Dear colleagues,
Please forward this CfP to anyone who would be interested.
Dr. Vincent Blok MBA
Assistant Professor in Responsible Innovation and Sustainable Entrepreneurship
Wageningen University
Website: www.vincentblok.nl
https://wu.academia.edu/VincentBlok
Call for Papers
PHILOSOPHY OF MANAGEMENT 2015
The 10th Philosophy of Management International Conference 2015
St Anne's College Oxford
9 – 12 July 2015
Organised by Philosophy of Management
Sponsored by University of Greenwich Business School
Philosophy of Management 2015 is the tenth in a series of conferences open to all. It will be of special interest to philosophers, management researchers and teachers, consultants and practising managers.
Following the successful conference held at DePaul University in Chicago last year, we are pleased to return to St Anne's College, Oxford. In accordance with our well-established model we are designing an event to offer opportunities for unhurried presentation of papers and discussion, high-quality supportive interaction and feedback, ample opportunity for networking and a gathering in which all participants can pursue informal, rich conversations and the continuing exploration of shared concerns. All residential accommodation is on the compact College campus. Participants will be limited to 75 plus plenary speakers.
Contributions are invited to any of the Conference tracks – or on any aspect of philosophy of management and from within any cultural or philosophical tradition. We will especially welcome papers, panels and workshops on the relationship between philosophy and management practice.
PUBLICATION
Papers will be blind-reviewed and appear on the Conference Papers website.
Important: It is a condition of acceptance that Philosophy of Management journal has first refusal to publish accepted papers or revised versions.
PLENARY SPEAKER/S
tbc
TRACKS
Papers combining empirical research and case studies with philosophical treatment of issues will be particularly welcome in all tracks.
See full track details at the end of the Call.
1. Management and the Philosophy of Mind
Track convenor: Paul Griseri
2. Management in Process
Track convenor: Mark Dibben
3. Ancient Philosophy for Contemporary Management Practices
Track convenor: Anindo Bhattacharjee
4: Neo-Liberalism and Management Scholarship: Critiques of Mainstream Principles and Methodologies in Management Scholarship
Track convenor: Miriam Green
5. Philosophy of Management, Ethics, and Economics
Track convenor: Martin Kelly
6. Managing Voice, Exit and Loyalty
Track convenor: Wim Vandekerckhove
7. Philosophies of Entrepreneurship and Innovation and Creativity
Track convenor: Vincent Blok
8. Dialogue in Management
Track convenors: Marja-Liisa Kakkuri-Knuuttila, Kai Alhanen and Andrea Hornett
9. Management Studies as Science, Scientism, Social Science, Social Technology, Moral Science
Track convenor: Rod Thomas
10. Divers
Papers on any other aspect of philosophy of management will be welcome.
CONFERENCE FORMAT
o Plenary session with invited leading speakers
o Presentations of papers in parallel sessions
o Workshops, panel discussions and interviews
o Poster presentations
We invite participants to propose collaborative formats for their sessions: eg paper, prepared reply and moderated discussion; contrasting approaches to an issue with papers from theorists and practitioners. Contributors are welcome to assemble small panels to offer a series of linked papers.
LANGUAGE
The language of the conference will be English.
BEST PAPER AWARD
All full papers received by the 27 March paper submission deadline will be considered for the Conference Best Paper Award. Judges will be drawn from members of the Conference Committee.
TO CONTRIBUTE...
Please submit a 500 word abstract proposal with contact details and brief cv all in one WORD (or equivalent) file to arrive by Monday 12 January 2015. (Please do not submit full length papers at this stage.)
Please indicate the track to which you wish to contribute.
Please name your file as follows: (Yoursurname–Papertitle-TrackNumber).doc
Email to nwltempemail-PoMconference2015@yahoo.co.uk
Papers will be blind peer reviewed.
