The main argument in this paper is that the philosophical tradition of phenomenology can provide a source for reflections on emotionality which points to a primordial emotional atmosphere in everyday work life. Within the phenomenological tradition, the paper mainly turns to the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty and his studies of an emotional atmosphere which “is there” as an essential part of our very way of being situated in the world, but Heidegger’s notion of Stimmung is also discussed.

The purpose of this article is to present an understanding of knowledge and learning in organisations from pragmatist perspectives. Relying on the work of early pragmatists as well as contemporary pragmatists, we introduce a conceptualisation of knowledge as the outcome of inquiry. Knowledge, in this article, is presented as provisional, multi-perspective, both particular and general. Our point of departure here is that the chief value of knowledge is its usefulness insolving problems. Pragmatist views of knowledge are further explicated in our discussion of four pragmatist themes, which we have identified as particularly viable on the basis of Jane Addams’ pragmatist view and the practice of democracy in organised life: 1) Knowledge as transactional in organisations, 2) Reciprocity and learning in organisations, 3) Experience-based knowledge and meaning-making in organisations, and 4) Sustainability as an ongoing, democratic process in organisations. In the pragmatist school of thought we draw upon, a predominant issue is always also the very purpose of knowledge, or what we refer to as ‘usefulness’. Under discussion, we argue that a pragmatist understanding of knowledge and learning in organisations allows us to move beyond the polarisation of cognitive-possession – social-process and instead work from an alternative framework, with a focus on processes of learning and knowledge in organisations that aim at integrative, democratic problem solving.

Over the centuries the term “talent” has changed semantically and slowly transformed itself into a floating signifier or become an accidental designator. The term “talent” no longer has one single meaning and a “referent” in real life, but instead a multiplicity of meaning and references to something beyond real life, something indefinite and indefinable. In other words, today we do not know specifically what the term “talent” in talent management really means or refers to. Indeed, this is problematical, because in late modernity the term “talent” has become a popular and frequently used key term among business consultants and, within the science of human resource management, a cornerstone in the discipline of “talent management”, and not knowing what the term really means will turn any talent discussion, talent identification and talent recruitment into a question of subjectivity and belief in talent rather than objectivity and knowledge of talent.

Responsibilities towards employees constitute a recognised general subject area in the field of business ethics. Thus, research has been done regarding respecting employees’ rights to fairness in dismissal procedures, to their privacy, to a fair wage, etc. Employee loyalty has also been shown to be very important both in management literature and in legal debate but much less attention has been given to employer loyalty which could be one of the responsibilities of an employer to his or her employee. Rather, some confusion regarding the nature of loyalty has at times led to suggestions that loyalty should be replaced by self-interest. However, scholars who favour this view usually do so in reaction to the one-sidedness of loyalty expectations. This paper proposes that loyalty is a duty that employers also owe their employees, based on the reciprocal nature of certain rights and duties within human relationships and an understanding of psychological contracts. Thus the paper argues that loyalty should be a mutual expectation between the parties rather than unidirectional. In fact, employer loyalty enriches the employers themselves in terms of their human fulfilment, since it is a human virtue, and leads to employee loyalty response, which then impacts the bottom-line.The paper’s content is also important insofar as it could contribute to building ethical duty foundations for employers in developing countries where weak regulatory environments combine with the harshness of the economy to make it an employers’ world and make instances of unfairness towards employees common.

This paper argues that it is possible (and recommendable) to develop a new conceptual framework based on the tradition of philosophical hermeneutics to address what one could call “the human factor” within knowledge creation in organisations. This is done firstly through a review of the epistemological roots of three main theories of knowledge creation in organisations (systemic theory, complexity theory, and social constructionism). We examine these theories along two axes: a) their understanding of the relation between person and language, and b) the controllability of knowledge creation. Secondly, we restate the question of knowledge creation in organisations from the perspective of philosophical hermeneutics, arguing that knowledge creation takes place as an event in language, that is as an uncontrollable process which nonetheless requires courage, trust, and persistence and thereby requires that certain “ethical actions” should happen. This, finally, leads us to develop a model for knowledge creation called LUGS, which insists on the intrinsic relation between epistemology and practice, i.e. between what people come to know and how they decide to be – and it is this intrinsic relation between knowledge and being that we take as the “message” of this article.

