances surrounding translation and identification explored later on in those sections – fail to sit entirely comfortably within either the expatriate or mask metaphor. Naturally such concerns could be attributed to analytical error, but instead I think it is more helpful to see it as a problem with the straitjacketing effect any analytical metaphor creates (Alvesson, 2003: 18). The idea of the MBA as Adaption therefore draws heavily from aspects of those areas already covered in Sections 4.1 and 4.2, but is particularly sensitive to those points where neither seems to capture the interviewee experience. An important part of identity work, reflecting its debt to reflexive modernity and identity projects, is reflexivity on one’s identity in the workplace. The opening quote below relates strongly to the 175

‘translation’ ideas of the MBA as Expatriate explored above, but seems also be reflecting that the ‘picking up’ and ‘transforming’ of knowledge into a different discourse – ‘AutoMaker-speak’ – is insufficient; that it also requires ‘non-literal’ use, such as presenting the MBA symbolically: No I think what it is that AutoMaker do some things in certain ways that's acceptable in terms of delivery of papers, models, views, I've picked up the knowledge, understanding and transformed it into AutoMaker-speak. Now some of that is literally, ‘now here's the model, photocopied from the Thames Business School materials, lets explain it, now let's use that within the AutoMaker context, a bit like this, this and this [places hands sequentially, facing outward in front of her, like a mime artist with an invisible wall],’ it's a mixture of both. (4: 394-8, emphasis added) From a quote that begins as if it will slot neatly within the MBA as Expatriate metaphor, it then seems to indicate the interviewee isn’t comfortable with only a ‘translation’ view but wants to convey something of being seen as an MBA in that context – hence ‘a mixture of both’. The next quote strongly emphasises aspects of identification as an MBA, in the MBA as Mask sense, including examples of how he might present himself by invoking the MBA term specifically. This interviewee is coming at ‘being an MBA’ much more from the Mask approach than the interviewee in the previous quote, seemingly seeing the MBA much more as a symbol is the play of discourse: I’ve done MBA [sic], I think I can prove, by telling someone that I’ve done an MBA, that I can prove, um, some degree of intellect, or some degree of intellectual ability, um, I think it supports a lot of the ways GovDept, um, takes things forward, and leadership springs to mind at the moment, so therefore I can make reference not just specifically the MBA, but to the leadership bit of it for example. So it’s an opening, not just ‘I’m an MBA candidate, graduate whatever you’ve got to do what I say’, ‘I haven’t ever used it in that way, but I have used it as a means of starting conversations. (17: 312-318) However, similarly to the previous quote, this interviewee also expresses concern at the apparent tension between ‘reference’ to the ‘leadership bit’ of the MBA as ‘proving’ ‘some degree of intellectual ability’ on the one hand, and ‘starting conversations’ by invoking the MBA on the other. Both these two quotes above seem to try and indicate – through their talk and reflection on being an MBA in different contexts – some concern with ‘holding’ the MBA, and being an MBA, within one frame; in these cases, the MBA as Expatriate and the MBA as Mask frames, respectively. The interviewees aren’t directly addressing these metaphors, of course, which are a subsequent analytical imposition (Section 3.4.1 above), but nonetheless these quotes serve as exemplars for a number of areas of the dataset in which an alternative analytical frame or metaphor is required – one of adaption – which can begin to take account of those concerns. A number of inter-linked aspects of adaption as identity work can be discerned within the dataset, covering both the process of becoming an MBA in organisational contexts, and the process of reflecting on being or becoming an MBA in organisational contexts. This section of the analysis therefore proceeds first by exploring the ways in which MBA ‘cut’ the figure of an MBA through adaption (Section 4.3.2.1) before discussing the ‘texture’ of adaption – how the MBA is ‘woven’ into identities (Section 4.3.2.2) – and finally examining how and whether the MBA can be, like a ‘vest’ reflexively present without the identity being (publically) invoked (Section 4.3.2.3)

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4.3.2.1

Adaption by ‘cutting: first this figure, then that’

The introduction of the adaption metaphor above (Section 4.3.1) quotes a number of identity work theorists who note that, despite the power of discourse to ‘position’ people within certain identities – for example as an MBA – ‘no discourse [is] sufficiently strong backed [to offer] a powerful grip’ on the subject (Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2003: 1167), and further that an individual’s discourse ‘never quite settles in one mode of identification’ (Iedema et al, 2004: 29). To others, and to themselves, adaption of an MBA identity is therefore determined by the discourse, but never inevitably – the discursive ‘grip’ of a particular MBA identity is not stable across contexts; rather a particular identity is ‘cut’ through discourses – with discourse – in the sense that Foucault terms knowledge and discourse as instruments ‘made for cutting, not understanding’ (Foucault, 1984; quoted Townley, 1999: 300). The multiple social and discursive contexts give rise to an ‘undecidability’ to identity, forcing identity work to be undertaken (Alvesson and Willmott, 2002), and depicting what Margaret Strathern (1991) terms a ‘fluidity in the potential magnification and diminishment of identity[. One which] calls attention to a swiftness in moving between identities: “cutting; first this figure, then that.”’ (Strathern, 1991: 6). The first quote of this section shows the interviewee reflecting on occasions of identity work done in a particular context, in this case discussions with her boss who also is an MBA, but their task is to prepare documentation for a broader audience who would be aware of both her and her bosses’ responsibility for that work. Traces of translation, and ‘showing and hiding’ the MBA mask are present, but also concern not being caught in certain discourses of being an MBA – ‘a bit boxes, a bit too, too MBA for you?’: Well for example I might say ‘how about using...’ and I was using something the other day and I said ‘how about using’ and I’ve said to my boss ‘oh I learned this on my MBA’, you know, and certainly with my boss there have been opportunities, and where I have been in those situations and I’ve said ‘Is this OK or is this, you know, a bit boxes and, a bit too, too MBA for you and you, are you sure you want something this kind of strategy and airyfairy?’ And she’s gone ‘Oh yes’, and actually she has actually wanted it, which is good, because she could have gone ‘it’s a bit too much’, it’s a bit too over-egging it – it’s just pricing [her job role]. … I think definitely yes, it’s definitely ‘sneak it in’’ (24: 168-75) Identity work is being undertaken both in reflection in the interview, and with the interviewee’s boss as she considers how to ‘cut first this figure, then that’, both through concern as to how to deploy the MBA – ‘sneak it in’, and which MBA identities to cut out – ‘airy-fairy’, ‘over-egging it’. The example above is a particularly reflective account of adaption, but such identity work processes are seemingly in play even without such reflexive awareness, or at least the articulation of such reflexive awareness. The figure which is ‘cut’ – the self-identity achieved – may be less under the purview of the reflecting individual, but nonetheless indicates that certain identities are cut through particular discourses even when it is not a consciously reflective process:

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It’s difficult that, because I think you just build up knowledge over years, and sometimes you’re not conscious about where you get it [I think that process is] subconscious, I think, you do, it’s not a conscious ‘Oh I will do… or ‘I’ll refer to that, you know more subconscious – you just do it, and if you look back and think ‘oh why have I done that’, you know it was based on something you did in your MBA, but there’s no conscious decision to do something. (19: 95-9) It is interesting to compare this quote to one from the MBA interviewee dataset of Hay and Hodgkinson, 2008: 31): I took a language, references and models and a way of thinking which was enormously helpful in terms of: I wouldn't be doing things and think ‘oh on my MBA I did this’, but I think it gave me time to reflect, to analyse processes, in a way which I would never have done had I not done the MBA. This also suggests a (conscious) translation process through reflection, but that the process of adaption undertaken in terms of cutting a particular MBA identity to / for a particular group was not reflexively a conscious element, but the self-identity outcome as an MBA remained one which emerged from an identity work process – here glossed as adaption. Brown and Hesketh (2004) in their study distinguish between graduate trainee interviewees who saw the recruitment process as a ‘real’ test of knowledge and experience, and those who saw it as a language game. In the previous two quotes from my dataset, and compared to the Hay and Hodgkinson (2008) extract, Brown and Hesketh’s distinction is clear in the interview talk, but for this section of the analysis it is important to stress that the MBA self-identities they cut in the situations they describe nonetheless are part of the adaption process. Adaption is therefore also about the MBAs cutting a particular figure to the MBAs themselves as reflexive players in multiple social discourses – developing a way of employing it within which the figure they cut for themselves between powerful discourses of being an MBA is equally a precarious social identity: Q: Do you have an MBA style? Yes I think there is Q: How would the MBA be manifest? Yes yes [long pause] ... umm… I think you use it almost as a comfort blanket: if things aren’t going well, in any situation, you think back, um, I’m trying to think of a really good example for you…. Yes now I would find, if things aren’t going as I would want them to in a project, I would sit back and go into MBA mode, and think, ‘right, is the strategy wrong? Do I need to develop a different strategy, do we need to review the strategy; take a different approach’, and that’s all very conscious thought. Prior to the MBA, I would have gone to someone I trusted as a manager and said ‘this isn’t working, what do you think I should do?’ And, so, there’s a lot more self-reliance there, but it’s self-reliance based on knowledge and I’d, er, … [unclear 1.5 secs]… Right, I’ve applied this knowledge and it didn’t work either – what shall we do now? Because no one else has any more [unclear] than I am, we’re all in it together trying things out. But I’ve got the confidence to know where to go. (25: 155-68) This interviewee seems to have an identity work process they show to themselves: entering an ‘MBA mode’ to be an MBA. To cut this figure for themselves still relies on the available discourses of being an MBA – ways of thinking, being and talking negotiated by the community of MBAs he 178

has joined – but this seems to require some conscious reflective process on the part of the individual. It is unclear whether such an MBA identity is then understood as identified within his work social group; the figure being cut between the discourses of MBAs – here as ‘strategic’, ‘selfreliance’ etc – is not seemingly related to others’ reactions to such an identity. The grip a particular discourse of ‘being an MBA’ has on his being an MBA in his work context is mediated by other kinds of conferred identities in play, including one of someone who has ‘self-reliance based on knowledge’, or a ‘confident’ manager. The adaption process not only occurs both consciously and unconsciously as a particular MBA identity is cut, but those who are more of Brown and Hesketh's (2004) ‘game-players’ with their identities can also see that others are undertaking the same kinds of identity work processes around them. The quote below relates a meeting between one of the MBAs I was observing and a senior manager who was acting in a mentoring role for the MBA. The context is that the MBA had mentioned that a lot of ideas and approaches which others around her in the new job were using were unfamiliar to her: Great moment when [the senior manager] reassures [MBA being observed] about coping with ‘new ways of thinking’. She tells an anecdote of being in a management meeting early on in her current role, and she wondered whether everyone else had ‘special glasses’ that allowed them to see things in the document that she wasn’t seeing – a ‘kind of simultaneous translation’ required… (2, day 3: page 4) The senior manager is indicating that the kinds of identities presented by those around her were a case of both how the ‘special glasses’ made them look to her as the new arrival to the context, and how those glasses changed how things looked, particularly through language, for those that were wearing them. Adaption by the senior manager to legitimate practice in the role would therefore involve putting on these special glasses herself, but also she would be aware that doing so would change how she viewed that practice – even to the point of ‘seeing things in the document that she wasn’t seeing’ before. Cutting one figure, then another is therefore a fluid, and often instantaneous, process of adaption, but it must be cut through existing discursive resources which both allow and constrain which figures can be cut. The process occurs both with very definite conscious reflexive attention to the likely self-identity as an MBA which will be identified, and when the process is undertaken more or less unconsciousness. Having examined how adaption ‘cuts this figure, then that’ I move on to explore in more detail the process of adaption in terms of the texture of identity work it employs.

4.3.2.2

The texture of adaption

The dynamics of cutting a particular MBA identity through identity work can be described as the ‘texture’ of identity. Here I borrow the term, with alterations, from both a social learning and Communities of Practice writer (Gheradi, 2006) and her broader inspiration for the term (Cooper and Fox, 1990). Gheradi uses the term to denote the web of processes, interactions and practices that go to produce a particular precarious identity. For Cooper and Fox (1990: 49) the term describes reflective analysis of the organisation of identity and practice through interaction, terming it ‘a strongly evocative concept which recalls the intricacies of networking but at the same time allows for an analytical, qualitative framework’. Linking both conceptualisations is what they 179

term ‘weaving’ (c.f. Rippin, 2005); the ‘analytical metaphor most appropriate for understanding and following the ... multivalent process that constitutes texture’ (Gheradi, 2006: 51). Here I am employing weaving and texture as useful sub-elements of the broader identity work process of adaption because it crosses the structure / agency distinction in important ways. In particular they are useful for highlighting the simultaneously productive and reflective dynamics of the adaption process. For some of the interviews the concept of weaving clearly comes readily, even if not used in all the aspects understood by Cooper and Fox (1990) and Gheradi (2006) by the term: You’ve weave it in … an MBA is an integral part of who I am as a manager, and the skillset that I have … What I tend to do, I think, is, on a day-to-day basis I just weave that extra knowledge and expertise into my day-to-day work, so that people round here don’t actually probably realise, or no, they just think ‘that’s [interviewee name]’. Whereas actually I’m using all of my skills-sets, and that just happens to be … I use my HR qualification, my qualification just on a day-to-day along with my MBA. (26: 477-8, and 545-9) Here the interviewee explicitly weaves not only practices – ‘the skill-set that I have’ – but also identities ‘who I am as a manager ... they just think “that’s [interviewee name]”’. There is an interesting balance here between the deployment of an active term like weaving, and the sense that the achieved self-identity is not perceived as separable; as the outcome of some cumulative or even supplemental process within identity work. Adaption as a process of weaving an identity of a particular texture is therefore something which it is both possible to reflect upon and undertake actively, but it is problematic to suggest that identity texture can be re-constituted into its apparent component parts – identities with ‘an HR qualification’, or with ‘an MBA’: I didn’t, I didn’t vocalise the relationship to the MBA, but also for me it’s confused whether it’s the MBA, PhD or other things, and those things post-MBA has also influenced me, and in some instances have influenced me greater, but they’ve been built on the MBA. (23: 87-90) Reflectively reconstructing the process of adaption – deconstructing how the identity texture was woven – appears to be problematic for the interviewees, but they certainly seem to feel that it has occurred, as the previous two quotes strongly suggest, as do many others in this section. The weaving of a particular texture of identity is therefore part of a process of adaption, in that it depends both on the available legitimate discursive resources an individual has, but also on how those identities are viewed across shifting constituencies – as ‘built on the MBA’, or, like both the penultimate and the next quote, the MBA as part of an identity texture which cannot be delineated even by the MBA themselves: Maybe, but not specifically as a result of modules, but just the going through the process, the learning process, so maybe the way that you learn … maybe like the logic of learning, um, but I’m struggling to really think of an example of when I’ve actually though ‘MBA has made me feel like this’, I think, anyway. (17: 190-3) In many ways these quotes reinforce aspects of the ‘cutting’ section above, in that there appears to require neither consciousness of the weaving or cutting processes either at the point they are 180

