American Pragmatism and Organization Studies: Concepts, Themes and Possibilities

2016 ◽  
pp. 3-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick Rumens ◽  
Mihaela Kelemen
Keyword(s):  
Organization Studies ◽  
American Pragmatism

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947)

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tor Hernes
Keyword(s):  
Organization Theory ◽  
Alfred North Whitehead ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Unit Of Analysis ◽  
American Pragmatism ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
Concrete Experience ◽  
Open Structures ◽  
Spatio Temporal ◽  
Event Based

Born in England in 1861, Alfred North Whitehead turned to philosophy after a brilliant career in mathematics, where he developed a philosophical scheme based on experience as the ultimate unit of analysis, rejecting what he called the bifurcation between mind and nature that had dominated philosophical thought. He also invoked the idea of concrete experience to connect to American pragmatism, and especially to William James’s work. This chapter first provides an overview of Whitehead’s life and times before turning to his philosophical views. It examines Whitehead’s notion of atomism and his influence on organization studies. Finally, it discusses three aspects of events that may help lay foundations for an event-based organization theory inspired by Whitehead’s philosophy: events as spatio-temporal durations, the forming of events through mirroring, and the open structures of events.

scholarly journals PRAGMATISM AND PRACTICE THEORY: CONVERGENCES OR COLLISIONS

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Anders Buch ◽  
Bente Elkjaer
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Practice Theory ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
American Pragmatism ◽  
The Social ◽  
Practice Turn ◽  
Pragmatist Philosophy

Proponents of the ‘practice turn’ in the social sciences rarely mention American pragmatism as a source of inspiration or refer to pragmatist philosophy. This strikes us as not only odd, but also a disadvantage since the pragmatist legacy has much to offer practice theory in the study of organizations. In this paper we want to spell out the theoretical similarities and divergences between practice theory and pragmatism to consider whether the two traditions can find common ground when gazing upon organization studies. We suggest that pragmatism should be included in the ‘tool-kit’ of practice-based studies of organizations.

scholarly journals Questioning and Organization Studies

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (10) ◽  
pp. 1529-1542 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mihaela Kelemen ◽  
Nick Rumens ◽  
Linh Chi Vo
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
American Pragmatism ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One ◽  
Forward Looking

In organization studies, there is a cleavage in the literature that separates ‘questions’ and ‘questioning’ at a very fundamental philosophical level. On the one hand, the objective notion of ‘questions’ has already been well addressed. On the other hand, the process of ‘questioning’ remains under-researched. Although questioning the process of questioning is challenging, this is precisely where American pragmatism can be helpful. As we explore in this essay, the forward-looking quality of pragmatist inquiry is what motors the process of questioning. Our pragmatist-inflected argument is that questioning does not always have to serve critique and position building in the organization studies field. Rather, questioning out of curiosity can build new dialogue and open up new methodological avenues. This will help change the habitual ways in which we explore ideas, problems and situations in organization studies as well as lead to more democratic forms of organizing.

The Talmudist Enlightenment: Talmudic Judaism’s Confrontational Rational Theology

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 37
Author(s):  
Menachem Fisch
Keyword(s):  
Religious Commitment ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Physical Sciences ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
American Pragmatism ◽  
Rational Theology

Robert Brandom's "The Pragmatist Enlightenment" describes the advent of American pragmatism as signaling a sea-change in our understanding of human reason away from the top-down Euclidian models of reasoning, warrant and knowledge inspired by the physical sciences, toward the far more bottom-up, narrative, inherently fallible and dialogical forms of reasoning of the life and human sciences. It is against this backdrop that Talmudic Judaism emerges not only as an early anticipation of the pragmatist enlightenment, but as going a substantial and radical step beyond it, that in the context of religious commitment and reasoning, is unprecedented. 

Dualities, Dialectics, and Paradoxes in Organizational Life

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Dynamic Systems ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Organizational Studies ◽  
Organizational Life ◽  
Organizational Processes ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Process Studies ◽  
Convergence And Divergence ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Over Time

Organizational contradictions and process studies offer interwoven and complementary insights. Studies of dialectics, paradox, and dualities depict organizational contradictions that are oppositional as well as interrelated such that they persistently morph and shift over time. Studies of process often examine how contradictions fuel emergent, dynamic systems and stimulate novelty, adaptation, and transformation. Drawing from rich conversations at the Eighth International Symposium on Process Organization Studies, the contributors to this volume unpack these relationships in more depth. The chapters explore three main, connected themes through both conceptual and empirical studies, including (1) offering insight into how process theorizing advances understandings of organizational contradictions; (2) shedding light on how dialectics, paradoxes, and dualities fuel organizational processes that affect persistence and transformation; and (3) exploring the convergence and divergence of dialectics, paradox, and dualities lenses. Taken together, this book offers key insights in order to inform persistent, contradictory dynamics in organizations and organizational studies.

