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61. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 11 > Issue: 2
Miriam Green Can Deconstructing Paradigms Be Used as a Method For Deconstructing Texts?
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Problems surrounding representations of texts have previously been raised and discussed, as has the difficulty, in the light of hermeneutic, critical and post-structuralist writers, of arriving at definitive meanings of texts. This paper is part of ongoing research into the problem of evaluating the representation of original texts in the organisation/management area. The texts in question are Burns and Stalker’s The Management of Innovation 1961, 1966, and to alesser degree Lawrence and Lorsch’s Organization and Environment 1967. The representations are those in three widely used textbooks typical of many, and applications in management accounting research. A way round this apparent impasse may be to see whether there are any ‘objective’ or commonly accepted standards and criteria within a particular system of thought, assuming that the texts in question are all located within the same system. These texts will beexplored in terms of the paradigmatic boundaries they encompass to see whether the same kinds of problems and solutions are presented, and whether they ultimately lie within the same boundaries. Finally, having argued that they are largely located in different paradigms, the underlying question is raised as to whether one paradigm can be an adequate vehicle for the transmission of a text substantially in another.
62. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 11 > Issue: 2
David Ardagh Presuppositions of Collective Moral Agency: Analogy, Architectonics, Justice, and Casuistry
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This is the second of three papers with the overall title: “A Quasi-Personal Alternative to Some Anglo-American Pluralist Models of Organisations: Towards an Analysis of Corporate Self-Governance for Virtuous Organisations”.1 In the first paper, entitled: “Organisations as quasi-personal entities: from ‘governing’ of the self to organisational ‘self ’-governance: a Neo-Aristotelian quasi-personal model of organisations”, the artificial corporate analogue of a natural person sketched there, was said to have quasi-directive, quasi-operational and quasi-enabling/resource-provision capacities. Its use of these capacities following joint deliberation in ethically permissible and just joint acts, their effect on end-users and other parties, and conformity with or challenge to State law, arguably settles its moral status as an ethical or unethical organisational agent. This paper identifies and defends the presuppositions of this conception, and applies the results to business.
63. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 11 > Issue: 2
Regina Queiroz The Importance of Phronesis as Communal Business Ethics Reasoning Principle
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In this article I maintain the importance of the Aristotelian concept of prudence or phronesis applied to business ethics, distinguishing its meaning from Solomon and Hartman’s approaches to Aristotelian business ethics. Whereas Solomon stresses the value of perception of particulars and Hartman criticizes the incapacity of Aristotelian phronesis to dwell with the interests of others, I advocate that Aristotelian virtue ethics is important because the concept of phronesisdoes three things: (a) stresses the rational calculation and general principles or rules in virtue ethics, in general, and business ethics, in particular; (b) provides a communal-based ethics principle; and c) offers us a clear comprehension about what calculation or reasoning is in ethics.
64. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 11 > Issue: 2
Hugh Bowden The Ethics of Management: a Stoic Perspective
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The purpose of this article is to explore the notion that certain aspects of Stoic thinking can give useful insights into some salient issues in current management theories. The Stoics, as represented in this paper chiefly by Epictetus, concerned themselves with: management of self, management processes and information. The main focus is on ethics – how the individual and the organisation ought to behave. Pierre Hadot, in ‘Philosophy as a Way of Life’ notes ‘a degree of resonance between Stoic prescriptions and recent theories of leadership and governance’. This article attempts to explain the resonance by identifying a convergence between some management theories and certain aspects of Stoic thought. Certain key terms of Stoicism can find direct correlates in modern managerial terminology. It is suggested that the convergence can occur in terms of the topic – the reference point or issue, the reference group of thinkers concerned with the issues and the cultural and social context.
65. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 11 > Issue: 2
Paul Griseri Editorial
66. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 11 > Issue: 2
Christine Noel-Lemaitre, Séverine Le Loarne-Lemaire Human Resource Management and Distress at Work: What Managers Could Learn from the Spirituality of Work in Simone Weil’s Philosophy
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Workplace spirituality deals with paradoxes. This concept has been taken on board since the late 1980s, but very few human resource managers have realised that workplace spirituality could make an essential contribution to a better understanding of workplace and corporate reality. Increasing numbers of academic papers are being published on this subject but mere remain many grey areas for researchers. The aim of this paper is to use Simone Weil’s philosophy as a reading grid to get an insight into workplace spirituality as a new paradigm of management. Initial studies attempting to apply Weil’s philosophy to management highlight the necessity for all the actors within the organisation to define their job tasks and contents according to their own way of thinking. Our interpretation of Weil’s philosophy also sheds light on the impossibility of dissociating thinking and acting and reminds us that work is done to nourish both the body and the soul. By concentrating on the spirituality of work, we can establish new links between ethics and human resource management.
67. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 11 > Issue: 3
Mark R. Dibben, Stephen Sheard Reason in Practice: A Unique Role for a ‘Philosophy of Management’
68. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 11 > Issue: 3
Steven E. Wallis The Right Tool for the Job: Philosophy’s Evolving Role in Advancing Management Theory
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In this paper, I build on Wittgenstein’s metaphor of a toolbox to introduce the metaphor of ‘tool confusion’ – how differing conceptual constructs may be applied, or misapplied, to one another and the effect that such applications have on the advancement of management theory. Moving beyond metaphor, I investigate a theory of management through two specific philosophical lenses (Popper and Lyotard). This analysis tests both the theory and the philosophies with regard to how each philosophy may be applied as a tool to advance theory towards more effective application. Preliminary conclusions confirm that the application of partial philosophies is not as useful as the application of complete philosophies. Deeper contemplation, however, suggests that there is no upper limit to the completeness of philosophies. Thus, the problem of completeness is inescapable. In place of completeness, I explore the use of perceptual tools that are more specific, foundational and concise. Engaging in a second investigation, I use structures of logic (circular, linear, branching and co-causal) to investigate the subject theory. This investigation suggests at least two important insights relating to the structure of theory and the fuzziness of theory. Combined, these investigations and related conversations suggest rigorous methods for advancing theories and a more normative role for the philosophy of management that will support the accelerated advancement of management theory and practice.
69. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 11 > Issue: 3
Laurent Ledoux Philosophy: Today’s Manager’s Best Friend?
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The purpose of this paper is to rationalise why and how philosophy can help today’s managers in their daily practices.I will first explain why today’s managers particularly should engage themselves in profound and enduring dialogue with philosophers. To this end, I will present the close links between the major managerial activities and the major philosophical domains.In the second section, I will sketch out how such a dialogue can be facilitated. To this end, I will present some of the methods and conditions used to ensure the success of the practice of philosophy in organisations.
70. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 11 > Issue: 3
Scott MacMillan, Anthony R. Yue, Albert J. Mills Both How and Why: Considering Existentialism as a Philosophy of Work and Management
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In this paper, we examine the intersection of existentialism and management, in particular to illustrate how existential thought offers three key insights to the pragmatic world of work and applied act of management: (1) Existentialism places a primacy upon the individual and the existential self that is continually being formed within the workplace. (2) Existentialism allows for a coherent examination of individual and organisational-level decision making and ethics as an integral part of the philosophy. (3) Existentialism is inherently ‘applied’ and focused on ‘process’ in that it allows for an understanding of the meaning of work.
71. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 11 > Issue: 3
G. Loek J. Schönbeck Is Pathology Dysfunctional?
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An enterprising odyssey might be one way to investigate whether a unique role is afforded to ‘a’ philosophy of management. The question is, first, which philosophy is at stake and what finery such a philosophy might bear. Second, three cardinal questions arise: (1) “What can we say about it?“; (2) “How do we know we can or cannot say something about it?“; and (3) “What is its relation to rationality?” Third, by an old scepticist tradition one may choose tantalising innersubjects to punctuate these questions. In this case, the inner subject will run: “Is pathology dysfunctional?“ A survey of related problems and possible solutions mingled with suspension follows on from this. Supported by appropriate non-philosophical disciplines, it will serve as a crowbar to reappraise the relation between critical management studies and organisational studies on the one hand and philosophy of management on the other.
72. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 12 > Issue: 1
Stratos Ramoglou Philosophy as Undogmatic Procedure: Is Perfect Knowledge Good Enough?
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In the effort to defend and demonstrate the (prime) role of philosophy as an activity aiming at uncovering and questioning dogmas underlying our cognitive practices, the present article places under critical scrutiny the epistemic axiology informing organisation/management studies. That is, the plausibility of the largely unquestioned presumption that it is only the quest for truth that matters. This critical endeavour is effected by juxtaposing the conditions under which this would be the case, and in the prism of present conditions concludes that this is not unquestionably the case. Throughout the line of analysis developed, important implications for the present role of philosophical discourses are drawn.
73. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 12 > Issue: 1
Thomas Klikauer Philosophy, Business Ethics and Organisation Theory: A Review Article
74. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 12 > Issue: 1
Paul Griseri Critical Discussion: Philosophy and Organization, edited by Campbell Jones and René Ten Bos
75. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 12 > Issue: 1
Kenneth Jorgensen, Anete Strand, David Boje Towards a Postcolonial-storytelling Theory of Management and Organisation
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A contribution to management philosophy is made here by the development of a postcolonial-storytelling theory, created by drawing together parallel developments in quantum physics and tribal peoples’ storytelling. We argue that these developments resituate the hegemonic relationship of discursive representationalism over material storytelling practices. Implications are two-fold. First, this dissolves inherent dualisms presumed in the concept of interactionamong entities like actor–structure, subject–object and discursive–nondiscursive in favour of a profound ontology of entanglement and intra-action of materiality and discourse, where storytelling is a domain of this discourse. Second, postcolonial phenomena are understood as results of entangled genealogies in which plural voices are present. This implies an understanding and awareness of the intra-action of imperial narratives and material storytelling and antenarrative resistance, and thus the resistance and contestation to imperial and colonising monologic narratives of spatial and temporal alignment.
76. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 12 > Issue: 1
Jeffrey Nicholas Book Review: Organization, Society, and Politics: An Aristotelian Perspective by Kevin Morrell
77. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 12 > Issue: 1
Stephen Sheard, Mark Dibben Editorial: Philosophy of Management as Moving Beyond Critical Axiologies?
78. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 12 > Issue: 1
Stephen Sheard Realism’s Castle of Crossed Destinies: Evaluating Bhaskar’s Transcendental Realism Relative to its Philosophical Significance in Contemporary Organisational Studies
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In this article I look at CR (critical realism)1 as chiefly exhibited in the seminal theory of Ron Bhaskar – in particular, his early theory of transcendental realism. I examine its mechanisms of thought and pick out some difficulties with the theorisation relative to its deployment by OS theorists and relative to recent attempts to deploy CR as a theory which can bridge the fork in the constructivist and realist areas known as a form of ‘divide’ in the discipline (fault line). I also try and attempt a more in-depth philosophical analysis of the ideas of CR to gain an insight into its nature and what it can offer both as an apodictic system of philosophical insights with aspects of a belief system – but also relative to its realist-related claims towards veridical knowledge of kinds. I make comparisons with other theorists and philosophers including Kant, Derrida, Hume and Aristotle. I close with insights into how a closer scrutiny of CR thought as it is entering OS is necessary to understand the evolving nature of the inter-relationship of ontology and the ontic, in relation to the fault line described.
79. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 12 > Issue: 2
Henk J. van Rinsum, Jan Boessenkool Decolonising African Management: Okot p’Bitek and the Paradoxes of African Management
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In this article we argue that ideas about management are led by cognitive frameworks rooted in cultural, including intellectual, traditions. African management is part of ambiguous mental concepts. African management results from a quest for an essentialist authenticity in the framework of decolonisation. Through analysing the life and work of the Ugandan African nationalist, poet and anthropologist Okot p’Bitek (1931–1982), we argue that the concept of double consciousness as defined by W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963) can be used as a strategy to analyse the ambiguous nature of management in Africa. Generally speaking, double or, even better, multiple consciousness could serve as an instrument of any manager (and scholar), both in Africa and outside Africa, avoiding the danger of essentialism. If truth be told, Okot p’Bitek was the true pioneer of conceptual decolonization in African philosophy. -- Kwasi WireduIt is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness, – an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings…. This, then, is the end of his striving: to be a co-worker in the kingdom of culture… -- W. E. B. Du Bois
80. Philosophy of Management: Volume > 12 > Issue: 2
Carol Dalglish Management Issues in Developing a Sustainable Model for Supporting Entrepreneurs in Africa
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Small and micro-enterprises play a significant part in economic growth and poverty alleviation in developing African countries. There are, however, a range of management issues that arise when looking at the support required for local enterprise development, the role and management style of the local support agency and the role and style of the, usually Western, funding body. This paper explores the management philosophy required to establish and resource micro-enterprise development and compares the local management processes with those expected by a Western funding body. The purpose of this paper is to identify the strategies used by a mixed urban community association in Beira, Mozambique and the adaptations that are required by the Western sponsor to reflect local philosophical, cultural, traditional and environmental considerations. The paper goes on to propose a philosophical ‘pro-forma’ to improve the relationship between local community organisations and foreign donors to support enterprise development.