TIMETABLE
12 January Proposal abstracts due
30 January Contributors informed of acceptance
27 March Full papers due
8 May Notification of conference tracks
19 June Issue of conference programme and full set of abstracts to all participants
9 – 12 July Conference
Please note that the texts of all papers will be available before the conference on the conference papers website. Speakers will speak to their abstracts which will be issued by email on 19 June.
QUERIES
Please contact Nigel Laurie at
nwltempemail-PoMconference2015@yahoo.co.uk
BOOKING
Conference bookings are being managed by the University of Greenwich. Details will be posted to this list shortly.
Please address any inquiries direct to
Miss Jordan Drinan
Events Management Officer
University of Greenwich Business School
Hamilton House, 15 Park Vista, London SE10 9LZ
Telephone: +44(0)208 331 9083
Email: j.drinan@gre.ac.uk
ORGANISING COMMITTEE
Kit Barton
Pathway Leader, Regent's American College London
Anindo Bhattacharjee
School of Management Sciences Varanasi, India
Vincent Blok
Assistant Professor in Responsible Innovation and Sustainable Entrepreneurship
Wageningen University, The Netherlands
Mark Dibben
Co-Editor, Philosophy of Management, Associate Professor School of Business & Economics, University of Tasmania
Miriam Green
Senior Lecturer in Organisation Studies (Sessional), Icon College of Technology and Management
Paul Griseri
Editor in Chief, Philosophy of Management, Former Head of Management, Middlesex University
Andrea Hornett
Assistant Professor
Fox School of Business, Temple University
Marja-Liisa Kakkuri-Knuuttila
Professor of Philosophy of Management
Department of Management Studies, Aalto University
Martin Kelly
Associate Professor, Waikato Management School
Nigel Laurie (Co-chair)
Founding Editor, Philosophy of Management, Visiting Professor, Royal Holloway School of Management, Managing Partner, London Facilitators
Rod Thomas
Senior Lecturer and MBA Programme Leader
Newcastle Business School
Wim Vandekerckhove (Co-chair)
Principal Lecturer, Human Resources & Organisational Behaviour Dept,
University of Greenwich Business School
Please forward this to anyone who would be interested. Thank you.
Nigel Laurie & Wim Vandekerckhove
21 November 2014
FULL TRACK DESCRIPTIONS
1. Management and the Philosophy of Mind
Track convenor: Paul Griseri
Mentality in organisations covers a wide range of managerially-relevant content. Much organisational behavior is public, and therefore has collective impacts and significance. The idea of a company as a collective raises the question of how all and any mental phenomena can be given an interpretation that goes beyond individual psychology. Other aspects of organisational life that raise issues of the mind include: what conceptions of character underpin the idea of organisationally based virtues? How does the role (a key element in leadership) link with personality? How far do attitudes shape perceptions and judgment in organisations?
Sample topics
o The nature of collective mental phenomena – deliberation, action, perception, memory, attitude
o Managerial decision-making
o Managerial judgment
o Thought and language in organisations
o Moral psychology and the virtues
o Aesthetics and efficiency as attitudes to organization
2. Management in Process
Track convenor: Mark Dibben
Deconstructive Postmodern renderings of Management and Organization Studies topics have made a significant advance towards comprehending the complexity of managerial life. They have, however, tended to rely upon a range of philosophers' basic ideas, such as those of Bergson, Whitehead, Deleuze, Peirce, Spinoza and Dewey in concert, to develop their arguments. In contrast, this track seeks to embody the principles of Philosophy of Management to encourage either: a) the coherent, in-depth and systematic application of one philosopher to topics in management; b) the writing of genuinely new process philosophy of management; or c) auto-ethnographic accounts of practitioner experiences of process and its impact on their ways of being/becoming in the Paul Weiss 'Philosophy [ie. of Management] in Process' (1966) tradition. Process relational philosophers are postmodern in the emphasis on "persons in community" (Cobb, 2007). Relationality is fundamental, but crucially relationships are always internal, not external; we create ourselves out of our relationships with each other and the larger world which is both around and within us. In this sense, we seek papers that connect with the Re-constructive Postmodern approach in seeking ''to overcome the modern worldview through...a new unity of scientific, ethical, aesthetic and religious intuitions" (Griffin, 1993: vii-x).