scholarly journals Production and Characterization of Maize Chromosome 9 Radiation Hybrids Derived From an Oat-Maize Addition Line

Genetics ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 156 (1) ◽  
pp. 327-339 ◽  
Author(s):  
O Riera-Lizarazu ◽  
M I Vales ◽  
E V Ananiev ◽  
H W Rines ◽  
R L Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Radiation Hybrid ◽  
Chromosome Region ◽  
Chromosome 9 ◽  
Addition Line ◽  
Addition Lines ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Maize Chromosome ◽  
Chromosome Addition ◽  
Radiation Hybrids ◽  
Chromosome Addition Lines

Abstract In maize (Zea mays L., 2n = 2x = 20), map-based cloning and genome organization studies are often complicated because of the complexity of the genome. Maize chromosome addition lines of hexaploid cultivated oat (Avena sativa L., 2n = 6x = 42), where maize chromosomes can be individually manipulated, represent unique materials for maize genome analysis. Maize chromosome addition lines are particularly suitable for the dissection of a single maize chromosome using radiation because cultivated oat is an allohexaploid in which multiple copies of the oat basic genome provide buffering to chromosomal aberrations and other mutations. Irradiation (gamma rays at 30, 40, and 50 krad) of a monosomic maize chromosome 9 addition line produced maize chromosome 9 radiation hybrids (M9RHs)—oat lines possessing different fragments of maize chromosome 9 including intergenomic translocations and modified maize addition chromosomes with internal and terminal deletions. M9RHs with 1 to 10 radiation-induced breaks per chromosome were identified. We estimated that a panel of 100 informative M9RHs (with an average of 3 breaks per chromosome) would allow mapping at the 0.5- to 1.0-Mb level of resolution. Because mapping with maize chromosome addition lines and radiation hybrid derivatives involves assays for the presence or absence of a given marker, monomorphic markers can be quickly and efficiently mapped to a chromosome region. Radiation hybrid derivatives also represent sources of region-specific DNA for cloning of genes or DNA markers.

scholarly journals Grand Challenges, Feminist Answers

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 263178772110203
Author(s):  
Yvonne Benschop
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
Situated Knowledge ◽  
Feminist Ethics ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Grand Challenges ◽  
Knowing That ◽  
Feminist Organization

Feminist organization theories develop knowledge about how organizations and processes of organizing shape and are shaped by gender, in intersection with race, class and other forms of social inequality. The politics of knowledge within management and organization studies tend to marginalize and silence feminist theorizing on organizations, and so the field misses out on the interdisciplinary, sophisticated conceptualizations and reflexive modes of situated knowledge production provided by feminist work. To highlight the contributions of feminist organization theories, I discuss the feminist answers to three of the grand challenges that contemporary organizations face: inequality, technology and climate change. These answers entail a systematic critique of dominant capitalist and patriarchal forms of organizing that perpetuate complex intersectional inequalities. Importantly, feminist theorizing goes beyond mere critique, offering alternative value systems and unorthodox approaches to organizational change, and providing the radically different ways of knowing that are necessary to tackle the grand challenges. The paper develops an aspirational ideal by sketching the contours of how we can organize for intersectional equality, develop emancipatory technologies and enact a feminist ethics of care for the human and the natural world.

scholarly journals Edgar Wind on Experiment and Metaphysics

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Brigitte Falkenburg
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Art History ◽  
Philosophy Of Physics ◽  
Metaphysical Realism ◽  
American Pragmatism ◽  
Theory Formation ◽  
Internal Realism ◽  
Detailed Interpretation ◽  
Holistic Theory ◽  
Central Claim

Abstract The paper presents a detailed interpretation of Edgar Wind’s Experiment and Metaphysics (1934), a unique work on the philosophy of physics which broke with the Neo-Kantian tradition under the influence of American pragmatism. Taking up Cassirer’s interpretation of physics, Wind develops a holistic theory of the experiment and a constructivist account of empirical facts. Based on the concept of embodiment which plays a key role in Wind’s later writings on art history, he argues, however, that the outcomes of measurements are contingent. He then proposes an anti-Kantian conception of a metaphysics of nature. For him, nature is an unknown totality which manifests itself in discrepancies between theories and experiment, and hence the theory formation of physics can increasingly approximate the structure of nature. It is shown that this view is ambiguous between a transcendental, metaphysical realism in Kant’s sense and an internal realism in Putnam’s sense. Wind’s central claim is that twentieth century physics offers new options for resolving Kant’s cosmological antinomies. In particular, he connected quantum indeterminism with the possibility of human freedom, a connection that Cassirer sharply opposed.

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