Anxiety and human resource development: possibilities for cultivating negative capability

Hay, A ORCID: https://orcid.org/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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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:	30
Number:	2
ISSN:	1044-8004
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1002/hrdq.21332 DOI
Record created by:	Jonathan Gallacher
Date Added:	15 Nov 2018 12:27
Last Modified:	27 Jan 2022 16:26
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/34999

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