scholarly journals Reflections on Reflexive Theorizing: The Need for A Little More Conversation

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 263178772094418
Author(s):  
Leanne Cutcher ◽  
Cynthia Hardy ◽  
Kathleen Riach ◽  
Robyn Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Research Practice ◽  
Discursive Practices ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Ideal Types ◽  
Forms Of Knowledge

We investigate the nature and impact of recent ‘reflexive theorizing’ in the field of Organization Studies by examining articles that critically reflect on research, practice and the profession more generally with a view to defining, refining or changing future trajectories for the field. We identify a range of discursive practices used in these articles to establish authority, describe the field and make claims about the nature of theorizing. We then present three ‘ideal types’ that represent particular constellations of these discursive practices. We interrogate each of these ideal types in order to demonstrate how particular combinations of discursive practices can limit the potential of reflexive theorizing by shutting down conversations. Finally, we make a number of suggestions for weaving together discursive practices in ways that help to ensure that reflexive theorizing generates new forms of knowledge through conversations which are open to a wider range of voices, and where respect and generosity are evident.

scholarly journals La intuición, el programa dialéctico de la República y su práctica en el Parménides y el Teeteto

Plato Journal ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 137-150
Author(s):  
Álvaro Vallejo Campos
Keyword(s):  
Discursive Practices ◽  
Sharp Distinction ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Forms Of Knowledge ◽  
Modern Perspective

This article examines the relation between the dialectical program established in Plato’s Republic and the practice of dialectic in other dialogues, such as the Parmenides and the Theaetetus. The author argues against those scholars who have sustained a sharp distinction between an intuitive (not discursive) conception of knowledge and the discursive practices characteristic of Plato’s concept of dialectic. In his view, Plato has been overinterpreted from the modern perspective of the distinction between intuitive and discursive forms of knowledge. As a consequence, this article also examines the relation between the dialectical practices displayed in the Parmenides and the Theaetetus and the anhypothetical condition that Plato attributes to “the principle of everything” in the Republic.

scholarly journals Unlearning towards an uncertain future: on the back end of future-driven unlearning

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (5) ◽  
pp. 454-469 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus F. Peschl
Keyword(s):  
Design Methodology ◽  
Belief Systems ◽  
Learning Systems ◽  
Specific Result ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Innovation Studies ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Conceptual Paper ◽  
Uncertain Future ◽  
Forms Of Knowledge

Purpose While many approaches in the field of unlearning aim at describing, understanding or explaining the “what” and/or “how” of unlearning, this paper aims to focus on the “where-to” and the goal of unlearning. In many cases, unlearning starts off with a specific result or goal in mind. This paper suggests that such an approach has to be challenged in the context of a highly complex and uncertain world and to introduce a mode of unlearning following a strategy of future-oriented open-endedness. Design/methodology/approach This conceptual paper draws on (both theoretical/philosophical and empirical) interdisciplinary evidence from a wide variety of fields, such as organization studies, organizational (un)learning, systems theory, cognitive science and innovation studies. Findings It turns out that open-endedness in unlearning processes plays a central role, especially if we are confronted with high levels of uncertainty and complexity. In such an environment, following a strategy of co-becoming with an unfolding environment and with an emergent goal seems to be more promising than aiming at a preconceived (un-)learning goal. Originality/value The unlearning literature provides various approaches to what unlearning is and how it can be executed. However, understanding the actual goals and outcomes of unlearning and how these goals are identified and determined is a rather under-researched field. In many cases, they are preconceived in advance finding their realization in new forms of knowledge, assumptions, belief systems, values or routines. This paper challenges this strategy and addresses the gap of how it is possible to unlearn toward an uncertain future. This has an impact on the process of unlearning itself; it has to be reframed and understood as an open-ended strategy for identifying emerging future potentials, purposes and goals in a process of co-becoming with an unfolding future.

scholarly journals Digital Earth Ethics

2019 ◽  
pp. 785-810 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yola Georgiadou ◽  
Ourania Kounadi ◽  
Rolf A. de By
Keyword(s):  
Data Protection ◽  
Location Privacy ◽  
Personal Information ◽  
Privacy Preserving ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Ideal Types ◽  
Digital Earth ◽  
Protection Legislation ◽  
Ethics Guidelines