deployed, or in reflection of how they took place, for there nonetheless to be a recognition that the MBA has a role in the moment-to-moment aspect of identity work which is complex and nuanced for each individual. The interviewees can therefore be ‘readers’ or analysers of the dynamics of identity work when they interrogate the texture of identity into which the MBA identity is woven, in Cooper and Fox’s (1990) sense, but they are also making nuanced decisions on the weaving of aspects of an MBA identity at those moments on which they are reflecting. The decisions they make are, as we have seen, not only to adopt discourses which are available in relation to the MBA as though they are static across social contexts, but also to adapt those discourses through weaving, such they move beyond being ‘transparent ciphers of discourse that merely enact it, live it, reinforce and reproduce it’ (Whittle, 2005: 1304). Rather adaption sees them – rather than just passively adopting – more as Contu and Willmott (2003: 290) note among the identities of a different group of social learners, being impressively ‘inventive [in how] they were in performing their work within the space proscribed’. Several of the quotes in this section explore the use of MBA identity as a process of weaving explicit use of the MBA into the texture of their identities – perhaps by invoking the name itself in a particular context. But, as was noted in the introduction to this section, adopting in the sense of identification from Section 4.2 is only one part of the adaption process. Weaving a texture of identity which involves the MBA therefore should potentially be part of the warp and weft of those unable to claim the identification as MBAs through the MBA as Mask: the two interviewees who had not quite completed their courses at the time of interview: I understand an awful lot of people drop out at the [final, research project] stage of the programme and I think that's a complete waste of money, uh, waste of time, I mean, I feel I've learned a lot anyway on the programme, so I think it’s beneficial, and I think it would be beneficial for the company to have me still work for it, having gone through the programme and maybe not got the MBA at the end of it because I’ve learned an awful lot anyway, just that I don't have the formal qualification to show for it. (6: 186-92) I don’t think that just having the qualifications is really a, doesn’t make you any more valuable than not having it. If you went all the way to the end but didn’t go to the graduation ceremony, for example, doesn’t make you any less valuable. So think that a reward-based culture is still good, but you always have that inconsistency that the outside world values that piece of paper more than the inside world does. (16: 442-7) They offer an interesting extension of the weaving / cutting discussions above, in that they both note the complex tensions in the way in which the MBA identity can or cannot be woven into the texture of their identities when they may not legitimately claim it explicitly through ‘that piece of paper’. The comment of the second interviewee – ‘if you went all the way to the end but didn’t go to the graduation ceremony, for example, doesn’t make you any less valuable’ – makes inherent sense, particularly to an MBA as Expatriate analysis, but does so without acknowledging the role of the MBA as Mask perspective. He begins by considering the way in which an MBA identity can (or should) still be claimed, before making a strong statement of the MBA as Mask perspective. The first interviewee also addresses this tension, but the other way round, beginning by noting the ‘waste of money ... waste of time’ the MBA programme is without being able to explicitly invoke 181

the MBA as part of an identity, before considering the kinds of ways he can signal an MBA identity – ‘learned an awful lot anyway’ – which are woven in seamlessly, in the manner of the interviewee above how thought others considered them; ‘that’s just [interviewee name]’. There is an interesting balance between a sense that the shared practices and experiences of the MBA programme should allow an MBA identity to be claimed, and a certain resignation that in many contexts it could not be. This despite others, quoted above, who hold an MBA and feel it is not a distinguishable identity from that they have woven into their broader texture of identity. The two interviewees without MBA qualifications seem unclear about how to weave an MBA identity, yet those with the MBA explicitly available are often at great pains not to have it as the dominant pattern. Despite their different circumstances, both seem to construct a kind of agentic ‘knowing compliance’ (Brown and Coupland, 2005: 1056) from the available discourses of MBA identities. The ‘knowing compliance’ which the MBAs undertake – being constrained yet creative in weaving an MBA identity – is something they can recognise in others too. One source of the more conscious reflection on MBA identity work are others’ MBA identities, and how they appear to be constructed. While some of the interviewees reflect that their MBA identity is so tightly woven into the dynamics of their identity texture is it not ‘separately’ visible, they have a strong sense of how available discourses of MBA identities are being employed by others: Within the organisation, the culture has been one of downplaying rather than up-playing your skills, your personal skills. Um, and bear in mind I’ve been here for quite a while, but um, I know that there are individuals in the organisation who are external hires – that’s an interesting one – an external that comes in, where it’s been the norm in let’s take an example, Citibank, where it’s been the norm to ‘Hello, I’m so-and-so and I’m an MBA from X’, where that’s been acceptable in that culture whereas here it’s a bit of like ‘Woah’, when somebody does that. The majority adapt, they pretty soon find that it’s not the way it’s done. [...] The external hires ‘need the corners rounded off’ … they’re a little bit ‘I’ve got an MBA and this is the way we do it’ – know it all, um and actually they need the corners rounded which is how to learn to ‘subtly’ use their MBA. The individuals who I’ve brought in over the last 5 years, who’ve stayed, have undergone that ‘subtle’ adaptation. They no longer shout about having an MBA, they just use it as part of their management toolset. Which is what I think it should be at the end of the day, it’s a set of skills, knowledge and expertise and you just add it to your existing skill-set: complement them. (26: 457-65 and 590-7) This extended quote, taken from two sections of the transcript, reflects on the how other MBAs weave an identity as MBAs in their workplace setting (where the interviewee has encountered them). It is clear from his reflections that it is precisely the way in which the MBA is woven into the texture of their workplace identities (at least those they present to him) where further identity work is needed, as the ‘outside’ MBAs employ the same processes to knowingly comply with the available discourse. Of course here the interviewee is for once explicitly themselves a ‘disciplining’ force on others’ identity work attempts, which nicely illustrates the kinds of individual effects which go to creating that discursive force. Interestingly the interviewee also uses, unprompted, both adapt and adaptation to describe these processes.

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Using weaving as a term of identity work within adaption to explore the texture of identity dynamics additionally opens up some of the more problematic areas of ‘displayed’ or ‘identified practices’ as the main component of an MBA identity without falling to the assumption of the MBA being an ‘innate attribute’ of identity. One of the concerns of Chapter 1 and aspects of both Section 4.1 and 4.2 is the way in which terms like ‘confidence’ as a result of the MBA identity were reflected upon as important by the interviewees even if not displayed. Understood in the context of weaving an MBA identity texture allows attributions of ‘confidence’ to be portrayed as the MBA being woven into the pattern of the texture, but not necessarily, recognised separately, or to be separable as an ‘aspect’ of identity separate from the individuals displayed identity in a specific social context: For me personally to, to take, it’s, it’s a big big difference between having an MBA and not having an MBA. It adds a lot more… in terms of my marketability, or my confidence to manage different business situations as well, as, er, having that different perspective means that you can, approach, er, especially large companies, on more of a parallel with some of the people you’re dealing with, whereas before you might not have had the knowledge or the confidence to relate that. (18: 156-61)

Here both the terms ‘confidence’ and ‘marketability’ can be seen as related within an adaption conceptualisation, as the interviewee describes something of where and how an MBA identity is present for them. It is clearly a social conceptualisation, reliant on others’ responses, one that it is an on-going process upon which one can reflect, and requires on-going identity work that actively mediates between the available discourses and the kinds of figure that will be cut / woven by drawing on those discourses. Collectively the quotes from this section speak strongly of the involvement of the individual in the process of weaving an identity, both in work situations and in reflection, consciously or unconsciously, and both drawing on the discursive textures and patterns available to them, and simultaneously contributing to those dynamics – working outward from their nuanced efforts to broker a legitimate position and working inward from the possible patterns available to them. As Cooper and Fox (1990: 578) comment: The woven text[ure] opens in a centrifugal way and can only be experienced as an activity of creative production, in which the agent/reader is caught up as an active element in the ongoing, unfinished movement of the text[ure]. Central to the previous two sections have been the ways in which the MBAs use identity work to cut a figure / weave a texture around their MBA identity in which its explicit invocation is a highly risky strategy requiring brokering, forms of translation and extreme care in identification. The final section of the analysis brings together many of these issues to explore the underlying/overlaying presence/absence of the MBA identity within work contexts.

4.3.2.3

(Di-)vested interests and the MBA

This final short section of the analysis focuses on extending and consolidating the adaption-asidentity work conceptualisation. To do so, in addition to retaining the insights of the ‘cutting a MBA figure’ and ‘weaving an MBA identity’ sections it will draw in aspects of ‘showing and hiding’ and others aspects of identification from Section 4.2, and also brokering from Section 4.1.

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The quotes from Sayer (2004) and Bauman (1997) which open Section 4.3 are important here; they represent the two sides of the identity work discussion which are both diametrically opposed and in agreement – the MBA identity seems precisely to be ‘the flimsiest of garments, ever liable to unravel, unpicking along every ill-stitched seam’, and ‘too tight ... sticking to the body ... a liability’. That this should be the case speaks strongly of a need for identities around the MBA which are somehow both real and invisible, precarious constructions and difficult to dismantle. Clair, et al. (2005: 79) view deviates from adaption on the ‘reality’ of identity when they suggest that ‘people experience a feeling of authenticity when they can be fully “themselves” in public’, but their consequent idea of ‘invisible social identities’ captures something of the complexity of the selfidentities resulting from an adaption identity work process. Just as Whittle (2005: 1305; see also Knights and McCabe, 2000) notes that ‘managers may be hindered by a total and absolute identification with a particular discourse’, and there has been a long sociological tradition of socalled ‘dirty’ identities (e.g Goffman, 1963; Ashforth and Kreiner, 1999; Drew, et al., 2007; Ashforth, et al., 2007), so an important part of the work of cutting / weaving an MBA identity is the degree to which one can divest oneself of the MBA identification when necessary. These ideas connect to the growing literature on ‘dis-identification’ (e.g Elsbach and Bhattacharya, 2001; Spicer, 2006; Fleming, 2006; Wenglén and Alvesson, 2006; Costas and Fleming, forthcoming 2009), within which defining oneself is not just against a relatively stable ‘Other’, as in Social Identity Theory (see Section 2.3.3), but actively and passively attempting to divest oneself of a problematic, albeit precarious, identity in a particular social context. From one perspective it is a stretch to suggest that an MBA identity could have a similar stigmatisation to some of Drew, et al. (2007) examples including refuse collectors, bailiffs, and cigarette company employees. However, just as the expatriate metaphor worked in describing MBAs’ experiences between work and study contexts (even though their ‘cultural’ shift is clearly less complete than ‘national’ expatriates), so the MBAs, within specific contexts in which they find themselves practicing, find an overt MBA identification to be as toxic as the ‘dirty’ identities described by Ashforth, et al. (2007), and as much requiring of ‘divesting’ from their swirl of other identities in different contexts as those more broadly socially ‘tainted’ identities. Divesting yourself of your MBA identity is therefore partly a case of ‘hiding’, from Section 4.2, and partly a case of actively brokering an identity which takes great care in creating situations in which the MBA can be invoked: You’re more likely to see it in a meeting where you might say, ‘well it’s very interesting, but what I’ve discovered from my MBA is X’, or ‘we could use this model from my MBA’ – it’s all subtle, rather than overt. (26: 465-67) The interviewee exercises great caution when considering how the MBA might be identified explicitly, even describing those occasions when he feels comfortable relating practice to that identity as ‘subtle, rather than overt’. Even more cautious is the following interviewee, taking great care not only divest themselves of an overt MBA identity, but also in reflecting for themselves on how an MBA identity should be invoked, he distinguishes between the different kinds of motivations for identity work which might cause him to view the MBA as part of his identity:

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Question: using the knowledge from your MBA isn’t ‘pride’, or showing off[, is it]? That’s correct, that’s right. But the marketing. Or justifying something by a qualification, as opposed to justifying it by the way it’s expressed, or the coherence or the solution or the actual applicability. I mean something I would avoid doing is saying ‘we should do this because that’s what my MBA said’, or no, no, ‘we should do this because I’ve got an MBA’. (23: 130-4) An MBA identity is surely present in both ‘we should do this because that’s what my MBA said’ and ‘we should do this because I’ve got an MBA’, yet it is seemingly important to the interviewee for them to ‘correct’ themselves between these two aspects of identity work even when, as they acknowledge, they are divesting themselves of both these aspects of MBA identity anyway, in that these are things they would ‘avoid’ doing. This exploration of divesting oneself of the MBA – itself, as noted above, an extension of earlier parts of the data analysis – leads to the central concept within adaption as a form of identity work; the idea of showing without showing, of becoming without overtly being, an MBA: the MBA ‘vest’. This concept is taken from a very striking quote from an interviewee as he struggled to articulate his workplace MBA identity: I don’t wear an MBA T-shirt, I wear an MBA vest, if you see what I mean. (9: 540)

Here the interviewee seems to be suggesting that a ‘visible’ MBA identity sits between other ideas of himself (his body) and the world, but that it is not, or not always, visible to those around him (as an MBA t-shirt would be). Yet the ‘MBA vest’ affects him nonetheless, changing (potentially) his visible shape to others as another layer, and affecting how he views the world (perhaps it keeps him ‘warmer’ than it might otherwise do). This analysis lays a great deal on what might be described as a ‘throwaway’ comment in a single interview did it not chime so well with so many of the other quotes ranged across the whole of this data analysis. For me the ‘MBA vest’ captures the ambivalence, the boundary-crossing, the liminal nature of the MBA identity as it comes across in this dataset, as well as the complex, hidden, underlying nature of its identity work deployment by so many of the interviewees. Furthermore, it has a ‘fashion’ connotation to which ‘cutting a particular figure’ is markedly strongly related (Section 4.3.2.1), as well as the obvious connection between a clothing image and the process of weaving and texturing (Section 4.3.2.2), both of which tie it more closely to the adaption process. The ‘MBA vest’s punning relation to ‘divesting’ oneself of an MBA identity will already have been spotted (the opening to this section), and the ‘hidden’, ambiguous, ‘prior’ (discursive) forces brought to mind by the phrase ‘vested interests’ is also in the ‘MBA vest’ image somewhere. More distantly, there is surely just a hint of a sought-after ‘Superman’ image of the MBA as a ‘Master of the Universe’ from the much-maligned broader discourse on MBAs covered in Chapter 1, as the interviewee imagines peeling off their mild-mannered managerial alter-ego to reveal the superhuman MBA below, to shouts of joy and awe from those around them. Finally, just as Fox and Cooper (1990) used ‘texture’ to denote the form in which a reflective analyst can reconstruct some studied object as well as the created identity, so Alvesson (et al., 2008: 9) interestingly describe the 185

