After Laclau, given that the ethico-political can be granted a reinstated universalistic status, traditional business education offered by Thrift’s cultural circuit of soft capitalism seems incommensurable with the revised polity of leadership education. The discursive apparatuses of business schools are status quo maintaining institutions that are colluding with the other components of the capitalism’s cultural circuit in sustaining a repressive orthodoxy of leadership and leadership education. The revised task within institutionalised leadership education is to subvert this orthodoxy, both at the site of its generation within the business school and at the point of its consumption: this will involve challenging consumers’ preconceptions about what institutional leadership education can offer

According to Laclau (in Deconstruction, Pragmatism, Hegemony, 1996) one concept that is central to contemporary political theory is that of representation. “The condition of a good representation is, apparently, [emphasis in original] that there is perfect or transparent transmission, by the representative, of the will of those whom he represents” says Laclau. And yet the tasks of popluar leaders consists, often, of providing followers with a language by which they are able to formulate their political identity and will. When the represented need representation (which is the inherent utility of representation) it is usually because their identities, or voices, need supplementing, in this case via the agency of a representative. This act of supplementarity means that the role of the representative cannot be neutral, not when they are lending, in proxy, their own voice to the absent represented. There cannot be perfect transmission when representatives play an active role in the formation of the collective wills of those whom they represent.

From a political standpoint, is it not agreed that the more democratic a process, the more transparent is the transmission of the will of those represented by their representatives? Does this not also stand for the process of leadership? That the better leadership is demonstrated by the greater transparency of the transmission between leader and follower? That the successful leader embodies, enacts and gives voice to, without manipulation, distortion or corruption, the will of their followers to whom they entrust their intentions? But this seems not the case: there appear to be flaws in the notion of representation: there is (a Derridian) structural undecidability in the notion of representation, an infinite deferral, an impossibility

Reading Richard Rorty’s embrace of liberalism (in Achieving Our Country, and Contingency, Irony and Solidarity and Philosophy and Social Hope) you’d be forgiven for thinking that pragmatism’s close links with the deconstruction of Derrida implies that these two programmes of rejection of foundationalism naturally embrace liberalism (phew; I can’t believe I wrote that!). Thankfully, help is at hand, in the guise of Michael Sandel and his Liberalism and the Limits of Justice. I’m seeing now that liberalism as per Sandel reaches it limits at its conception of the person – the autonomous, free though strangely transcendent agent that traditional (Rawlsian) liberalism posits. This struck me as an interesting (in a nerdy kind of way) critique of liberalism, which hitherto I’d felt some allegiance to, via Rorty and inferentially via Derrida. So maybe I’m no longer a liberal? Right now I need to find out how Sandel’s communitarian views fit with deconstruction, it at all, as well as the impact his critique has on Rorty’s liberal conception. For this I’m reading Sandel and the intriguing symposia proceedings from Critchley, Derrida, Laclau & Rorty called Deconstruction and Pragmatism. Wouldn’t it be great to build a communitarian based critique not just of liberalism, but of deconstruction and pragmatism? I suspect deconstruction will come out clean.

Ok, so what is this destabilising? And what possible benefit does this anarchic sounding practice have for executive education? Firstly, before you can destabilise you have to acknowledge that which is stable, why it is stable and what stability means. Not only that, you have to have a reason for questioning the stability of your chosen cannon, orthodoxy and acepted knowledge (in executivezen’s case, executive education) if your (political, or dare I say, communitarian) actions are not to be deemed as gratuitous epistemic vandalism. Executivezen’s understanding of Derrida is that his deconstructive acts do not simply rubbish the texts he examines, just for the sake of it. Very often he sides with the author (Husserl, Rousseau, Heidegger) he is deconstructing and his intentions are to aid in the intent of the text – his revealing of metaphysical ambiguities hidden within texts is a constructive (not destructive) action.

How this works for executivezen is as follows: I acknowledge that which is stable in the field of executive education as the interconnected belief systems present in the community of followers (suppliers and consumers) of our non-workbased, institutionalised educational practices. I identify these namely as the validity of a (higher) educational institutions as sites for executive education; the validity of subject matter experts within those institutions and their authorial status; as the belief in research-led educational practice; as the belief in existing modes of global techno-capitalism; as belief in the orthodoxy of educational practice; this list could go on (as will my explaination of belief). I acknowledge that this stability has grown up around the neccessity of these educational institutions to establish credentials sufficient to garner trust from their consumers, sponsors and stakeholders; also around the ideology that surrounds higher educational and into which consumers invest without question. This stability has led to an “economy of the same” as Derrida, in ‘Writing and Difference’, calls it.

Why then would one wish to destabilise the ‘text’ that is executive education, given the perfectly understandable conditions of its evolution above? For executivezen this is about being dissatisfied with the status quo, yearning for a better way of being in the world, ceasing from evil, doing only good and doing good for others. Some aspects of global techno-capitalism are, at best, not effective and at worst, wrong. Maybe – so executivezen’s thinking goes – what stands as part-palliative care for the illness of global techno-capitalism is better management, leadership and business education to, in part, provide these. Given that the pedagogy of exec.ed is bankrupt, here is my motive for destabilising exec.ed texts. Executivezen does not count this as epistemic vandalism but as constructive betrayal.

Derrida’s response to Rorty, taken from Deconstruction and Pragmatism (page 77 to 88, translated from French by Simon Critchley) concerning the politicising qualities of deconstruction speaks of the potential of a deconstructive reading & writing of exec.ed. promising a political acuity hitherto dormant.

