Russ Vince

University of Bath, School of Management, Professor of Leadership & Change

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Russ Vince is Professor of Leadership and Change in the School of Management, the University of Bath and Director of the School’s Research Centre for Strategic Change and Leadership (CSCL). He was Associate Dean (Research) from January 2011 to December 2013. His research interests are in management and organisational learning, leadership and the management of change. His books include Managing Change, (Policy Press, 1996), Group Relations, Management and Organisation (Oxford University Press, 1999), Rethinking Strategic Learning, (Routledge, 2004)
Phone: +44(0)1225-384419
Address: School of Management
University of Bath
Bath, BA2 7AY
United Kingdom

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Books by Russ Vince

The Handbook of Experiential Learning and Management Education

While Experiential Learning has been an influential method in the education and development of ma... more While Experiential Learning has been an influential method in the education and development of managers and management students, it has also been one of the most misunderstood. This Handbook offers the reader a comprehensive picture of current thinking on experiential learning; ideas and examples of experiential learning in practice; and it emphasises the importance of experiential learning to the future of management education.

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Rethinking Strategic Learning

Russ Vince examines learning as both a social and a strategic process, invariably linked to emoti... more Russ Vince examines learning as both a social and a strategic process, invariably linked to emotions and politics that are mobilized by attempts at learning and organizing. He makes a substantial contribution to theories of organizational learning and develops new ideas about critical reflection and collective leadership. The author outlines a critical perspective on HRD, arguing that staff responsible for learning and change in organizations have put too much effort into the development of individuals and not enough into understanding and engaging with organizational dynamics that limit and shape individuals' opportunities and abilities to learn and change. HRD is explained as an intervention within a political system and practice of management and leadership, with all the difficulties and contradictions that attempting to manage and to lead are likely to contain and reveal. This means that the focus of HRD is on action, on developing the capacity to act, on generating credibility through action, and on influencing and working with others in situations loaded with emotion and politics.

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Organizing Reflection

Through a series of leading-edge contributions from pre-eminent international scholars in the fie... more Through a series of leading-edge contributions from pre-eminent international scholars in the field, Organizing Reflection makes a stimulating and distinctive contribution to the study of reflection. By doing so, it offers the first shift from the individual reflective practitioner to processes of collective and public reflection. The unique and varied contributions focus on the development of notions such as public reflection, collective reflection, and critical reflection. In doing so, they provide critical insights into new thinking and approaches to the role of reflection in organizations, as well as the conceptualization and delivery of learning and change. Organizing Reflection will be of interest to scholars working in business, professional, management and organization studies, to human development academics, and to scholarly practitioners in organizations.

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Papers by Russ Vince

‘I don’t know what’s going on’: Theorising the relationship between unknowingness and distributed leadership

Human Relations, Jan 8, 2024

Surely a leader should know what to do? But what happens when complexity means they cannot know w... more Surely a leader should know what to do? But what happens when complexity means they cannot know which path to take? We answer this question with an ethnographic study of distributed leadership (DL) in an organisation grappling with inherent tensions within its mission. The article makes a counter-intuitive argument for the value and utility of unknowingness, defined as a state of awareness of both an absence of knowing and one&#39;s inability to know. Three interrelated aspects to unknowingness are developedacceptance of not knowing, tolerance of the discomfort of not knowing, and distribution of unknowingness-leading to an innovative theory of unknowingness. We reveal how unknowingness and DL are bound with each other in the sense that not knowing can enable distribution of leadership within the organisation, whilst DL addresses challenges in complex organisations associated with not knowing. We thereby provide an illustration of the interplay between those with hierarchical authority and others dispersed throughout an organisation. In sum, we provide an alternative perspective to the heroic, all-knowing individual leader.

