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In this essay I reflect on the disruptive potential of bemusement. When people are bemused, we feel confused or bewildered. We can also feel wry pleasure, especially if we are bemused by something perplexing, that confounds expectations or norms. I explore how the affective tensions of bemusement can unsettle persons' emotional investment in institutional order. I argue that disruption arises from surfacing the absurdities that are part of what is accepted as normal, and I illustrate this with a discussion of the 'Dismaland Bemusement Park'. I assert the importance of confounding stability, order and rationality by recognizing the parallel existence of confusion, absurdity and illogics. Practical access to these parallel dynamics arises from the art of cultural subversion. Such an art both politicizes and gives pleasure to those involved in creative disruption; and it embraces the ensuing confusion as a critique – as a potentially insightful twist on institutional order.

This article explores doctoral students' emotional experience as they learn about conducting qualitative research. Emotions emerging from a shared learning experience provided doctoral students with opportunities to reflect on their experience as qualitative researchers and on the practice of qualitative research. Explicit links are made between students' learning how to do research and their research as learning, to provide an example of experiential and engaged teaching practice within a doctoral program in management. A study of a module on qualitative research focused on the emotional experience of being a doctoral student, captured a range of emotions, and offered students the opportunity to understand the importance and value of emotional reflexivity within their qualitative research.

The theme of this essay is how to engage with unconscious dynamics in our analysis of institutions. The essay clarifies the ways in which the unconscious influences institutional structures and organizational practices, and this is the main theoretical contribution to organization studies. A conceptual framework is presented that can help scholars of organizations and institutions to deepen analysis and understanding of how people's organizational lives can be shaped by dynamics that are beyond reason, as well as how such dynamics are embedded in social structures. The terms unconscious and institution are aligned to illustrate a new concept, 'institutional illogics'. This refers to the structuring and unsettling effects of unconscious dynamics, particularly social defences and shared fantasies, on organizations and institutions. Examples from published, empirical papers are used to illustrate the value of the framework. The concept of illogics is intended to encourage balance alongside the influence of logics on institutional analysis.

In this polemical essay, Professor Russ Vince argues that it is important to understand the contradictions that can be generated by Action Learning. This method is a powerful and effective approach to managers' learning that can underpin transformations of management practice. However, any method for learning, no matter how convinced we are of its efficacy, is tied to organizational power relations and their effects. It is likely that the radical potential of Action Learning sits side-by-side with the political purpose that the use of the approach might serve. Power relations create contradictions in how learning methods are felt, used and understood. Engaging with the contradictions of Action Learning has the potential to improve its impact and effectiveness.

This article addresses the question: how can we help managers to understand the emotional and political dynamics that surround and permeate their managerial roles? A conceptual framework is presented that is based on the integration of literature on space with literature that has taken a psychodynamic approach to management learning. The term spatial psychodynamics describes the way in which juxtapositions of material, relative and relational space in the management classroom can reveal dynamics that help managers to perceive the emotions and politics that are part of their roles. Three characteristics of spatial psychodynamics are presented: unconscious dynamics and the interpretation of learning space, the political effects of fantasy in learning space, and how juxtapositions of space create distinctiveness of place. An example is discussed in order to illustrate how this concept can improve our ability to engage with emotional and political dynamics in the management classroom.

The focus of this paper is a discussion of anxiety and politics as they relate to business school pedagogy. Using ideas from critical management education (CME), the paper explores why and how to engage with the anxiety mobilized through attempts to learn. The aim is to discuss emotional and political dynamics that are generated, and too often avoided, in management education. Making these dynamics overt in the classroom can help managers to comprehend the political context within which management takes place. Examples informed by CME are presented, as well as reflections from the author on the anxiety and politics that emerge for the critical management educator in a business school context. The contribution in the paper is to show the way that anxieties and politics within the business school classroom offer opportunities to change how business schools approach the teaching of managers. CME adds value to management education because it challenges what and how individuals and groups expect to learn, and consequently it challenges assumptions about how learning takes place within business schools. Such challenges are seen as an important and integral part of 'making the business school more critical'.

This paper seeks to improve our understanding of the emotional and political dynamics that are generated (and too often avoided) in action learning. The idea at the centre of the paper is a distinction between 'learning-in-action' and 'learning inaction'. The phrase 'learning-in-action' represents the value of action learning and much of what we know about the productive relationship between learning and practice. For example, we know that action learning can provide a generative learning model for improvements in practice. Membership of an action learning set can assist individuals in the development of strategic actions, which then can be tested and potentially transformed in practice. However, there is another dynamic that is having an effect on learning and the transformation of practice within action learning. This is called 'learning inaction' because participants in learning sets also have (conscious and unconscious) knowledge, fantasies and perceptions about when it is emotionally and politically expedient to refrain from action, when to avoid collective action, and the organizational dynamics that underpin a failure to act. Organizational members are often aware of the political limits of learning within organizations without having to be told; we collude with others in order to create limitations on learning and we are often aware of what is and is not going to be seen as a legitimate result of our attempts to learn. We know these things at the same time as we are engaged in action learning. These developments in theory are related to practice through a focus on four action learning sets within the UK Health Service.

The aim of this article is to show how psychodynamic theory and its application can inform the management of change in organizations. The article outlines a psychodynamic framework for the management of change, emphasizing the interrelation between individual and collective emotional experience and power relations. The phrase a politics of imagined stability is used to describe the role that social and strategic politics play in the perpetuation of emotions and fantasies that have an impact on organizing. The framework involves understanding how the organization is imagined, experienced and maintained through the influence of social and strategic politics, as well as the resulting emotional and political relations within which attempts at change have to be managed. The conceptual framework is illustrated and developed through a case example from Hyder plc, formerly the largest private company in Wales, UK. The discussion and conclusion outline the articles contribution to knowledge concerning psychodynamic thinking and the management of change.

This article explores the difference between learning in an organization and organizational learning. I construct a conceptual framework for understanding organizational learning at an organizational level of analysis. This framework is based on the proposition that organizational learning is visible in the organizational dynamics created from the interaction between politics (power relations) and emotion within an organization. Using a combination of psychodynamic theory and reflections on the politics of organizing I develop the idea that organizations are learning when the 'establishment' that is being created through the very process of organizing can be identified and critically reflected upon. I use a case example of a change initiative within Hyder PLC, a multinational company, to identify organizational dynamics that limit organizational learning. In the final part of the article, I discuss the conclusions that emerged from the case example and the implications of these conclusions for the theory and practice of organizational learning.