Management by Textbook: The Role of Textbooks in Developing Critical Thinking

© 2015, © The Author(s) 2015. Critical thinking is widely regarded as a crucial capability for competent management and also for any leadership role in society. In this article, we ask, “How do textbooks play a role in the weakness of many management graduates’ critical thinking skills?” Management teachers can find plentiful advice about best teaching practices, yet the critical skills gap remains. We argue that the nature and use of management textbooks intersect and interact with students’ epistemology to support a culture of surface learning, resulting in a failure to develop critical thinking skills. Textbooks reinforce underdeveloped student epistemology through limitations of content and position students as passive recipients of an authoritative version of oversimplified knowledge. In our survey of 30 successful management textbooks, we found the majority of popular management textbooks potentially inhibit, or only weakly support, the development of students’ capacity for critical thinking. The article concludes with suggestions for improving textbooks and textbook choice or considering alternatives

The MBA at the crossroads: Design issues for the future

How appropriate is the MBA as the major vehicle for management education in Australia as we enter this new century? This question is explored from two perspectives. First, the implications of the changing social, economic and political context of management education, particularly the emerging needs for a sustainable and reflexive society. The second perspective will explore the recent debates around epistemology and their potentially important implications for related curriculum design issues. Assumptions about the nature of knowledge dominant in the 1960s formed the very rationale behind the design. At this time the assumption that knowledge was cumulative and each discipline had an uncontested knowledge, which could be taught in foundational subjects was central to the MBA's development. We question the ability of such subjects to capture the diversity of the disciplines they seek to represent and whether this design is the best way to develop graduates with the ability for reflexivity in action, who can broach different worldviews and have the skills that can negotiate the transformations required of corporate Australia. The MBA is at the crossroads - can it regenerate through an incremental changing of curricula, to incorporate the active engagement of students with these issues?

Power and self-identity: Positive psychology applied to human resource development

[No abstract available

Positive Psychology Applied to the Workplace: A Foucauldian Discourse Analysis

An ever-expanding literature now exists critiquing the theory and philosophy of positive psychology, however, research has yet to provide a critical analysis of its practical application. The current study extends on these critiques by exploring how positive psychology is applied to the workplace by investigating practitioner-based sources including interviews with workplace coaches who use positive psychological interventions and applied published texts. The study draws on Michel Foucault’s concepts of power/knowledge and discourse as a theoretical and methodological framework. Three dominant discourses were identified which illustrate the ways in which positive psychology is applied to the workplace. These include the promotion of its scientific credentials, employing a strength-based approach and using goal-setting and behavioral reinforcement interventions. When applied to the workplace, these discourses psychologize workplace problems, resulting in potentially negative outcomes for employees. However, interviews with some of the workplace coaches indicate they practice a degree of reflexivity, providing a salutary lesson for the science of positive psychology. </jats:p