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This paper acts as a commentary on the paper “Self‐reflexivity scrutinized: (pro‐)feminist men learning that gender matters” (Styhre and Tienari, 2013).

The following discussion seeks to build on Styhre and Tienari's argumentation and points to arguments of agreement and disagreement.

First, the authors argue that while self‐reflexivity cannot be fully taken into account it would be detrimental to social change to restrict it to accidental, haphazard happenings. Second, they argue that perhaps Styhre and Tienari do not always take self‐reflexivity far enough. In order to increase our understanding of why particular kinds of structural hierarchies take place in academia, it is important to locate these incidents within a system of practices that contribute to the marginalisation/privileging of certain groups of people.

The authors further see it as a researcher's moral obligation to at least attempt to overcome the identity‐related, cultural, political and structural conditions that make self‐reflexivity difficult, tiresome and emotionally constraining. We should encourage ourselves to have an ongoing conversation with our whole self about what we are experiencing as we are experiencing it, not only after a critical incident has taken place.

In conclusion, the authors are more inclined to argue along the lines of Alvesson et al., who see reflexivity as a skill or capacity that can be developed, while remaining in consensus with Styhre and Tienari that it can never be fully under the control of the researcher or practitioner.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the debate on reflexivity in organization and management studies by scrutinizing the possibilities of self‐reflexivity.

By means of auto‐ethnography, the authors analyze their own experiences as (pro‐)feminist men in the field of gender studies.

The authors argue that self‐reflexivity is partial, fragmentary and transient: it surfaces in situations where the authors’ activities and identities as researchers are challenged by others and they become aware of their precarious position.

The paper's perspective complements more instrumental understandings of self‐reflexivity, and stimulates further debate on its limits as well as potential.

The purpose of this paper is to elaborate on self-reflexivity and, in particular, explore the notion of context in relation to men's reflexivity in academic work.

The paper is a commentary on an earlier paper published in Equality, Diversity and Inclusion addressing the issue of reflexivity in organization studies and commented on by three different scholars.

Relating specifically to men doing gender studies research, the authors argue that they are always men in context, and their “privilege” (and reflections on it) needs to be accounted for in situ; in relation to the assumptions, relations, and practices at hand, rather to some abstract and vague “privileges” contained in, and carried by, men as a general category.

The paper seeks to advance a novel understanding of reflexivity not so much anchored in the willful capacity to reflect on scholarly work but as engagement with experiences of exclusion or unexpected outcomes in fieldwork and in interacting with other researchers.

The purpose of this paper is to present a methodology to develop responsible leaders through developing their response-ability within the context of their day-to-day lives that addresses the existing disconnect between the knowledge about responsible leadership and its practice.

The responsible leadership development methodology begins by helping individuals increase their awareness of their impact on others based on how they are relating and responding to them. This is facilitated through individuals engaging in self-reflexivity and reflection on relationships for which they want to be responsible. Then individuals experiment with and take responsibility for how they are relating and responding within the relationships. Finally, they engage in self-reflexivity and reflection to make sense of the experience to develop practical wisdom and the response-ability that will allow them to become more responsible leaders.

Students that completed an MBA leadership course that employed the responsible leadership development methodology overwhelmingly reported that their response-ability improved in ways that allowed them to become more responsible for their actions, impact on others, relationships and the reality they co-construct with others, as well as becoming a more responsible person.

The research is based on an MBA class of 24 students, only a few of whom currently occupied organizational leadership positions.

The presented leadership development methodology facilitates the development of responsible leaders through developing their ability and commitment to act responsibly within the context of their day-to-day lives.

The purpose of this paper is to explore some of the problems of teaching qualitative research methods to large culturally‐mixed groups of postgraduate business school students.

After a consideration of some current relevant pedagogical issues the author presents an autoethnographic account of his own parallel experiences of teaching qualitative research methods and learning to play a musical instrument. Emotional aspects of teaching and learning are highlighted in an analysis of the dynamic interaction between the two activities. This is presented as an example of how the “use of learning stories” can increase sensitivity to the anxieties of students.

Finds that the core of the argument lies in the value of self‐reflexivity to the business school teacher and that looking inward at personal learning experiences is invaluable for informing current and future teaching practice. Recent learning experiences seem to have the most potential and learning something that is found difficult may be the richest source of empathy and insight.

It is argued that reflexive analysis by research‐methods lecturers of their own learning experiences can develop synergies which would not only improve the effectiveness of their teaching but also enrich the learning experience of their students.

The paper is an attempt to generate some original ideas about teaching research methods in business schools via a mix of autoethnography and music. The core of the argument lies in the value of self‐reflexivity to the business school teacher.

