Instrumental Understanding of Management Ideas

This chapter discusses the instrumental status of management ideas through the lenses of three theoretical perspectives. While from the modernistic–rationalistic perspective, management ideas are conceived of as tools, they are also frequently described as legitimizing elements or fashions viewed from the social constructionist–symbolic perspective. However, seen from a pragmatic perspective—this chapter’s main analytical frame—the instrumental quality of a management idea cannot be decided upon a priori, as if it were a distinct property of each idea. Instead, the implementation phase stands out as critical for the shaping of management ideas. A pragmatic lens, such as offered by translation theory, helps to identify a range of possible trajectories of initiatives to implement management ideas. Some lead to instrumentalization and practical use, while others do not. It is argued that translation theory has the potential to guide practitioners’ efforts to instrumentalize management ideas.

Animal sacrifices: a Mechanism to silence the Spirits of victims of violent deaths Mate Mean or Red Death in East Timor

This paper reports animal sacrifices witnessed between 2010 and 2013, during exhumations performed by the forensic team of Serious Crimes Investigation Team (SCIT) of the United Nations Mission in East Timor (UNMIT). The exhumations were carried out within the framework of the investigations conducted by the United Nations (UN) to clarify the crimes committed during the armed conflict in East Timor in 1999. Therefore, the bodies exhumed correspond to the victims of this event. In this pages, the sacrifices are subject to an anthropological interpretation, with a symbolic perspective. To this end, the procedures, artifacts and other elements, present in the practices observed, are described in detail, arguing that this practice corresponds to older traditions, previous to the imposition of the Catholic religion in Timor, and it was a mechanism of interaction among the family group, as well as a tool of communication with the afterlife.

Cultural analysis in three indigenous productive organizations from an interpretive-symbolic perspective

Most cultural scientific studies in Colombian organizations have been characterized as being deterministic and by establishing cultural typologies, according to the analysis of internal and external organizational variables. Additionally, most of these studies are oriented towards considering Colombian organizations within modern westernized contexts as the unit of analysis, leaving out of the scientific discussion, the traditional Colombian organizations that have been designed and developed from native perspectives and grounded in the ancient cultures of the country. In contrast, this research defined three indigenous productive organizations as units of analysis to describe and characterize their culture from an interpretative-symbolic perspective, analyzing their own cultural features and components based on the theoretical model of cultural dynamics. The methodology is based on organizational ethnography and cultural analysis of emerging categories. The results show that although there are points where three indigenous productive organizations meet regarding material, intangible and social aspects, every organization has its own cultural characteristics that defines as “indigenous-traditional” or “western-modern”.

A transsumptio e o uso de enigmas como "saída" para um discurso sobre o divino em De docta ignorantia (1440) de Nicolau de Cusa [The transsumptio and the use of puzzles as a "way out" for a discourse on divine in Nicholas of Cusa's De docta ignorantia (1440)]

Este artigo traz traços de uma importante discussão dentro do contexto da filosofia de Nicolau de Cusa, a saber, a discussão sobre o conceito de transsumptio e o uso de enigmas como uma saída para um discurso acerca do princípio primeiro, isto é, Deus. O objetivo é mostrar como esta perspectiva enigmática ou simbólica aparece na filosofia cusana, especialmente nas três obras que se propõe a discutir este trabalho: De docta ignorantia (1440), De visione dei (1453) e De non aliud (1462).[This article brings out traces of an important discussion in the context of the philosophy of Nicholas of Cusa, i.e. the discussion about the concept of transsumptio and the use of puzzles as a way out for a discourse on the first principle, that is, God. The objective is to show how this enigmatic or symbolic perspective appears in the Cusan philosophy especially in the three works that this work proposes to discuss: De docta ignorantia (1440), De visione dei (1453) and De non aliud (1462).]