relationship of the reflective analyst undertaking identity work to that same analyst’s position doing identity work ‘in situ’ as a ‘vested stance’; a phrase touching upon many of the same issues. It is for these myriad reasons that I have chosen the ‘MBA vest’ as the signature image of the adaption process – one therefore important enough to place in the title of this thesis. The rest of the data analysis plays out the ‘MBA (di-)vest’ as an analytical category within the data. The observed MBA below explicitly reflects on her MBA identity in relation to ‘expertise’. Some sense of expertise she feels accrues to her MBA identity, but that this wouldn’t have legitimacy without her explicit invocation of her ‘district’ manager identity. She is required to appeal to her experience on the ‘front-line’ of district management to be taken seriously, but in her ‘internal consultant’ current role is only being called upon because of its ‘expert opinion’ connotations: ‘the expert, the gospel if you like’: [The MBA] does draw on her ‘practical’ experience in [her old, district-based role] … to legitimise herself – certainly more than the MBA…. When I question her on using district experiences in this job, she says, ‘it makes the individual understand that I’ve actually done it rather than read it in a book’ … Interesting discussion of expertise – the balance between the bureaucratic response and the ‘expert opinion’ – ‘I’m seen as the expert, the gospel if you like’ … ‘I can emphasise that it’s just advice as much as I like but if you weren’t going to take that advice, why would you be ringing me?’ (3, day 5, page 22) Of particular interest is the way in which she plays off the MBA-derived identity of ‘expert’ against her ‘district’-based identity as expert, both of which seem to give her legitimacy, and the effect of which on others’ practice she seems concerned about: ‘I can emphasise that it’s just advice as much as I like’, but the imbued expertise given her by her identity means that people will alter their actions on the basis of that vested identity. (Di-)vesting themselves of the MBA identity is therefore a more sophisticated and nuanced understanding of the adaption process than the more simplistic ‘showing and hiding’ of the MBA as Mask. It takes into account both the kinds of figures the MBAs are trying to – and are able to – cut, and the ways in which they try to weave an identity within those confines: I’m, I’m very resistant to doing that [overt invocation of the MBA], and I’ll tell you why, um, I think because a lot of people haven’t got MBAs I look on it as somewhat contentious if you say ‘well I’ve done this in a study and therefore because I’ve gained this knowledge’, you know, they don’t want to feel you’re trying to, trying to display some kind of oneupmanship, or you’re cleverer than they are, so you’ve got to approach things in a more subtle manner: ‘and this is my suggestion on how the business should be done’, and you know, try and argue your case that way. I think generally because the MBA delivers, especially in AutoMaker which is a classic blue-chip, um, the, the knowledge and information you pick up on the MBA lends itself to being able to sway the argument round into where you want to go, because ‘the business’ says should do something that way – and the higher level buyers will recognise that as well… because they’ve got MBAs… [laughs]. (18: 251-60) Here the interviewee has his MBA vest which remains hidden within certain social grouping; deliberately so – ‘I’m very resistant to doing that’ – because of an awareness of the implications of cutting that figure, but the MBA is nonetheless woven into the identity for others ‘because they’ve got MBAs’. Again the identity work process is one requiring ‘subtlety’ in order to be ‘convincing’ as 186

an MBA. This is divesting of the MBA identity by holding it back in a nuanced manner, as Brown and Coupland (2005: 1063) notes, ‘not only subject to the power of local discursive practices, but as active agents engaged in impression-management activities’. The next interview extract shows precisely that balance between the tensions of local discursive practices, and the keenness for the interviewee to divest themselves of their MBA identity. But he still feels the MBA as part of his identity, but being ‘careful how [he] did the MBA’: I felt I had to be careful about how I did the MBA [at work] and how I talked about it then with colleagues. The area I was working in was a very technical area and the skill or asset that was most treasured was pure and simple product knowledge, it’s in depth knowledge of the business, of the processes and from the technical side of the car, the engineering side of things. To have somebody coming along and saying, ‘I’ve just done this on an MBA, wouldn't it be better if we did this’ would not go down well with dyed-in-the-wool engineers. The way to do it is to make that same suggestion, but to structure it using the knowledge that you have, but I'd never say it was as a result of the MBA. (10: 298-306) The MBA is ‘vested’ as it is being ‘divested’ – ‘never say it was a result of the MBA’ – the kind of legitimate, knowledgeable figure he wishes to cut requires the MBA, but adaption of the MBA to be practiced. In such situations as the interviewee is reflecting on, the MBA identity is there and not there – reflexively invoked but apparently invisible to those ‘dyed-in-the-wool engineers’. The selfidentity which is the reflexive outcome of his adaption identity work appears as a subtle, nuanced and ‘careful’ social construction. Also important is the sense from this quote that it is not just the engineers’ ‘pure and simple product knowledge’ which places them in a different community of meaning, but the background sense of the discursive stereotype of ‘an MBA’ which also causes this MBA to be ‘careful’ – ‘vested’ – in ‘doing the MBA’ in his workplace. However, within the constraints of both the broader discursive forces and local power discourses, again the texture of the MBA identity is subtle and actively shaped, a form of ‘bricolage, creatively fusing multiple and sometimes contradictory positions in their turns and their utterances’ (Iedema, et al., 2004: 29). The MBA vest is also present when the interviewees explicitly reflect on their identity work processes, in that divesting oneself of an MBA identity may be the viewed as the only way in which an MBA identity may be successfully constructed for themselves: ‘creatively fusing’ the MBA identity into workplace practice by divesting themselves of the broader discursive implications of that identity: I will have greater awareness of where that’s appropriate – where’s it’s appropriate to be pushy – you said about words associated with MBAs and often you do here the word ‘pushy’ – they’re in your face, they’re there, they’ve got to do this project, they’ve got to do this assignment, and I think I have a better appreciation that the culture of the company will not, that being pushy, that being in people’s faces is not going to get your results. You do have to play the system, and if you don’t know how to play the system then it’s difficult. (19: 416-21) There are distinct overlaps here, and in the previous quote, with the idea of ‘translation’ from Section 4.1. But the MBA vest, cutting, weaving, and adaption, are overlaid on that conceptualisation to try and capture more of the identity work aspects being undertaken through this process: that it is as much about positioning who these interviewees are becoming, to 187

themselves and to others, in reflection and in situ, as it is about what they know, even about themselves. The apparently light invocation of ‘appropriate’ in the quote above conceals a multitude of careful identity work calculations around both ‘the system’ and what constitutes ‘playing’ it. The MBA identity must be divested to avoid attributions of being ‘pushy’, at the same time as the broader aspects of the ‘system’ have pushed the interviewee in the direction of the MBA in the first place. Adaption of an MBA identity is therefore intimately bound up with becoming someone who is different to different social groups at different times through identity work, and its presence within the reflexively-constructed identities of the interviewees for this research is both profound and fleeting; triumphant and illusory. The vested interests of the local and global discourses of MBAs, management, their organisation, and their individual personal relationships at work constantly mediate and interpenetrate their adaption, constraining what figure they can cut, but also providing them with the ‘raw material’ from which an MBA identity might be constituted, or woven, for an MBA vest: I think in that time, I've changed quite a lot, I think that all the changes that have made me better because of the MBA, all that sort of stuff, I don't think the company recognises that. My impression is that I don't think the company would care whether I had finished my dissertation or not, in reality. So therefore, but I think that they have benefited from the fact that I have done an MBA, because they see me as a different person than they saw me, even three or four years ago, and I'm a different person because I’ve done the MBA, so. (9: 654-60) The position of this valued, powerful, elusive symbol ‘MBA’ – around which an identity might be shaped seems tantalisingly close – but its adaption within the identity of this interviewee remains dislocated. Strong statements of the symbol’s transformative power – ‘I’m a different person because I’ve done the MBA’ – which resonate with some of the most effusive pronouncements of the power of ‘learning’ from Chapter 1, are seemingly insufficient for the MBA identity to be adopted by this individual. The identity work to adapt it – to divest himself of its problematic status – is apparently in this case prevented by the power of the discourse to adhere it visibly to his identity. Instead of the MBA vest, seen and unseen, this ‘well-sewn and durable identity’ must be discarded as a ‘liability’ (Bauman, 1997: 89) – with adaption to the workplace rejected: If I sent in my CV to AutoMaker, they'd be desperate to interview me for my current job. Um, but because I’m already working here it doesn't make any difference to them. (11: 530-2)

4.3.3 Conclusions This final section of the findings has used the metaphor of the MBA as Adaption as a lens through which to explore the experiences and reflections of the interviewee and observee MBAs. It has suggested that the accounts of experiences of being an MBA presented in this study can be usefully illuminated by considering MBAs as undertaking a form of identity work which I have termed ‘adaption’. Adaption describes the process of identity work undertaken by the MBAs in this study, by drawing on aspects of both of the two previous metaphors – the MBA as Expatriate and the MBA as Mask – 188

and further developing the ideas suggested by those perspectives to provide an over-arching concept for understanding the MBAs’ experiences. Adaption is itself a blended term suggesting from ‘adopt’ – to take on outside aspects – and ‘adapt’ – to change existing configurations, indicating its role as constitutive of a process which explores and describes the reflexivity through which MBAs practice as, and are recognised as, MBAs in their workplace settings. By viewing MBA identity work as a process of adaption, the complex interaction of the concepts of being ‘qualified’ and ‘qualification’ – crucial stumbling points for the ‘black box’ and ‘emperor’s new clothes assessments of the MBA – as well as the central signifier of ‘MBA’, can be explored and, potentially, explained. It also takes a discursively constructed view of the MBA as a powerful symbol through which the MBAs are recognised and identified, but one which also allows for some considerable creative agency by individuals in shaping their identities in relation to being an MBA. The data examined within the metaphor of the MBA as Adaption have been categorised as constituting a number of key aspects, which can be understood separately, but are highly interdependent in practice. The first suggests that the MBAs are involved in ‘cutting a figure’ as an MBA, with discourse around the MBA both their resource for cutting from, and the constitution of the figure they cut. The process of cutting a figure occurs both with very definite conscious reflexive attention to the likely self-identity as an MBA which will be identified, and when the process is undertaken more or less unconsciousness. To cut a particular figure as an MBA involves creating, or altering, the texture of identity. This part of adaption is achieved by the weaving together in different patterns, at different times and in different contexts, the practices of different communities whose discourses legitimise in different kinds of ways, and ‘knowing compliance’ with the implications of deploying complex, multi-valenced symbols such as the MBA. A key finding from this dataset, and one which the process of adaption takes as a major element, is the requirement for appropriate divesting of an MBA identity by an individual. This is indicated by the signature image of this thesis from the data, that of the ‘MBA vest’ rather than the ‘MBA tshirt’. This is a complex image suggesting the need for the presence of the MBA identity ‘underneath’ – present for example through the translation of practices across communities – but which is preferably revealed at the behest of the individual rather than their identification through the discourse, which the MBA t-shirt might imply. Being able to (di-)vest themselves of an MBA identity is seen by the MBA as both a problem – because they cannot claim the legitimacy and discursive rewards of its invocation – and the solution, as it prevents unwanted recognition when the organisational and broader discourse is at least ambivalent and often negative in its connotations of the MBA. This reflexively-created ‘vested’ stance of the MBA gets to the heart of the ways in which these MBAs are trying to weave a particular texture of identity, that is, through undertaking adaption. The MBA as Adaption is therefore an important new concept within identity work, and a new way of viewing MBAs at work. It is one which draws creatively on the previous metaphors through which the data was viewed, to encompass and explore a greater degree and variety of the data. Adaption, cutting a figure, weaving, and divesting provide a nuanced vocabulary for exploring, describing and explaining how MBAs are constituted at work.

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5.

Discussion and Conclusions

This chapter is divided into three sections. The first (Section 5.1) will reflect on the concept of adaption and its development, using this to address directly the research questions posed in Chapter 1. It will also re-situate the concept within the recent literature on social learning, identity, and identity work, as well as literature on the MBA. Section 5.2 examines the limitations of the work presented here using a framework compiled from Johnson, et al., 2006, Johnson and Duberley, 2003), encompassing reflection on the methodology chosen, the epistemology implied within the research, and the discipline within which the research is situated. The final section of the thesis (Section 5.3) constitutes the conclusion to the thesis, outlining both the contribution of the thesis, and the implications of the research for researching, teaching, and being MBAs, as well as examining the possibilities for extending the work with further research.

5.1 Adaption and MBA Identity work In this first section of the final chapter of the thesis, I will be reflecting on the relationship of the data analysis to the research questions I posed at the end of Chapter 1. What I consider the answers to these research questions are presented below, in summary form. In particular I consider that my answers, culminating in the idea of adaption, have begun to open the ‘black box’ to examine the practice of becoming an MBA, have shed some light on the dark corners of the selffulfilling prophesy argument, and also have begun to unpick the ‘emperor’s new clothes’ problematic – all key issues identified within Chapter 1 which prompted the research questions in the first place. The broader implications of those answers are then discussed in greater depth within the individual sub-sections below. Section 5.1.1 focuses on adaption as a concept, reflecting on its genesis and development as a form of identity work, and in relation to the MBA concept. The following section (Section 5.1.2) discusses adaption within the broader framework of identity, with a particular focus on the important structure-agency distinction. The final area (Section 5.1.3) in this section positions MBA adaption against other recent literature which has examined identity work, and MBAs. The four research questions posed at the end of Chapter 1 are repeated below, with a summary response to each drawn from the conclusion aspects of Sections 4.1, 4.2 and 4.3. 1. How do MBAs practice as MBAs in their workplace? For the most part, subtly. There is no cross-contextual and ultimately identifiable ‘MBA practice’. Instead they do it by acting in a brokering role which ‘translates’, not ‘transfers’ – through social negotiation – their business school MBA student identity into a workplace MBA identity. This brokering is both a role and a process, one often placing the MBAs in a

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‘liminal’ position. I consider that an MBA as Expatriate metaphor captures much of this process of brokerage and translated practice. 2. How are MBAs recognised in the workplace? For the most part, rarely, and not always in circumstances of their choosing. Display of the MBA symbol – for example on promotion applications or business cards, is important, but such overt usage can cause individuals to be lumped together as having an identity from which they would want to distance themselves. Hiding the MBA symbol is therefore as important as showing it, and the subject positions recognised by its display are sharply circumscribed by both organisational and wider discourse on MBAs. I consider the MBA as Mask metaphor to capture much of the process of recognition – of symbolic identification – of MBAs in the workplace. 3. What constitutes being an MBA in the workplace? A process of adaption constitutes being an MBA in the workplace. This process draws on the concepts of the MBA as Expatriate and the MBA as Mask above to create a form of identity work, within which ‘cutting a figure’ which both embraces and di-vests itself of available MBA identities is crucial. The process of MBA constitution sees MBAs as drawing on, and avoiding, discursive positions on the MBA to weave a particular texture to their identity on a moment-by-moment basis. 4. How do MBAs’ senses of practicing or being recognised as an MBA at work relate to, or draw on, the ways of understanding an MBA reviewed in Chapter 1? There is a very strong awareness among the MBAs interviewed for this study of the kinds of discourses surrounding the symbol of the MBA. In particular its ambivalent symbolism within the organisations I studied, but also the impressions it can create more broadly in different contexts. Understanding how MBAs use adaption to learn to be, or do, MBA in the workplace is only comprehensible in the light of the multifaceted discourses at different ‘levels’ which create the shifting and always contingent context within which MBA adaption takes place. Figure 8 below indicates the broad interrelationship of the three metaphors used in the analysis, and what I consider the key constituent parts of those metaphors, as instantiated by the data collected in this research. The MBA as Expatriate foregrounds those aspects of ‘translating’ practices across boundaries, the MBA as Mask emphasises how MBAs are identified by, and identify with, the MBA symbol, and the MBA as Adaption draws on each to outline a form of identity work within which divesting oneself of an MBA identity can be as important as claiming one.