Niccolò Machiavelli is credited with inspiring the MACH IV personality assessment instrument, which has been adopted widely in management, both public and private. The personality this instrument maps is manipulative, deceitful, immoral, and self-centred. The instrument emerged in 1970 and created a minor industry. There are at least eighty empirical studies in management that involved more than 14,000 subjects. Richard Christie, who created the scale, has said that it is derived from the works of Machiavelli. In a standard debriefing after completing this scale, respondents would be told it concerns the Machiavellian personality. We argue that the Machiavellian personality in MACH IV has little, if anything, to do with Machiavelli, either the man or his works. If Machiavelli is alleged to be relevant to management, we argue that this personality assessment instrument does not demonstrate such relevance. To advance this case we first describe the development of the instrument, identifying some of the assumptions upon which it rests; then we assess each of its twenty items against Machiavelli’s texts. Wefind fewer than half of the items have even a tenuous connection with Machiavelli’s works, yet the instrument bears his name. Against this spurious Machiavelli we juxtapose another twenty passages from The Prince, showing a much more complex and subtle thinker than the one-dimensional cipher in the MACH IV scale. Machiavelli studies have done much to dispel the cloud of mythology around the man and his reputation, and we hope to do the same to MACHIV. In the name of intellectual honesty and sound scholarship, we urge management scholars to take note of this distortion of Machiavelli, and where possible address it, and that users of the MACH IV scale distinguish the man, Machiavelli, and his works from this instrument.

Two-by-two grids are a popular means of exposition of management thought. In this note such grids are identified with Carroll diagrams, developed by the Oxford mathematician and logician Charles Dodgson. Using this insight, the nature ofthe conceptual tool frequently used by management authors is reflectedupon. Two-by-two grids are a clear means of exposition and can be a valuable vehicle for identifying hitherto neglected aspects of a management issue, but there is also a risk that, in their relatively parsimonious treatment of management topics, they fail to capture important features of practice. Two particular areas of risk are identified and discussed.

For all the time and effort expended on empowerment and participation 'programmes', many fail each year. This paper argues that the cause is a faulty view of communication widespread among managers and their teachers: the conduit, transmission model. It frustrates participation and is an ideology of management control. It rests on untenable beliefs about meaning and how language relates to the world. The paper proposes a new model of communication in terms of 'communicating other/wise' and offers examples of how it can be practised in management education and by managers aiming to bring empowered and participatory workplaces into being.

What kind of inquiry is management science? This paper compares two accounts - realist-oriented and constructivist-oriented - and proposes a third position. The realist view that scientific inquiry seeks knowledge of realities independent and outside of the knowing process is set against the constructivist view that scientific theorising creates accounts which develop our discourses without claiming knowledge of 'deeper realities. It argues that ultimately we have no way of resolving this long-standing dispute. To move beyond the impasse it proposes a trusting constructivist position, arguing that responsible theorising requires that inquirers develop discursive accountability and that the process of inquiry matters as much as its content. Finally it explores what such a view of accountability would mean for the relationship between scientists or 'professionals' and users of their research findings in organisations.

Making decisions, as Peter Drucker put it, 'is the specific executive task'. But the situations in which managers decide can differ sharply. Some involve risk, uncertainty or lack of predictability while others lack clear structure and present decision-makers with ambiguity in some form. And yet, in spite of much research, we still have no unified account to explain how managers make decisions let alone to help them decide effectively. Different research streams specialise in different aspects of judgement and decisio-nmaking (JDM) and produce results which apply in different contexts. Some focus on decisions under risk,some on cases of uncertainty, some on different aspects of ambiguity. Some are objectivist and others interpretive, basing themselves on paradigms which are mutually exclusive. As a result, managers relying on any one of them when making decisions can get only partial help because no one paradigm covers everyaspect of the issues on which they decide.This paper addresses the lack of a unified account. It offers a framework for comparing the different research approaches to JDM and their incommensurable paradigms. It describes the central role of metaphors, stories and formal models when managers make decisions. It adopts a neo-pragmatic perspective which treats all three as special forms of model rather than representatives of opposing paradigms. This in turn makes possible a unified account in which specific functions are assigned to each form of model in specific stages of decision-making; metaphors and stories represent the interpretive paradigm and formal models the objectivist paradigm. Finally, to shape future research, the paper derives five propositions about the use and impacts of metaphors, stories and formal models from an account of how they are actually used by managers making decisions.

If we were to believe the popular press, it would seem that violence at work is an increasingly pressing concern for employees, employers and legislative bodies. In this paper we offer a set of philosophical reflections on violence, in order to clarify and destabilise some of the assumptions which run through manydiscussions of and practical interventions into, violence in the workplace. Rather than focusing on violence 'as such\ we consider various ways in which actions have been, and could be, represented as being violent. To this end, we identify a range of quite distinct representations of violence, and consider the grounds on which decisions are made about 'what violence really is. Refusing to see violence as a simple, obvious phenomenon or as indeterminate and infinitely open, we seek to deploy a deconstructive reading of decision in order to outline the broad contours of a critique of a certain common sense that sees violence only in individual acts of physical violence.

