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With the demise of the empiricist theory of knowledge and the increased prominence of postempiricist and hermeneutical perspectives, it is clear that various aspects of our social lives – including educational leadership – should no longer be thought of in terms of technological or instrumental rationality and technical expertise. Although the current philosophical ferment allows for different ways to rethink leadership, this article examines the implications of one school of thought – philosophical hermeneutics – for the research on, and especially the practice of, educational leadership. The central point is that this perspective, when interpreted in terms of how we think of ourselves as persons, results in a conceptualisation of leadership as a predominantly practical and moral activity.

We believe that management and strategy scholars should engage in research around the role of informal economic activity in the perpetuation of poverty on the African continent.

We argue that the study of informal economic activity, because of its explicit and often purposefully created hidden nature, requires a new method of inquiry and we propose that the practice of hermeneutics provides such a method. Our chapter describes the foundations of hermeneutic research and outlines key principles to guide inquiry.

We move from a rigorous introduction to the general method (a form of hermeneutic investigation) and its implementation in the narrative interview. The chapter concludes with a set of practical guidelines to help researchers employ narrative interviews to uncover collective memory structures and gain deeper insight and real understanding of the workings of informal economies.

We believe this chapter will motivate management and strategy scholars to examine the role of informal economic activity in the perpetuation of poverty in Africa and provide a starting point for developing the tools necessary to engage in research that creates a real and deep understanding of the contexts of poverty on the African continent.

This paper seeks to investigate the impact of e‐mail on individuals and organizations and to provide a framework that frames e‐mail management as a complex and multi‐stranded issue.

The paper employs a multi‐dimensional appraisal of e‐mail use in organisations and introduces a management framework as a practical tool to enact change and organisational learning. The approach uses Lee's five central concepts for understanding hermeneutics: distanciation; autonomization; appropriation; social construction; and enactment, applying these to the problem of e‐mail overload.

This paper contributes to the theoretical understanding of e‐mail use in organisations, and develops a practitioner toolkit for enacting change in e‐mail use. This work uses hermeneutics and an interpretive framework to investigate the impact of e‐mail on organisations, employing concepts from Ricoeur, Gadamer, Habermas, and Klein.

Future research could evaluate the effectiveness of e‐mail performance improvement programmes using a mix of research methods including surveys of e‐mail attitudes and analysis of e‐mail readability and language analysis.

The paper introduces an e‐mail management framework that is a practical tool that can be used to enact change and organisational learning

Implementation could lead to improved communication; improved visibility of the informal organizational network, knowledge sharing, and action network; business process improvement; improved knowledge management; and increased employee morale.

The paper shows how actors may choose to enact emancipation from e‐mail oppression by taking deliberate action to reconstruct the environment in which they exist in an inquiry‐change cycle of organisational learning by implementing an e‐mail management framework.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the application of a hermeneutic-based approach as innovative way to study the Cultural Heritage management in a mesoeconomic space.

The paper builds a theoretical framework based on the analysis of relevant literature in the field of cultural economics, heritage economics and conservation and restoration techniques. Then, after having defined the conceptual hypothesis, a hermeneutical interpretative model is designed for the analysis of the processes of Cultural Heritage management with particular regard to the strategies of stakeholder engagement.

The research shows how the mesoeconomic space is that border area where it is possible to solve more easily the conflicts that arise as a result of the different expectations of stakeholders. Hermeneutical analysis, applied in iterative form, allows us to find common connections, points of contact and convergences between the interpretative horizons of the various stakeholders.

The application of the interpretative model allows the identification of the expectations of stakeholders, improving the knowledge of the tangible and intangible attributes of works of art, in order to design appropriate interventions of restoration, conservation and valorization.

The new model of analysis, based on hermeneutic methodology, is designed to understand and describe the social and economic relations between the different stakeholders involved in the management of Cultural Heritage.

This paper examines for the first time the Cultural Heritage sector within the mesoeconomic area between the micro and the macroeconomy. In addition to this mesoeconomic analysis and conceptual approach, the authors introduce as methodology the economic hermeneutics that represents an innovative tool in the field of economic and business disciplines.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the pluralist contours of Canadian management “knowledge” using the discourse “official” bilingualism – the English and French languages – to understand the impact of socio-historical-political differences on the development of management knowledge production.

Drawing upon an archival collection of management textbooks as historical data, the authors critically explore and analyze the development of Canadian “schools” and management theory. Using narrative analysis and critical hermeneutics, the paper considers the socio-historical-political context of the various “Canadian” scholars that sought to establish a unique business academy distinct but paradoxically akin to the management schools in the USA.

Mirroring the struggle of Francophones in a dominant English imperative, French management textbooks appeared decades later than English titles. When French texts began to disseminate, it remained in the shadows of American management ideologies.

As only Canadian organizational behavior texts published within the previous 50 years were used as data in this study, it may be incautious to draw broader conclusions. The empirical element of this research relied upon convenience sampling of textbooks.

Management educators weld a considered level of socio-political power that they may or may not knowingly possess, especially in terms of selecting a textbook and other course materials. Regardless of background, management students are somewhat a “tabula rasa;” open to learning new content to make sense of the world. This “open state” places a great deal of responsibility on the professorate in shaping management students’ theoretical understanding of everyday life in organizations. The authors suggest practitioners be reflexive, aware of how textbooks serve as an important vehicle in education that in times past, have promoted or reified mono-cultural agendas.

The research in this paper builds on recent research that considers the role of socio-historical-political context in how management knowledge and theory is performed, as well as contributes to understanding textbooks in how they may shape a pluralist account of Canadian management “knowledge”.

