For a listing of links to pages relating to philosophers from Parmenides onwards, try this link Philosophers
From 2000 -2006 I was involved in running a Special Interest Group of the British Academy of Management and a Standing Working Group of the European Group for Organization Studies on the Philosophy of Organization with Heather Höpfl. The original rationale behind setting up these groups was as follows:
During the past two decades, we have seen an increasing use of the ideas of contemporary philosophers in the study of organizations and organizing processes. Perhaps the most prominent of these have been Michel Foucault, whose work has heavily influenced critical Human Resource Management, and Jacques Derrida, whose work on deconstruction has inspired a wide range of textual approaches to organizing with a new attention given to language and narrative, as has the work of Julia Kristeva. Jean-Francois Lyotard's work on postmodernism has been widely regarded as the source of a debate in the field of Organization Studies which has at times been acrimonious, and Jean Baudrillard's early work on consumption has recently been rediscovered to underpin the impact of his work on symbolic exchange, simulacra, and seduction. On the other side of the Atlantic, Richard Rorty's work has influenced narrative and rhetorical approaches to organizational inquiry.
The list could easily be extended, and somewhat indefinitely. The fact that these debates have arisen primarily in Europe is a result of the historical dominance of European philosophy in the advanced capitalist economies since the Englightenment, and the rich variety in educational traditions which has produced a stimulating heterogeneity in systems of thought. The interest in philosophy in organising mirrors a wider popular interest in thinking more deeply about issues over which the the speed of technological change forces us to skim, an interest in values, ethics and spirituality, and a lack of patience with fads, fashions and quick fixes, although some might cite the work of Jostein Gaarder - the first best-selling popular philosopher to engage with real philosophy - as a philosophical quick-fix in itself. Much of the application and critique of philosophical ideas in organization studies, with a few notable exceptions, has been superficial and only partially understood, outside of a broader philosophical context on which these philosophers drew. In countering this tendency towards kitsch philosophy and kitsch critique, four challenges emerge:
a) to move back beyond the work of the high profile current philosophers to reassess the significance of their sources, and rediscover neglected sources (currently we could include Deleuze and Guattari, Bergson, Artaud, Heidegger, Kojeve and Bataille amongst the more recent thinkers; Nietzsche, Hegel and Kant tower in the background; Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Parmenides and others in the distance).
b) to move outside the Western European tradition and explore connections with non-European traditions, Chinese and Indian philosophy in particular.
c) to see how this study of philosophy can become practical and applied to organising (cf the work of Bergson on creativity and innovation; the work of Deleuze and Guattari on change; and of Habermas on communication)
d) to introduce philosophical thinking into the Business School curriculum at as early a stage as possible
The work of philosophy is interdisciplinary - contemporary philosophers engage with and develop a sociology, a psychology, an aesthetics, an ethics, some economic theory and literary genres in the course of their work. Thus the working groups mentioned above have members from a wide range of sub-disciplines within the field, but also incorporate those whose work is itself multi-disciplinary. They also include philosophers from outside the field, but who have an interest in organizations and organizing. Up to now there has been no forum for those working with philosophical ideas to exchange them formally, other than through commenting on each other's publications, nor to develop a collective arena for sharing agendas.
The proposed activities of the EGOS Standing Working Group on the Philosophy of Organization included:
- organizing workshops and small conferences for exchange of ideas between disciplines focusing on the work of an individual philosopher (the first took place in April 2000 - "Bergson and the Social Sciences") or an unfamiliar philosophical tradition (eg non-Western)
- providing a website and forum for exchange between international researchers between conferences
- organizing workshops at EGOS Colloquia - the first was at Lyon 2001 Stream 32: Odysseys of Organizing: Philosophy in Search of the Other The stream was oversubscribed and split into two - two books have now been published as a reuslt, both with Routledge in 2005 - Organizing Identity (Pullen and lInstead eds) nd Thinking Organization (Linstead and Linstead[Pullen] eds). The second was held at the EGOS Colloquium in Barcelona 2002
The theme in fact covered two sub-themes - "Organizing Wisely? Managing Beyond Knowledge" convened by Heather Hopfl and Alison Linstead(now Pullen); and also Sub-theme 17 : "Negotiating Organizational Aesthetics" convened by Stephen Linstead and Antonio Strati. In that year the group also supported the foundation of the successful biannual series of conferences on Art of Management in September 2002 in London.In 2003 the theme was The Open Organization and Its Enemies, in Copenhagen; in 2004 The Magic of Organization in Ljubliana, Slovenia; in 2005 Empire and Organization in Berlin; and finally in 2006 in Bergen Norway we consider Organised Selves; Organising Others: Philosophy and Identity in a Just Society.
- encouraging joint work among European scholars, through faculty exchanges, joint submissions to funding bodies (in the social sciences and humanities) for collaboration, and joint publications. Collaborations and successful funding bids have been made, and some are current ly under review. This is an area that needs to develop further over the next few years but there is certainly great interest in the possibilities for living and organising differently and for draiwng on philosophy in helping to understand them. We have begun a collaboration through a visiting fellowship at York with Pat Kane, journalist, freelance intellectual, rock star, TV presenter, consultant and author of "The Play Ethic" Macmillan 2004 who has a wonderful website.
- organizing exchanges of doctoral students working in different disciplines and arranging doctoral symposia. Whiulst the group did not itself do this, several outstanding events centirng on philsophical issues have been run by the Leicester Management Centre; the University for Humanisitcs, Utrecht; Essex Management Centre; the Department of Management at St. Andrews and the Centre for Social Theory and Philosophy at the University of Keele.
- organizing pedagogical workshops on using and teaching philosophy
. The first of these took place at the British Academy of Management at Cardiff in September 2001 in conjunction with the new journal Reason in Practice[now renamed Philosophy of Management The journal initiated a biannual series of conferences at St Anne's Oxford beginning in June 2002 following a successful one-day event at LSE in May 2001.The journal has also since organised several other practice-oriented workshops.
The allotted period for the group's activities ends in summer 2006 so we will have a farewell party in Bergen. However, the field has been stim ulated in exfiting ways over the past six years and there are now many more opportunities to pursue philosophical ideas at workshops and seminars. Furthermore, the scholarly journals in th efield are now welcoming article that display a much greater degree of familiarity - and at times a sophisticated knowledge of, the ontology and epistemology of organizational thought and research, and the growing areas of ethics and aesthetics in particular display this. The work of the group clearly contributed to this new climate.
GREAT WEB HOSTING service and TRAINING!
They have everything: An online Editor, Tutorials, Personal Help, CGI bin,
Domain registration and more.