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The MBA as Expatriate

The MBA as Mask

• Social learning • Boundaries • Liminality • Translation • Brokerage

• ‘Showing and hiding’ • Masking • Badges and labels • Identification

The MBA as Adaption • Identity work • Reflexivity • Cutting a figure • Weaving • Texture • (Di)-Vesting Figure 8: Adaption and MBA identity work

5.1.1

Reflections on adaption as identity work

I have suggested in the summaries above, and in Section 4.3.1 above, that MBA adaption is a form or process of identity work. In discussing and reflecting upon this developed concept of adaption, the first step is to examine whether it does constitute a form of identity work. Although, as noted in Section 2.5, different authors use identity work employing somewhat differing interpretations, in general there is relative consistency regarding some key tenets of identity work, consolidated in the similar definitional wordings used by multiple authors: identity work is ‘the mutually constitutive set of processes whereby people strive to shape a relatively coherent and distinctive notion of personal self-identity’ (Watson, 2007: 136; see also Alvesson and Willmott, 2002: 626, and Section 5.2.1). I have worked from these broad aspects of identity work when approaching the data, and this has meant that adaption dovetails with those key aspects explored in Section 2.5.1. Adaption is first and foremost a process, which assumes that being an MBA is not a fixed or ever-present designation, but rather one which is developed, adapted and adopted iteratively in each shifting context. Adaption involves striving – or some form of work – on the part of the individual for the identity to be essayed, formed, strengthened or revised (see Sveningsson, 2003: 1165), although on occasion that might involve temporary striving to divest themselves of the MBA identity. Adaption is a mutually constitutive process: becoming an MBA involves drawing on the available discourses to try and shape a particular self-identity, but often one is defined as an MBA and regulated into an available subject position. Adaption is finally a way of describing the mutually constitutive process of striving for a ‘precarious sense of coherence and distinctiveness’. Adaption displays evidence of the desire of individuals to claim (or claim aspects of) an MBA identity, but on their terms: something which, for example, would allow them to access more readily a coherent 192

‘good manager’ identity, with the MBA either in the forefront or in support, but which would also distinguish them from the morass of ‘unqualified’ managers around them. Of course at the same time they might be striving to divest themselves of an MBA identity among their colleagues, who might identify them as coherent within a broader negative organisational discourse of MBAs, and distinctive as interpretively ‘separate’ from them. Because adaption fits easily into the key tenets outlined by other authors, I feel comfortable in positioning adaption as a form of identity work undertaken by MBAs. It was important to confirm adaption as coherent with the key tenets of identity work. However, if it were utterly congruent there would be no requirement for an additional term MBA ‘adaption’ to describe a particular form of identity work. A new concept should not be proffered lightly, and a new ‘blended’ term such as adaption – with its host of sub-terms from Figure 8 above - is especially a hostage to fortune. Down (2006: 10), for example, castigates identity studies as already ‘specialist, technical and theory-jargon’, while Collins (1998, quoted McKinley, 2008: 541), far from encouraging proliferation of terminology, recommends scholars make ‘small but productive steps toward reducing the excessive proliferation of constructs in the attention space’ of organisation studies. With a number of other terms recently coined (see Section 5.1.3 below) in empirical studies to expand upon the identity work concept, there is a danger that adaption could be seen as one of what O'Doherty (2004: 82) calls, in his inimitable style, ‘disposable, makeshift concepts and esoteric, portmanteau words [which] accumulate, agglomerate and take flight in a carnivalesque riot that parodies and dramatises the surreal and delirious production of commodities and services proffered by contemporary ‘casino capitalism’’. Adaption as a concept therefore needs to pull its weight within this ‘riot’ of terms – to be both coherent with identity work as an umbrella term, and distinctive in relation to other terms, and in how it describes its subject, MBAs. I believe there are two key aspects which, in combination, distinguish adaption within identity work. The first to consider is that adaption draws strongly not only on mainstream identity theories, but also on situated learning theory - and particularly boundary work and Communities of Practice. The second is its connection to the growing interest in dis-identification, and its implications for different levels of discourse through, or from, which identity is cut. Adaption returns identity closer to the centre of Communities of Practice when examining the learning aspects of being an MBA – a position which it held in Wenger’s (1998) main formulation but which, as discussed in Section 2.2.4 above, was rather lost in both the ‘functionalising’ of CoP , and the ‘practice’ movement (Gheradi, 2006). Therefore elements of the MBA as Expatriate remain prominent within adaption, particularly the idea of brokering and translation as practice-based approaches through which individuals change the identities of particular communities – or learn to practice as an MBA within them. At the same time adaption also draws very noticeably on the Foucauldian tradition of subjectivitycreation through discourse, both to understand how MBAs are positioned as MBAs and how certain subject positions are made available to be claimed, and also to provide resources for certain types of identity projects. While identity work as a concept owes a heavy debt to the Foucauldian tradition within organisation studies, the way in which discourses operate to produce a particular individual – whether they chose to be identified that way or not – is particularly salient 193

within adaption. While some earlier work has sought to outline the possibility of bringing Communities of Practice and a more Foucault-informed discourse analysis together in examining organisational life (most prominently Fox, 2000)), other studies have not held these two in collaboration and tension when applied to empirical work in the way that this study has done. In particular, bringing together aspects of situated learning theory and post-structuralist identity work has forced an analytical focus upon multiple levels of discourse (Alvesson and Kärreman, 2000b; Hardy, 2004), so that adaption of an MBA identity can only be understood within the broader social discourse of MBAs of Chapter 1, and also within the trajectories of organisational discourse related by the interviewees, and the immediate context of who they are present with at the time of undertaking the identity work. It is therefore the allying of a multi-level discursive view of identity work around the MBA symbol, to an explicit treatment of the MBA as a situated learning experience, which gives rise to the ideas of cutting and weaving a figure as an MBA through adaption. Adaption therefore distinguishes itself from identity work as a term through its joint debt to poststructuralist theory and to situated learning theory. But it also carves a niche through its focus, drawn from the data, on resistance to identification, and on dis-identification. The process of adaption is often one of subtlety, of translating the MBA while avoiding identification as one in particular contexts – divesting themselves of the MBA’s distinguishing symbolism in order to cut and weave a figure which has greater legitimacy within the community. While there are already studies examining dis-identification stretching back to Goffman (1963), many of them examine identities which are either ‘dirty’, that is, they are identities which very broad social discourse sees as generally tainted in some way (Ashforth and Kreiner, 1999, Ashforth, et al., 2007; Kreiner, et al., 2006a; Elsbach and Bhattacharya, 2001), or they are identities which are very prominent in professional settings (e.g. identification by others is almost unavoidable) such as priests (Kreiner, et al., 2006c) doctors (Pratt, et al., 2006) and professionals whose role is identified by department or role (e.g. Chreim, et al., 2007), or both in the case of the strippers studied by Grandy (2008). The MBA as a qualification is, as Chapter 1 notes, a highly ambivalent symbol, particularly in its differences in connotations between broad social discourse and organisational discourse in the study of this thesis, and it can be ‘hidden’ or denied in a number of ways, allowing certain types of divesting and resistance unavailable to many other identities. While interest in dis-identification of such liminal identities as is definitely growing in very recent work (see, for example, Costas and Fleming, 2009) and there exists a body of work on ‘hidden’ identities at work (e.g. Clair, et al., 2005), currently the focus on divesting of a liminal identity ‘symbol’ and role such as the MBA is a distinct point of departure for adaption within identity work. MBAs are, through adaption, not rejecting any discourse of MBA identity wholesale, nor claiming a singular immutable MBA identity, but shaping, to a greater or lesser extent, a workable MBA identity from the available discursive resources – something which occasionally involves active decisions to divest themselves of that identity as part of that identity work. If they are undertaking this more or less successfully, even on a precarious bases, then it important to discuss whether or how it might be developed, encouraged or even taught (see Section 5.1.4 below). However, prior to that, I will discuss the position of adaption within broader identity frameworks (Section 5.1.2)

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5.1.2

Adaption and identity work frameworks

In Section 2.5.1 I noted that, prior the empirical phase, I wished to hold open the nature of the relationship between identity work as explored here as a concept, and the Communities of Practice and post-structuralist identity approaches already covered. Here, following the previous section’s summary of the main conclusions of the empirical research, I will return to this issue, particularly in explicitly relating the main aspects of adaption as a concept to ideas of structure and agency discussed in Section 2.5.2 above, and place it within the construction of the influential identity frame work of Alvesson and Willmott (2002; see Figure 4 – which is adapted and re-presented in simplified form as Figure 9 below). Figure 9 below shows a loose relationship between the differing emphases of the three metaphors of this study (marked ‘2’ on Figure 9), and the elements of the Alvesson and Willmott (2002) model of individual identity (marked ‘1’ on Figure 9). Firstly it is important to remember that I am using ‘identity work’ as a broader term than Alvesson and Willmott (2002), encompassing all of the identity processes. From this starting point there is some broad congruence between the more individual agency-driven concept of identity work from Alvesson and Willmott (2002) and the agentic practice and translation processes of the MBA as Expatriate, while the more structurally defined identity regulation – particularly discursive regulation – from Alvesson and Willmott (2002) corresponds more closely with the more structurally-determined MBA as Mask. The precarious self-identity which is the outcome of the interplay of the two remains the same on both models, although in mine it is focused on a particular kind of discourse and symbol: the / an MBA. Adaption therefore sits as an additional term between the existing frames, which, for the MBAs studied for this thesis at least, brings them together and inter-relates them in specific ways. As Section 2.5.2 discussed, there is a strong sense of oppositional structure-agency forces to the Alvesson and Willmott (2002) model, and adaption attempts to provide a concept to cut across this distinction. While structure – agency determination is a philosophical question which cannot admit of an ultimate answer through empirical means, nonetheless adaption – with its cutting, weaving and divesting – sees MBAs as discursive subjects which, in moving through particular rich discursive contexts, ‘can only achieve legitimation through taking up those signifying practices available and offered to them and which are located within that field of knowledge prior to their entry’ (Dent and Whitehead, 2002: 11). The broader social discourses and the specific organisational discourses of the MBA interpenetrate each other to provide the resources from which an MBA self-identity is cut dynamically, demonstrating how individual creativity with discourse and the regulatory constraints they place on that creativity are related through social activity (see Layder, 1994: 4).

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Identity regulation

Identity work

Self-identity

1

MBA as mask

MBA as expatriate

MBA as adaption

MBA self-identity

2 Figure 9: Comparing Alvesson and Willmott (2002) to the MBA adaption model

The development of MBA adaption has explicitly been a study as called for by Kuhn (2006), which has examined ‘how arrays, or sets, of organisational discourses influence identity formation, and [also] attends to discourses beyond the artificial boundaries of the organisation’ (Kuhn, 2006: 1342). The ambiguous discourse of the MBA of Chapter 1 has provided the broader extraorganisational discourse, from which the organisational discourse of those MBAs studied – equally multi-faceted – has been fashioned and informed, which in turn has provided the complex discursive context for individual MBA adaption. The requirement for divestment of the MBA speaks to the regulatory and constraining power of the discourse, but that hiding (and of the still present ‘vest’ MBA without the prominent ‘MBA t-shirt’) and the weaving and translation of MBA practice in organisational contexts demonstrates the creative agency possible from within those swirling discourses. In this way adaption shows how, as Kuhn (2006: 1342) suggests, ‘the “choices” actors make ... are shaped by those arrays of discursive possibilities available for identity construction’, such that from moment to moment individual identity work may display a ‘tilt’ towards more constructive weaving of a particular self-identity texture, or an attempt to divest of that MBA selfidentity through hiding, or translation. Understood in terms of structure and agency from Figure 9, then, adaption describes an unstable balance of conditions of possibility for any specific MBA selfidentity to be realised to any external social community or group, depending on the ways in which the ‘logics’ of the discourses at different levels are operating. Kosmala and Herrbach (2006: 1399) 196

my emphasis) in their study of the influence of specific discourses on professional accountants’ identity work, describe three key dimensions or ‘logics’ of discourse, and conclude that, ‘as a result of the interplay of … competing ‘logics’ or ‘ideologies’, practitioners are inevitably led to adopt subjective positioning and distancing, deriving from belief/disbelief dynamics with some or all of the conflicting elements of the overall organisational ideology, which somehow includes all three dimensions’. The ‘somehow’ in the final phrase of this quote is telling. Although the interpenetration of discourses is apparent in nearly every example from the data for this study, the unstable balance represented in any particular act of adaption ‘somehow’ includes many available discourses – both constraining and providing discursive resources for identity work – but there remains an element of mystery (Alvesson and Kärreman, 2007) when any attempt is made to analytically pronounce as to how that discursive interplay is determined. In Figure 9 above, adaption therefore adopts a theoretical position as a kind of fulcrum in identity work between structure- and agency-driven approaches. However, rather hidden within the preceding discussion is reflection on a problem identified in Section 2.5.1: that of the problem of why individuals desire and work for a ‘secure’ or coherent identity (Newton, 1998), or, in Nic Beech's (2008) phrase, ‘how identities become meaningful’. Jones and Spicer (2005b: 224) summarise the concern: The question remains: why is it that subjects accept, indeed actively desire to construct themselves in relation to discourse? If we reject a humanist vision of an isolated subject who is immune to or only ever repressed by discourse, and also want to be able to explain the constitution of the subject in discourse, then we need to pose the question of why it is that subjects recognise themselves in discourse. Adaption as form of identity work would clearly reject both the isolated subject and pure repression readings, but the root of the ‘desire’, as Jones and Spicer dub it, remains somewhat elusive. Within the discussion of the rise of the MBA in Chapter 1, the strength of the MBA qualification is that it forms a symbolic representation of a forward-projected ‘aptitude’ which provides an anchoring point for at least a stable identity trajectory, if not a secure identity. The desire for a secure identity in this formulation is then is a form of psychological comfort to an individual (Collinson, 2003). However, much of the explanatory power of identity work as a concept derives from the insistence of this ‘drive’ for security of identity – a lot of interpretive ‘weight’ to be placed on a single cause (Newton, 1998). The drive to undertake adaption – to be seen as having a successful MBA identity – I therefore position as one deriving from a number of sources which operate in a similar direction, rather than one doing all the ‘work’. Partly the MBAs are constructing themselves in relation to discourse out of a desire to ‘anchor the self’ (Thomas and Linstead, 2002) through the maintenance of a consistent trajectory of self-identity related to other identities such as being a ‘successful manager’, as Alvesson and Willmott (2002) and other identity theorists suggest. Partly, though, it is also a need to create individual legitimacy in social practice; to be recognised as knowledgeable, and to have a sense of self as central to the practice in which they engage regularly. But the need for adaption of an MBA identity specifically is also, I believe, related to the more material concerns which individuals have in terms of securing well-being for themselves and others they care about. In this aspect I concur with a recent study by Gagnon (2008: 378, 389) which describes management learners as striving to reduce insecurity, but attributes this to material rather than symbolic causes: 197

Insecurity is not considered here as a psychological problem, rectified through changes to personality, if that were possible, or even through psychological safety at the group or intersubjective level … By contrast, this study shows the importance to identity work of structural, material insecurity as well as symbolic insecurity embedded in particular contexts and in broader, asymmetrical relationships of organisation. This section has positioned adaption as related to, but moving on from and contributing to, influential frameworks on identity and identity construction. Additionally adaption positions itself as being a process set in chain through a number of mechanisms: discursive power to enforce conformity, psychological desire to maintain a coherent self-narrative, and the need to mitigate ‘structural, material insecurity’ which might threaten well-being. Having outlined adaption as identity work, and as a form of identity construction, I move on to discuss and re-situate adaption in relation to recent empirical literature on identity and on management development.

