Managers' practice and managers' learning as identity formation: Reassessing the MBA contribution

The contribution of MBA study to managers' work has been increasingly questioned, in particular the relevance of the curriculum and the transfer of MBA knowledge and skills into practice. However, emerging processual understandings of practice emphasize management as a relational activity and manager development as a process of evolving a particular identity in relation to others. While these understandings enable a reassessment of the contributions of MBA study, they have so far offered unconsolidated theoretical tools and empirical evidence of manager-students' identity-work is limited. This article makes both theoretical and empirical contributions using a case study of MBA manager-students to critically examine the relationality of management, the significance of identity in the respondent managers' day-to-day practice, and the contribution of MBA study to identity-work. The findings contribute to resolving a key debate in the study of identity formation. The article concludes by developing implications for the redesign of MBA education to better enable manager-students' identity formation.