The diagrammatic representation of the REP construct has been a simple yet powerful tool to help me understand my research process. The diagram below (Figure 5.28) illustrates that the construct does not represent a static state but the component parts grow in significance for me, and the forward direction of movement (the processed outcomes of emotional learning for the self become embodied, and so feed the ability to do REP, and so on) can in turn shape and influence the landscape in which we work.
My reflective practitioner journey makes a unique contribution to organisational study through emotive learning and taking actions and ideas on within the public sector. Whilst I do not claim a methodological solution or set of findings about knowledge that changes what we know about emotions, I provide a practice that can reveal a knowing process for the reflective practitioner engaging and finding out about emotions. I argue that REP can support new partnerships between the public and private sectors that require a meeting of inner-selves in creative dialogue. I have been supported in my role of helping to innovate within the public sector to tackle major issues such as climate change, and of helping to stimulate ethical consumer choice and hence market response. My vignettes have illustrated the learning process at work in such instances. So the method is socially and emotionally constructed, yet hastens and serves rational business cases within the market economy. Hillman (1995) again picks this up, exasperated that destroying the planet is supported by the false promise that science will make good; such positivistic projection ignores humankind’s lemming-like ability to follow the path to annihilation. This reminds me of Gidden’s (1990) juggernaut of modernity in the runaway path of capitalism and workers throwing themselves mindlessly into harm’s way.
In Figure 5.28 below each bold square represents the growth of the self (as singularly
represented in Figure 5.27). I sense it expanding and deepening as my “Returns to the self” bring confidence, stature and embodied emotion to my inner-self. This enables personal development and growth, and maximises the moments and chances of
personal transformation or step-change (depicted here as steps A to B, B to C, C to D). Overall, the diagram depicts the expansive pathway of the REP process of engaging with emotions.
Figure 5.28 Personal transformation: growing the subjective power of the
inner-self. Ininr outer outer Inner outer Inner inner inner inner outer outer outer outer outer outer A B A C A D A
My working and extension of the theory and concept around emotional intelligence gave essential insight which, together with experiencing people’s emotional responses in a rational research framework, helped to give me an exciting emotional realisation. This was painful in many ways as I knew, after some three years of research, that I had to reset my thesis and allow myself to become fully emotionally immersed in the feelings of finding out. My data, then, was my ethnographic account based on my reflections in actions using my new construct of Reflective Emotive Practitioning. This did not relegate the first phase of research but used that as evidence in my account of the journey.
I suggest that attempting to research emotions or emotional intelligence with a traditional rational approach renders the researcher detached from the real and
continuous emotional experience that drives people. Without emotional immersion and a reflective practitioning role (and over some years to sustain growth and maturing insight) the researcher either becomes or is already part of the commodification of emotions in an organisation, or is given superficial treatment by suspicious and worried senior managers. In both cases this is an understandable institutional (and human) reaction to the risk of negative findings and destructive results.
I have become convinced of the need for organisations but have come to know them as irrational. The bureaucracy almost always takes over the function and original purpose of collectivising in the first place. I suggest that continuously focusing on reshaping or restructuring organisations can be wasteful, even if inevitable. If this is so, then my experience and REP approach at least give a new way in to research and participating in research into emotions at work.
My research through REP centres on process rather than results coming from an imposed structure. Our own power creates structures fit for purpose that are embodied with emotions. I acknowledge that I do not present an objective overview of emotions in organisations and so there is no conventional generalisability but a representation of a personal and in-depth story that is transferable to other unique workplace contexts. That is the essence of the research design – it is personal and reflective, yet influential in moving the development of emotional understanding. The research could not simply be applied in any organisation – access would not easily be given and in any case REP is created iteratively through reflective practice. I am presenting and advocating immersed researchers connecting with their emotions in order to connect with the
emotions of others and those of the organisation, whatever the situation (commodification or otherwise) in their workplace contexts.
