Personal website of Hari Tsoukas with events, information and links to books and publications.

European Group for Organizational Studies

Regular conferences on process respectively philosophical organisation studies.

We explore the process through which people in organizations, especially those in leadership positions, in circumstances marked by ambiguity, surprise, and conflicting values, come to, or arrive at, judgment. Briefly reviewing the (somewhat limited) literature on judgment in management studies, we conclude that its mainly rationalist orientation prevents us (scholars and practitioners alike) from properly grasping important features of the hermeneutical–developmental process involved in coming to a judgment. In particular, the role of emotions, moral agency, language use, and, especially, the selective and integrative nature of perceptual processes, are far too easily ignored. We make the case for a particular notion of judgment understood as Aristotelian “phronesis” (practical wisdom).

There is an increasing concern that management theories are not relevant to practice. In this article we contend that the overall problem is that most management theories are unable to capture the logic of practice because they are developed within the framework of scientific rationality. We elaborate practical rationality as an alternative framework and show how it enables development of theories that grasp the logic of practice and, thus, are more relevant to management practice.

Strategy-as-practice research has usefully built on earlier strategy process research by taking into account the social embeddedness of strategy making. While such an approach has generated valuable insights, it has curiously left unexplored the moral dimension of practice. In this article, we show how the potential of strategy-as-practice research may be more fully realized if the moral dimension of practice is conceptualized through virtue ethics (especially MacIntyre’s version). Specifically, we first reconceptualize, through virtue ethics, the three main concepts of strategy-as-practice—practice, praxis, and practitioners—underscoring the inherently moral constitution of actions undertaken in strategy-related work. Moreover, we suggest that strategic management is viewed as a particular kind of practice (what we call “competitive institutional practice”), charged with “values articulation work” and “balancing work.”

Organization scholars have often criticized the discipline of being distant from practical managerial problems. In this article we discuss another form of distance: from citizen's problems. The recent financial crisis in Europe, especially in the South, made manifest formidable needs for massive state reform. The challenge, from a process view, is that previous reform attempts have often failed, with each new failure leading to less readiness for future reform. We discuss the possibility of state reforms being trapped in a pattern of vicious circularity, thus articulating two fundamental yet under-explored topics in European management research: state reform and the vicious circle.

In this chapter, drawing primarily on Wittgenstein, we argue that a representationalist view of theory in an applied or practical science such as organization and management theory (OMT) is unrealistic and misleading, since it fails to acknowledge theory's ineradicable dependence on the dynamics of the life-world within which it has its ‘currency’. We explore some of the difficulties raised by the use of representational theorizing in OMT, and mainly explore the nature of a more reflective form of theorizing. Reflective theory, we argue, invites practitioners to attend to the grammar of their actions, namely to the rules and meanings that actors draw upon in their participation in social practices. In this view, the role of theory resembles the role Wittgenstein ascribed to philosophy: it is theory-as-therapy.

This review maps and critically evaluates the rapidly growing body of research in the strategy-as-practice field. Following an introduction on the emergence and foundations of strategy-as-practice, the review is structured in three main parts, based on the terminology, issues and research agendas outlined in the field.

Sensemaking is the process through which people work to understand issues or events that are novel, ambiguous, confusing, or in some other way violate expectations. As an activity central to organizing, sensemaking has been the subject of considerable research which has intensified over the last decade. We begin this review with a historical overview of the field, and develop a definition of sensemaking rooted in recurrent themes from the literature. We then review and integrate existing theory and research, focusing on two key bodies of work. The final part of the chapter draws on areas of difference and debate highlighted throughout the review to discuss the implications of key tensions in the sensemaking literature, and identifies important theoretical and methodological opportunities for the field.

The essay examines what organizations are as they happen. It first argues that the happening of an organization has two basic components: the performance of its constituent actions and practices and the occurrence of events whereby its material arrangements causally support these activities. Equating the idea of something as it happens with that of something in real time, the essay then examines two kinds of real time in which organizations occur. The first is the unfoldings of the performances and events that are the happening of the organization. The second is the co-occurrences of the teleological past, present, and future in organizational actions. As it happens, however, an organization is more than what there is to it in real time. It also embraces the persisting structures of its practices and its enduring material arrangements, both of which, among other things, institute possible real times for the organization. The essay argues that the perpetuation of practice structure should be understood as organizational memory.

In research across professions, the development of professional skill traditionally was seen as a process of accumulation of knowledge and skills, promoted by practical experience. More recently, this view has been modified to incorporate skillful know-how that is progressively acquired by passing through developmental stages, such as novice, competent, and expert. The authors of this article critically review contemporary stage models that are typically applied across professions. Their principal critique is that a focus on stages veils or conceals more fundamental aspects of professional skill development. On the basis of their critique, the authors propose an alternative model that builds on the strengths of previous models while seeking to overcome their main limitations. Finally, the authors outline the implications of their alternative model for professional education, workplace practices, and research on professional development.

Interesting summary of Wittgenstein's contribution to philosophy - Meaning is use: Wittgenstein on the limits of language

The Helikopter-Streichquartett is one of Karlheinz Stockhausen's best-known pieces, and one of the most complex to perform. It involves a string quartet, four helicopters with pilots, as well as audio and video equipment and technicians. It was first performed and recorded in 1995.