‘This Interpreted World’: Two Turns to the Social in Management Learning

Abstract

Management Learning has established itself as a new field in management and organizational studies over the last 40 years. This article outlines two shifts towards ‘social’ theorizing since 1994 when the journal was rebranded. First, the turn to critical management learning, and second, the turn to practice-based studies of management learning. Both of these shifts occurred within the broader turn towards qualitative social research. While critical management learning can lean upon critical theories through which to interpret management learning in practice, it is argued that ethnomethodologically informed practice-based studies complement these approaches by examining ‘member’s methods’ as vernacular critical practices.