what fixed, immutable, ultimate essence?

Given that there are no fixed essences (a view endorsed by most poststructuralists and by Derrida), then there is no fixed human essence. As Jim Garrison says (‘Dewey, Derrida and the Double Blind’ p.105 in Derrida, Deconstruction and Education, 2004, Blackwell), “without a fixed essence, [leadership and management] education has no ultimate, immutable and eternal fixed telos that represents the perfection of the process of education. There can be, then, no fixed immutable foundations of education”. To paraphrase Garrison, [managers or leaders] “are not substances … with the latent potential to actualise … their essence any more than acorns alone have the latent potential to actualise their essence as a giant oak tree. What [managers & leaders] become depends on the transactions they enter.”

This means what, exactly, in respect to executive education? It seems to be a truism that management and leadership education (exec.ed) is not a fixed entity; obviously, programmes of education, learning, development, arise from the conditions of the client organisation and as such are contingent and not fixed or immutable (though, perhaps, this is less true of programmes of formal, curricula-bound, education such as an MBA or MSc). However, executivezen is not sure this holds true of programmes of espoused ‘customised’ education and is certainly of the belief that these programmes are not politically neutral. By programme, executivezen means a defined system, structure and agenda, in this case pertaining to education: the term ‘programme of education’ refers as much to a perceived lack of education that may form the basis of the commissioning of a piece of education, up to scheduled instances of formal classroom education. All programmes belie an agenda, a postion formed in advance that makes a programme political in nature. Programmes of education are political in nature (see Politicising Executive Education and Exec.ed and Politics posts). At some point, the programme of a programme of education falls back into stasis, which in this case is back to the political agenda implicit in that programme of education. This is not to say that the chosen political agenda that constitutes a programme is the essence of that programme: as per Garrison (and deconstruction) there is no essence to education. Sometimes, that resultant political agenda does not arise via a conscious choice but instead is a manifestation of the inheritance (metaphysical or otherwise) of corporate culture.

Surely, then, those involved in (the programmatization of) exec.ed have the ability to challenge both the commissioning client’s views as to the essential-ness of exec.ed and the type of political agenda they adopt or conform to? Not just the ability; perhaps this is the sole job of educational programmatization; or perhaps this is an overlooked aspect of the role of educational advisors. Maybe what brokers of b-school expertise should be about is not the marshalling of business & management content into a sellable programme of education, but instead to help clients to come to terms with their cultural, metaphysical, logocentric inheritances so that they can more accurately and appropriately commission suitable change (educational?) interventions, i.e. given the current climate of chaos and complexity, openness against closure, difference against identity, perpetual movement against stasis. This would signal a change in the nature of b-schools towards a more consultative stance towards exec.ed, distinct from the more traditional purveyor of knowledge.