Reflective Practice in Management Education Professional Development and Hermeneutic Research

How do managerial researchers and practitioners communicate useful and beneficial insights? How can organisations use management research to educate managers and leaders, and develop their professional skills and resilience? How can a multi-perspective and cross-disciplinary approach to management enable organisations to cope with diversity and develop a global mindset? 

This research area examines how multi-perspective research techniques such as hermeneutics and qualitative phenomenology can be used to inform management education and development, especially in areas of diversity, reflective practice and self-development.

Research Streams

The Hermeneutic Circle

The hermeneutic circle provides a particular approach to professional practice research. It recognises that research is more than a set of methods, tools or techniques but a certain way of being attuned to and involved in the world; one that is as full of passion as it is of reason. 

The word ‘hermeneutic’ refers to the art of ‘making meaning’. The circle offers a way of making sense of the research experience through the circular process of immersing ourselves in and reflecting on it.

This research method is heavily embedded in MGSM’s doctoral program, with students from all disciplines attending and contributing so they can experience, develop and reflect on their research journey. 

Work emerging from this research area informs the pastoral care, and coaching and workshop programs that empower our doctoral scholars. It also enables professional researchers visiting from other Australian universities to embrace all aspects of their personal research experience.

The Global Mindset

The need to understand and manage diversity is common to all business functions. Strategic leaders must be able to perceive opportunities present in embracing differences, to understand the talents and competencies managers who operate in a global network require, and to appreciate local and habitual ways of doing things more effectively. 

This research stream examines the challenges of working with differences in culture, gender, age, functional specialisation or nationality, and identifies the competencies required for working with the new and unfamiliar in today’s complex and uncertain global environment.

Reflective Practice in Management Education

Considerable literature demonstrates that many new managers experience moments of ‘positive shock’, where they adjust their expectations and assumptions about what it means to be a manager. This research frames such moments of reflection as crucial for management development and education. Considering reflection on its own to be empty and action on its own to be blind, this research stream examines how the artistry and discipline of management moves between reflection and action, and why awareness of this is vital to managers’ education and development.

Management Self-Development

This stream of research concerns self-development processes relevant to managers. In particular focus are intrapersonal skills – such as how we deal with stress, how we manage and organise ourselves in the face of multiple and conflicting demands, how we manage reactions to feedback and insights about ourselves, and how we engage in self-regulatory actions to improve our capability and skills. Examined in detail is how managers deal with their emotional lives alongside such pressures and expectations.  

This research is particularly interested in high performers and discovering whether self-directed experimental learning influences performance, and the role the Emotional Intelligence Quotient (EIQ) plays in this.

 

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