5.1.3

Situating adaption in the recent empirical literature

The previous two sections have explored how the notion of adaption relates to identity work and identity construction frameworks. However, I would argue that adaption also compliments and supports a number of other recent empirical studies of identity and identity work in workplaces and organisations, some focusing particularly on management development and management education. This will be followed in Section 5.1.4 by discussion of the relative tangibility of the adaption concept – exploring whether, if I am confident it exists and is helpful, adaption could be encouraged and developed either by organisations or by management development professionals. The number of published empirical studies focusing on individual identity work at work has increased rapidly in the time of the study for this thesis, with a proliferation of terms and vocabulary to support the overall idea development. While the empirical sites for many of these studies are considerably different to that studied here, in terms of the kinds of identity and identity work processes developed there is a great deal of overlap. As noted in Section 2.5.1 above, individual identity work at work has until recently been something of a European research tradition (key empirical references including Kärreman and Alvesson, 2001, and Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2003), emanating from sociology, with identity viewed as ‘fragmented into manifold, simultaneous and shifting notions of self’ (Alvesson, et al., 2008 : 6) while North American scholarship has concentrated on organisational identity constructs, with ‘identity as hierarchically integrated into dominant notions of self’ (Alvesson, et al., 2008 : 6), and individuals seen as relatively straightforwardly being socialised to identify with, or against, a stable organisational entity (see Bartel, et al., 2007). More recently, however, a number of US-based authors – including most notably the interrelated work of Blake Ashforth (e.g. Sluss and Ashforth, 2007; Ashforth, et al., 2008), Glen Kreiner (Kreiner, et al., 2006b, Kreiner, et al., 2006c), Tim Kuhn (2006) and Michael Pratt (Pratt, et al., 2006) – have drawn extensively on the European school of identity work studies to explore more directly ‘the process of [individual] identity negotiation, how identification waxes and wanes as individuals and their contexts evolve’ (Kreiner, et al., 2006c: 1032).

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Studying professional groups such as priests and doctors, these authors have expanded the extensive vocabulary for examining and understanding the development of identity work at work, tracing the dynamics of identity work in, I would argue, similar ways to the metaphors of MBA as Expatriate, MBA as Mask and MBA as Adaption. For example, in their longitudinal study of trainee and then graduate medical doctors Pratt et al. (2006) see individuals, as they enter particular medical specialisms, undertaking a process of ‘identity customisation’ – the ‘change in identity made to fit work demands’ (Pratt et al. 2006: 246). This identity customisation they suggest happens in three main ways – for the doctors moving into ‘general practice’ primary care, a process of ‘enrichment’, deepening the sophistication of the identity concept; for those adding surgery to their primary care training, a process of ‘patching’ additional identity elements on to the existing identity, and for those shifting into radiology, a process of ‘splinting’ retaining aspects of primary medical doctors as present but separate from their newer radiologist identity. Kreiner, et al. (2006b), studying priests, posit identity ‘intrusion, distance and balance’ as three processes driving identity change among their subjects. For example, the priests felt that often their broad discursive ‘priest’ social identity intruded on occasions when they were trying to position themselves as private individuals, e.g. that the boundaries between their different kinds of identities were too permeable. By identity distance, Kreiner, et al. (2006b) mean those points where there is no area of mutual translatability between identities – perhaps between gay and work identities (Clair, et al., 2005). Identity balance is a happy medium negotiated between the two previous process (Kreiner, et al., 2006c). While the adaption study here has to a certain extent charted its own theoretical course, the kinds of dynamic identity work processes described in selected recent empirical identity studies are clearly developing in similar directions, and have potentially fruitful overlaps in supporting further research. There is clearly some congruence between the kinds of divesting and weaving processes of adaption and Pratt et al’s (2006) identity customisation, and, in positioning adaption between the MBA as Expatriate and the MBA as Mask, there is also some considerable affinity with Kreiner et al’s (2006) identity balance concept. Two further areas are salient where MBA adaption moves with, and beyond, into recent empirical research. Firstly, in the current interest in ‘multilevel’ identity research, which examines identity by ‘interweaving dynamics at both the intra-individual level (personal identity) and the inter-individual level (social identity) ... where treatments of personal and social identity meet’ (Kreiner, et al., 2006b: 1052). This interest in understanding the interplay of discourse at different levels is a major area of current investigation on both sides of the Atlantic, with Smith and Sparkes, 2008: 5) seeing the rise of multiple approaches to integrating different discursive ‘levels’ in identity studies as a ‘continuum, with perspectives that adopt a `thick individual' and `thin social relational' view to the self and identity at one end, and those that adopt a `thin individual' and `thick social relational' view at the other’. Chreim, et al. (2007: 1515), for example, use a three- level discursive framework to explore the ways in which ‘agentic reconstruction of professional role identity is enabled and constrained by an institutional environment that provides interpretive, legitimating, and material resources that professionals adopt and adapt’, and Beech (2008: 74) takes a dialogic approach to levels of discourse, within which ‘identity work can proceed through stimuli which are responded to in relatively centripetal or centrifugal ways, and subsequent dialogue which acts to reinforce, refine or reject an identity construction’. Even without Chreim et al. (2007) and Handley et al’s 199

(2006: 650) coincidental use of ‘adopt and adapt’ (I had settled on the adaption concept prior to the publication of these papers) the similarities and points of contact between these studies and this thesis are very apparent in the way they analyse how, and when, individuals draw on broader discourses in complex and creative ways to shape identities. It is also not coincidence that all of these studies employ purely qualitative methods just as this study has done, as they allow ‘the development of theories of how others construct their identities through the swift-moving concatenation of selves appearing, disappearing and reappearing in the moment-to-moment construction of the self’ (Harding, 2008: 42). The final salient area where this study of MBA adaption can be related to recent empirical literature is to qualitative studies which focus on management development or the MBA itself specifically. This study of adaption among MBAs bears many similarities to three studies in particular, two of which take an explicitly ‘identity’ or ‘identity work’ approach to their research. The first, Hay and Hodgkinson (2008) which is perhaps better glossed a more ‘mainstream’ interpretive study of MBA experiences than an identity study, also tackles the complex negative ‘emperor’s new clothes’ criticism the MBA has received, and also finds the picture when MBAs are interviewed about their experiences to be more complex than the broader ‘stereotypical’ positions in the wider discourse might indicate. However, while it suggests that the critique of MBAs is oversimplified, Hay and Hodgkinson (2008) fails to offer a discursive explanation for either the existence of the problem, nor how MBAs deal with those negative identity connotations, other than through ‘reflection’. The other two studies have greater affinities with this one – something evidenced by fairly wide prior reference to them in this thesis. The first, Gagnon (2008), studies participants on two executive management development programmes, but unlike Hay and Hodgkinson (2008) it examines the multiple levels of structural regulation impacting the participants’ identity work. It also is at pains to link identity regulation to specific organisational practices – not just to the development programme activities: While both development programs considered here serve to homogenise, identity regulation is experienced at two levels, the discursive and intersubjective. The latter often operates in service of the former, as seen in group members’ enforcing of leader identities at [research site 1], and engaging in forced rankings and other more subtle practices of judgment and peer criticism at [research site 2]. (Gagnon, 2008: 388) This study also was concerned to understand the effect of multiple levels of discourse on the MBA as regulatory forces acting to shape the identities of the participants, and therefore represents a complementary piece to Gagnon (2008), who examined executive, non-qualification programmes. The closest recent study to this thesis is Sturdy, et al. (2006a), which both studies MBAs specifically, and adopts an identity work approach to understanding practicing as an MBA. I will therefore make a close comparison of this study with my thesis. I begin with the similarities. It concurs with my analysis that ‘conventional notions of acquiring, translating and applying management tools and frameworks are barely significant’ (Sturdy, et al., 2006a: 844), suggesting instead that processes,

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with overlaps to adaption, are being undertaken by the MBAs, including a concern for the ways in which interlocking discourses constrain available identities (Sturdy, et al., 2006a: 841): Some direct translation, combination and application of ideas is evident, along with the more indirect discursive construction of identity as 'strategic' or managerial in content... However ... opportunities for application to organisational practices are seen as inappropriate or impeded within the organisation. For me, from this point of view Sturdy et al. (2006a) represents a complementary study to this thesis – it provides an additional excellent indication of the relevance and appropriateness of both the topic and the approach of this thesis. However, despite the congruence of approach there are some equally important points where our findings differ, or this thesis offers an alternative explanation. For example, Sturdy et al. (2006a: 851) suggest that, for their sample, ‘the consequence [of gaining the MBA qualification] was a change in the perception of self; a self that is more sharply perceived, less ambiguous, more keenly felt and one more positively valued in emotional terms’. The process of adaption as positioned here would certainly allow for and help to explain such an outcome when it occurred, but would also allow sense to be made of those from this study who it seems did not experience a more ‘sharply perceived’, ‘less ambiguous’ identity as an MBA at work. Therefore I feel also move on somewhat from the 2006 study – particularly in the multiple metaphor approach used in the thesis, and the extended examination of dis-identification in the form of divesting in the weaving of an MBA identity. Further evidence of the explanatory role which adaption can provide comes from examining Brocklehurst, et al. (2007: 380) recent introductory editorial to a special of the journal Management Learning on the MBA entitled ‘Whither the MBA’: When MBA students are asked what benefit they derive from an MBA, they mention the qualification itself, a subsequent improvement in their status, an increase in selfconfidence, an induction into a specialised discourse, membership of a network of elite international managers for which they believe they have been carefully selected – but less often than one might expect do they emphasise the acquisition of specific practical skills or techniques. The lens of adaption allows a degree of explanation, through identity work, of all the elements listed by Brocklehurst et al. – the mask of the ‘qualification’, the requirement to translate a ‘specialist discourse’, the identification of themselves with a potential MBA status elite, and the lack of emphasis of ‘specific practical skills or techniques’; these have been woven into their broader texture of a managerial identity, and they have divested themselves of explicit invocation of them. Adaption doesn’t imply or demand that there is a distinctive ‘MBA’ identity which can always be delineated and tied indelibly to the MBA qualification, but it provides a clear and, I would argue, powerful route for understanding both the black box / emperor’s new clothes concerns with many MBA studies, and provides an identity work process for explaining how MBAs practice, are identified, and are constituted at work. One further area which has a number of conceptual overlaps with adaption is a stream of research which describes and explores how individuals ‘craft’ an identity. This approach brings together aspects of ‘craftwork’ as identity and its tradition within tacit or craft practices, and aspects of the 201

recent re-conceptualisation of resistance to discursive determination. Particularly in the way in which identities are structured and shaped through movement between different discourses in relation to workplace practice, crafting offers an important complement to adaption as a process of cutting, weaving and divesting identities. Identities related to craft (or the craft one undertakes) have a long tradition in sociological study (Sennett, 2008). This idea of craft or craftwork is of course also a central tenet the practice movement (Gheradi, 2000). In this tradition the practical development of a craft – often a linked to a physical ability which operates as a trade, such as musicians, weavers, goldsmiths, or, more contemporarily, camera crew or computer programmers – creates an identity grounded in expertise, practice, and applied or ‘vocational’ knowledge (Christopherson, 2008). The embodied expertise of a learned craft provides (at least potentially) the security of an identity grounded in practice, and one in which the agency of the individual to produce something of worth – of good quality, and not least to themselves – is what engenders that security. Crafting an identity is then a process of developing that embodied expertise such that one can take security and even pleasure from one’s efforts – one’s agency – in claiming and proving an identity as expert. Even here, though, with craft and craftwork as a potential refuge from the constant discursive slippage of identity, trials of agency in claiming particular identities are fraught with contradictions. As sociologist Richard Sennett (2008), in his recent book exploring the social history of the craftsman, suggests: Agency does not happen in a social or emotional vacuum, particularly good-quality work. The desire to do something well is a personal litmus test; inadequate personal performance hurts in a different way than inequalities of inherited social position or the externals of wealth: it is about you. Agency is all to the good, but actively pursuing good work and finding you can’t do it corrodes one’s sense of self. (Sennett, 2008: 97) In crafting an identity the powerful impositions of discourses still intrude, both in the internal sense of self, and in the external opportunity to claim an identity. The evitable multiple communities within which the individual moves means that crafting an identity within one sphere – mastery of that context, even – doesn’t help when alternative identities are being valued. Discussing the 16th century master goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini, celebrated for crafting a fabulously-original saltcellar from pure gold, Sennett (2008) writes: But [his] originality carried a price. Originality could fail to provide autonomy. [Instead it is] a case study of how originality could lead to new kinds of social dependence and, indeed, humiliation. Cellini left the guild realm of assay and metal production only to enter court life with all its intrigues of patronage. With no corporate guarantee for the worth of his work, Cellini had to charm, hector, and plead with kings and princes of the Church. (Sennett, 2008: 71) However, while Sennett considers craft – despite its precariousness – a potential site of identity security, others suggest it is precisely these craft and craftwork identities which have been most heavily eroded in modern western society, in favour of more amorphous ‘managerial’ identities (Sayce, et al., 2007). Sayce et al. (2007) analyse changes in worker identity that occurred within a manufacturing firm restructuring, and specifically link the declining status of craft work in relation to the imposition of a ‘management’ discourse (Sayce, et al., 2007). This understanding of craft 202

emanates from a parallel stream of ‘crafting’ research, which examines the role of discourse and power in shaping how individuals are able to craft an identity, that is, they examine how ‘personhood is defined … [and individuals] craft themselves in the practice of everyday life’ in specific contexts (Kondo, 1990: 23). Here crafting refers to the process of crafting an identity from within the more amorphous management or managerial discourses – with discourses as much as material practice as the resources to-hand. Crafting an managerial identity in these terms is then a process of claiming and resisting the ‘bewildering array of discursive resources, identity materials and cues’ (Down and Reveley, 2009: 382) in which individual are immersed. This process is a form or recasting of identity work, in that it sees managerial ‘selves as crafted in processes of work within matrices of power … [and investigates] complexity, power, contradiction, discursive production and ambiguity … in order to complicate and dismantle the ready stereotypes that erase complexity in favour of simple, unitary images’ (Kondo, 1990: 300 and 302). In particular this ‘complicating’ and ‘dismantling’ focuses on the ways in which identities are resisted – or the nature of this resistance, and it is this area which makes it particularly salient to the idea of adaption. Research examining how identity is crafted therefore looks, firstly, on the way in which resistance to particular discourses can create ‘befuddlement as much as narrative coherence or unity’ to one’s sense of self (Down and Reveley, 2009: 382), and secondly, when close analysis of identity accomplishments in practice renders resistance as productive of identities (Thomas and Davies, 2005). One aspect of crafting an identity is the resistance to a dominant discourse, for example through ‘unsupervised “remaking” of a job role’ (Lyons, 2008: 25). However, studies of crafting have tended to see the power of particular managerial discourses less in terms of monolithic oppression and a straight-forward ‘negative paradigm of resistance’ (Thomas and Davies, 2005: 685) in response, but rather have viewed individuals as crafting identities which creatively draw on alternatives to ‘mainstream’ managerial discourses (Musson and Duberley, 2007). While resistance to dominant discourses is sometimes seen as a single response to a single demand, some research examining crafting an identity seeks to ‘break out of the dualistic debate of “compliance with” versus “resistance to” to offer a more generative understanding of resistance at the micro-level’ (Thomas and Davies, 2005: 683). By this they mean, partly, that individual resistance to corporate discourses is present through less confrontational ‘micro-emancipatory’ methods (Alvesson and Willmott, 1992b) such as cynicism or humour (Fleming and Spicer, 2003; Fleming and Spicer, 2007). But it also implies that crafting an identity through resistance should be ‘understood as a constant process of adaptation, subversion and re-inscription of dominant discourse: resistance therefore is stimulated by the contradictions, weaknesses and gaps between alterative subject positions’ (Thomas and Davies, 2005: 687). This is particularly interesting in relation to adaption, in that the ‘hidden’ nature of the MBA as individuals try and divest themselves of an MBA identity can potentially been seen as a form of resistance when understood as part of crafting an identity. In this sense, being an MBA is part of a managerial identity in which a figure is cut, crafted and woven by individuals through the ‘heteroglossia’ of organisational discourses of development, change, restructuring and new managerial discourses: ‘discordant … discourses that buffet and discombobulate frontline 203

