Ideology, doxa and critical reflexive learning: The possibilities and limits of thinking that ‘diversity is good’

Abstract

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How can managers reach a critical position from which to develop more responsible management practices? The literature suggests that the answer lies in critical reflexive learning, explaining how reflexivity can detach individuals from the grip of harmful ideologies. We challenge this premise, according to which critical reflexive learning and ideology are counterposed, arguing instead that they need to be studied as intertwined. We build on the organizational ethnography of a firm promoting inclusive and responsible management, studying a programme for recruitment of highly skilled migrants. Exploring managerial learning achieved through this programme, we show how critique, reflexivity and learning are closely linked to the ideological system of beliefs that naturalizes the organizational order: the organizational doxa ‘Diversity is good’. This work makes the following three contributions to literature on critical reflexive learning: it stresses the currently overlooked interconnection between critical reflexivity and ideology, it shows how an ideological expression (doxa) both induces and simultaneously bounds managers’ engagement with critique, and it argues for the counterintuitive possibility that critique and change can be achieved through doxa. We answer our opening question – how to reach critique and responsible change – somewhat provocatively; through the adoption of a new ideology.