Traditionally, medical professionals have taken a paternalistic stance towards their patients and have relied on a traditional approach to medical ethics. In recent years, in Britain, however, a new 'managerialism' has developed in the National Health Service (the NHS). This stresses consumerism and greater patient choice and is changing the relationship between doctors and patients. This paper draws out the implications for patients. It describes the ethical characteristics of the two conflicting approaches and argues the need to stress again the view of the patient as an individual person.

Part 1 of this paper1 used the notions of equivocality and uncertainty to distinguish the situations in which managers make judgements and decisions and described in general how managers use models in these different contexts. This final second part describes in detail the three types of models managers use: formal models, stories and metaphors. It offers five propositions about how managers use the three types of model, propositions which can usefully form the basis of future empirical research.

This paper considers discussions of the work of Alasdair MacIntyre in management literature. It argues that management scholars who have attempted to appropriate his After Virtue as a supportive text for conventional business ethics do so only by misreading or by ignoring his other work. It shows that MacIntyre does not argue for a reformed capitalism in which individual virtue overcomes institutional vice. Rather he argues that capitalist businesses are inherently vicious and that therefore individual virtue cannot be realised within them. The job of the virtuous is to resist them.The paper first presents an account of MacIntyre’s position on management and introduces some of the critical and supportive uses of his work in management scholarship. It focuses on two papers typical of the approach taken by conventional business ethicists to his work. These have attempted to deploy concepts developed by MacIntyre while denying the account of management and organisation of which they form a part.The paper provides some tentative hypotheses as to why management scholars have approached MacIntyre in this way. It argues that these attempted appropriations not only have failed but also must fail as conceptual coherence is sacrificed when the account within which those concepts make sense is denied.

When people seek to overcome discrimination in employment they often appeal to the principle that ‘one should be hired on the basis of qualifications alone’. But do we know what the principle means? And would applying it solve the problems of discrimination in employment? We may take the claim to mean that certain aspects of a person such as her race, religion and attractiveness that are thought to be irrelevant to almost all jobs should not be considered in employment decisions. But in this we would be mistaken. This paper argues that the concept of ‘qualification’, far from being purely descriptive, is morally loaded and a function of an employer’s choices and purposes. As a result, appealing to the principle alone cannot prevent discrimination for issues of discrimination in employment are embedded in the ethical issues of ownership, management and the social responsibilities of a business.

Reviews of business ethics usually differentiate the field in terms of prescription as opposed to description: the application of normative ethical theory verses empirical analysis. Despite recent departures from this dualism, through the elaboration of what has been called postmodern business ethics, the metatheoretical basis of this (increasing) pluralism of business ethics remains opaque. This paper attempts to provide some reflexive clarification and, using codes of ethics as an example, to show that the diversity of business ethics is neither chaotic nor haphazard. It explores how variable metatheoretical assumptions about the epistemic status of ethical and social scientific knowledge systematically lead to the constitution of four distinct modes of engagement in business ethics: prescriptive ethics; descriptive ethics; postmodern ethics; and critical ethics. This diversity is illustrated, with examples from the relevant literatures, in terms of variation in: the aims of business ethics; its organisational focus; the role of the business ethicist; how corporate codes of ethics are construed; the internal contradictions and tensions that arise. We conclude by examining the pre-paradigmatic status of these four modes of engagement and speculating about their future.

In this paper we argue the need to introduce the philosophical tradition of the examined life into the workplace in a systematic way and show how it can be done. We set out seven key philosophical areas and selected questions for managers to pose about their organisations. We conclude with a case study, whichexamines one of our key questions ‘What is real?’. We also provide some recommended reading for managers seeking an introduction to philosophy and to explore the seven areas.

Current theories of management have difficulty overcoming certain problems and limitations related to some features of the field itself: multiplicity, multidisciplinarity, fragmentation, presence or lack of paradigms, self-referentiality, and ethnocentrism. This paper first reviews these issues broadly. Then, itemphasises the preponderance of the scientific method and the exclusion of philosophy as theoretical foundations for management. It proposes taking philosophy as the science to provide the foundations of management. It explains how philosophy - especially philosophy that has its roots in Aristotelian thought -can be of help to management through four different functions: admirative, globalising, political, and critical. In this way, Aristotelian philosophy is shown to be a superior basis for solving the present problems in management theory and a fruitful option for integrating ethics in organisational and management theories.