Sample topics
o The manager's experience as active subject in relation to others
o Freedom Relational Power in organisations
o Overcoming the problem of managers as 'mini Omni-gods'
o Understanding change: From objective events to subjective flows
o The co-creation of value in organisations
o Towards an 'ecological management [/civilisation]'?
3. Ancient Philosophy for Contemporary Management Practices
Track convenor: Anindo Bhattacharjee
In recent years, there has been growing debate over the relevance and sustainability of the existing management paradigms. Post the financial crisis of 2008, the various economic and management paradigms have been severely criticised for their viability in the contemporary world. One of the solutions that emerged out of these debates was increasing the use of philosophy in the development of the foundational principles of management. This track creates scope for intellectual and practical discussions on how to apply the timeless principles of the most ancient philosophical traditions on the planet to arrive at new perspectives for contemporary management that are more holistic, inclusive, responsible, sustainable and culturally relevant.
An indicative list of the schools of thought in Ancient Philosophy from various traditions and their possible areas of relevance in business is provided below. The list is only indicative, and so we are also open to submissions about any other element of ancient philosophy that has not been covered in the list but has important relevance to the study and practice of business and management.
Sample ancient philosophical traditions
o Ancient Occidental Philosophy
o Pre-Socratic, Classical Greek, Hellenistic schools, Neo-Platonism, etc.
o Ancient Faith-based traditions
o Christianity, Islam, Sufism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Jewish traditions, Zoroastrianism, etc.
o Ancient Oriental Philosophy
o Vedanta, Samkhya, Nyaya, Confucianism, Daoism, Zen, etc.
o Other Ancient Philosophies
o Ancient Egyptians, Shamanism, Mayan, Aztec, etc.
o Philosophy from Ancient literary works
4. Neo-Liberalism and Management Scholarship: Critiques of Mainstream Principles and Methodologies in Management Scholarship
Track convenor: Miriam Green
Neoliberalism is now regarded as far more than an economic system, but as pervading all forms of political, social and individual life and as embedded in the everydayness of current societies (Lilley & Papadopoulos, 2014). It has been argued that neoliberalism promotes 'rationality', by which is meant efficacy, cost effectiveness and calculations for utility, benefit and satisfaction. This involves a market rationale for decision-making in all spheres. This has been extended to domains previously excluded, such as questions of values, morality, politics, and also education. (Brown, 2005).
The implications for education are institutional, with regard to the independence of universities, colleges and schools, and epistemological, in terms of what is acceptable and legitimated as scholarship and knowledge, and what is excluded. This is relevant for current management (including 'management accounting' in all instances) scholarship. Debates have been going on for decades about philosophical, sociological and methodological approaches; their validity, the commensurability / incommensurability between approaches; the extent of acceptance of critiques of main stream approaches and possible reasons for successful resistance to such critiques. Scholars engaging in such debates in the management and management accounting fields include Otley and Panozzo. Prominent social theorists such as Habermas, Derrida, Bourdieu and Bhaskar, and philosophers and historians of science, eg Hanson, Kuhn and Feyerabend have also written, sometimes passionately, about these issues.
Sample topics
o Analysis of ontological, epistemological and methodological approaches in management scholarship
o The relationship between neoliberal principles and what is legitimated as valid scholarship in the management area
o The influence of neoliberalism on university curricula and research projects
o The influence of neoliberalism on academic institutions
o The influence of the academy (journal editors, journal rankings, institutional pressures) on the types of management scholarship produced
o Trends in management accounting scholarship
o 'Objectivist' versus 'subjectivist' scholarship in management: incommensurable or complementary?
o 'Objectivist' management scholarship – are its claims to be scientific valid?