managers, thereby making it difficult for them to sustain coherent identity narratives’ (Down and Reveley, 2009: 381). Down and Reveley’s (2009) description of buffeted, discombobulated and ‘befuddled’ (Down and Reveley, 2009: 382) managers resonates with the MBAs trying to weave and divest an MBA identity within and through competing organisational discourses. Seeing their regular resistance to recognition of an MBA identity (with its overlay of ‘ready stereotypes’ quoted from Kondo (1990) above) as not a pure negation, but rather as part of an engagement with the competing discourses, illuminates those minor and confused acts of resistance as themselves involving ‘the reification and reproduction of that which is being resisted, by legitimising and privileging it as an arena for political contest’ (Thomas and Davies, 2005: 700). Adaption can therefore be usefully understood as a means of crafting an identity through modes of resistance to ‘discordant’ discourses, particularly in the way the data in this thesis has described the complexity and difficulty many of the MBAs have in settling or claiming and MBA identity. Down and Reveley (2009) refer the work of Goffman (1967), in a quote describing crafting identity which neatly encapsulates many of the concerns which cause the MBAs to wish to divest themselves of, and weave in, an MBA identity: Claiming of a special skill or expertise vis-à-vis others risks eliciting embarrassment or hostility, particularly given the “threat to another’s face” posed by using that expertise claim to comment on their performance; and a common response to this risk is simply to “wriggle out of the difficulty by means of self-abasement” (Goffman, 1967: 32). (Down and Reveley, 2009: 392) This ‘crafting’ relationship between expertise, identity, interpersonal relations, discourse and the need to ‘wriggle out’ of a particular identification seems to me to lie at the heart of the desire to divest of an MBA identity, while simultaneously wishing to claim it. Relating the process of adaption to crafting an identity gives insight into the ways in which the cutting and weaving a particular identity is accomplished through resistance to certain discursive positioning, but also that it is this resistance which ‘results in the reification, legitimisation and reproduction of the very subject positions that they are denying’ (Thomas and Davies, 2005: 700). Taking a more nuanced understanding of resistance – where is it seen as generative of particular subject positions for MBA identities – clearly provides insight, and potential new directions, to some of the ways in which adaption marries attempts by the MBAs at self-presentation, and attempts to divest particular identities. However, many of these ‘crafting’ studies are examining the creation of identity through local, nuanced resistance to broadly ‘imposed’ discourses – for example, managerial discourses over craftwork, or of ‘new public management’ over previous selfdefinitions of autonomous professionals. What makes the MBA case particularly interesting in relation to this understanding of ‘crafting an identity’ is that, in general, the interviewees are desperate to ‘successfully’ claim or embrace, rather than reject, avoid or deny, the ‘mainstream’ or apparently broadly dominant discourse – that of the MBA as ‘crown jewel’, ‘desirable’ signal of expertise and earning potential. That their ‘resistance’ extends to what Jones, et al. (2008) term ‘discourse suppression’ offers an important angle on the ‘resistance as crafting an identity’ conceptualisation, in that it appears that the ‘generative’ nature of identities comes not only from pressure of resistance, but also from problematic attempts to embrace or achieve a particular identity through identity work. 204

5.1.4

The implications of adaption

In terms of drawing conclusions and discussing this study in relation to the extant literature, there is one further aspect to cover before discussing methodological limitations of the research (Section 5.2 below), and that is to explore the extent to which the conclusions of the thesis lends themselves to any normative ‘recommendations’ regarding the ‘successful’ MBA identity and its construction. The previous section hinted towards ‘more or less’ and potentially ‘better or worse’ forms, levels or performances of adaption. Given the research questions developed for this thesis, prognostications regarding application in terms of programmatic statements for improving course design, HRD systems etc., clearly fall well beyond its scope. Indeed moving down this line of thinking could well been seen as an attempt to ‘transmogrify’ or ‘functionalise’ adaption into the kind of performative concept it was developed to counter in the first place. However, there remains the question as to whether it would be possible to draw such implications from the study while remaining faithful to the research framework employed. Examining how other studies cited just above have tackled this concern, it is clear that most reject the idea that the MBA knowledge simply ‘transfers’, but many are tentative concerning alternatives. Hay and Hodgkinson (2008), for example, merely propose that there is ‘an indirect value to practice’ of the MBA qualification, and that the more reflective actions of MBAs should be taken into account when evaluating their success. US-derived studies are less reticent, with Kreiner, et al. (2006b: 1052) stating boldly that ‘our findings suggest that identity work tactics can be shared and taught’. The distinction seems to rest on the degree to which identity resources and individual identities are layered, so that when some self-identity is displayed / recognised, others are present and available in discursive resources surrounding the individual, but below the surface somehow in that particular interaction. The individual then makes a conscious choice regarding which identity aspects to foreground and which to keep hidden. Pratt, et al. (2006: 257), for example, describe their identity customisation concept in these terms: Therefore, the [identity] customisation process described herein appears more akin to mass customisation, a process whereby goods are produced on an assembly line but tailored to an individual's needs. Here members can be said to have been able to pick and choose from various identity elements - as if choosing from an identity "menu" - to make sense of their work, but these choices were highly constrained by the organisational context. This hierarchy of different items / identities can then be shuffled forward in certain circumstances from the ‘pack of cards’ of possible identities, but remain, perhaps hidden, on the menu of options at other times (Sluss and Ashforth, 2007; Day and Harrison, 2007; Hewlin, 2003). From this theoretical position, it is only a short hop to suggest that what to pick from the menu, and when, is itself a kind of ‘skill’, or even ‘meta-skill’ (see Section 5.2.2.2 below) which can be identified, encouraged and taught ‘tactically’ as Kreiner et al. (2006a) suggest. On the other hand, I’ve already referenced earlier a number of identity work scholars who feel that this kind of conclusion is evidence of a ‘naïvety’ of assuming that ‘identity can be pushed in any direction without inertia, pain, resistance, and unintended consequences’ (Alvesson and Willmott, 2002: 637), and who assert that identity work is precisely not like picking ‘from a shopping list; consciously choosing from a menu of options. ... [Instead individuals] form identities as an exercise of social power’ (Thomas and Linstead, 2002: 75). 205

Adaption sits between these two positions. The di-vesting concept clearly assumes the potential ability of an individual to avoid designation as an MBA when they do not wish to be – although of course they may not always be successful. Cutting a figure as an MBA by translating aspects of the MBA community practice into work organisation practice might also involve a kind of hiding or sublimation in a social setting which nonetheless is part of a conscious process of maintaining a ‘vest’ of the MBA under the ‘T-shirt’ of another recognised identity. On the other hand the data leading to the MBA vest concept indicates it is often both difficult to avoid being identified as an MBA, and a wrench to have to do so, as individuals cannot ‘take on and abandon social identities fairly simply, as if they are readily available and easily forgotten ... [because] individuals make considerable investments of time, energy and more in social identities’ (Kreiner, et al., 2006b: 1052). I would therefore be very cautious in pronouncing that ‘better’ adaption could lead to a more successful MBA self-identity, but the implications of stories from the data of strategic, subtle, nuanced translation and divestment of an MBA aspect to identity do point in that direction. A tentative approach based on the idea that intelligent understanding of how to translate MBA practice, and when to court and when to divest identification of an MBA-derived self-identity, would allow adaption to be a potential method of charting a course at an individual level between the black box issue – that there is no way of ‘viewing’ better MBA practice directly – and the emperor’s new clothes issues – that there is nothing except symbol to the MBA. This understanding of successful adaption of an MBA self-identity would entail all of the elements of adaption – weaving, divesting, and cutting a particular figure. Somewhat contrary to Sturdy et al. (2006a: 855), who suggest that ‘the MBA might better be seen as a form of therapeutic language training within life projects than a funnel for learning explicit management ideas to further organisational and national competitiveness’, successful adaption of an MBA self-identity would suggest it can be both – although the ‘showing’ of the MBA would likely be woven into local practice, rather than explicitly invoked for identification. So, despite the concerns related to attempts to ‘functionalise’ identity work concepts, it does seem reasonable to cautiously link the limited, but important, sense of agency present in the interviewee’s descriptions of MBA adaption to potential flexible use of adaption as an identity resource, just as Coupland, et al. (2008: 328) suggest that ‘descriptions of emotional experiences can be regarded as resources that may be utilised flexibly to 'manage' their identities’ (see also Hardy, et al., 2002). In this sense there does seem to be an advantage to a reflexive and conscious awareness among MBAs that the processes of adaption are happening, e.g. that it is, in the main, those who assume that MBA ‘knowledge’ ‘just does transfer’ into the workplace are less able to project a relatively consistently successful MBA identity because they are not, as some others are, seeing it as a subtle, contextualised, nuanced process of weaving and divesting. This position definitely has some similarities with that of Brown and Hesketh (2004), who distinguish between graduate recruitment interviewees who see the recruitment process as a ‘real’ test of knowledge and experience, and those who see it as a kind of complex game or dance (see also Maccoby, 1976). Brown and Hesketh (2004) find those treating the process as a ‘game’ more successful (in gaining the role) than the former group. There are interesting links between this research and a recent study which found that those who the authors describe as ‘chameleon-like high self206

monitors’ (Mehra and Schenkel, 2008: 138) – e.g. individual who are highly reflexive about how they are being identified – are both more like to adapt successfully to changes in work context, but interestingly also more likely deliberately position themselves in boundary-spanning roles. Such findings, brought together, begin to tentatively suggest lines of support consonant with adaption. For example, for organisational practice: investigations as to how to most usefully position MBAs in organisations, and for business school teaching: alerting MBAs to the likely ways in which they will have to deploy or at least understand adaption to maintain an MBA identity at work. Caution is still required, however, to prevent the assumption that adaption then becomes a ‘meta-skill’ which can be inculcated, assessed and measured in MBA programmes (see Section 5.2.2.2 below). In summary, this Section has examined and reflected on the relationship between the concept of adaption developed in this thesis, and other recent literature on identity work and management development. It has found that adaption is coherent and distinguishable as a concept within the emerging and proliferating literature on identity work, and offers a potential framework and vocabulary for understanding a number of the other recent concepts. It is also powerful analytical heuristic, which might well offer support for a number of practical applications.

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5.2 Limitations The previous section has sought to promote, distinguish and delineate adaption as a useful and insightful addition to the proliferating canon of terms around identity work. In particular it has focused on introducing adaption as a process relevant to understanding the experience of certain sorts of MBA degree graduates – indeed the discussion of the contribution of this research and thesis (see Section 5.3.1 below) focuses on this area. However, before discussing the thesis’ contribution, it is important to cover the different kinds of limitations there are to the research reported above. Both the literature review (Chapter 2) and the methodology section (Chapter 3) have been at pains to position the research within a particular frame – focusing particularly on the theoretical placing of the research within particular research paradigms, and certain traditions. It is therefore appropriate that discussion of the quality of the research through its limitations in this section is congruent with its stated meta-theoretical concerns as outlined within the Alvesson and Deetz (2000) framework. Firstly, as noted in Chapter 3, a qualitative and broadly inductive study such as this one should pay particular attention to the role of the researcher in the production of the research (Section 3.1.3; Alvesson and Sköldberg, 2000). Being therefore aware of the complex problem of ‘the conflation between method and interpretation’ (Guba and Lincoln, 2000: 178) in qualitative research, when evaluating the quality of the research the researcher must reflect on how their own decisions and interpretations have affected the outcomes of the research. Section 5.2.1 below therefore demonstrates a reflexive concern by me as a researcher as to the methodological quality of my work. However, the precise criteria against which qualitative research should be judged have become so controversial that an entire field of work, often labelled ‘criteriology’ (Seale, 1999) has grown up to explore and explicate the issue (Johnson, et al., 2006; Spencer, et al., 2003). For this reason the methodological reflexivity of the kind undertaken in Section 5.2.1 is seen by many as insufficiently broad. Rather than stop at the level of methodological reflexivity we must step back to an epistemological or meta-theoretical level, acknowledging that because ‘we cannot eradicate our subjective meta-theoretical commitments, we must open them to our inspection through our capacity for reflexivity’ (Johnson and Duberley, 2003: 1280). Discussion of the limitations of this thesis will therefore draw on a framework suggested by Johnson and Duberley (2003) concerning reflexivity in qualitative business and management research, which separates reflexivity into three relatively distinct levels, each of which reflect different kinds of theoretical concerns: Methodological reflexivity (Section 5.2.1), Epistemological reflexivity (Section 5.2.2), and Disciplinary reflexivity (Section 5.2.3). The precise distinctions between these levels are discussed within the individual sections.

5.2.1

Methodological Reflexivity

This section, covering methodological reflexivity, is organised according to what Steinar Kvale, 1995) describes – rather tongue in cheek – as ‘the holy trinity’ of evaluative criteria for research: 208

Validity, Generalisability and Reliability. These terms are used here because they are wellestablished methods of reflexivity, involving primarily ‘reflecting on the way in which research is carried out and understanding how the process of doing research shapes its outcomes’ (Hardy, et al., 2001: 535). However, they are somewhat controversial – and hence Kvale’s tongue-in-cheek description – when applied to qualitative research. This is because, as Johnson and Duberley, 2003: 1284) note, they are strongly associated with the normative, ‘scientific’, quantitative method – which of course was rejected for this research in the Chapter 3 discussion – and also their use tends to assume a focus on ‘localised critique and evaluation of the 'technical' aspects of the particular methodology deployed [at the expense of] the underlying meta-theoretical assumptions that justify that methodology in the first place’ (Johnson and Duberley, 2003: 1284). This traditional ‘trinity’ of criteria certainly tend to focus on testing the quality of research from ‘within the game’ (Kuhn, 1970: 37) rather than radically questioning the rules of that game. Yet those criteria posited for evaluating non-normative research – including ‘internally reflexive audit trails, dependability, confirmability, and ecological validity’ for interpretive research, and ‘heteroglossia, unsettling of the hegemonic; articulation of incommensurable plurality of discourses, and de-centring the author through multivocality’ for dialogic research (Johnson, et al., 2006: 147) – themselves seem to generally ignore the point that the idea of criteria is itself ‘essential procedural’ and that ‘internal’ concerns arguably remain important in all types of research, albeit interpreted differently (Seale, 1999; see also Silverman, 1993). I am therefore maintaining a traditional division of methodological quality criteria in this section, but am interpreting them according to appropriate criteria for a qualitative, interpretive and partially dialogic study, beginning, of course with validity which was discussed at length in Section 3.5 above, and continuing here with generalisability (Section 5.2.1.1) and then reliability (Section 5.2.1.2). However, before discussing generalisability, one important aspect to reflect upon is the relative value of interviews vs. observation for exploring and investigating identity and identity work. Indeed, as noted in Section 3.2.2 it was a particular quote from Sveningsson and Alvesson (2003: 1165, my emphasis) stating that ‘identity lacks sufficient substance and discreteness to be captured in questionnaires or single interviews and to be measured and counted’ which led me to include some element of observation in the study. While clearly informing the overall tenor of my analysis, my relatively light use of the observational data in the final data presentation for the thesis perhaps indicates my disappointment at the extent I was able to make use of the observational data – particularly considering the relative ‘fieldtime’ involved: approx 30 hours with 26 individuals for the interviews, and approx 180 hours observation with 4 individuals. Reflecting on that observational element of the thesis I consider it was problematic for a number of reasons. Firstly I must acknowledge the possibility of a lack of analytical skill; that the sparse use of observational data compared to interview data reflects a level of experience and comfort with interviewing, interview studies and interview analysis which was not replicated in observation – which was newer to me as a technique.

