This paper investigates the multidimensional phenomenon of wisdom in organizations and management as an integral and relational process. In particular, the paper will show how phenomenology can help to render an extended understanding of the "incorporated" dimensions of wisdom situated in organizations and managerial life-world practises. Based on this, an integral (and holonic) pheno-practice of wisdom in organisations will be proposed. Accordingly the interior and exterior dimensions as well as individual and collective spheres of wisdom are assessed together. Furthermore, the (...) interconnected processes of intentional, behavioural, cultural and systemic domains of wisdom can be integrated. Following a processual turn, a dynamic and decentred perspective on wisdom will be developed by which it is interpreted as an emerging and inter-relational event. Finally, theoretical and practical implications and further research on a more integrated understanding of wisdom are discussed. (shrink)

As a response to the decoupling of the ‘talk’ and the ‘walk’ in organizations regarding claimed goodness and actions, this contribution explores the role of the rhetorical modes of ethos, pathos, and logos as a new form of wise communication to handle timely ethical and societal issues. We develop a criticism of one-sided, often logos-oriented and instrumentalizing, irresponsible and unresponsive approaches taken by organizations in their communication efforts, and then go on to propose a more balanced, proto-wise integration of the (...) three modes as part of embodied practice. We differentiate and reintegrate these rhetorical forms, and discuss them in relation to embodied, ethical and aesthetic practices that are qualified as responsible, responsive, and reasonable in and beyond organizations. Finally, some implications and perspectives on organizing an embodied, living ethos of sustainability are suggested. (shrink)

Based on insights of phenomenology, this article aims to contribute to a comprehensive understanding of embodied space and place of and for leader- and followership in organisations. From an interrelational perspective, the “spacing” and implacement of leadership and followership will be interpreted as local-historical and as local-cultural processes. Linked to questions of distance of leadership, embodied face-to-face interaction will be critically compared with distant, non-localised, displaced relationships and tele-presence mediated by information and communication technology. In addition to outlining some links (...) to “potential space” and place-responsiveness by concluding some implications, problems and perspectives on research of embodied space and place forleadership in organisation are discussed. (shrink)

This paper presents a phenomenology of affect and discusses its relevance for organizational life-worlds. With Merleau-Ponty, affects are interpreted as bodily and embodied inter-relational phenomena, which have specific pathic, ecstatic and emotional qualities. Relationally, they will be situated as “inter-affection” that are part of the inter-corporeality of the “Flesh” of wild be(com)ing. Affect and inter-affectivity are then related to organizational life-worlds, through a critical exploration of different phenomena and effects generated by positive, negative and ambiguous dimensions. Finally, the potentials of (...) affects and affection as part of the nexus of an embodied responsive responsibility and sustainability are discussed and critical perspectives on affective becoming outlined. (shrink)

This article brings together mindfulness and habitus theory in relation to developing wise leaders. In particular, we present new insights about the intersection of time, subjective and intersubjective experience, and mindfulness that are relevant to developing embodied wisdom in leaders. We show that temporal competence is essential for shaping habitus and developing embodied wisdom. Further, and to extend theoretical understandings of mindfulness in leadership, we argue that temporal capabilities developed through mindfulness can foster embodied wisdom by creating a specific ‘wisdom (...) habitus’ that includes values and ethics. The system of dispositions that comprise one’s habitus is, however, largely unconscious and implicit and we discuss how mindfulness renders habitus, including ethical conation accessible to development for the bodily ability to act wisely. This article then establishes a framework that leadership development programs in business schools can adopt for understanding habitus and mindfulness to enable embodied wisdom to develop in leaders. Finally, we show that a mindfulness perspective offers valuable contributions to research on leadership. (shrink)

