Paul Hibbert

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Verified

Paul verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

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• MBA PhD FHEA FCMI FBAM FAcSS
• Professor at University of St Andrews

In this conceptual paper we argue that, to date, principles of responsible management have not impacted practice as anticipated because of a disconnect between knowledge and practice. This disconnect means that an awareness of ethical concerns, by itself, does not help students take personal responsibility for their actions. We suggest that an abst...

In this paper we explain how the development of new organization theory faces several mutually reinforcing problems, which collectively suppress generative debate and the creation of new and alternative theories. We argue that to overcome these problems, researchers should adopt relationally reflexive practices. This does not lead to an alternative...

In this article, we explore the ways in which individuals deploy reflexive practices in order to avoid or engage with a call to change either oneself or the social context. We begin by developing a categorization of the modes of reflexive practice associated with avoidance or engagement. We go on to develop—through a relationally reflexive research...

We consider how reflexive practices can enable learning from negative emotional experiences. We study these experiences in academic organizations through a relationally reflexive autoethnographic method. Our findings contribute to theory in three ways. First, we show how learning involves practices with different modalities of emotion work and refl...

What if the most important route for scholarly impact was not what we write, but instead who we are and what we do? And what if our being and doing are both shaped by our learning and formation as researchers? In this article, I explore how critical researchers, committed to reflexive practice in their work, can have significant scope for personal...

This essay is a call for action to support those experiencing hidden vulnerability in academic life. My experience as a gay man, who is often presumed to be straight, has shown me that people can experience unrecognized vulnerability when their differences or difficulties are not obvious to others. To respond to the issue of hidden vulnerability, I...

Leader Work provides a guide to the ways in which reflexivity can support leaders in their development and professional practice. The book does not present a tick-box toolkit to being a better leader, instead it provides the prompts and deeper reflexive space for leaders to consider their own self-development. The book draws on reflexive practice...

Based on a study of a postgraduate course, we show how—through the processes associated with applying a strategic tool—students developed the understandings that allowed them to span disciplinary and organizational boundaries. We reveal how the students, working in groups and acting as consultants to industry clients, developed specific boundary-sp...

In this essay, we question evaluative practises concerning 'scientific excellence' as solely captured in so-called 'A journals', because they can entail a disconnection between the measure and its contents. Where this occurs, we start writing for our own immediate 'survival' and long-term social standing among our peers. Along the way, however, the...

Often, emotions are seen to be a threat to organizations; they are perceived to require regulation and containment to limit their disruptive effects. However, individuals’ moral emotions can have positive effects for organizations, by motivating appraisal of the context in which inappropriate conduct takes place to support adaptation and encouragin...

In this article, we are interested in how togetherness in workplace friendships is experienced in the absence of physical co-presence. We explore practices through which we-experiences, that is, shared experiences that produce feelings of togetherness, are realized and maintained across time and space and how different we-experiences constitute dif...

This essay argues that conceptualisations of responsibility in the responsible management education literature are generally superficial or unstated. We propose that this leads to practical understandings of responsibility being drawn from the hidden curriculum of socialised learning in the background of formal educational contexts. To disrupt this...

This theoretical essay argues that management learning and education (MLE) is fundamentally accomplished by communication. Specifically, we utilize a Communication as Constitutive of Organization perspective to advance MLE as fundamentally a communicational accomplishment, which we label ‘Communication as Constitutive of Learning and Education’. We...

Based on an autoethnographic study of early career researchers’ field research experiences, we show how individuals deal with moments of discrimination that present identity threats. This is accomplished through participating in the construction of a shared holding environment to provide emotional shelter and resources for resultant identity work....

In this chapter, we outline a particular methodological approach to the study of creativity. We advocate an ethnographic approach to the collection of data and the narration of descriptive and theoretical insights, allied to the use of practice theory as a way to provide structure in the midst of this organic, interpretive approach. We organize our...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop a more detailed understanding of how embedding in different social networks relates to different types of action that individuals choose in the context of organizational closures, downsizing or relocations. To develop such insights, this paper focuses on three particular types of social networks, name...