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Secondly, one of the key elements to emerge from the ‘adaption’ concept is the strong element of subtle disguise of overt employment of the MBA. Observing a failure to demonstrate something which might be ‘MBA-ness’ is, of course, highly problematic. Naturally, after an observed meeting in which I thought I discerned something interesting, I would ask the individual being observed about it, but then, epistemologically, I have the same issues (and presumably Alvesson and Sveningsson would too17) as if I was undertaking an interview. This particularly seemed so given the propensity of the observees to make comments like: ‘[MBA observee] points out that she’s been thinking about the MBA prior to this meeting [of her colleagues] and in the planning, and only realised she was doing so when she realised I [the researcher] was going to be around’ (4, Day 1: 1). The ‘impact’ of the researcher on the situation was felt particularly acutely at such points, especially on those occasions when (because some explanation had to be given to others as to my presence as an observer) I was introduced as observing ‘what people were doing with their MBA’, inevitably causing the idea and ideas of ‘MBAs’ to be higher in the minds of both my observee and those around them in the subsequent interchanges. Lastly, despite it being a relatively (for me) inefficient process for data collection, including an observational phase in the research did provide some important fillips to the study’s validity. For example, the relatively covert nature of the MBA was brought home in the number of times during observation I was told by observee’s colleagues, ‘Oh, do they [the observee] have an MBA? – I didn’t know that’, even from quite long-standing colleagues. Also, the distinct lack of ‘clichéd’ discursive ‘markers’ of being an MBA – explaining an organisational situation using a 2-by-2 matrix, overuse of the word strategy etc. – while I was observing the MBAs supports the idea (suggested by the interview data) that it is rarely overtly visible. In addition, while there was little overt indication of ‘being an MBA’ in the observational data, my sense of what was entailed in ‘being a manager and an MBA in the organisation’ resonated strongly with more general observational studies of being a manager (Watson, 1994; Mintzberg, 1973), something which is highly relevant for assessing generalisability.

5.2.1.1

Generalisability

In common with the discussion of validity above, generalising from qualitative study ‘does not follow a purely statistical logic in field research’ (Silverman, 1993), but generalisability is nonetheless an important concern of such research. As noted in Section 3.1.3 above, qualitative research is ‘particularistic regarding both time and place even though the emerging analytic frame is designed to aid the deeper understanding of other particular settings’ (Deetz, 1996: 196). For assessing quality of research through generalisability here I will use a number of appropriate aspects mentioned by Silverman (1993), including discussion of generalisability of sample / data, and concepts / theories. 1)

17

Sample: The sample for this research was self-selecting, and therefore should be a reasonable representation of the narrow category from which it was drawn, e.g. UK nationals who had undertaken an MBA degree at one of two schools in the UK, sponsored

Professor Alvesson acknowledged as much to me in comments he made on a presentation of my work at Lund University in May 2006.

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by their specific one of two organisations, and who were still employed in their organisation at the time of data collection for the study. It seems to me relatively uncontroversial that the experiences of the interviewees should cover most of the kinds of experiences had by the small number of others fitting those exact criteria (e.g. I have ‘no reason to expect atypicality’ (Mason, 1996: 154)). In terms of extending the findings beyond that immediate population, clearly more caution is required. However, in relation to ‘traditional’ generalising, certain findings seem likely to resonate with somewhat broader populations. For example, the finding that MBAs have a tendency to be very cautious about overtly invoking the MBA seems likely to be something MBAs in large, well-established ‘blue-chip’ UK organisations other than those studied might find important. Another suggestion for generalisation of the data outside the current population is to those MBAs who studied part-time at a range of schools in the UK, but who have remained with their sponsoring employer following completion of their MBA. On other hand, it seems clear from the data that generalising to other types of MBAs – e.g. full-time MBAs, US-gained MBAs, etc – or to those either not staying with their organisation, or moving into consultancy, would be difficult and requiring of further research (see Section 5.3.2 below) before knowing if the same kinds of patterns of experiences and identity work would be discovered. In Section 4.1.2.2 above one of the interviewees notes stark differences between their experience and their perceptions of a full-time MBA experience, and another interviewee comments on the difference between himself and those who went into mainstream consultancy firms after their MBA: I mean you could argue that many people change for lots of different reasons and they’re worth more to you, just because they’ve changed, and I feel it’s not really change itself, it’s how you put the change to use, so I mean I try and say about the change itself, but it still remains the fact that the outside world values the piece of paper, because it’s tangible evidence that you’ve done something, and if you go to a consultancy, then really they make their money by how many letters you have after your name. (16: 450-6) Given these concerns, it seems therefore sensible to draw a cautious but reasonable empirical generalisation line for this research (Gomm, 2004) at sponsored MBAs within UK schools, who have stayed with their large organisations. 2)

Concepts / theories: As Silverman (1993) notes, compared to relatively narrow possibilities for generalisation from the sample, qualitative research can often provide a wide theoretical generalisation. The fit of key concepts from the research to other recent research on identity work is discussed in Section 5.1.3 above, but here there are a number of areas to which the concepts and ideas developed and explored here could potentially be usefully applied. Firstly, the ideas contained within the adaption process could reasonably be applied within identity work studies more broadly.

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Secondly, the process of adaption as a concept is one which could be applied to MBAs more generally, particularly to help understand the experience of MBAs, and the identities they are constructing and forging in the workplace. Expanding the idea of adaption as a mix of learning and identity theories additionally assists in understanding the problems of many more normative studies of MBAs and MBA ‘value’. Thirdly, it seems likely that identity work processes such as adaption could be applied to learners undertaking a range of business and management qualifications – a crucial limit being those qualifications well-enough known within the organisation to have developed a certain broader discursive reputation like the MBA. Perhaps in addition to academic qualifications, symbols of expertise such as the professions might also be amenable to study through the adaption lens (see Section 5.2.3.2 below) Fourthly, the aspects of the research describing identity processes across boundaries – in this case between business schools and workplaces, but also other ‘liminal’ positions such as consultants (Sturdy, et al., 2006b) – could have potential relevance to the other studies of those crossing organisational or social group boundaries, including those changing job, and those undertaking other kinds of training programmes. This generalising of the concepts from this research represent a tentative assumption given some groups with broadly similar circumstances – this is obviously not a suggestion that adaption must be the only or primary process for making sense of those other experiences, or that adaption applies in the same manner, as a quantitative generalisation would imply.

5.2.1.2

Reliability

Reliability – defined in quantitative studies as the extent to which the same result is achieved when a measure is repeatedly applied to the same group – seems the least likely of the ‘holy trinity’ to translate into qualitative research. However, as Kirk and Miller (1986: 72) note: ‘qualitative researchers can no longer afford to beg the issue of reliability’. Kirk elucidates a key method through which qualitative research can be more reliable, by aiming for a high degree of transparency in the research; that is, ‘for reliability to be calculated, it is incumbent upon the scientific investigator to document his or her procedure’ (Kirk and Miller, 1986: 72). While the pure interpretive, sense-making aspects of the data analysis – the actual assigning of codes to text – remains within the head of the analyst, I have striven to make the other aspects of the procedure as clear as possible. The general structure of the analysis, e.g. through the metaphors, was discussed in detail in Section 3.4.3. As noted in Chapter 3, the final coding structure for the data is present in the ‘level 4’ headings in Chapter 4; a wealth of data from the interviews has been presented to indicate as often as possible the relationship between the data and the interpretation; and the conclusions of Chapter 5 develop directly from the analysis of Chapter 4. In Section 3.4.2 I argued against using a Conversation Analysis presentation of the data, but to do so would have increased the degree of ‘low inference descriptors’ (Seale, 1999), and therefore, potentially, affect the reliability of the analysis. I stand by that decision in reflecting upon the 212

completed analysis. I feel that the data shown is sufficient to indicate the conclusions drawn from it without recourse to more structured analysis of the language, although this clearly continues to have its place in analysing identity (e.g. Harding, 2008). One further aspect related to reliability is the extension of the analysis from a purely interpretive understanding of the interview and observational data to one which tried to understand the relationship between that data and broader discourse. It is arguable that this is a reliability issue in that it provides a potentially more ‘complete’ picture of the phenomenon, increasing the chances that the analysis is situated within wider social and discursive concerns. This is also linked to the discussion in Section 3.1.2 concerning how reliably learning – however defined - can be observed improves reliability. But understanding it in relation to identity requires an understanding of wider discourse, as Alvesson, et al. (2008: 11) suggest: Much of the research that is focused on perceptions and practices in particular organisations neglects what is not immediately visible from the vantage point of participants and researchers—that which remains silent in live interviews or obscured by survey instruments. The broader historical, cultural, institutional and political influences that inevitably shape local dilemmas and responses thus fade from sight. I have therefore tried to employ research methods that bring the wider discursive aspects into the analysis both for improving the methodological reliability of the study.

5.2.2

Epistemological Reflexivity

The next ‘layer’ of reflexivity within Johnson and Duberley’s (2003) framework is epistemological reflexivity. Although a complex concept, it can be glossed in relation to methodological reflexivity as moving on from questioning whether the game was played by the rules, to questioning the rules of the game. It takes a further ‘step back’, so to speak, to view the context in which the research was undertaken, and the decisions taken to form the research’s epistemological position. For this reason, Alvesson and Sköldberg (2000) gloss epistemological reflexivity as ‘the interpretation of interpretation’. Two related aspects will be considered here. Firstly, understanding whether the research in this thesis measures up within the expectations of identity work, and identities studies overall (Section 5.2.2.1) and secondly, dealing with a particular problem in moving the conclusions of the research towards some kind of ‘actionable’ or normative knowledge (5.2.2.2)

5.2.2.1

Reflections on good identity work work

A recent review of identity studies in business and management (Alvesson, et al., 2008) offers a useful frame against which to understand the study undertaken for this thesis. While fitting the concepts of this research within the literature was covered in Section 5.1.2 above here it is important to understand the whole research within current ideas of researching identity. In general, I feel the research matches up well against the topics and areas suggested by Alvesson et al. (2008: 15-28) – in fact their work, published after the analysis of this thesis was completed – 213

provides something of a ‘check-list’ against which to measure my own research. In particular, there is increasing concern within identity studies to bring together different ‘levels’ of discourse and understand their interaction in creating identity at an individual level. My research in this thesis has focused upon individual identities, but has been at pains to understand their identity-forming activities through the ‘extra individual’ forces of ‘organisational agents and discourses’, as well as ‘societal/cultural discourses and institutionalized cultural patterns’ – all aspects which Alvesson et al. (2008: 18) encourage for identity studies in organisations. Furthermore, this research has explored aspects not only of ‘discursive formations’ around the MBA through study of ‘embodied practice’ (Alvesson et al., 2008: 19), particularly through the three primary metaphors, but it has also attempted to elucidate issues around ‘disidentification’; the ‘constitution of the self around what it is not’ (Alvesson et al., 2008: 19). My research has sought to ‘understand individual’s experiences at work’, as well, particularly, as ‘revealing problems associated with political and cultural irrationalities’ (Alvesson et al., 2008: 17) – in my case, those surrounding the strong ‘black box’ or ‘emperor’s new clothes’ readings of the ‘value’ of the MBA. Finally, my research has employed ‘interviews, participant observation, and reading texts’, to study’ ‘ongoing process’, and ‘recurring micro-level incidents’ (Alvesson et al., 2008: 20-21) – particularly in the deployment or identification of the MBA identity in a work setting. Overall I feel therefore that it its framing and conceptualisation, as well as in its execution (discussed in Section 5.2.1), this research ‘fits’ well within the kinds of scope and interests of identity studies – particularly in its sometimes-uneasy mix of interpretive and more dialogic approaches. In terms of the reflecting on the areas key authors would like to see research undertaken in this area, and the approaches they would like to see taken – particularly its epistemological stance – this research certainly seems well-positioned to make a quality contribution. Furthermore, as these suggestions from Alvesson et al. (2008) were developed through their research at the same time as the development of this research (and only published as it was coming to its completion, as were other similar contributions, such as Gagnon (2008), it suggests the overall thrust of the research is well-situated within the development of a particular school of research in organisation studies.

5.2.2.2

The meta-skills problem

A specific concern at the epistemological level with the research regards the kinds of ‘practical’ conclusions which can be drawn from it. As noted above in Section 5.1.4 above, one implication of the research is that certain approaches to identity work actions through adaption should be amenable to improvements, i.e. if ‘good’ adaption is how MBAs ‘successfully’ are MBAs in the workplace, then ‘adaption’ should be taught to MBA students to help them ‘utilise’ it better. The problem is that this conceptualisation positions adaption as a kind of ‘meta-skill’: adaption as knowing when to deploy certain other skills (showing / hiding, patching, weaving, etc.). It could even be glossed as a competence or a transferable skill – as exactly one of those ideas I had concerns about in Section 2.1. However, if adaption could be ‘taught’ as a transferable skill, then clearly, individuals would have to have some awareness of when to deploy adaption. Holmes (1997: 5) follows through on the logic: 214

If transferable skills were explanatory terms we would be faced with the further theoretical task of explaining how a person decides which skills should be used, and how, in the different contexts to which they are deemed to be transferable. One attempt at this is to suppose some further ‘meta-skills’ (or set of them) which might be called transfer skills. But then how does an individual decide that a situation requires the application of such a skill to transfer a particular transferable skill to the situation? Presumably there must be an infinite series of such ‘meta-skills’! This gives rise to a problem of ‘infinite regression’ in which we cannot ever get to ‘the bottom’ of language, culture, or context so we can ultimately decide what is needed to decide what is required when (see Rorty, 1991: 99-100); something sometimes termed the ‘turtles all the way down’ problem.18 For these reasons, despite the acknowledged important role of individual agency in the process of adaption, at an epistemological level such concepts cannot be easily ‘normalised’ for deployment. Reflection on the development of the conceptualisation should give pause before any rush to assume that such a process can be, in a sense, commoditised for ‘transfer’. While development of particular identities within particular communities is a learning process, the specificities of those contexts, the caution with which empirical findings from those contexts can be generalised, and the ‘infinite regression’ problematic outlined here, give the lie to any simplistic sense in which ‘identity work tactics can be shared and taught’ (Kreiner, et al., 2006b: 1052).

5.2.3

Disciplinary Reflexivity

The final element of reflexivity within Johnson and Duberley’s (2003) framework is disciplinary reflexivity. At the risk of overlabouring the analogy, this ‘level’ of reflexivity takes a further ‘step back’, so that we question not only the rules of the game, but why certain games are being played, and why we might be considering it a game in the first place. In this sense it moves beyond the role and position of the researcher in creating the research, to additionally examine ‘the community ... recognising that we [as researchers] operate in complex networks that hold in place certain approaches to representation’ (Hardy, et al., 2001: 540). These complex networks – which form particular disciplines and establish disciplinary boundaries – make important decisions as regards acceptable or appropriate epistemological and metatheoretical positions for research. Within the previous section, I indicated that from an evaluative point of view, my research was well-positioned to fit within identity work research. In this section I examine some of the limitations of that frame for my research, beginning with the role and possibility of ‘multi-standpoint’ research (Section 5.2.3.1) and then exploring some of the theoretical avenues the data suggested which were not taken (Section 5.2.3.2). 18

The story, as told in its most famous incarnation, in the opening of Hawking, 1988: 1): ‘A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the centre of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.” The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, “What is the tortoise standing on?” “You're very clever, young man, very clever,” said the old lady. “But it's turtles all the way down!”.