In the initial phase of the research ethics were of paramount importance. It is not implied that this diminished later on, rather that the research was intrinsically ethical and not impacting on or representing people in any negative way. I was open with my employer and colleagues about what I was trying to discover and the turning in on myself became an ethical matter focused on me.
I discussed my insecurity in dealing with the subject area at length with colleagues and my supervisors. However, I soon saw that there was no threat to individuals or
organisational standing as I represented myself in the unfoldings of the first-person narrative. I have recognised throughout the research that I bring my own opinions and judgements. However, it was my openness to laying out my learning and
preconceptions about emotional intelligence and a perceived gap in the understanding of emotions that triggered the research and developed the rich account of this thesis. REP brings forth ideas that tip into new territories, rippling across the pool’s surface in neat rings. The self is a disturbance to the rhythm that enters and informs and
contributes in a renewal of the very landscape. I know myself better through the emotional turmoil bringing me and others into sustainable ideas. The emotions, as well as carrying actions and ideas through with passion, become somehow fixed in the fabric of the landscape and embodied memories in people and the things they create – such as new buildings, training courses, policies or jobs. The energy in these work achievements has an emotional halo effect – a legacy that can be felt by contributors and next-generation workers adding new dimensions to the work. In the terms of the Gestalt school, I believe new emotions are embodied in the landscape and the people. I began with an early appreciation of Foucault’s representation of society as being like Jeremy Bentham’s (ibid.) panopticon prison watch tower design. Here the observers have a perfect view of their captors by looking out to the ring of cells. My REP
contribution provides a way of turning this metaphor of organisational hegemony on its head by placing you and me in our own watch towers and in our individually imagined worlds of organisational, societal or global fields. I believe that with our emotions of finding out we can come to know our inner-selves and enjoy the mystery and wonder of emotions playing with our ideas.
I arrived at my REP concept and non-conventional thesis after a difficult journey through rough terrain and obstacles within academic and practice fields. The narrative form of the data and my personal analysis is founded upon this experience and
knowledge and scholarship over many years of more conventional research. This lends integrity to my departure from standards and my case for the necessity of doing so to break through frontiers of emotions in the workplace. Whilst my postmodernist and post-positivism approach aligns with that of many disciplines over the last 25 years or so, it is less common in the field of business or management research in organisations. However, as social and emotional complexities are recognised in the noise of what makes up organisational life and in how business across sectors is delivered in unstable environmental, political and economic times, the story I present offers resonance to others striving to deliver energized and vital creativity to the workplace – producing work on products, services and processes that connect with our emotional selves. To share and contribute we must care for ourselves and listen to our feelings as we engage our thoughts and actions in reflexive practice. Organisational work is programmed to be linear – human beings are not and cannot be so.
In dark moments of my research I encountered feelings of confusion, angst and
frustration with me and my workplace. This could have limited my research but now I know this to be essential emotional learning as I sought my unique path and
contribution. I was drawn into an emotional state of flow that was buoyed up by self- reflection on inner and outer data. The imaging of the data and subsequent analysis reified my REP process of finding out and fuelled my emotional actions and speaking out – with others and by myself – against target-driven waves of tasks. My experience fills me with conviction that emotions nurtured in ourselves, supported by like-minded and like-feeling colleagues at work, can be a power source for original and refreshing work and behaviours and attitudes towards the work experience.
However, I recognise that readers are equally unique and I do not lay claim to generalising theory or fixing a methodology. My narrative and approach are self-
created, as is my data and analysis, but the reflections on my journey and the interfacing with others is presented as knowledge that can be seen as transferable to the evolving constellation of reflective practitioners working with emotions in organisations. The narrative has turned into an autoethnography – writing that has become part of the finding-out process and itself evidence which I reflect on and analyze. The thesis writing made me turn further in on myself and became a final layer of analysis and interpretation on the whole that enabled me to draw conclusions within the continuous
process of finding out. The writing is passionate and emotional in the first person with the intersecting aim to connect with the emotional senses of my readers and fellow reflective practitioners.
6.0 Chapter 6 Conclusion