Department of Management, Society and Communication

Management education is frequently critiqued for not incorporating learning that reflects the complexities of working life, including the confrontation with uncertainty. Without this ability, managers make hasty decisions and are not reflexive about their own practices. Many scholars have advocated the integration of experiential learning, but this also does not always include uncertainty, or the emotional reactions that come from confronting (or avoiding) the unknown. Experiential learning focuses more on what can be learned, rather than unlearned.

My research is rooted in the premise that the practice of being in uncertainty, also called “negative capability”, can be the doorway towards learning reflexivity. Using an experiential, democracy education method that I facilitate as an elective for third year bachelor students, I attempt to guide students from a process of reflecting on society to a more internal reflexive process. This is done through the experience of discomfort and uncertainty that comes up in confronting dilemmas. My research focuses on this transition from reflection to reflexivity, through uncertainty, and whether such a practice addresses the concerns of management education’s critics.