Abstract Digital Earth scholars have recently argued for a code of ethics to protect individuals’ location privacy and human dignity. In this chapter, we contribute to the debate in two ways. First, we focus on (geo)privacy because information about an individual’s location is substantially different from other personal information. The compound word (geo)privacy suggests that location can be inferred from people’s interests, activities, and sociodemographics, not only from traditional geographic coordinates. (Geo)privacy is a claim of individuals to determine for themselves when, how, and to what extent location information about them is communicated to others. Second, we take an interdisciplinary perspective. We draw from (geo)computing to describe the transformation of volunteered, observed, and inferred information and suggest privacy-preserving measures. We also draw from organization studies to dissect privacy into ideal types of social relationships and privacy-preserving strategies. We take the point of view of Alice, an individual ‘data subject’ encountered in data protection legislation, and suggest ways to account for privacy as a sociocultural phenomenon in the future. Although most of the discussion refers to the EU and the US, we provide a brief overview of data protection legislation on the African continent and in China as well as various global and regional ethics guidelines that are of very recent vintage.

Decolonizing Arab organizational Knowledge: “Fahlawa” as a Research Practice

Organization ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (5) ◽  
pp. 836-856
Author(s):  
Hèla Yousfi
Keyword(s):  
Management Practices ◽  
Universal Design ◽  
Arab Country ◽  
Arab Countries ◽  
Situated Knowledge ◽  
Research Practice ◽  
Management Research ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Management Literature ◽  
Border Thinking

This article draws attention to how management scholars “the outsiders within” who are structurally positioned within the academies of dominant powers might negotiate the complexities of producing a locally rooted and meaningful knowledge, emancipated from the U.S. hegemony while carrying organization studies in Arab countries. Drawing upon my different ethnographic journeys as a researcher, brought up in an Arab country with a Francophone intellectual mindset and studying Arab management practices, I will discuss both the potential for and the difficulties of critical engagement with a decolonizing management research agenda. Then, and building on critical border thinking tradition, I will propose the Egyptian term “Fahlawa” as a metaphor for better describing the challenges of a decolonizing research practice that privileges contestation and perpetual bricolage over formal and universal design. Finally, I will conclude by highlighting the potential of “Fahlawa” as a survival/resistance practice to theorize what is unthought and invisible in management literature and to build situated knowledge less organized by U.S. domination.

‘I Feel I Am Not Human’: Investigating the Relationship between Discourse and Subjectivity in the Lives of Persons Experiencing Panic Attacks

2002 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 29-38
Author(s):  
Kenneth G. Wilson ◽  
Kerry McLuckie
Keyword(s):  
Panic Disorder ◽  
Social Constructionist ◽  
Panic Attacks ◽  
Discursive Practices ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Internal Problem ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Treatable Condition ◽  
Forms Of Knowledge

The study described in this paper investigated the ways in which panic and panic disorder are socially constructed, and how these constructions are involved in the formation of the subjectivities of those persons experiencing panic. In adopting a social constructionist perspective, it is proposed that all understandings of panic are informed by the social and historical contexts from which they emerge. The study investigates how linguistic practices, organised into different discourses, construct accounts of panic which go on to constitute particular forms of knowledge about panic. Discourse analysis was used to analyse media articles, radio interviews, and other examples of “panic talk”. The analysis yielded discourses that are involved in the construction and understanding of panic as a phenomenon. It was noted that panic was constructed in terms of abnormality, as a treatable condition, as an internal problem, and as an agent that has the potential to change people. The construction of panic according to these discourses had significant effects on the formation of subjectivity, in that it contributed to the formation of a “compromised” self that was “always-already” different, and abnormal. Lastly it was noted that the construction of subjectivity in these terms was related to discursive practices, involving the regulation of self.

scholarly journals Replicability. Politics and Poetics of Accountability, Validation and Legitimation

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giampietro Gobo
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Operational Definition ◽  
Jigsaw Puzzle ◽  
Organizational Setting ◽  
Discursive Practices ◽  
Physical Sciences ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Third Way ◽  
Field Relation ◽  
The Social