Developing basic frameworks to support teaching in multiple modes, especially when shifting from in-class to online delivery.

This article explores how learners transition through the liminal space when they engage with and master threshold concepts. We investigate this question through a qualitative study of undergraduate students as they grapple with the threshold concept of evidence-based management (EBMgT) as a disciplinary way of thinking and practising. Our findings...

This article is based first-person experience with experiential learning (EL) practices in an undergraduate introductory management course. We consider how a challenging EL activity, based on volunteering during recovery from a catastrophic flood event, exposed three shadow sides of EL. These shadow sides of EL, which often remain hidden to educato...

This paper adds to the repertoire of field research methods through developing the technique of ‘participant deconstruction’. This technique involves research participants challenging and re-interpreting organizational texts through the application of orienting, disorienting and re-orienting deconstructive questions. We show how participant deconst...

This special section was initiated and curated by us, as members of the British Academy of Management’s Management Knowledge and Education (MKE) project. MKE is an academy-wide initiative, launched in 2014 to advance the creation and circulation of innovative and transformative research that deepens and broadens our understanding of management know...

This paper advances the literature on evidence-based management (EBMgt) by exploring how students understand it. We conduct a qualitative inductive study of undergraduate students who were introduced to EBMgt and applied evidence-based processes as part of an introductory management course. Our findings identify four qualitatively different student...

In this paper, we explore the ways in which individuals deploy reflexive practices in order to avoid or engage with a call to change either oneself or the social context. We begin by developing a categorization of the modes of reflexive practice associated with avoidance or engagement. We go on to develop – through a relationally reflexive research...

This chapter reports on a flipped classroom intervention in an undergraduate business course. We explore the role shifts for tutors and students that occurred when a flipped tutorial intervention was introduced in an introductory management course. The course is positioned in the first-year core of the undergraduate business management degree and h...

This chapter explores what we are asking students to do in flipped classroom context. We show how we are asking students to independently (but with facilitation) engage with practical and theoretical problems, and how engaging in this independent learning process challenges students to understand themselves differently. This requires the developmen...

In this essay we look at leadership development differently, through the lens of philosophical hermeneutics. We show how three aspects of philosophical hermeneutics - focused on accumulating experience of interpretation, engaging in dialogue and interpreting experience - connect with insights from the leadership development literature and lead to p...

Identity work is widely regarded as a process through which people strive to establish, maintain or restore a coherent and consistent sense of self. In the face of potential disruptions of, or threats to, their identities, people seek to salvage their sense of self by resolving tensions and restoring consistency. In contrast to the current identity...

Evidence-based management (EBM) has been subject to a number of persuasive critiques in recent years. Concerns have been raised that: EBM over-privileges rationality as a ba- sis for decision-making; ‘scientific’ evidence is insufficient and incomplete as a basis for management practice; understanding of how EBM actually plays out in practice is li...

In this conceptual paper, we explore how individuals respond to a need to change when faced with the revelation of something undesirable about their social – and particularly organizational – context. Our focus is on reflexivity and reflexive practices, and we contribute to theoretical and practical debates in three ways. First, we identify a typol...

Following the publication of a recent report, commissioned by the Higher Education Academy (HEA) and conducted by Staff and Educational Developers Association, this short paper considers the HEA UK Professional Standards Framework in the UK Higher Education Sector, in the context of recent and continuing debates about how best to support faculty pr...

This paper contributes to the debate on the dynamics of the development of practices and their relation to the emergence of collaborative communities of practitioners. Our research is situated in a university that was seeking to promote and stimulate interdisciplinary research collaborations through a number of initiatives. We are concerned both wi...

Organisational theorists have become increasingly interested in the creative industries, where practices that are commonplace are of particular interest to organisations in other sectors as they look for new ways to enhance performance. Focusing on the music industry, this book sets up a unique dialogue between leading organisational theorists and...

