Phenomenology Of The Embodied Organization

Drawing on contemporary debates and responding to an analytic lacuna in organization and management studies and calls from organizational practice, Phenomenology of the Embodied Organization explores the fundamental and integral role of the body and embodiment in organizational life-worlds.

A multifaceted ecological and socio-cultural crisis confronts us, and the irresponsible and unsustainable operations and actions encouraging this predicament are bound up with contemporary societal, economic, organisational, and managerial practices. The recent and on-going global economic crisis with its failures of responsibility and pervasive (or existential) threat posed to natural ecologies are among many more manifestations of a profound disintegration, unwise forms of practices, and non-integral ways of living. The current crisis, scandals, and tensions between corporations and civil society, and numerous examples of unethical practices that are partly validated by common practice have helped to intensify demands to scrutinise corporate behaviour and practices. The increasingly instrumentalised contexts and impositions of neoliberal regimes with their systemic constraint call for a rethinking of phrónêtic capacities and dispositions for wise practices in prâxis and corresponding sustainable actions. This book explores how practical wisdom can be conceptualised and applied to practices that respond to the life-worldly realities of organisations. At the same time, it relates to prâxis, understood as situated conduct in an ethico-political configuration. It is this nexus that is mediating between individual and social actions (micro), organisations (meso), and economy/society (macro). This book invites dialogue for thought-provoking reflection on how wisdom can help organisations and leaders deal with our age’s most pressing challenges. It opens a path to considering how such an understanding can help us to more effectively and more critically understand and appropriately respond to complex, multifaceted, emerging phenomena. It will be of value to researchers, academics, and students interested in leadership, organisational studies, wisdom, and business ethics.

In traditional business circles, wisdom is viewed with a certain scepticism, which is in part due to its historical associations with wisdom traditions and spiritual cultures. However, in business today, wisdom is emerging not only as a viable but also a necessary organizational and management practice. In particular, practical wisdom is being updated and retranslated for today’s issues and concerns in organizations. In recent years, leadership and organizational studies have initiated important changes in the way in which business-as-usual is conducted. In response to the increasingly complex and uncertain conditions of our international business environment, a growing community of ‘scholar-practitioners’ are pushing the boundaries of traditional organizational and leadership thinking and acting, making inroads into processes and applications of practical wisdom and ways of wise leading and managing. Given the unprecedented levels of challenges, dynamics and uncertainties that today’s organizations are exposed to, there is a need for a more integrative and sustainable approach to managing. Following the need for a reconsideration and revival of the meaning of wisdom, the editors explore vitalizing possibilities for the learning of wise practices in organizing and leading. This expansive range of domains where wisdom is currently being explored suggests a promising number of perspectives and possibilities for future inquiries and explorations into the nexus of wisdom and organization, leadership/management education and learning that benefits from cross-disciplinary synergies. This book will be of interest to those seeking to understand the growing significance of wisdom in relation to learning and teaching, especially in business and management education.

Phenomenological approaches to Management and Organization Studies offer a means to problematize 'appearances' in the field, allowing us to 'see' things in a different light and uncover what is hidden from our consideration by our theoretical or ideological assumptions. This handbook aims at showing the unexpected richness and diversity of phenomenological and post-phenomenological thinkers such as Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Arendt, or Scheler, as well as others belonging to the French new phenomenology (Marion, Henry) or the German neo-phenomenology (Schmitz). It also details the contributions of thinkers like Bachelard, Deleuze, or Foucault whose inscription and departures from phenomenology are illuminated. In this process, phenomenologies are historically, critically, and openly discussed by leading scholars while highlighting the interweaving between phenomenologies and other streams such as process studies or critical perspectives. Beyond a theoretical description, the chapters also show how phenomenologies and post-phenomenologies can help management and organization scholars and students to understand a huge variety of contemporary phenomena such as distributed collective activity, artificial intelligence, digitalization of organizational processes, remote work, financial markets and financial instruments, entrepreneurial events, cinematographic organizing of social media, issues of place and emplacement, commons and communalization processes and questions of embodiment and disembodiment at work.

In this text, the history of phenomenological research on learning is synthesized and brought forward into the areas of existential learning, the development of enthusiasm about learning (from childhood through adulthood), and paradigmatic creative experience. Original research findings are derived using the Giorgi method of descriptive phenomenological analysis in psychology. The results, structural and eidetic in nature, are then integrated from a holistic developmental viewpoint: that of Existential-Humanistic Self-Development Theory (EHSDT). An evolving developmental partnership between learning and creativity emerges as the proper conceptual frame for considering optimal growth and the relative maturity of situated becoming oneself (i.e., the process of self-cultivation). The resulting perspective is supported by cutting edge trends in neuroscience and related to pedagogy and education.

Phenomenological approaches to Management and Organization Studies offer a means to problematize 'appearances' in the field, allowing us to 'see' things in a different light and uncover what is hidden from our consideration by our theoretical or ideological assumptions. This handbook aims at showing the unexpected richness and diversity of phenomenological and post-phenomenological thinkers such as Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Arendt, or Scheler, as well as others belonging to the French new phenomenology (Marion, Henry) or the German neo-phenomenology (Schmitz). It also details the contributions of thinkers like Bachelard, Deleuze, or Foucault whose inscription and departures from phenomenology are illuminated. In this process, phenomenologies are historically, critically, and openly discussed by leading scholars while highlighting the interweaving between phenomenologies and other streams such as process studies or critical perspectives. Beyond a theoretical description, the chapters also show how phenomenologies and post-phenomenologies can help management and organization scholars and students to understand a huge variety of contemporary phenomena such as distributed collective activity, artificial intelligence, digitalization of organizational processes, remote work, financial markets and financial instruments, entrepreneurial events, cinematographic organizing of social media, issues of place and emplacement, commons and communalization processes and questions of embodiment and disembodiment at work.

In this book, experts discuss whether volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA) represent a challenge or a business opportunity. More intense debates on global climate change, increased turbulence in financial quarters, increased job insecurity and high levels of stress at the workplace are attracting attention in the context of organization behavior and entrepreneurship. Fear and confusion have become part and parcel of business, often undermining trust, cooperation and inspiration. As a response, a new way of organizing self-management has emerged. The book combines practical wisdom from East and West, to develop integrative self-management theory and practice; provides direction to support an integrative mind-set, integrative organization and integrative leadership; and presents VUCA as an opportunity and necessity for development and growth, rather than a threat.

The Handbook of Philosophy of Management addresses the philosophical foundations of management in theory and practice. It covers established branches of philosophy, such as aesthetics, epistemology, moral philosophy, political and social philosophy, philosophy of education, philosophy of practice, and philosophy of science. The Handbook’s broad scope maps out the field and provides a forum where philosophy can be meaningfully applied to the study of management in all its forms. The original, peer-reviewed research published here sheds new light on the complexities of management theory and practice, beyond what hitherto has been possible with the sole application of the social sciences. As philosophy provides a meta-framework for moving beyond paradigm fragmentation within management research and education, this allows researchers and practitioners to find harmony (and discord) in the perspectives revealed by a philosophical lens.