Replicability is a term that not only comes with different meanings in the literature of many domains but is often associated or confused with other terms such as ‘reproducibility,’ ‘repeatability,’ ‘reliability,’ ‘validity,’ and so on. To add to the confusion, it can even be used differently across diverse disciplines. Though all named concepts are important, what makes them barely advantageous is that they do not cover some peculiar aspects of the replicability and validation processes, i.e., appropriateness of conceptualization; trustworthiness of operational definition and operational acts; accuracy of researcher’s description, categorization and/or measurement; successfulness of observational (or field) relation. Moreover, in social sciences and organization studies, the concept of validity of data is highly questionable due to the quite frequent shortage of real statuses of the observed objects. The present paper aims to challenge the received view on the concept of ‘replicability,’ by proposing a “situational approach” based on the idea that replicability works under certain organizational and socio-technic conditions, and that it is heavily influenced by the way that different stakeholders (scientists, technicians, participants artifacts, and technologies) respond to them. Consequently, it is important to understand how and why replicability works in different contexts. Its main purpose, without denying the importance of current conventional perspectives on replicability and its siblings, is to widen and change them to include an organizational setting and a reflexive epistemology. This implies the pursuit of a third way of replicability, between the postmodernist negation of its possibility and its opposite, i.e., a naïve naturalism. A way asserting that replicability is a jigsaw puzzle or a mosaic, constituted by discursive practices (poetics) and organizational achievements guiding the politics of accountability, validation and legitimation. The domain here considered pertains to the social and organizational sciences. However, though going beyond the aim of this essay, many issues could be reframed and adapted to medical, natural and physical sciences, as some of the following examples can show.

The sensory imperative

2021 ◽  
pp. 135050762110622
Author(s):  
Christina Juhlin ◽  
Robin Holt
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Organizational Life ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Organizational Research ◽  
Political Position ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Forms Of Knowledge

With this essay, we identify and resist a sensory imperative in management and organizational research and beyond. We define the sensory imperative as an uncritical embrace of the idea that the senses offer a unique and attractive methodological and political position for studying managerial and organizational life and for challenging dominant forms of knowledge production. By falling in with this imperative, the turn to the senses in management and organization studies risks losing sight of its own mediations. We propose three ways of regaining sight of these mediations, which, we argue, come together as an analytical sensorisation – a study of, rather than with, the senses.

scholarly journals Sounds of Silence: Graduate Trainees, Hegemony and Resistance

2005 ◽  
Vol 26 (7) ◽  
pp. 1049-1069 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew D. Brown ◽  
Christine Coupland
Keyword(s):  
Private Sector ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Discursive Construction ◽  
Discursive Practices ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Linguistic Turn ◽  
Graduate Trainees ◽  
Self Authorship

This paper analyses how graduate trainees in one UK-based private sector retail organization talked about being silenced. The paper illustrates how the trainees’ constructions formed a set of discursive practices that were implicated in the constitution of the organization as a regime of power, and how they both accommodated and resisted these practices. Our case focuses on the trainees’ discursive construction of normative pressures to conform, compliant and non-compliant types of worker, and explicit acts of silencing, together with their reflexive interrogation of the nexus of discursive constraints on their opportunities to be heard. Drawing on the analytical resources associated with the ‘linguistic turn’ in organization studies, our research is an exploration of the importance of language as a medium of social control and power, and means of self-authorship. It is also an attempt to locate ‘silence’ in putatively polyphonic organizations.

The Relevance Challenge in Management and Organization Studies: Bringing Organization Development Back In

2020 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 521-546
Author(s):  
Thomas G. Cummings ◽  
Chailin Cummings
Keyword(s):  
Action Research ◽  
Organization Development ◽  
Evolutionary Analysis ◽  
Research Practice ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Practice Gap ◽  
Applied Knowledge

We address management and organization studies’ (MOS) mounting relevance challenge of creating knowledge that matters far more to researchers than practitioners. Organization development (OD), a subfield of MOS, can help bridge the research–practice gap. OD was once a valued contributor to MOS creating applied knowledge to change and improve organizations. Yet that contribution gradually diminished and today OD is a marginal member of the MOS community. A historical–evolutionary analysis reveals the causes for that decline and suggests how to bring OD back in to address the relevance challenge. Our proposal involves the application of OD action research, an engaged and collaborative form of inquiry that creates knowledge in the service of helping organizations improve themselves.

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