Collaboration is increasingly used to solve complex management, research and societal problems, but it presents particular learning challenges. The existing literature has developed theories of how practice learning occurs within bounded communities, typically through assimilation into an agreed set of meanings, skilled practices and legitimated ju...

This conceptual paper considers how embedding in types of social network influences the employment-seeking actions of individuals affected by organizational demise. Three kinds of likely action, related to different embedding influences, are characterized: collective direct action, individual direct action and individual indirect action. The paper...

Firms face a number of threats to their businesses from online communication practices. Simply put, most firms possess intangible assets, such as information goods and goodwill, whose value is vulnerable to harm associated with the transmission and publication of online content. Consequently, firms have sought to protect their assets from such harm...

This study is concerned with how continuity is achieved within the context of recurrent temporary organization. Our qualitative research, which takes a practice approach, focuses on the ‘London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival’ and the communities that collectively enact it. We identify and trace four key groups of ‘safeguarding’ practices — (1) prese...

This paper addresses a topic of current interest in organizational development in the advertising industry. This development is concerned with the elimination of account managers as intermediaries between client companies and creative teams and the subsequent involvement of all functions within the agency in a client-facing structure. Our focus is...

In this paper we consider the role of interpretation in the practices associated with learning in collaborative contexts. The existing literature has developed theories of how practice learning occurs within coherent communities, typically through assimilation into an agreed set of meanings, skilled practices and legitimated judgement, or taste. Bu...

Although the role and management of interdisciplinary research in knowledge development has received plenty of attention in recent years ambiguity remains, often hindering management efforts. To address this issue, this paper provides an integrated review of extant literature on interdisciplinary research. It focuses on integration processes and th...

Ethical behaviour has now assumed a crucial role in business decision-making. Recent corporate scandals and responses by regulators have created an environment in which there is a heightened awareness of business ethics. There has been extensive debate on the role of the business school in the moral and ethical development of future professionals a...

This conceptual paper seeks to develop insights for teaching reflexivity in undergraduate management classes through developing processes of critical reflection. Theoretical inferences to support this aim are developed and organized in relation to four principles. They are: first, preparing and making space for reflection in the particular class co...

Communities of practice scholars have neglected the question of how practices arise in nascent communities and how emergence involves a balance of collective and individual agency. We suggest that considering how individuals pursue career progression may be a way of understanding the emergence of collaborative communities of practice in terms of bo...

This article presents the Interpretive Clustering Approach to theory building from Research Oriented Action Research data as a means of creating theory to support the reflective practice of public managers. Tenets about the nature of theory suitable for supporting reflective practice are developed and discussed; these relate to recognizability, gen...

In this article we address a key tension in the literature. That is, whether the knowledge status of a tradition is largely preserved passively, under tradition’s own authority, or alternatively preserved through deliberate, individual interpretive acts.Through empirical research in three network contexts, we show that both authority and interpreta...

Abstract In the complex, usually problematic situation of interorganizational collaboration the need for managerial learning in the pursuit of collaborative advantage is high. Two particular characterizations of learning, in relation to interorganizational collaboration, are well described in the extant literature. We characterize these as transfer...

In this article we consider the nature and implications of barriers to collaborative process learning that may occur in regional clusters. Our approach is rooted in research in interorganizational collaboration and focuses on interview-based research in photonics clusters in: Scotland and the West Midlands in the United Kingdom; Berlin-Brandenburg...

Inter-organizational collaboration has been argued to present as many complex challenges as it tries to solve. In this paper, we explore the role of tradition in these challenging and problematic contexts. In particular, we are concerned with the ways in which traditions emerge, endure or change in relationship with (and in the context of) collabor...

Purpose – The paper seeks to support a better understanding of the types (or processes) of reflexivity which may be involved in the practice of organizational research, and the implications of reflexive practice for organizational researchers. Design/methodology/approach – A characterization of reflexivity as a process is developed from extant res...