Between 1927 and 1941 Pan American Airways (PAA) operated international flights from the USA with virtually no competition from US carriers. How PAA established and maintained its monopolistic position – by instrumentally creating a myth of “German threat” – and the implications for organizational theorizing and historiography is the proposed focus of this paper.

Drawing on a cultural theory approach to “doing history” and Barthes' 1972 notion of myth, this paper uses a critical hermeneutical exploration of the extensive PAA archive collection (at the Otto Richter Library of the University of Miami) and numerous secondary sources (e.g. various written histories). Following Barthes, the paper views myths as monolithic and authoritative historical constructions which conceal their ideological roots and instrumental conditions of creation. Through critical hermeneutics, the paper deciphers the myth of “German threat” by (re)contextualizing it and thus pluralizing history by showing how a threatening image of “foreign” and specifically “German” aviation operation in South America was instrumentally created to privilege PAA's operations and its close relationship with the US State Department.

Implications for the management theorist and historian as they pertain to a more fragile tone for “doing history” include the acknowledgement of history as multiple socially constructed interpretations of the past, an appreciation for histories that make their conditions of production transparent and the need for (re)writing histories that parade as authoritative monoliths.

The paper offers an empirical example of how an organization's instrumental use of myth facilitates manipulations of history in order to situate and secure the positioning and image of that organization.

Purpose—Through a case study of Pan American World Airways (Pan Am), this chapter sets out to explore the roots of 20th century globalization and the postcolonial nature of the trading relations involved.

Design/methodology/approach—Drawing on Foucault’s broad notion of “the archive” a critical hermeneutics approach is used to examine a series of company-produced texts, including minutes, travelogues, company narratives, annual reports, film, diaries, and published histories.

Findings—The chapter argues that Pan Am contributed to the “idea of Latin America” and, in the process contributed to practices of dependency that served the interests of the United States. Drawing on a case study of Pan Am, the chapter further argues that multi-national corporations help to establish the contours of international trade by influencing the very character and boundaries of the territories traded in, with troubling implications for the countries traded in.

Research limitations/implications—As a detailed case study extension of the findings to other global trading arrangements needs to take into account to social-political context and relational histories of the players involved.

Practical implications—The chapter generates insights into the role of rhetoric in developing trading relationships and its roots in embedded notions of postcolonial thinking and generalizations.

Originality/value—The chapter contributes to an understanding of the role of language and the social construction of national identities involved in the development of international business.

The aim of this paper is to open a debate about the relevance of American pragmatism for the philosophy of the social sciences. The agenda for a pragmatist philosophy of social science is introduced by contrasting it with ‘sociological hermeneutics’. Sociological hermeneutics refers to a common research agenda that attempts to implement insights from the philosophical project of hermeneutics into the social sciences. According to this view, the interpretative method is a sine qua non for any faithful representation of the external world. In contrast, a pragmatist philosophy of social sciences shows affinities with Nietzsche's genealogical method and the reflexive turn in cultural anthropology. Its aim is not to represent something out-there, but to use the encounter with different forms of life to reassess our selves and our own culture.

Purpose—The notion of organizations as gendered is not new, yet critical gaps in the understanding of the processes responsible for the creation and maintenance of these gendered organizations still exist. Within the existing breadth and depth of feminist organizational scholarship, an increasing number of researchers have been drawn to Joan Acker’s notion of the “gendered substructure” as one of the more promising frameworks for analysis of the gendering of organizations. In this chapter, the authors seek to develop an analysis of Acker’s gendered substructure through, and reflection on, its application.

Design/methodology/approach—Acker’s framework of gendering processes is explored through a case study of the gendering of a single organization over time—Pan American World Airways (Pan Am). The authors’ “reading” of the archival materials was informed by a combination of feminist poststructuralism, critical discourse analysis, and critical hermeneutics.

Findings—Through an exploration of the roots of Acker’s framework and its application to a case study of a single organization over time (Pan Am), the chapter contends that its greatest potential lies in examining the four process sets—division of labor, workplace culture, social interactions, and (self) reflection—through a fifth process of “organizational logic” that is seen as temporal and contextual. Drawing on poststructuralist feminist theory, it argues that organizational logic can be viewed through analyses of organizational, and organizationally based, discourses.

Originality/value—The chapter argues that the (widely recognized) heuristic value of Joan Acker’s “gendered substructure” has not been realized due to inconsistencies in its interpretation and application. This study engages Acker’s framework in its entirety, as gendering processes do not exist in silos and are likely more interdependent than typically credited. The chapter looks at the dynamics of, and between the five sets of, gendering processes.

Through a case study of Pan American World Airways (Pan Am), this paper sets out to explore the roots of twentieth century globalization and the postcolonial nature of the trading relations involved.

Drawing on Foucault's broad notion of “the archive” a critical hermeneutics approach is used to examine a series of company‐produced texts, including minutes, travelogues, company narratives, annual reports, film, diaries, and published histories.

The paper argues that Pan Am contributed to the “idea of Latin America” and, in the process contributed to practices of dependency that served the interests of the USA. Drawing on a case study of Pan Am, the paper further argues that multi‐national corporations help to establish the contours of international trade by influencing the very character and boundaries of the territories traded in, with troubling implications for the countries traded in.

As a detailed case study extension of the findings to other global trading arrangements needs to take into account to social‐political context and relational histories of the players involved.

The paper generates insights into the role of rhetoric in developing trading relationships and its roots in embedded notions of postcolonial thinking and generalizations.

The paper contributes to an understanding of the role of language and the social construction of national identities involved in the development of international business.