This paper uses systems theory to clarify the crucial point that there is a basic, inborn, bodily motivation, and that a social theory of the self cannot simply be a theory of process. By bridging across current neuroscience, cognitive science, and systems theory, I propose a self that is fundamentally emotional energy seeking. There are other bodily needs (food, drink, etc), but these satiate quickly, and although they can override everything else at moments when they are low, they are not the central switching mechanism, the top of the hierarchy in the subsumption architecture of the self. Basing the formation and ongoing processes of the self in the motive to maximize emotional energy can explain the seeming conflict between tendencies towards self-consistency and the potential for creativity and change. It also allows us to detail the mechanisms that underlie the process of individuals drawing on culture as a resource and in turn diffusing new symbols and meanings into the larger culture.

The purpose of this paper is to study the status of the individual self in the emergence of change initiatives in organizations.

This theoretical paper examines the emergence of change initiatives through the building of agents’ capacity to act, based on a theory of action inspired by Paul Ricœur.

This paper identifies the “course of recognition” to favor the emergence of change initiatives and the building of the capacity to act of agents, respecting the autonomy at the individual level, a sense of care at the group level and justice at the institutional level.

The theoretical research can be extended with empirical studies dealing with the role of agents’ capacities in conflict management, the role of the “narrative self´” in change processes in organizations and the conjoint operationalization of autonomy care and justice to determine the agents’ capacity to act for initiatives to emerge.

It is important to develop a sense of shared leadership to nurture the capacity to act of agents to make change initiatives emerge in organizations, increasing organizational members’ feelings of being recognized.

So far, research has not provided satisfactory answers to the question about how to best initiate organizational change. The use of Ricœur’s theory of action adds value to the existing approaches as it addresses the source of the emergence of initiatives from agents’ feelings of their capacity to act, and integrates individual, group and institutional levels, which are rarely contemplated together.

The purpose of this paper is to self‐reflexively deconstruct a paper published by the author in 1996 about a Singaporean entrepreneur for whom the author worked. Through the deconstruction a number of important methodological and epistemological issues are raised. Firstly, the way in which the value of qualitative research in management and organization studies is judged more by how it conforms to acceptable ways of data collection, analysis and interpretation (strategic apparatus) than on any “truth” value it may have. Secondly, a consideration of how the “I” of the researcher is influential in how research is undertaken and written up. Thirdly, that this “I” of the researcher is also determined by what is acceptable “scientific” discourse and by other prevailing discourses.

In a paper published in 1996, the author detailed the “dark side” of an entrepreneur for whom he worked. Using a psychoanalytic framework this paper constructed the entrepreneur as an irrational and unethical incompetent. In the present paper, this earlier work is deconstructed using insights from Derrida's in order to highlight “strategic exclusions,” and to offer alternative readings. These alternative readings emphasize the influence of various discourses on the construction of the earlier paper, and also introduce a reading of the earlier paper as a psychoanalytic narrative.

The paper highlights the uses to which “objective tools” of analysis can be put in order to manipulate and construct an explanation and interpretation of personal experiences. This raises important epistemological issues concerning the influence of broader discourses on the representation of experiences and how realities and identities are constructed and performed. The paper concludes by suggesting that whom we are as researchers, and what we observe and write, is more complex and influenced by more discourse(s) than we might think. Even if researchers tell impressionistic and confessional tales simultaneously with their realist ones, it is necessary to consider what discourses may lay behind their telling. It has been argued that a limitation of deconstruction is that it may result in endless iterations and readings of text with no discursive closure. This may be a limitation of the deconstruction offered here.

The paper raises questions about the nature of the “academic” narrative and the importance of deconstruction in establishing author positioning within narrative. It contributes to the discussion about objectivity in organizational and management research and issues of epistemology and ontology more generally.

The aim of this paper is to give an account of a self‐evaluation process in a change programme within the US Coast Guard.

This is an autoethnographical account as form of reflection on a leadership in position facilitating change within the organization.

Adaptive organizational change is a human endeavor, not a scientific application of techniques and skills.

The authoethnography points mainly only to a change process of the writer and is therefore hardly an abstract model for others.

Meaningful organizational transformation does not occur without a corresponding self‐transformation, most importantly of the individual leading the change.

Changing oneself by managing change process as a leader, one has to become the change process in order to be successful.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the construction of the meanings of auditor independence (AI) in an oil‐rich autocratic state with an ideology straddling liberal market capitalism and Shari'ah (Islamic teachings).

The concept of AI was explored using Blumer's interactionist approach or the Chicago School of Symbolic Interactionism (CSSI). Multiple methods were adopted in collecting and interpreting data: document analysis, personal professional experience, observation and interviews with auditors in two audit firms in Saudi Arabia.

Using discourse analysis, the paper demonstrates that auditors construct the meanings of independence in appearance and in fact through their social interactions at three levels: micro (personal self‐reflexivity through ethical reasoning and reputation of individual auditor); meso (organisational culture through range of commercial activities and image management) and macro (through political, de jure, and socio‐economic structure).

The paper contributes to the auditing literature by providing insights into the construction of the meaning of AI in a context different from the dominant Anglo‐American discourse, as well as transition and emerging economies discourse. The paper also contributes to the CSSI research methodology by extending it to consider interactions not only within an organisational context, but also within the context of a country.