Leadership research so far has neglected clusters as a particular context for leadership, while research on networks and clusters has hardly studied leadership issues. This paper fills this dual gap in the abundant research on leadership on the one hand and on networks/clusters on the other by investigating leadership in photonics clusters from a s...

This article discusses the jungle of theories and approaches that abound today in works applied to the management of relations between organizations. It discusses the actions of 'individuals' who may be thought of as managers of an inter-organizational entity (IOE). It also explores research that describes organizational capabilities - in the sense...

The article discusses the concept of reflexivity, in the context of teaching the concept to master of business administration (MBA) students. Reflexivity is analyzed in terms of its recursive and reflective aspects, and characterized as a threshold concept. It is noted that critically examining personal assumptions and norms can be helpful in terms...

The article presents a discussion of management science theory in terms of communities of practice and organization research. It focuses on the social construction of traditional industrial management paradigms. An argument is presented that many practitioners of management science actually accomplish much less than they think they do, because scie...

This chapter is concerned with a relatively under-explored aspect of ‘engaged research’ – the nature of friendship relations between researchers and practitioners, and the ethical dilemmas that arise in such relationships. Attention has been paid to the relational aspects of research in the methodology literature, but this chapter focuses more clos...

Interorganizational collaboration research is a paradigmatically fragmented, theoretically promiscuous field that encompasses a complex range of organizational forms. This paper seeks to build and apply a meta-theoretical framework to overcome this confusion and complexity. The resultant integration of extant research is potentially useful in four...

This article addresses a gap in the organizational studies literature by developing tradition as a theoretical and empirical construct that parallels dynamic conceptions of identity construction. It draws on the 80 year history of the New Zealand public science sector to illustrate both the enduring and emergent nature of two specific strands of tr...

This article is concerned with attitudes to learning in inter-organizational collaboration. Basic attitudes to learning evident in extant research -"selfish", "sharing" and "sidelined"- are compared with those observed through research-oriented action research. A conceptualization based on a characterization of the attitudes observed in the researc...

Purpose – The purpose of this editorial is to provide an overview of content and process of development of the five papers collected in this special issue on collaboration and storying. Design/methodology/approach – This guest editorial discusses the five papers in terms of their contribution both to debates on the utility of stories as data and f...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the ways in which narratives of collaborations tagged as successful may be constructed around common characterizations of participants, in order to provide insights to the ways in which stories may be constructed as vehicles for the adoption or adaptation of good or promising practices. Design/method...

Purpose The paper aims to explore the problematics of validity that are inherent to the conduct of an action research project because of the disparate language games of both practitioners and academics. Design/methodology/approach An exploration is offered of the tensions between different understandings of a research setting at different stages o...

Within the general context of the theory of collaborative advantage, this paper focuses on one aspect of a theme of research relating to the issue of learning in collaborative settings. The broad question that this research is addressing is whether conceptualizations of issues relating to learning that face practitioners can be useful in helping th...

Within the general context of the theory of collaborative advantage, this article focuses on attitudes to inter-partner learning in both private and public sector settings. Basic attitudes to learning - "selfish", "sharing" and "sidelined" - are identified and through a qualitative analysis of data collected during collaboration programmes, these a...

In this article, we explore tradition in the context of collaboration. We take a view of tra- dition as rooted in reference groups, which are conceptually distinct from membership groups. Through research in two particular collaborations supporting technology busi- ness development in the UK, we find that tradition, as a potential cause of failure...

We approached the considerable body of literature on learning in collaborative situations in order to explore the possibility of pulling the separate strands into a broad conceptual framework which might offer new insights. The literature focus in the framework was deliberately upon the interorganizational field, although we do touch upon some more...

Leadership research has so far neglected clusters as a particular context for leadership, while research on clusters has hardly studied leading (in) networks or clusters. This paper fills this dual gap in the abundant research on leadership on the one hand and networks/clusters on the other by investigating leadership of and in four photonics clust...