Addressing Privilege in Teamwork

Design Tools for Critical Management Education

Villeséche, Florence ; Teilmann-Lock, Stina

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Journal of Management Education

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10.1177/10525629221126067

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Villeséche, F., & Teilmann-Lock, S. (2023). Addressing Privilege in Teamwork: Design Tools for Critical
Management Education. Journal of Management Education, 47(1), 104-116.
https://doi.org/10.1177/10525629221126067

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Article

Addressing Privilege in Teamwork: Design Tools for Critical Management Education

Florence Villesèche
Associate Professor
Copenhagen Business School
Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy
Porcelænshaven 18B, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark
fv.mpp@cbs.dk
+4538154268

Stina Teilmann-Lock
Associate Professor
Copenhagen Business School
Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy
Porcelænshaven 18B, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark
stte.mpp@cbs.dk

Contact author: Florence Villesèche

Journal of Management Education 2

Abstract

In this article, we argue that a key diversity issue to be tackled in the classroom is disparity: Some students

are more privileged than others, and their inputs are more valued than others’. Therefore, as educators, we

need to devise new ways to rebalance benefits and deficits in our classrooms. Complementing critical work

on privilege in business schools that has exposed and theorized the problem, we take a practical, By design

approach to addressing privilege while avoiding diversity education dilemmas. We propose that such a

proactive rather than reactive approach can help mitigate the negative consequences that the exercise of

privilege may have on our students’ learning. Specifically, we propose that we can learn from designers

how to use tools that help create collaborative, positive-sum environments when conducting team-based

activities in the classroom. We present a selection of simple yet powerful design devices: Speaking rules,

Problem framing, and Iteration. We discuss how these devices may help address privilege in the classroom

with illustrative examples and reflections on the outcomes and limitations of these devices. We thus enrich

the underdeveloped conversation on how design methods can be translated and applied to management

education.

Keywords: Disparity; Privilege; Design tools; collaboration; team-based activities; diversity education

dilemmas.

This article is part of the Themed Issue “Privilege in the Business Schools and the Management Classroom”.
Villesèche and Teilmann-Lock 3

Addressing Privilege in Teamwork: Design Tools for Critical Management Education

Introduction

Diversity can be defined as “the distribution of differences among the members of a unit with respect to a

common attribute” (Harrison & Klein, 2007, p. 1200), such as gender, age, ethnicity, educational

background, or social class. Harrison and Klein (2007) further distinguish between three diversity

constructs: diversity as separation, variety, and disparity. In management scholarship and teaching,

diversity tends to be approached either as separation or variety. In diversity as separation, the emphasis is

on the differences within a given social group and the social mechanisms these can trigger within human

groups, such as similarity-attraction or social categorization, which can lead to conflicts, lack of

cohesiveness, and ultimately lower group performance (Van Knippenberg et al., 2004). In diversity as

variety, the focus is on seeing diversity as a resource for workgroups that can lead to higher levels of

creativity or innovation thanks to the diversity of input from the group’s diverse members (Herring, 2009).

These two constructs are often discussed as the two sides of the same coin when working with diversity.

The underlying assumption is that we can solve diversity issues in our classrooms by emphasizing the

variety argument over the separation one. However, this can lead to a “diversity education dilemma”

(Amoroso et al., 2010), i.e., a situation in which we reinforce differences by bringing attention to them,

which happens even when trying to reinforce positive stereotypes and work within the paradigm of critical

management education (CME) (Welsh & Dehler, 2013).

The third construct, diversity as disparity, has received less attention, which is problematic as this

construct entails considering questions of status hierarchies, social values, and inequalities in

organizations—not least in business schools (Fotaki & Prasad, 2015). Such work is crucial as students lack

awareness of their privilege and, at the same time, members of underprivileged groups tend to give higher

status to members of privileged groups (Fotaki & Prasad, 2015). In the Western business school context,
Journal of Management Education 4

the majority group tends to be white, (upper) middle class, reproducing elite (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1964;

Hartmann, 2000) and masculine norms (Kelan & Jones, 2010). In the classroom, such privilege can express

itself through a set of behaviors and embodied performance (Jarness et al., 2019) and by deploying skills

and traits typical of higher-class backgrounds, such as being highly articulate, being good networkers, and

being strategic, that are valued in business school and are in high demand in the related job market

(Sølvberg, 2021).

We thus argue that the question of diversity in the classroom that we need to tackle is one of

disparity, in other words, the fact that some students are more privileged than others or are more valued

than others. Drawing on Dean and Forray (2021) and Amoroso et al. (2010), we define privilege in the

classroom as an unequally distributed, invisible stock of superiorly valued resources that certain students

can count on deploying during their studies; we also agree that, as educators, we need to devise new ways

to rebalance benefits and deficits in our classrooms.

Still, we must move from what the problem is (privilege) to how to solve it (Bilimoria et al., 2010).

In this article, we seek to contribute to CME scholarship that has exposed and theorized the problem and

documented reflexive work among business school educators (Bilimoria et al., 2010; Holmes et al., 2005;

Jack, 2009) and privileged students (Zulfiqar & Prasad, 2021). More specifically, we focus on teamwork

in the classroom. While teamwork is an integral part of contemporary approaches to teaching, where

dialogue and interaction are preferred to ex cathedra teaching, and although dialogue-based approaches can

be used in critical education (see, e.g., Sammel & Waters, 2014), teamwork may be a prime occasion to

deploy privilege, in particular through the skills and traits of higher-class backgrounds mentioned above

(Sølvberg, 2021). Emphasizing a positive-sum outcome, we take a By design approach to dismantling

privilege here in interactive activities involving teamwork and thus support long-standing calls to

democratize the classroom (Rogers, 1969).

Design approaches are still not discussed much in the management education literature, which is

surprising given the potential of such tools to deliver on CME goals (Welsh & Dehler, 2013), including the
Villesèche and Teilmann-Lock 5

need to develop our students’ critical thinking skills and lead them to take courageous action (Adler, 2016).

Design approaches contribute to such goals by providing in-class collaborative elements of this learning

process. We concur with Fenwick (2005), who contests that awareness and emancipation can be achieved

through negative processes (shaming, suffering, etc.) and suggests that we need to create an action-

reflection dynamic by which we do not cling back to the status quo by way of a defensive reflex.

Collaborative learning and perspective-taking are also avenues to avoid diversity education dilemmas

(Amoroso et al., 2010; Zulfiqar & Prasad, 2021). The design approach thus rejoins broader scholarly

concern for the importance of taking a process perspective (Elliott et al., 2013). Moreover, design

approaches arguably have a practical, hands-on dimension that fits well with some of the core tenets of

business school education.

Addressing Privilege By Design

In this article, we advance the view that we may mitigate privilege by working systematically with

classroom tools that promote students’ peer learning and group work. Specifically, we propose an approach

for undoing unearned advantage By design (Bohnet, 2016). We borrow the notion of undoing undesirable

social outcomes By design from systems engineering design, where the approach of Privacy by design was

developed to protect privacy as a human value in all steps of the engineering process (Cavoukian, 2010).

Before proceeding, we acknowledge that designers have developed the design devices described below for

designers to create design solutions and that design is a process, not just a collection of tools. In this article,

we suggest that applying such devices in management education may mitigate privilege while introducing

the students to the notion of design.

The helpfulness of learning from designers lies in the operational character of design, and the focus

on creating solutions makes that a valuable complement to critical approaches. Moreover, the human-

centeredness of modern design methods (Buchanan, 2001; Schön, 1983) is a means to the end of mitigating
Journal of Management Education 6

privilege in collaborative design processes. Notably, we adopt and adapt foundational principles of the By

design approach: 1) being proactive, not reactive; 2) embedding the undoing of privilege as the default

setting of classroom formats; and 3) striving for a positive-sum (rather than zero-sum) environment where

all contributions are acknowledged and valued. When stakeholders are given equal weightage and

opportunity to express their views, satisfactory design solutions are developed (B. T. Christensen et al.,

2017; Friedman & Hendry, 2019). In what follows, we present a selection of devices used by designers to

structure design processes. It is important to emphasize that, as process-structuring devices, design devices

are heuristics: If one device does not work, the designer’s approach would be to try with another. We

recommend this approach when using design devices in student teamwork; design tools are not universally

effective, but there are many tools to choose from. We argue that it is likely that one of the many existing

design devices could help pursue a proactive approach to addressing privilege in the classroom. There are

many available design tools; see for example the web resource https://www.ideo.org/tools. In the following

developments, we introduce a selection of devices and give examples of how we have used them for

teamwork in the classroom to practically illustrate the case we are making for using designers’ tools.

Device 1: Speaking Rules

One important type of design device used to give equal standing and voice to all stakeholders is a step-by-

step guide for idea generation. The underlying idea of step-by-step guides in design methodology is that

constraints unleash creativity. A commonly used format is Speaking rules for presenting ideas within a

group (Kumar, 2013). Defining Speaking rules is a strategy for preventing invisible ones, i.e., implicit social

rules about who speaks first, for how long, and so on. For example, participants can take turns articulating

their input, applying the rule that sentences must always start with Yes, and…, thereby connecting it to the

previous speaker’s input. Another rule can be to Say only one word at a time. Here group members take

turns uttering a single word to tell a story. A third example of a step-by-step guide is to Begin with the last

word. In this case, conversations occur in pairs, and every sentence begins with the last word uttered by the

other person.
Villesèche and Teilmann-Lock 7

Those unfamiliar with conversation structuring of this type often find it frustrating or even

infuriating. The unease, however, is a sign that the method is working. Subtly, yet firmly, the hard rule-

structuring of a conversation forces people out of their usual social standing and role, which may mitigate

the workings of privilege. Ultimately, such rules aim to turn group members into active listeners, which is

as important as active participation. While below we give an example from one particular teaching session,

we would argue that repeating the hard rule-structuring several times with the same group of students is

worthwhile to see if familiarity with the format makes it less frustrating. Explaining that this device is a

tool to foster active listening can also help create a positive attitude toward it, as well as providing evidence

of how we often tend not to listen (or not actively enough) and we thus engage poorly with others’ points.

Active listening can be learned, and this skill paves the way for a positive-sum working environment and

the deployment of additional devices. Adopting Speaking rules grounds the co-construction of solutions

that all team members are invested in producing.

As a case in point, we introduced Speaking rules in a graduate-level class on research methods for

business studies. Students worked in groups and were tasked with creating a narrative based on interviews

and ethnographic data they had collected at a museum. To facilitate the development of the narratives, each

group was told to apply the above-described Speaking rules of Yes, and…, One word at a time, and Begin

with the last word in three consecutive rounds. Groups were taking notes during the rounds. Before starting,

they were told that the speaking-rule exercises were meant to distract the ego and avoid disruptive group

dynamics of, for example, dominance or competition. As such, we were not trying to trick them into using

design devices but rather made them aware of the aims and potential outcomes.

Groups had varying success in following the rules and using the exercises. Some groups reported

that it added not value for them and decided to abandon the rules and return to normal conversation. Other

groups embraced the exercises and shared that active listening was a positive experience in their groups:

The rules had made them suspend their replies and listen until others had finished speaking. Also,

conversations had become less about each group member figuring out what to say next and more about
Journal of Management Education 8

building on the ideas of others. From our observations, students who most resisted following the rules also

had more to lose in terms of social status. There were many native (vs international) students in the class,

and several students had previously earned their undergraduate degrees at this same business school.

Accordingly, they can be expected to be more “in the know” about the curriculum and the hidden

curriculum (Orón Semper & Blasco, 2018). In other words, some students may have used their privilege to

dominate conversations and influence the direction of group work.

In sum, drawing from our experience with deploying this device, using Speaking rules in team-

based work in the classroom can help lessen the exercise of privilege; however, when participants resist the

premise, the exercise may fail. The fact that the most privileged may be the most able and likely to resist in

this case is undoubtedly a weakness. Therefore, it is essential to create familiarity with the device and clarify

its aim, as remarked earlier. However, there is still no guarantee that it will be adopted by all teams and

work as expected. Notwithstanding, it is essential to emphasize once again that design devices are heuristic

process tools: If one tool fails, it can be replaced by another until the desired process is successfully

facilitated.

Device 2: Problem Framing

The class of problems that designers label wicked problems or higher-level problems (Rittel & Webber,

1973) are ones that are difficult to solve because there are complex questions of status, social values, and

inequalities at play and because information and requirements may be incomplete, contradictory, and

changing. Moreover, we have no way of knowing when a wicked problem gets optimally solved: Solutions

to wicked problems cannot be defined as good or bad or true or false (Rittel & Webber, 1973). Instead, as

Buchanan insisted, “every formulation of a wicked problem corresponds to the formulation of a solution”

(Buchanan, 1992, p. 16). That means the range of suitable solutions to a wicked problem is anticipated and

limited by the way the problem is framed in the first place.

Villesèche and Teilmann-Lock 9

We see at least two possible advantages of working with the analytical category of wicked problems

to mitigate privilege. First, there are no privileged solutions (no single true or best solution) to a wicked

problem. This means that a majority perspective does not automatically get to dominate. On the contrary,

since the assumption is that there is no way of knowing for sure if one has found an optimal solution, every

perspective is valuable for determining how good or how bad a solution is. Second, a central analytical

point of working with the category of wicked problems is to formulate the problem carefully; this creates

an openness in a group for welcoming a wide range of perspectives insofar as the diversity of inputs

qualifies and strengthens the process as well as the outcome.

In our business school, for example, we have started to use a workshop format (hereafter, the Lab)

in a course combining the topics of organizational change and diversity management. We did so to address

privilege but also to help students develop better solutions—which, from a design perspective, starts with

formulating better problems. Indeed, we noticed over the years that students tend to identify problems and,

later, solutions that in numerous ways reflect their identity and privilege. This issue became particularly

pregnant when a partnering organization wanted our mainly white, European, middle-class, female students

to focus on inter-cultural and disability-related needs for change.

The Lab is a multi-partner endeavor that aims to act upon the call for critical performativity, that

is, the need to go beyond critique and toward change for equality, equity, and inclusion (Zanoni et al.,

2020). Equality, equity, and inclusion are wicked problems in the workplace (see, e.g., Eden & Wagstaff,

2021) and thus lend themselves to using Problem framing. Developed initially with practitioners in mind,

the Lab format combines norm critique and design thinking (see J. F. Christensen et al., 2021 and

GenderLAB, 2020 for a developed presentation and discussion of the Lab format). A full Lab format

consists of reflexive steps that aim to generate conversations among participants about identity, norms, and

stereotypes (i.e., norm critique) and steps that demand speed and are inspired by design devices to frame

and develop solutions for a wicked problem (see Table 1 for a summary of the steps). Participants work in
Journal of Management Education 10

groups of up to eight people, and several facilitators are in the room to give instructions and support the

Lab work.

[INSERT TABLE 1 ABOUT HERE]

We will here focus on the second step of the Lab: Points-of-view. In this step, each group member

must, on one sticky note, write down their take on the wicked problem to be tackled in the Lab they

participate in (such as gender equality or racism in the workplace) and draw their take on it on the other

sticky note. They then answer clarification questions from the other group members. Doing Problem

framing by using both sides of the brain and having each team member explain the problem in their own

way enables students to appreciate the “wickedness” of a problem fully, and thus that their understanding

may not be sufficient to propose solutions to the problem later in the process. The bringing into play of

different skills—including oral presentation, writing, and drawing—also serves as a democratization of

access to Problem framing since it shifts the focus between diverse representation forms, thereby also

shifting the privileging of the different forms. This step of the Lab ends with each group member selecting

one of the sticky notes (with words or a drawing) they would like to engage with further and sticking it onto

a larger sheet of paper in front of them. This will be the starting point for addressing the problem iteratively,

as we discuss in the next section. This means that the aim is not for the group to agree on a single, consensus-

based version of the problem but to realize that it is a wicked problem while at the same time specifying

and narrowing down the number of versions of the problem that the students will work with during the Lab.

In more common research language, this amounts to agreeing to a set of starting hypotheses before trying

to address them iteratively.

Device 3: Iteration

An iterative process occurs when the requirements associated with a design problem are revisited multiple

times. In that sense, iterative processes should be understood in opposition to linear ones. In a linear process,

we go through pre-defined steps, going to the next once we have completed the previous one until we reach
Villesèche and Teilmann-Lock 11

the final step: reaching a result or a solution. For example, a linear process may amount to 1) stating the

problem; 2) analysis; 3) test; 4) launch. In an iterative process, instead, every step can be revisited; the

guiding notion is that since we cannot anticipate every aspect of a problem and the potential solutions and

since every solution can be improved, it would be unreasonable to go through each step only once. Iterative

processes also enable learning from error, which reduces the enforcement of formal and social hierarchies

in a group (Portnoy, 2019). Besides, if all participants or stakeholders know that multiple reruns and tests

will occur, they are reassured that their concerns will be considered before the process closes. This helps to

balance stakeholder interests and the undoing of privilege. It also helps to preserve an openness to ideas

that might otherwise have been discarded before their potential had been fully explored.

In the Lab format described above, steps three and four—Ideation 1 and Ideation 2—illustrate this

iterative approach well (see Table 1). These steps constitute a refinement of Problem framing and a step

toward testing and evaluating solutions in practice. These steps aim not to result in a single, best solution

to the problems formalized in the first step but to generate and then select from a large array of potential

solutions. These iterative steps of the Lab are fast-paced and timed, and the aim is to produce as many

solutions to all the problems as quickly as possible. There is thus little time for impression management

and deployment of privilege to favor a specific solution. In Ideation 1, there are no detailed instructions to

come up with ideas, and every group member comes up with solution ideas to all the problems selected in

the Points-of-view step. In Ideation 2, students do the same exercise from the perspective of a corporate or

stakeholder position (e.g., CEO, accountant, customer), which further increases the number of solutions

while also reducing the centering of one’s identity and privilege. These phases are thus iterative in two

ways: Inside each ideation step, the process is iterative as everyone proposes solutions, including to the

Problem framing output that others have selected; and the two ideation steps are iterations of each other

and of the Points-of-view step by again bringing in the notion of different standpoints toward a problem. In

a Lab format, these steps are followed by the Bingo selection of ideas step to narrow down the number of

solutions to be prototyped in practice.

Journal of Management Education 12

Business school students usually like this fast-paced approach very much, and we thus have no

concrete examples of resistance. Based on informal feedback and student evaluations, the format appears

to be a welcome change in the way students approach learning and group work. However, given our

expectation that such design-inspired exercises can be used to mitigate privilege, we acknowledge that the

fast pace could still correspond better to the skills and preferences of socially more privileged people

(Sølvberg, 2021). However, the high number of solutions generated and the ability to retain several of these

for further iteration (and eventually, prototyping) helps mitigate this risk.

Concluding Comments

In this article, we show how the design devices Speaking rules, Problem framing, and Iteration may help

create a working environment where the privilege of some students can be mitigated in group work. While

design devices are developed by and for designers, we exhibit that they are translatable to and applicable

in other domains, including CME. In the examples laying out our own experiences in the classroom, we

also showed how they could be applied and to what extent they work as described. We have, however, only

scratched the surface of how we can leverage insights from design studies to further the goals of CME

(Welsh & Dehler, 2013), and our article has several limitations.

It would be crucial to collect more systematic data about how the students experience such

approaches and whether they adopt such devices beyond the context of a particular class or session. Also,

importantly, these devices are not universal tools nor universally efficacious against privilege. We

suggested that, as designers do, if a tool fails, one can pick up a new one and try again. Furthermore, as

pointed out in the introduction, there are many different design devices to choose from. Options include

Role play, Rapid prototyping, and Drawing the problem, to mention just a few. Notwithstanding, we

acknowledge that design is a process and not simply a set of tools. The Lab example we gave makes use of

several devices (focusing on device 2 and device 3) and is thus closer to what designers do. At the same

time, such a format is more structured and less flexible in the sense that it requires more time but also that

it is difficult to reach the goal (choosing three or more solutions) if students do not actively participate in
Villesèche and Teilmann-Lock 13

all the steps. Overall, while we do not see this as an all-or-nothing decision, the design-based approach—

and the aim to address privilege with design devices—needs to be aligned with the pedagogical approach

in the course, program, or school, and with the establishment of social contracts with the students regarding

engagement in class.

Finally, in line with CME scholarship, we acknowledge the privileged position we occupy as

teachers and that our choice of methods can reaffirm power and patriarchal relations (Fenwick, 2005). We

thus call for further reflection on how to bring such tools into the classroom and under what conditions.

Indeed, our perspective on desirable means and outcomes—such as collaboration or democracy (see, e.g.,

King & Land, 2018)—needs to be adopted by rather than imposed on our students.
Journal of Management Education 14

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Journal of Management Education 18

Table 1

Structure of the Lab

Step Duration Name Description

1 15 minutes Norm-critical exercise (1) Presentation of participants and

reflection on norms and their influence

on us (basis to Step 5)

2 15 minutes Points-of-view Participants use both brain

hemispheres by writing and drawing

their point of view of the problem at

hand

3 15 minutes Ideation (1): brainstorming Generating solutions to the problem

from one’s own point of view

4 15 minutes Ideation (2): brainstorming Generating solutions to the problem

from an assigned point of view

5 15 minutes Norm-critical exercise (2) Exercise on own biases and/or

privileges (based on Step 1)

6 15 minutes Bingo selection of ideas Participants choose solutions based on

three criteria: What can your case

organization do tomorrow? What can

they do in the long run? What is the

most out-of-the-box/wild idea or

solution?