The main thrust of my argument was that ad hoc su gge s ti ons of ch a ri ty cannot replace a systematic and theoreti c a lly inform ed approach to poverty rel i ef . Ch a ri t a ble don a ti on som eti m e s h elps—and som etimes harm s — but is no general solution to global poverty, and can be po s i tively dangerous wh en pre s en (...) ted as such. We need to consider, and often choose, other routes to helping the poor—including ethical to u rism and fair trade in lu x u ry goods. We will not be able to invest in such feasible routes if we give away all our extra income, as Singer recommends. Sticking to donation above all, when a combination of other strategies is necessary, is highly likely to harm the poor. Si n ger doe s n’t re a lly en ga ge my argumen t . In s te ad , he cari c a tu res our “f u n d a m ental disa greem en t” :a pp a ren t ly, Si n ger rej ects va ri o u s policies because he takes into account the “f act s” ; wh ereas Ku per is the one seeking a “f a i t h ,” a “po l i tical ph i l o s ophy. . . i m mune to ref ut a ti on on the basis of evi den ce .” Anyon e who has re ad my arti cle (pp. 1 07 - 2 0) must fin d this puzzling. The arti cle explains at len g t h wh i ch kinds of b ack ground theories help us to d i s cern and re s pon s i bly con s i der the rel eva n t f act s . I show that Si n ger sel ects and uses fact s u n c ri ti c a lly prec i s ely because he has no po l i tical econ omy, no po l i tical soc i o l ogy, and no t h eory of ju s ti ce . We are seri o u s ly misled if we do not draw adequ a tely on the wi s dom and.. (shrink)

The belief that women report more somatic complaints than men is not new. Many centuries B.C., the Egyptians and the Greeks already made an association between female pains and hysteria, which is Greek for Despite the commonly held belief that women are more sensitive to pain than men, the issue of sex differences in pain has received little attention from the scientific community in general. It is the merit of berkley to draw our attention to this large gap in our (...) scientific knowledge. (shrink)

Contrary to Singer's view, Kuper asserts that there is no "royal road" to poverty relief, but intersecting roads that may take us to a place without poverty. Drawing on the works of Rawls and Marx, Kuper examines how an effective political philosophy of this kind might be developed.

In this book, Roland Kupers argues that the climate crisis is well suited to the bottom-up, rapid, and revolutionary change complexity science theorizes; he succinctly makes the case that complexity science promises policy solutions to address climate change.

In an actual conflict situation many different factors can contribute to the view that a recourse to violence is inescapable and even desirable. Among them are natural responses to repression, encouragement from interested parties outside, and the oversimplification of the situation as it is described in the militant ideologies of the organizers of the conflict and in the moral evaluations of those who take sides in it. The reality is far more complex and the situation far less determined than it (...) seems. Taking the South African situation, the question of whether violence can be avoided can still be seen to depend on the kind of action that is taken. There is a relationship between ends and means. If the end is racial domination (by Africans in place of Afrikaners), then violence is the appropriate means. If the end is racial integration then violence must be avoided. Whether non-violence can serve this end of racial integration depends on its being consistently practiced and on the provision of the necessary outside encouragement. (shrink)

In response to Singer Kuper suggests that only a wider range of institutional reforms and political strategies can generate sustained inclusion in governance and the global economy.

How is it possible for individuals to exercise any control over a political order that is supranational and multilayered? This key question must be answered if we are to reconcile democratic principles with the requirement of global justice as well as with the cosmopolitan political institutions that play an ever-increasing role in our world. The leading answer to this question, at present, is that of Juergen Habermas and his followers: deliberative democracy. This article, however, argues that theories of deliberative democracy (...) fail to take seriously both the problems and the opportunities of large-scale societies and so cannot provide adequate conceptual foundations for deepening and globalizing democracy. In particular, the participatory requirements of Habermas’s normative theory can be met only by making assumptions about human cognitive capacities and institutional capabilities that are not remotely plausible in any pluralistic society. (shrink)

Creativity is a relevant yet elusive concept, and consequently there is a large range of methods to assess creativity in many different contexts. Broadly speaking, we can differentiate between creativity measures on the level of the person (such as the Torrance tests), the level of the creative product (consensual assessment), and the level of the creative process. In the recent literature on children's creativity, 80% of the studies employed measures on either the person or the product level (Kupers et al., (...) submitted). However, for parents, teachers, and employers who wish to stimulate creativity, insight in the (often socially embedded) creative process is badly needed. This move from the inter-individual to the intra-individual level of assessment is furthermore in line with research in many other domains in psychology. Although there is some research focusing more on detailed descriptions of creative processes, the studies are usually purely qualitative and therefore highly context-specific, making generalization difficult. In this paper, we present a newly developed coding frame as a systematic, generic, micro-level measure of creativity. What is unique about this coding frame is that it can be applied to observations of creative processes in many different contexts, and for different kinds of creative tasks. The core of the instrument is that it allows us to assess the two core components of creativity - novelty and appropriateness on an ordinal 4-point scale, at each moment during the creative process. The coding frame can be applied in three steps. The first step is to determine the unit of analysis, that is, the level of detail in which the creative process is assessed. The second step and third steps are coding the units on two ordinal scales of novelty and appropriateness, respectively. In order to illustrate the versatility of our instrument, we apply it to two cases of very different creative processes: a musical composition task (open-ended) and a scientific reasoning task (closed- ended). Last, we demonstrate the possibilities for analyzing this type of dense intra-individual measurements of creativity (time series analysis and state space grids) and discuss the future research that is needed to fully validate the instrument. (shrink)