o Implications for knowledge / scholarship of the absences or exclusions from mainstream management scholarship
5. Philosophy of Management, Ethics, and Economics
Track convenor: Martin Kelly
Economics pervades much of Western thinking today, and has perhaps replaced religion as the most used guide to 'good' behavior. Economic rationality guides much personal, institutional and societal decision making. The major leaders in contemporary society are more likely to have received business management 'education' than the religious training received by many societal leaders prior to the 20th century. If something appears likely to yield an economic return, it often requires little further support to justify its creation, without consideration of its effect on the natural environment and broad societal wellbeing. Modern citizens have been induced to adopt an instrumental reasoning, which implies that all that is profitable is 'good'. Such reasoning may be applied without adequate ethical safeguards. Who should be responsible for:
creating ethical safeguards?
deciding on, and explaining, the reasoning that underlies these safeguards (education)?
ensuring these safeguards are implemented effectively?
These questions are difficult to answer in a societal environment that has been dominated so effectively by economic theories, which have substantially increased the economic wealth of powerful Western political and managerial decision makers. How can the dominance of economic thought over societal developments be broken? What might happen if it is not?
Sample topics
o Historic analyses: how did we get to where we are now? Would Adam Smith approve?
o International comparisons of societal decision making, and the place of economic thought. Creating an ethical market place
o The place for market forces in the Boardroom
o Thoughts on how to make societal decision making in the Western world more ethically appropriate
o Thoughts on shareholder primacy, and corporate domination
o What went wrong with: CSR, Sustainability and the Triple Bottom Line?
6. Managing Voice, Exit and Loyalty
Track convenor: Wim Vandekerckhove
In an obvious wink to Albert Hirschman - who would have had his 100th birthday in 2015 - this track welcomes papers on any aspect of Hirschman's most famous schema: exit, voice, and loyalty. The track looks for papers making a strong conceptual contribution, but with some empirical base.
Sample topics
o Papers on different types of voice and how these imply different managerial emphases
o Old vs new exit strategies (eg poaching) and their commonalities
o Ideologies of loyalty and how to game these
o Managing trust and indifference
o Managing resistance and sabotage
o Employment relations and customer relation management
7. Philosophies of Entrepreneurship and Innovation and Creativity
Track convenor: Vincent Blok
Sample topics
o Philosophical reflections on basic concepts in entrepreneurship research, like the nature of entrepreneurship and the entrepreneurial activity, opportunity recognition, risk taking and the role of failure, the relation between entrepreneurship and innovation, the contribution of entrepreneurs to societal progress (producing existing products in a more (economic) efficient way versus new product development in response to societal needs) etc
o Creating business opportunities versus finding business opportunities; the role of rationality, practical wisdom and emotions in the entrepreneurial process of opportunity recognition and opportunity exploitation
o Philosophical reflections on central notions of innovation, such as the idea of innovation and possible tensions between different concepts of innovation (like disruptive innovation and responsible innovation), the self-evidence of a technological conceptualization of innovation and the importance of innovations in human/societal behaviour, the role of tradition and craftsmanship (the old) in the production of the new, the self-evidence of economic theories in innovation and the advantages of alternative conceptualizations, like free and open source, commons based peer-to-peer (p2p) innovation strategies etc
o The role of entrepreneurship and innovation in our society, reasons for the entrepreneurship hype, the imperative of corporate innovation, the self-evidence of economic theories in entrepreneurship, the changing role of entrepreneurship in the sharing economy, circular economy etc
o The ethics of entrepreneurial decision making processes, entrepreneurial self-efficacy and the role of egocentrism and altruism, the trade-offs between economic and societal/environmental interests, the entrepreneurial virtues, the political responsibility of corporations for the future impact of innovations, the distribution of costs and benefits of corporate innovation in our society etc.
