Resisting Business School Academics’ Dehumanization: On the Humanizing Possibilities of Doubt

Abstract

Neoliberal changes have led to the troubling dehumanization of business school academics. In this paper, we suggest that this dehumanization may be resisted by a renewal of Freire’s humanization lens which views learning as a universal project of becoming more fully human. Specifically, we propose that engagement with the distinctly human condition of doubt provides one significant route to realize this learning. Drawing on 31 semi-structured interviews with business academics around the globe, we explore educators’ experiences of doubt and its possibilities for humanization. We offer two contributions. First, we elucidate doubt’s multifaceted, heavy, and socially produced nature to illustrate it as a condition ripe with possibilities for raising awareness of educators’ dehumanization. Second, we explicate how doubt currently functions to both enable and constrain educators’ humanization, and identify the underlying conditions which facilitate and limit doubt’s humanizing potential. Reflecting on these conditions, our implications consider how we might support educators to better work with their doubt to facilitate their ongoing efforts to become more fully human, and in so doing, resist their current dehumanization.