Emotion and strategic learning

Being taken over

Routledge studies in human resource development, Jun 15, 2004

The politics of imagined stability

Chapter 14: New Directions for Researching Critical Reflection in Organizations

Literature Review: `Formulating Questions

Management Learning, Sep 1, 1997

From the AMLE Editorial Team: Disciplined Provocation: Writing Essays for AMLE

Academy of Management Learning and Education, Dec 1, 2018

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Ideas for critical practitioners

Taylor & Francis eBooks, Feb 16, 2010

Organizing Reflection: An Introduction

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The Upside of the Downside

Management Learning, Dec 1, 2000

In this paper we suggest that it is important in management education to work with the defensive ... more In this paper we suggest that it is important in management education to work with the defensive dynamics in learning groups. Through a consideration of the dynamics within complex systems, we argue that the ways in which these defensive dynamics are worked with may determine the levels of learning attained. This work requires a recognition that defensive dynamics within groups can limit learning, an awareness of the nature of such dynamics, and skill in adopting appropriate strategies in relation to them. Both staff and learners can contribute to this work.

Both/and thinking: embracing creative tensions to solve your toughest problems

Action Learning: Research and Practice, Jan 24, 2023

Seeing the Forest Without any Trees:: The Paradox of the Clearcutting Custodians of England's forests

Loyal traitors and successful failures: Values, emotions and paradox within Forestry England

Paradox, Emotion and Coronavirus

Journal of Management Inquiry, Oct 15, 2020

Between Sense and Science: The Role of Emotion and Tacit Knowledge in Clinical Decision Making

Cooperation and Defection: The paradoxical situations of knowledge transfer practices in a professional organisation

Briefing for a Decent into Institutional Hell: A Lesson in Personhood in the NHS

The Handbook of Experiential Learning and Management Education

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Rethinking Strategic Learning

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Organizing Reflection

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‘I don’t know what’s going on’: Theorising the relationship between unknowingness and distributed leadership

Human Relations, Jan 8, 2024

Emotion and strategic learning

Being taken over

Routledge studies in human resource development, Jun 15, 2004

The politics of imagined stability

Chapter 14: New Directions for Researching Critical Reflection in Organizations

Literature Review: `Formulating Questions

Management Learning, Sep 1, 1997

From the AMLE Editorial Team: Disciplined Provocation: Writing Essays for AMLE

Academy of Management Learning and Education, Dec 1, 2018

Download

Ideas for critical practitioners

Taylor & Francis eBooks, Feb 16, 2010

Organizing Reflection: An Introduction

Download

The Upside of the Downside

Management Learning, Dec 1, 2000

Both/and thinking: embracing creative tensions to solve your toughest problems

Action Learning: Research and Practice, Jan 24, 2023

Seeing the Forest Without any Trees:: The Paradox of the Clearcutting Custodians of England's forests

Loyal traitors and successful failures: Values, emotions and paradox within Forestry England

Paradox, Emotion and Coronavirus

Journal of Management Inquiry, Oct 15, 2020

Between Sense and Science: The Role of Emotion and Tacit Knowledge in Clinical Decision Making

Cooperation and Defection: The paradoxical situations of knowledge transfer practices in a professional organisation

Briefing for a Decent into Institutional Hell: A Lesson in Personhood in the NHS

Integrating experiential learning through 'live' projects: A psychodynamic account

Inside action learning: the psychology and politics of the action learning model

Management Education and Development, 1993

The art of being a reflexive academic

Routledge eBooks, Jun 7, 2023

No Room for Mistakes: The Impact of the Social Unconscious on Organizational Learning in Kazakhstan

by Administrative Sciences (ISSN 2076-3387) (ESCI & Scopus indexing) and Russ Vince

The aim of this paper is to add to existing work on the theme of power, emotion, and organization... more The aim of this paper is to add to existing work on the theme of power, emotion, and organizational learning. The study was undertaken in Kazakhstan, where tensions between old and new regimes provide an environment that is rich in emotion and power/politics; and offer an opportunity to study the interplay between emotion and power during individual and organizational attempts to learn. The social unconscious is used as a conceptual frame to identify underlying dynamics that impact on organizational learning. The empirical study illustrates a social fantasy concerning the fear of mistakes and its consequences. This fantasy is sustained through blaming and punishing the people who make mistakes, and through feelings of internalised embarrassment and guilt that are enacted through interpersonal relations of shaming and being ashamed. Our contribution to knowledge arises from employing a concept (social unconscious) that has not been used to study organizational learning within a social and organizational context for organizational learning (Kazakhstan) that has not yet been studied. The practical purpose of this paper is to improve our knowledge of the social and political context of organizational learning in post-Soviet Kazakhstan through understanding unconscious dynamics that both inform and undermine attempts to learn.

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