L'anthropologie sud-africaine a historiquement été divisée en deux écoles: l'une, associée aux universités de langue afrikaans, appuyait l'apartheid; l'autre, associée aux universités anglophones, s'opposait à la ségrégation et à la discrimination raciale. L'anthropologie afrikaner se focalisait sur la culture, la tradition et l'ethnicité, tandis que l'école rivale voulait étudier l'Afrique du Sud comme une société unique, en transformation rapide. Cette opposition, qui a parfois été exagérée, a été la plus marquée dans la période de renforcement de l'apartheid, dans les années (...) soixante et soixante-dix, mais il y a toujours eu un débat considérable sur les objets mêmes des recherches en anthropologie, en particulier sur la nature des groupes «raciaux» et «tribaux» en Afrique du Sud. Ces problèmes, fondamentaux d'un point de vue politique, ont forcé les anthropologues à se confronter aux grandes questions posées par les politiques gouvernementales. Cet article retrace l'histoire de ces débats sur la classification des populations en Afrique du Sud. (shrink)

This introductory piece to the special issue presents in a broad sense, issues, and concepts related to temporality and ethics in business and society. In particular, this article rethinking time and temporality while developing a more critical understanding of the same, especially in organizing and managing, helps processing specific ethical questions and issues as well as more sustainable ways by reconstructing the past and relating differently to the presence and future in organisation studies and practice (Wenzel et al. in Organ (...) Stud 45:1–15, 2020). We present an extended understanding of what “timely” means and why is it well timed to connect temporality with ethics and vice versa in our present-day time and for a future to come. We discuss reasons why it is ethically timely to rethink and reconsider not only conceptions of time, but also its implications and consequences related to our contemporary world. This article elaborates on the connection between temporality and ethics. Moreover, we briefly discuss some specific ethically relevant phenomena, the nexus of time, and crisis and then conclude by offering some perspectives on alternative temporal interpretations linked to ethics and an overview of the articles in this special issue. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Das Mittelalter Jahrgang: 21 Heft: 2 Seiten: 381-399.

One of the recurring themes in discussions among mathematicians, whether in informal lunch hour talks or in more formal committees, is what might be called "simplistic impact-bashing." We are more and more often facing words that seem totally foreign to us—impact, impact factor, excellence, etc.—and we feel no doubt somewhat like people who are too old to adapt to new technologies or new habits. However, despite this unanimity against them, these concepts seem inexorably to infiltrate every branch of our academic (...) institutions, and progressively to invade the applications for financial support that we are ever more frequently required to fill out. It's not rare to hear that there's no point in fighting losing .. (shrink)

This article reports on a conversation convened by Quentin Skinner at the invitation of the Editors of The Journal of Political Philosophy and held in Cambridge on 13 February 2001.

This article contains an analysis of Georg Simmel’s aphorisms and an appendix with a number of these in translation. An account is given of the production, publication and reception of the around 300 aphorisms that Simmel produced. His close relationship to Gertrud Kantorowicz is discussed, since she was given the legal right to many of Simmel’s aphorisms when he died and also assigned the task of publishing them by Simmel. The main themes in Simmel’s aphorisms are presented: love, Man, philosophy, (...) Lebensphilosophie and art. Two of Simmel’s aphorisms are also given an extended analysis. It is suggested that the skill of writing a good aphorism, both when it comes to style and content, has much to do with what we call the art of compression. It is also suggested that what ultimately attracted Simmel to the form of aphorism was its capacity to hint at something that is richer than the reality we are currently experiencing. (shrink)

Drawing on contemporary debates and responding to an analytic lacuna in organization and management studies and calls from organizational practice, Phenomenology of the Embodied Organization explores the fundamental and integral role of the body and embodiment in organizational life-worlds.