Anxiety and human resource development: possibilities for cultivating negative capability

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Hay, A. ORCID: 0000-0002-2629-230X and Blenkinsopp, J., 2019. Anxiety and human resource development: possibilities for cultivating negative capability. Human Resource Development Quarterly, 30 (2), pp. 133-153. ISSN 1044-8004

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Official URL: http://doi.org/10.1002/hrdq.21332

Abstract

Our article focuses on anxiety, which is an integral but still often ignored aspect of human resource development (HRD). The context of our study is a particular HRD intervention in Higher Education (HE): the part‐time MBA, and here for a group of managers who had taken less‐typical routes into HE and for whom anxiety was often heightened. Drawing on interviews with 20 students, we offer three contributions. First, we provide in‐depth understandings of the manifestations of anxiety in MBA programs highlighting their location in self‐other relations, and so progress understandings of anxiety as a social phenomenon. Second, we provide insights into how these self‐other relations simultaneously play an integral role in the development of a capacity for “negative capability”: that is an ability to recognize the anxiety of not knowing inherent to the learning environment, and with trusted others to contain it, until it has informed us to allow for the emergence of new insights and learning. Third, we illustrate the ways in which this capacity can also be mobilized in students' everyday managerial work by providing a starting point for public reflection. We suggest that these contributions offer promise for advancing critical forms of HRD.

Item Type:

Journal article

Publication Title:

Human Resource Development Quarterly

Creators:

Hay, A. and Blenkinsopp, J.

Publisher:

Jossey-Bass

Date:

2019

Volume:

Number: