Output list
Conference paper
Building a community of scholars: Positive relationships in a holding environment
Published 2012
26th Annual Australian and New Zealand Academy of Management Conference: Managing for Volatility and Instability, 05/12/2012–07/12/2012, Perth, Western Australia
Academic staff in Australian universities are experiencing significant change, generating stress and anxiety. Caught up in these emotions, individuals seek the means to manage them. Kahn (2001) suggests that an appropriate means for management of negative affect is a holding environment. A ‘collective auto-ethnography’, this paper describes the holding environment constructed by a group of academics focussing on interpersonal relationships which are at the core of the Community of Scholars (Goodman 1964). It offers evidence that the holding environment created by this mutual collaboration between like-minded people has served to provide support for those involved. A holding environment may be an option to be considered by others facing dynamic change.