Disjunctions in the context of management learning: An exemplary publication of narrative fiction

Abstract

Management Learning is a centre of scholarship, and thoughtful scholars strive to achieve exemplary publications – those that make a difference to both theory and practice as well as being frequently cited. Adopting the poststructuralist idea that scientific texts are literary constructions, applying this focus to translation and diffusion effects of a noted exemplar, this methodologically focussed article contributes an empirical method accounting for disjunctions in the context of management learning. We conceptualize disjunctions as differences and disconnections inhering in alternative bodies of knowledge produced about organizations and organizational practices. We do this by proposing a methodological tool embracing history for gaining insight from exemplary publication that allows students and investigators to increase the quality of their research papers. The contribution is explained in terms of two descriptive methodological concepts used to collect and analyse data, namely, style and modality. Using Jermier (1985) as an exemplary publication, we describe its context/origins, the use made of its ideas and the disjunctions that have arisen in the context of management learning. These result from the impact of the paper on the thinking of authors, as shown by subsequent networks of citations. The empirical method demonstrates how certain conceptions of narrative fiction have been used in Management and Organization Studies, in the form of emergent problems in the relationships produced connecting writer, reader and subject.