For more information about specific topics and references to the literature, please contact
Vincent Blok, Wageningen University, The Netherlands vincent.blok@wur.nl www.vincentblok.nl
8. Dialogue in Management
Track convenors: Marja-Liisa Kakkuri-Knuuttila, Kai Alhanen and Andrea Hornett
Contemporary developments of dialogical practices revive the ancient Greek insight that knowledge and understanding best develop by speaking and thinking together in a democratic atmosphere. As far as the details concerning the goals, roles of the participants, and logical structure of interchange is concerned, Plato's Socratic dialogue differs greatly from the contemporary forms of dialogue which, after all, also present a wide variety.
In the management context, evidently, the most popular form of dialogue is the Bohmian one, originally established by the quantum physicist David Bohm (1927-1992), and further developed by Peter Senge (1990/2006) and William Isaacs (1999), for instance. The starting point of this dialogue form is that the experiences and knowledge of different persons deviate and thus complement each other. Each of them is, as such, limited, but taken together may yield a picture of a whole system of meanings and/or causal relations.
Bohm, like his followers, emphasizes the need to separate dialogue and decision making as distinct forms of communication, not to be carried out simultaneously. And yet, the Bohmian dialogue is claimed to offer such benefits as the higher performance of the organization, as well as the possibility of personal development of those participating in the dialogue practice (Senge et al. 1994).
Another important concept of dialogue, called dialogical network meetings, is based on Bakhtin (1980). It was developed by Seikkula and Arnkil (2006) for psychosocial and social work. It consists of open dialogue meant for crisis solution in cases such as psychosis, and anticipation dialogue for solving less acute problems. In contrast to the Bohmian dialogue, which is focused on the structure and principles of discussion, dialogical network meetings involve practical principles guiding the creation of well-functioning networks and working in them. It differs from the Bohmian dialogue also by aiming at decisions for solving the problems arising in hearing the different voices of the members of the network.
We welcome papers based on theoretical and / or empirical research.
Sample topics
o Practical examples of well-functioning dialogue in organizations
o Dialogue (of a specified type) and performance (case studies)
o Conceptual analysis of dialogue and related phenomena (intersubjectivity, equality, empathy, reciprocity, group thinking etc)
o Ethical implications of (a specified type of) dialogue
o The limits and possibilities of (a specified type of) dialogue in organizations
o The role of systems thinking in the Bohmian dialogue
o Revealing mental models in dialogue
o Historical considerations on dialogue
9. Management Studies as Science, Scientism, Social Science, Social Technology, Moral Science
Track convenor: Rod Thomas
The study of management, business and administration is a major activity within Higher Education institutions. For instance, by student numbers classified by subject, it presents by far the largest constituency of first degree and postgraduate students in the United Kingdom. One might thereby assume that everyone involved in such a large-scale and well-established activity knows what they are trying to do and achieve. But are there reasons to think otherwise? How does the study of management relate to the great sphere of human knowledge? It has been variously presented as a science, a social science and a social technology. Yet others have sought to debunk its scientific pretentions, viewing management studies more as scientism than science proper. And then there are those who wish to recover the idea of the 'moral sciences' by arguing that it is a grave mistake to think that moral problems are the sole concern of moral philosophers. Can subjects such as management, economics and law be studied in isolation from moral philosophy? Have the problems of management now become so wholesale that they spill over to question the disciplinary divisions of the university as traditionally understood?
Sample topics
o Management Studies: science, social science or social technology?
o Nature, convention and the possibilities of generalization
o Cause versus meaning
o Theories and their consequences: accounting for reflexivity in human activity systems
o Types of knowing: knowing 'what', knowing 'why', knowing 'that' and knowing 'how'
o Demarcation problems in the philosophy of science and their relevance to management studies
o The grounds for theory transfer between disciplinary domains
o Recovering the notion of the 'moral sciences' and its relevance to management studies
o Theories of scientism, pseudo-science, humbug, balderdash and bullshit – do they apply to management studies?
o Relevant contributions of individual philosophers and research programmes: eg Wittgenstein, the logical positivists, Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend, Weber, Winch, Gellner, Hayek, Darwinism
o The place of the Business and Management School in the modern university
10. Divers
Papers on any other aspect of philosophy of management will be welcome.
END
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