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5.2.3.1

Multi-standpoint research

If we were to take the categories of Alvesson and Deetz’ (2000) framework – normative, interpretive, dialogic and critical – to be strongly oppositional, or incommensurable, then my placing of identity work in Figure 6 (Section 3.1.2) above, between interpretive and dialogic research, is nonsensical. By positioning it there I could be seen as producing research which serves two masters, or attempts to be judged by two competing sets of rules, both methodologically, and epistemologically. However, while Alvesson and Deetz are careful to delineate distinctions between the various meta-theoretical positions in areas like aims, goals and analytical methods, it is clear that individual research projects are not required to sit squarely, or only, within a single category. It is therefore important to be aware of the methodological implications of such boundary-straddling – for example in the case of interview data interpretation noted in Section 5.2.1.1 above – but it also presents opportunities for juxtaposing different kinds of research in a single study. Within this thesis, a number of the interpretive decisions made through the analysis have had to be aware of ‘holding true’ to the experiences described by the interviewees, but also have tried, particularly in relation to critiquing the mainstream MBA evaluation literature, to be aware that the more dialogic aspect of the research requires it to be ‘largely ‘parasitic’ – [and that its] validity is in the ‘playfulness’ of its dismantling of claims made by other forms of research’ (Johnson and Duberley 2000: 104). There are therefore two areas in which I feel I have considered elements ‘across’ disciplines within the thesis which require some reflexive consideration here. Firstly, in Chapters 1 and 2 when examining the literature. Through the course of Chapter 1, and then juxtaposed between Sections 2.1–2.2 and 2.3–2.4, I have traced distinctions, broadly, between approaches and conceptualisations to learning and identity grounded to a greater extent in the discipline of psychology, and those grounded more in the sociological tradition. The second major area for disciplinary reflexivity is in consideration of my use of multiple metaphors in the analysis. Although it is clearly arguable that the three main metaphors of my analysis actually ‘fit’ under a single broad ‘non-normative’ viewpoint (see e.g. Fournier and Grey, 2000), it is here that I have tried hardest to keep ‘in play’ multiple perspectives from somewhat differing disciplines, in order to highlight points of conflict and points of synergy – identification and dis-identification – discoverable in the same dataset. Doing so meant adopting some more ‘deductive’ elements in the research with regard to selecting the metaphors (an issue I discuss at length in Section 3.4.1 above) but it meant I could be flexible in my interpretation through the different ‘lenses’ the metaphor provides. By undertaking multiple ‘takes’ on the data I feel I have maintained a degree of disciplinary diversity in my viewpoints, because viewing the MBA as Expatriate, or as Mask, forces different kinds of implications to the fore, just as approaching phenomena from different disciplines does. In this way I have tried to treat the MBA as a ‘fire’ object in Law and Singleton's (2005) terms: one that represents a play of absence and presence as it is studied, and one which cannot be grasped by reaching for it. By this I would argue that it takes more than one conceptual – and possibly disciplinary – lens to start to grasp the richness of the MBA concept; what it is ‘about’ in all of the

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possibilities I discussed in the opening paragraphs of the thesis. I therefore agree wholeheartedly upon the relationship of multiple takes / theories and richness described by Weick (2007: 16): The importance of a head full of theories is that this increases requisite variety. By that I mean that it takes a complicated sensing device to register a complicated set of events. And a large number of theories can be a complex sensing device if believing is seeing ... Thus, it takes richness to grasp richness. There is a concern that multiple ‘takes’ on the data may lead only to self-indulgence, or analytical paralysis in the face of contradiction (Seale, 1999; Weick, 1999) but I consider this research a relatively successful example of multiple metaphors for analysis, which uses it to elaborate and enrich theory (Spicer, 2007) exploring the relationship between data and theory as one of renewed mystery, not procedure (see Alvesson and Kärreman, 2007).

5.2.3.2

The (theoretical) road not travelled

My second major aspect of disciplinary reflexivity is to examine those approaches which the data might suggest, but which I have not taken up (or not placed in the foreground) in the analysis. The two major areas I reflect on as requiring explanation for their absence are, firstly, more psychoanalytic / internalised approaches to identity, particular in relation to emotions, and secondly, the theoretical lens of the MBA as a kind of profession striving for legitimacy. By adopting a theoretical approach in part informed by socially-constructed conceptualisations of learning (e.g. Gheradi, 2006), and strongly informed by the work of Mats Alvesson and his colleagues (e.g. Sveningsson and Alvesson, 2003), I have concentrated on the discursive construction of an MBA identity ‘out-there’ – a symbol or image developed socially and interactively in moment-by-moment practice. However, doing so places to one side some of the more ‘internalised’ drives, motivations and conceptualisations of identity into the background. My explanation of the rise and rise of the MBA in Chapter 1 is equally couched in ‘external’ discursive terms, and does not delve into psychological, or psychoanalytical explanations of motivations for the MBA. Something of this issue arises in the discussion of ‘why do individuals desire secure identities’ of Section 5.1.2.2, but at the level of disciplines this seems to me on reflection at least a partial limitation of the analysis, particularly as even discursively-constructed identities at work have begun to be viewed through a more psychoanalytic lens generally (see, particularly, Kosmala and Herrbach, 2006; Jones and Spicer, 2005b; Pullen, 2005; Gabriel, 1999; Roberts, 2005) or through particular theorists such as Jacques Lacan (Jones and Spicer, 2005a), and Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guttiari (e.g. (Sørenson, 2003). While I have followed the model and lead of Alvesson and Willmott (2002: 624) in general, it is important to note that they are certainly not opposed to these more ‘internalised’ aspects of identity. Their influential framework article referenced extensively in this research does employ the language of emotional drives on occasion: 'When a familiar feeling tone, associated with the sensation of 'being myself' becomes unsettled, feelings of tension, anxiety, shame and guilt arise.' (Alvesson and Willmott, 2002: 624)

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Added to this, the emotional content of the interview and observations in this study is often very stark – the MBA for many of them is clearly freighted with emotional baggage around status, influence, judgment, and pride. However, perhaps because of the nature of the metaphors selected for the analysis, these aspects have been sometimes discussed in relation to a specific quote, but have not formed part of the overall analytical frame. With Sturdy, et al. (2006a: 846) noting that ‘the interweaving of knowledge, emotion and identity work are rarely explored empirically’, and recent research on identity indicating that ‘emotion-descriptions’ can play a strong role in dis-identification strategies at work – ‘to construct a professional identity ... was marked out by an ability to construct oneself as emotional (Coupland, et al., 2008: 345) – this should perhaps be considered something of an opportunity missed within the thesis, and certainly one for consideration within extensions of the present work (Section 5.3.2 below). The other major theoretical area suggested by the data, but not dealt with separately within the analysis, is the ‘sociology of the professions’ literature. With recent historical analysis confirming that the emergence of business school and the MBA in particular was a concerted attempt to confer ‘professional’ legitimacy to management as a discipline (Khurana, 2007), frames and idea which examine being a ‘professional’ at work indicate other direction the analysis might have taken (Brohm and Huysman, 2004, Dyer and Keller-Cohen, 2000, Kosmala and Herrbach, 2006, O'Doherty, 1998). While I considered embedding some of these disciplinary traditions within the analysis, ultimately they tended not to square with the existing approaches, and, as much for reasons of space as rejection as inappropriate, this dictated it was not used extensively here. However it does provide a natural theoretical extension of the work (see Section 5.3.2 below).

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5.3 Contribution of the thesis and directions for further research This final section of the thesis will not re-iterate or re-describe in any detail the arguments already given above. Instead I will state the contributions which I see as emerging from the conclusions of Chapter 5 across its different areas and categories, with the supporting evidence for those statements comprising the earlier chapters. This section tackles first the areas of contribution I believe this thesis has made (Section 5.3.1) and then discusses some of the other areas into which the research might usefully be extended by me or by others (Section 5.3.2)

5.3.1

Contributions of the thesis

Once again in this chapter, recent work by Alvesson and colleagues (Alvesson, et al., 2008: 7) provides an indication of what contribution to look for in an identity study. I should aim to: ... develop novel and nuanced theoretical accounts, to produce rich empirical analyses that capture the inter-subjectivity of organisational life in a thoughtful and empathetic fashion, and to demonstrate how individual and collective self-constructions become powerful players in organizing processes and outcomes.' Alvesson et al’s (2008) account reinforces the point that social constructionist identity studies should still be looking to make contributions in the three classic areas for research contributions: to theory, to practice, and to methodology. To theory:

The primary contribution of this thesis to theory has been to develop a concept of ‘adaption’ within an identity work frame, through which to explain and understand the experiences of MBAs in the workplace. Adaption draws selectively on constructionist learning theories and poststructuralist identity approaches to create a set of terms and processes for describing the actions of MBAs as they discursively construct themselves as MBAs in the workplace. Adaption recognises the ‘tilt’ (Kuhn, 2006) of individuals towards more structured or more agentic approaches to identity formation and maintenance at particular times, seeing them as strongly constrained on occasion by the over-arching discourse of MBAs, but concludes that, ‘rather than being one-dimensional dummies speaking the lines that structural ventriloquism allows them, [they] are talented and creative players in many simultaneous and complex games' (Clegg, et al., 2006: 19). Adaption represents a theoretical frame which complements other emerging concepts for understanding identity processes at work, and, with its focus on those 219

claiming a particular identity as an ‘MBA’, carves an interpretive niche for itself in the gradual elaboration of identity work within organisation studies. Adaption additionally provides an ‘answer’, on its own terms, to the stark tensions of the ‘black box / ‘emperor’s new clothes’ distinction which has dogged the understanding and ‘evaluation’ of MBAs within the literature. To practice:

The problems of ‘converting’ the conclusions of this thesis into ‘normative’ practice have been covered earlier. However, the results of the research do provide a number of pointers in terms of organisational practice – although not necessarily ones which, if programmatically implemented, would automatically lead to ‘performance’ improvement in a simplistic manner. Firstly, popular organisational performance management systems which look for behavioural evidence of individual performance improvement post-MBA are likely to miss most or all of the subtle uses of the MBA undertaken through adaption. Furthermore, given that the systems seem to respond to overt uses of the MBA as Mask – on business cards, dropping indications you hold an MBA in more senior groups who also have MBAs etc. – but the research suggests that these activities reduce practical legitimacy on a day-to-day basis, it is those perhaps least adept at adaption overall who are being seen as the ‘successful’ MBAs by the system. For organisations this likely means promoting the MBAs who are least effective, and probably losing those who are better, as they become frustrated that their efforts are not recognised because they are displayed only through adaption. Secondly, for business schools trying to improve the ‘relevance’ or appropriateness of their course curricula, the results of this thesis speak to a more nuanced, multiperspective design of education; one which understands the kind of practice – through adaption – which the MBAs will be undertaking as MBAs in their workplaces. Bringing curricula ‘closer’ to stereotypes of business – traditionally interpreted as more ‘practical’ models and frameworks – fails to take account of what organisational practice of being an MBA is actually like. It seems likely that more ‘critical’ approaches to business education which emphasis conflict, multiple perspectives, and more subtle understandings of social interaction – mirroring the approach of adaption – will support ‘successful’ adaption more effectively.

To method:

This thesis makes methodological contributions in two areas: firstly, to methods of investigating identity work, and, secondly, to both academic and practitioner methods of evaluating and measuring MBA degrees and MBAs. Methods for investigating identity work are developing rapidly, on both sides of the Atlantic. While there is continuing debate over the role of particular methods in investigating identity work, this thesis contributes to that debate by highlighting advantages of the interview method, and disadvantages of observational methods for understanding and interpreting dis-identification in particular. It indicates the problems of observing practice which is deliberately designed to be concealing, or 220

sublimating of particular practices within another discourse. This thesis suggests that interview methods which view identity work as something accessible in brief or tangential ways is more likely to access adaption-style processes than observation. The evaluation of MBAs by the popular press, and by many in academia, has altered little in the time of this thesis’ preparation. Studies such as Van Auken and Chrysler (2005) continue to adopt a basic black box model which – however methodologically sophisticated it becomes - can never respond to the ‘emperor’s new clothes’ problematic. This thesis has indicated theoretical frames and methods to the field of MBA evaluation which can start to understand MBA identity work practice at work, and contribute to an understanding of the ‘value’ of an MBA in a more nuanced manner.

5.3.2

Directions for further research

Discussion of the conclusions and limitations of this thesis naturally point to a number of directions in which research into similar kinds of questions and topics could be taken. This could be either to address directly a limitation of the theories used or sample selected for this research, or new areas indicated by the results. The following list is meant to be indicative of what I consider some major directions I might be interested in taking the research, rather than an exhaustive trawl. Self-funding MBAs:

The relationship between the MBAs in this study, their MBA degrees, and their organisations was mediated by the sponsorship of the degree given the individuals by the company. The aspects of a psychological contract to remain with their organisation because of this may well affect how they act as MBAs in their workplace. Certainly there was evidence in the data of careful positioning by many within the interviews of the MBA as a ‘personal decision’, perhaps leaving them more space to subsequently criticise the organisation’s perceived conduct without appearing ungrateful. An obvious way to explore the effect of sponsorship on MBA identity work would be to expand the research to include a sample of selfsponsoring MBAs.

MBAs who went into big-firm consulting:

A number of interviewees made comparisons between their own experiences of trying to be an MBA in the workplace and those of consultants they had met or worked with in the course of their jobs. The very cautious adaption of many from this study seems clearly a response at least in part to negative stereotypes about the MBA within the organisational discourse. Companies within which MBAs were more prevalent as a percentage of the managerial workforce, or who relied heavily on ‘symbolic’ personal 221

capital for legitimacy might undertake and experience adaption in very different ways, despite perhaps holding identical qualifications from identical schools to my sample in this thesis. Big-firm consultancies would seem to be a suitable ‘contrast’ sample against which to test this idea. Gender concerns:

I chose not to split my sample for analysis by gender – I did not feel major distinctions in the identity work process could be tied to this division. However, a stream of research does indicate different kinds of motivations, experiences etc., for female as opposed to male MBAs (Simpson, 2000a, Simpson, et al., 2005), and in identity work more broadly (Pullen and Rhodes, 2008). An extension of my work would be to focus on this more directly.

Longitudinal research

My research often involved asking interviewees retrospectively about examples of being an MBA in the workplace. However, even if I believe interview technique to be a powerful method for investigating identity work, shifts in self-identity through identity work are difficult to discern from a single point in time (Beech and Johnson, 2005). ‘Tracking’ MBAs from before they start through to multiple points beyond might open up ‘narratives’ of MBA identity trajectories, similar to Pratt, et al.'s (2006) treatment of medical professionals.

Identity work crossing major career boundaries:

Becoming an MBA is only one career / identity ‘transition’ which might be understood through adaption and through identity work. Extensions of this work using a similar approach could include new graduates (Coupland, 2001; see also Poulter and Land, 2008), those moving from non-managerial to managerial roles, those taking up professional status for the first time, or even those moving into senior executive or CEO roles for the first time (Ibarra, 2005).

Emotions

As noted in Section 5.2.3.2 above, a theoretical extension of the work would be to explore the role of emotions and emotion-descriptors (Coupland, et al., 2008) in identity work for MBAs.

Sociology of the professions

The other theoretical extension of the research implied by Section 5.2.3.2 is to examine MBAs from the frame of creating and sustaining ‘professions’. There are already several studies which might usefully provide theoretical resources on legitimating professions through practice which could be brought to bear on adaption and the MBA (e.g. Wright, 2008).

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