Can the reflective practice of action learning enhance criticality in MBAs?:A Bourdieusian analysis of organizing learning sets in the Pakistani business schools

The aim of this doctoral study is to explore the cultural complexities of organizing action learning at three Pakistani business schools with the intention of investigating whether reflective practice can be established as a self-sustaining feature of MBA education. The study informs about the cultural conditions shaping the reflective practice of Pakistani MBA students in action learning by challenging their taken-for-granted assumptions and encouraging habits of critical thinking. However, with a lack of literature that documents the use of action learning in non-western cultures, the empirical insights generated by this study shed light on the difficulties surrounding the potential realization of reflective practice in the Pakistani MBA. This qualitative study is pivotal in filling this gap by providing academics, facilitators and practitioners with a cultural understanding about the organization of reflection in action learning and its situated perspective in a non-western context. This study argues that gaining an understanding of the embodied dispositions of action learners is a significant factor in fostering pedagogies of action within a given cultural context. The data obtained through set observations and interviews with 31 Pakistani MBA students over a 16-week period is indicative of the friction between predisposed, embodied, dispositions (e.g. gender, power, emotions, identity) and action learning’s reflexive character. An explanatory framework, drawing upon Bourdieu’s theory of practice (i.e. habitus, field and capital) helps reveal: cultural dispositions embodied by participants that structure reflective practices, the politics and emotions mobilized during reflection that legitimize power-relations, and the embodied practices shaping group dynamics in the action learning space. The study contributes to action learning practice in the Pakistani MBA and similar contexts, and in particular cautions practitioners to consider culturally sensitive ways of developing a collective space conducive to reflective dialogue. In conclusion, this study emphasises the need to recognize culture and its relation to reflection – i.e. to acknowledge the challenges of embodied dispositions to action learning, the psychological and political implications they have for organizing reflective practice in sets, and the complex interaction between action learning and the embodied and situated culture of Pakistani MBA students

Policy Alienation and Street-level Bureaucrats' Psychological Wellbeing:The Mediating Role of Alienative Commitment

In an era of New Public Management reforms, public sector policies often create a mismatch between social and economic values that can lead to public policy alienation—professionals’ feelings of disconnection from public policies. Policy alienation can create unrest among public professionals and carry several negative repercussions for their wellbeing and work-related attitudes. The negative repercussions of policy alienation are likely to inhibit public service delivery. However, existing research on policy alienation and its consequences for street-level bureaucrats’ wellbeing is scarce. Thus, it is unknown how policymakers can curb policy disconnect and counter its negative implications. To contribute to both general policy alienation theory and practice, our study hypothesized that the two dimensions of general policy meaninglessness—client meaninglessness and societal meaninglessness—are negatively related to street-level bureaucrats’ psychological wellbeing. We hypothesize this negative relationship is due to alienative commitment. A time-lagged survey data collected from 401 public professionals and analyzed using structural equation modeling supported our hypothesized relationships. The present study extends the nomological networks of the antecedents and consequences of alienative commitment and offers important implications that can help policymakers counter the issues related to public professionals’ alienative commitment and psychological wellbeing

Cultural politics and the role of the action learning facilitator::Analysing the negotiation of critical action learning in the Pakistani MBA through a Bourdieusian lens

This empirical study contributes to critical action learning research by theorizing the role of an action learning facilitator from a cultural perspective. Our article adds to critical action learning by conceptualizing the dynamics of facilitation in managing interpersonal politics within action learning sets. Employing Bourdieu’s notion of habitus as a theoretical lens, we explore both participant and facilitator accounts of action learning at three Pakistani business schools, shedding light on the culturally influenced social practices that shape their learning interactions. Through a critical interpretation of our data, we illuminate the challenges of facilitation by revealing how deeply ingrained power relations, within the context of gender and asymmetric relationships, influence participants’ ability to organize reflection. We contribute to critical action learning by theorizing the critical role of facilitator mediation in managing interpersonal and intra-group relations within the Pakistani MBA context, outlining the implications for the dynamics and facilitation of action learning

The Paradox of Work-Placement Identity:Exploring the Challenges of Role Transition from Students to Interns in the Workplace

In this paper, we argue that identities often become destabilised and disrupted during macro-level transitions across organisational boundaries i.e. university to the placement organisation. This can lead to conflicts between the role of students, who remain enrolled with their university programme, and interns, who see themselves as student-practitioners. We aim to untangle the complex relationship between work and placement identities, often intertwined and taken-for-granted in work-based learning (WBL) arrangements (e.g. internships or placement programmes)

“Articulating cognizance about what to hide what not":Insights into why and when ethical leadership regulates employee knowledge-hiding behaviors

Given the dearth of research examining the distinctions across various facets of employee knowledge-hiding (KH) behaviors, there is little known about why and when leadership negatively influences playing dumb and evasive hiding but positively influences rationalized hiding. The present study fills this void by hypothesizing that employee justice orientation (JO) acts as a mediator of the associations of ethical leadership (EL) with different facets of employee KH behaviors. We also propose employee conscientiousness moderates the relationship of EL with JO and the indirect relationships of ethical leadership with distinct variants of employee KH behaviors. The results based on time-lagged data from 387 employees provide support for the hypothesized relationships. Together, our research provides a more nuanced account of the influence of leadership on employee KH behaviors that can facilitate the development of more appropriate interventions to deal with the intricate problems related to employee KH behaviors