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1 – 10 of 272François-Xavier de Vaujany, Emmanuelle Vaast, Stewart R. Clegg and Jeremy Aroles
The purpose of this paper is to understand how historical materialities might play a contemporary role in legitimation processes through the memorialization of history and its…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to understand how historical materialities might play a contemporary role in legitimation processes through the memorialization of history and its reproduction in the here-and-now of organizations and organizing.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors briefly review the existing management and organization studies (MOS) literature on legitimacy, space and history; engage with the work of Merleau-Ponty to explore how organizational legitimacy is managed in time and space; and use the case of two Parisian universities to illustrate the main arguments of the paper.
Findings
The paper develops a history-based phenomenological perspective on legitimation processes constitutive of four possibilities identified by means of chiasms: heterotopic spatial legacy, thin spatial legacy, institutionalized spatial legacy and organizational spatial legacy.
Research limitations/implications
The authors discuss the implications of this research for the neo-institutional literature on organizational legitimacy, research on organizational space and the field of management history.
Originality/value
This paper takes inspiration from the work of Merleau-Ponty on chiasms to conceptualize how the temporal layers of space and place that organizations inhabit and inherit (which we call “spatial legacies”), in the process of legitimation, evoke a sensible tenor.
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This study aims to offer insights into the embodied concerns that underpin men’s personal grooming practices through which they experience their body as the “existential ground of…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to offer insights into the embodied concerns that underpin men’s personal grooming practices through which they experience their body as the “existential ground of culture and self” and manage their everyday bodily presentation.
Design/methodology/approach
This study analyses 16 interviews with male consumers of age between 20 and 76. The interpretative analysis is informed by both Merleau-Ponty’s concept of the body-subject and the sociology of the body as discursively constituted.
Findings
This study proposes four bodily identity positions that link individual personal grooming practices to specific embodied concerns. These bodily identity positions underline the different ways the male body is called upon to carve out a meaningful existence.
Research limitations/implications
The research findings are not intended to generalise or to be exhaustive. Rather, it is hoped that they may stimulate readers to think more deeply about the role of the body in aiding male consumers to seek maximum grip on their life-world.
Practical implications
The study findings provide marketers with rich narratives for brand positioning and image development beyond the traditional sexual and/or alpha male-themed marketing and advertising. They also offer preliminary insights for mental health practitioners into how the male body shapes men’s identity development and experiences of well-being.
Originality/value
The study identifies the different ways personal grooming can become assimilated into an individual’s system of beliefs and practices. It also offers empirical support for a definition of the body as active and acted upon, especially with respect to male grooming.
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The purpose of this article is to develop a critical and extended understanding of practices in organizations from a phenomenological point of view. It explores the relevance of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this article is to develop a critical and extended understanding of practices in organizations from a phenomenological point of view. It explores the relevance of Merleau-Ponty's advanced phenomenology and ontology for understanding the role of the lived body and the embodiment of practices and change in organizational lifeworlds.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on the literature review and phenomenology, the role of embodied and relational dimension, the concept of an emergent and responsive “inter-practice” in organizations is developed systematically.
Findings
Based on the phenomenological and relational approach, the concept of (inter-)practice allows an extended more integral and processual understanding of the role of bodily and embodied practices in organizational lifeworlds as emerging events. The concept of inter-practice(ing) contributes to conceiving of new ways of approaching how responsive and improvisational practicing, related to change, coevolves within a multidimensional nexus of organizations.
Research limitations/implications
Specific theoretical and methodological implications for exploring and enacting relational practices as well as limitations are offered.
Practical implications
Some specific practical implications are provided that facilitate and enable embodied practices in organizational contexts.
Social implications
The responsive inter-practice is seen as embedded in sociality and social interactions and links to sociocultural and political as well as ethical dimensions are discussed.
Originality/value
By extending the existing discourse and using an embodied approach, the paper proposes a novel orientation for reinterpreting practice that allows explorations of the emergence and realization of alternative, ingenious and more suitable forms of practicing and change in organizations.
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Snehal G. Mhatre and Nikhil K. Mehta
This article focuses on the various phenomenological approaches and their scope in the Human Resource Management (HRM) domain.
Abstract
Purpose
This article focuses on the various phenomenological approaches and their scope in the Human Resource Management (HRM) domain.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors reviewed and elaborated various phenomenological approaches, and their convergence, divergence and scope in the field of HRM.
Findings
The theoretical underpinnings of phenomenology reveal that with its philosophical differences, phenomenology emanates various spectrums in the form of different approaches. Furthermore, these approaches, e.g. Post-Intentional Phenomenology and Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, have the potential to understand and uncover various phenomena in the field of HRM.
Practical implications
Phenomenological approaches could be employed to uncover various complex phenomena in the field of HRM. Phenomenological approaches can be used to examine the everyday life experiences of employees, as they could contribute to reframe and enhance the HRM practices in the organization.
Originality/value
The study contributes to the authors' knowledge of employing various phenomenological approaches to explore the diverse phenomena in the field of HRM.
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To examine work on phenomenology and determine what information studies can learn and use from that work.
Abstract
Purpose
To examine work on phenomenology and determine what information studies can learn and use from that work.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper presents a literature‐based conceptual analysis of pioneering work in phenomenology (including that of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Paul Ricoeur, and others), application of such ideas as intentionality and being in information studies work, and the potential for greater application of the information seeker as other.
