Transition to management: the discursive formation of managerial practice

This study explores the transition to management that follows the promotion of individuals to their first managerial position. Building on Hill (1992, 2003), the present study argues that managerial practice is formed through the professional socialisation of novices during goal-driven and task-based interactions in the workplace, and the discourses and discursive strategies embedded in these interactions. The study reports practice-situated research that is guided by a multi-dimensional view of individual and extra-individual features of practice. The study employs a multi-perspectival research agenda to explore how managerial practice is shaped through discourse and successive interactions. It is essentially an intensive case study of two novice managers, their supervising managers and others located in one business unit of a Global 500 company, and the company’s internal 5-day leadership training program for first-level managers. At the heart of the study is ethnographically-grounded discourse-oriented analysis of audio-recorded interactional and interview data, field notes and responses to mediated reflective activities, an innovative form of intervention designed to extend the scope of the study. Analysis focused on three interdependent themes that emerged from the data: (1) social-institutional influences notably those relating to the organisation’s culture, (2) the nature of support provided from within the business unit, and (3) the supervising manager’s educational role. Each theme is developed in one or two self-contained journal articles that have been prepared for publication. Each article corresponds to a chapter in the thesis following the introductory first chapter. One of the articles has been accepted for publication (Chapter 6), two have been reviewed and revised (Chapters 4 and 5) and the other two will be submitted for peer-review (Chapters 2 and 3). Each journal article is sole-authored and has been written for multiple audiences including applied linguists, management educators and consultants, learning and development professionals, and managers. Chapter 1 introduces the study, including a number of preliminary issues and background information such as the research aim and questions, methodological orientation, research site, the organisation of the thesis, and anticipated contributions of this research. Chapter 2 identifies the discursive strategies used by training staff in an ideologically driven leadership training program before exploring how two novice managers and their supervisors comply with and/or resist practices promoted during training. Chapter 3 focuses on the informal learning experiences reported by two novice managers and suggests that the business unit in question and its experienced managers were inconsistent in building upon the learning experiences of these novices. Chapter 4 investigates whether novice managers reflect-on-action and develop self-reflexive habits, together with identifying and accessing forms of support that might assist them in doing so. Chapter 5 focuses upon the competing interpretations of two supervising managers and the researcher with regard to the transcript of a workplace interaction and establishes a new understanding of the educator role of supervising managers. Chapter 6 identifies and integrates into a coherent communicative model the discursive strategies deployed by one supervising manager as she prepares her novice for his new role and responsibilities. Chapter 7 concludes the thesis with suggestions for further study and application. As transition to management has not been previously studied using a discourse-oriented approach, it is anticipated that this work will make a useful contribution to our understanding of the enabling role played by discourse in the professional socialisation of novice managers in large organisations, and will underscore the need to review training interventions and materials that are currently used to support novice managers and their supervisors.