Reimagining Fairness: A Dialogical Approach to Equity in Assessed Group Work

Group work is central to assessment in management education, often framed as a vehicle for collaboration and experiential learning. However, especially for students from minoritized or underrepresented backgrounds, it often reinforces structural inequalities. This paper examines fairness challenges in assessed group work, contending that typical additive or conjunctive assessment structures overlook how asymmetries in power, participation, and recognition shape students’ experience and performance. Using Bakhtinian dialogism and insights from critical pedagogy, we reconceptualize group work as a dialogical space where voice, authority, and accountability are constantly negotiated. We find that informal group dynamics, including peer discipline and implicit performance expectations, can marginalize dissenting perspectives and restrict epistemic recognition. We offer a pedagogical framework incorporating three interrelated principles: co-construction of tasks and roles, structured peer reflexivity, and responsive facilitation of marginalization and conflict. Three underlying constructs—voice equity, epistemic authority, and dialogical accountability—reframe fairness as relational, negotiated, and ongoing. We outline implications for educators, programme designers, and institutions to create more equitable conditions for group learning, in which collaboration is encouraged and rendered just, inclusive, and accountable. We address current debates in inclusive and justice-oriented management education through a model integrating critical theory with pedagogical practice.