Phenomenology and the Reflective Practitioner

This article asks in what sense phenomenology could contribute to reflection as part of organizational practice. It discusses Berger and Luckmann's view of the role of language in reality construction and, in reaction, argues that Husserl's method of phenomenological clarification is helpful in order to find proper, valid concepts for dealing with practical organizational affairs. The value of clarification is illustrated by the case of the `patient as customer' and by discussing Schön's idea of the reflective practitioner.

Marginalization and Recovery: The Emergence of Aristotelian Themes in Organization Studies

The past decade has witnessed a number of interesting shifts in the way people think about organizations. One of the most curious is the way in which much of the 'new thinking' is antithetical to mechanistic and rationalistic theories that have historically dominated organization and management studies. This paper investigates this shift, and argues that this new antithetical thinking can be interpreted as the re-surfacing, or recovery, of certain strands of Aristotelian philosophy, strands that were marginalized with the rise of scientific rational ism in the 17th century, before management and organization studies, as we tend to conceive of them, began. The discussion presented here demonstrates the traditional dominance of a disciplinary, mechanistic self-image in manage ment studies, whereby the field drew its boundaries in such a way as to exclude anything 'other' than this. We argue that reconnecting organizational and man agement research with systems of thought other than those traditionally associ ated with the 'discipline', and adopting a 'kaleidoscopic' view of history, can enable researchers to think differently about key issues and inform future development. Key aspects of Aristotle's thinking are considered as a case in point.

Field Dependency of Argumentation Rationality in Decision-Making Debates

This study argues that the rationality behind strategic decisions, which is characterized as expressive, social, or instrumental rational, has to be aligned with the argumentation field of the decision, which is characterized as subjective, intersubjective, or objective. A multiple case study illustrates this proposition while exploring rationality in the mainly instrumental rational debate on the expansion of Heathrow, the social rational debate on extension of Gurkha rights and the expressive rational debate on the hijab in Britain. Stakeholder arguments that realize good alignment with the related argumentation field have a substantial influence on strategic decisions. Managers and policy makers who do not realize this field fit well have to adapt their decisions, or cannot execute them. The cases illustrate the effects of this alignment strategy, in argumentation that mirrors the rationality of opponents, and in a strategy that reframes the assumed fit between the rationality and the related argumentation field.