“To move on to a question that Rorty raised in discussion concerning the weakening of the political left in the United States, this would demand a great deal of analysis and perhaps Rorty is right in seeing such a weakening. But even if Rorty is right, my hope, as a man of the left, is that certain elements of deconstruction will have served or-because the struggle continues, particularly in the United States-will serve to politicize or repoliticize the left with regard to positions which are not simply academic. I hope – and if I can continue to contribute a little to this I will be very content – that the political left in universities in the United States, France and elsewhere, will gain politically by employing deconstruction. To a certain extent, and in an unequal way, this is a movement that is already under way.”

Executivezen feels confident that it is not trying to philosophise its way into a political relevance for exec.ed.

Time to recap over a work-in-progress stipulation of a deconstructive philosophy of executive education (executivezen does intend to elaborate on this somewhat staccato list in the rest of the blog). A deconstructive writing (learning design) and reading (consumption) of an exec.ed text (e.g. events or contexts) includes the following elements:

• learning without a learner is the equivalent of orthodoxy, cannon, knowledge
• there is a metaphysics in education and in exec.ed. Akin to a belief in the absolute of management, of research-led education, of research in general
• a deconstructive approach to studying exec.ed is one vigilant of stepping back into the more doctrinaire metaphysical assumptions (above) that surround exec.ed
• there is a symbolic value of exec.ed which a deconstructive approach reveals
• exec.ed is full of aporia – blindspots
• just as deconstruction welcomes uncertainty, promotes comfort with uncertainty and values the multiple readings of a (educational/learning) text, so too is my approach to writing (designing) exec.ed
• a deconstructive analysis of exec.ed texts reveals the binary opposites that are the mother-tongue of management
• exec.ed is not neutral in the same way that deconstruction is not neutral
• exec.ed should take sides – i.e. openness, difference & movement, rather than closure, identity & stasis.
• there is no final vocabulary for exec.ed
• a deconstructive approach to writing and reading exec.ed texts promotes granular political acts
• all developmental tools can work to realise individual and group political action
• a deconstructive exec.ed text stands for dissent, destabilisation, dissolution and disruption of orthodoxy
• exec.ed is revolutionary (emancipatory)
• invention must take place exec.ed, disrupting institutional norms
• exec.ed is about opening uncloseting aporias
• exec.ed is an experience of the impossible

The following is a close reading of the text edited by Reynolds & Roffe called ‘Understanding Derrida’ (2004).

(p.14) Is technical refinement of authentic primordial experience necessarily impoverished? It’s not a case of jacking in Western metaphysical thinking within executive education (exec.ed) – it should be revealed and closely engaged.

Question: what is Western metaphysical thinking in exec.ed? Or, what is the role of metaphysics in exec.ed? Maybe, the ‘ultimate nature of management’ or the ‘reality of leadership or management’ or transcendent knowledge or truth about management & leadership’? Possibly belief in the endeavors of business schools – plainly, the belief in b-schools; belief in research-led education; belief in education or higher education; belief that learning outside the workplace is a good thing.

So, does it progress in a series from belief to doctrine, where doctrine is an unquestioned belief? Doctrine maintains a vigilant critical awareness of the tendency to slip into more doctrinaire forms of metaphysical thought. This is relatively simply to apply to exec.ed, namely working with the client to raise their/our awareness of the symbols they attach to exec.ed.

Metaphysics of exec.ed and corresponding deconstructive attitude: the value of the symbol attached to exec.ed (symbolic value): that can be put to good use, making sure it is recognised by the client and participants. Weaving the symbolic value into the client’s broader development portfolio: that can leader to complimentarity where these beliefs can also be challenged. These ‘management beliefs’ are a given – there is no beyond management.

Philosophy is a political activity. What are the hierarchical oppositions in exec.ed?

Manager – non-managed; leader - subordinate, follower, managed, led; experienced – novice; educated – uneducated; orthodox – heterodox; consistent – contingent; developed – under-developed; authorised – unauthorised; powerful – weak; connected – unconnected; buck-stop – buck-pass; legitimacy – illegitimacy.

Deconstruction is not neutral, it intervenes. Exec.ed is not neutral, it intervenes. A deconstructive intervention against the above hierarchical oppositions is deconstructive exec.ed. Firstly, overturn the bipolarity: reveal that the secondary is in the primary. Secondly, create a new concept that is tertiary to the oppositions.

The following is a close reading of the text edited by Reynolds & Roffe called ‘Understanding Derrida’ (2004, p.28). What is a secondary in exec.ed? What counts as the creation of a new concept for exec.ed that overturns the hierarchical opposition in exec.ed and leaves us with an open-ended series of related characteristics or themes? Managing, e.g. managing to be managed?

Openness against closure, difference against identity, perpetual movement against stasis. Now, siding with this hierarchy IS political. Can secure metaphysical foundations be provided for exec.ed? Does exec.ed have a final vocabulary? Are providers of exec.ed (those that are either internal or external to the corporation) politically neutral? No: in the same way that deconstruction is not neutral. Executive education should take political sides with openness, difference and movement and not closure, identity and stasis. Exec.ed is NOT NEUTRAL.

So if exec.ed is political, what does one do? What can one do inside an institution or corporation? How free are we? What granular political acts can you countenance? How far can you go? Surely, exec.ed, in the guise of self-reflection, coaching, on-the-job mentoring, self-study, surely all of these activities allow us to examine how (whether?) our newly found political strength and determinations are put into practice.

Question: is this dissentful, anarchistic, disruptive and destabilising? Is a challenging of the currently accepted ways of doing things disruptive? You bet! Exec.ed in not ‘inherently’ anything, so is it always context dependent? Exec.ed is a revolutionary gesture – defeating the project-oriented economy of the same.