Participant learning in and through research as reflexive dialogue: being ‘struck’ and the effects of recall

Although learning as a dialogic process involving critical self-reflexivity is well-recognized, enacting management learning in and through research dialogue with participants has been given limited attention. This article fuses, from related research, relational social constructionist understandings of knowing, learning and research to produce a framework of research as a dialogic process of learning. The framework emphasizes the importance of being ‘struck’ for participant-centred self-reflexivity and management learning. The framework is illustrated by drawing on empirical material from a research project involving five managers’ participation in a set of three research interviews. The research highlights the temporal and historical features of being ‘struck’ and the effect of recall in stimulating self-reflexivity and learning. The article also considers how participants and researchers may seize striking moments by illustrating direct and indirect ways of talking and acting which signal being ‘struck’

Capturing sociality in the movement between frames : an illustration from leadership development

In this paper we offer a dynamic relational perspective in which frames and framing work together in the practice of leadership development. Mead’s (1932) notion of sociality is introduced as a way of engaging with movements within and between frames, where it is these framing movements that we argue hold the potentiality of emergent practice. The paper responds to a growing interest in the delineation, conceptualization and practice of leadership as opposed to leader development, where we understand leadership development in terms of the creation of social capital, relational capacity and collaboration. However, there is little, if any research into how these dimensions may be intentionally developed in practice. Using online forum data from an 18-month long leadership development programme, we demonstrate three different sociality movements, which we have labeled kindling, stretching and spanning. Our analysis positions sociality at the core of leadership development interventions, and practice more generally