Findings
The literature on phenomenology contains thought that is directly relevant to information studies and information work. Close examination of perception, intentionality, and interpretation is integral to individuals’ activities related to searching for and retrieving information, determining relevance, and using technology. Essential to the realization of phenomenology's potential is adoption of communication by dialogue so that an information seeker is able both to conceptualize need and to articulate that need. Some promising work in information studies demonstrates an openness to the ongoing and continuous perceptual experiences of information seekers and the relation of that process of perceiving to the growth of knowledge.
Originality/value
Offers a different way of thinking about human‐information relationships and the ways that information professionals can interact with information seekers.
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Seeks to argue for a phenomenology of embodied implicit and narrative knowing in organizations and show the significance of experiential dimensions of implicit and narrative…
Abstract
Purpose
Seeks to argue for a phenomenology of embodied implicit and narrative knowing in organizations and show the significance of experiential dimensions of implicit and narrative knowing and their mutual interrelations in organizations.
Design/methodology/approach
For this the advanced phenomenology of Merleau‐Ponty will be used as a framework for clarifying the relational status of tacit, implicit and narrative knowing and their embedment.
Findings
Implicit and narrative processes of knowing are inherently linked. Moreover, both forms of knowing in organizations and its implications can be integrated in a Con‐+‐Text.
Practical implications
Some limitations and practical implications will be discussed critically. In conclusion some perspectives of further phenomenological research on embodied implicit and narrative knowing in organizations are presented.
Originality/value
This approach contributes to a processual, non‐reductionist and relational understanding of knowing and offers critical and practical perspectives for creative and transformative processes in organizations, bridging the gap between theory and practice. It provides innovative perspectives with regard to the interrelation of embodied and narrative knowing in organizations.
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Nima Talebian and Turkan Ulusu Uraz
This study aims to explore the concepts of ‘place' and ‘place-experience' within the context of Post-phenomenology. During 70's, humanistic geographers have introduced…
Abstract
This study aims to explore the concepts of ‘place' and ‘place-experience' within the context of Post-phenomenology. During 70's, humanistic geographers have introduced ‘phenomenology of place' as a revolutionary approach toward place, which has been largely condemned by Marxist, Feminist and Post-Structural critiques through the last three decades. Accordingly, this study attempts to merge these place-related critiques in order to clarify a new framework titled ‘Post-phenomenology of place'. ‘Post-phenomenology', as a novel philosophical trend, is a merged school of thought, trying to re-read phenomenology based on Post-structuralism, Pragmatism and Materialism. In this study after a theoretical review on the formation of Post-phenomenology, the various aspects of place are discussed in order to clarify distinctions and paradoxes between phenomenological and Post-phenomenological understandings of place.
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Leah Tomkins and Virginia Eatough
The purpose of this paper is to look at how phenomenology can be used to explore the meaning and experience of organizational life. It argues that phenomenology provides more than…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to look at how phenomenology can be used to explore the meaning and experience of organizational life. It argues that phenomenology provides more than just themes or leitmotifs for post hoc analysis of narrative data; in its basic formulation, phenomenology is a way of thinking – a method – which illuminates the embodied, subjective and inter-subjective qualities of the life-world.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper follows Husserl's command to “go back to the things themselves” to access raw experience, asking ourselves, “what does experience mean phenomenologically?” We draw on the work of Merleau-Ponty to “flesh out” the embodied aspects of that phenomenological experience, outlining how the idea of a “field of presence” grounds our reflections in the here-and-now and gives our selfhood its coherence.
Findings
The paper presents data on the diverse meanings of “experience” to suggest that phenomenological and organizational understandings can be differentiated in terms of both temporality and selfhood. The paper argues that these differentiations expose different ways of thinking about the world more generally, drawing on Husserl's philosophy of the “natural attitude” to propose that one of its derivations, an “organizational attitude”, is obscuring our view of embodied experience.
Practical implications
The paper provides practical guidelines for those interested in researching the embodied, experiential qualities of organizational life. These emphasize the need to suspend the “organizational attitude”, modify how the authors position and explain the research, and attend to the interplay between the felt sense of the world and the words used to articulate it.
Originality/value
The logic of the body helps the authors to work towards a more integrative, conciliatory epistemological position for qualitative organizational research. The paper uses a phenomenological view of embodiment – as both subjectively experienced and objectively presented to the world – to suggest that the body, particularly when it is sick, is giving us clues for how to conceptualize the life-world of work.
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Lorna Stevens, Pauline Maclaran and Stephen Brown
This paper aims to use embodied theory to analyze consumer experience in a retail brandscape, Hollister Co. By taking a holistic, embodied approach, this study reveals how…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to use embodied theory to analyze consumer experience in a retail brandscape, Hollister Co. By taking a holistic, embodied approach, this study reveals how individual consumers interact with such retail environments in corporeal, instinctive and sensual ways.
Design/methodology/approach
The primary source of data was 97 subjective personal introspective accounts undertaken with the target age group for the store. These were supplemented with in-depth interviews with consumers, managers and employees of Hollister.
Findings
The authors offer a conceptualization of consumers’ embodied experience, which they term The Immersive Somascape Experience. This identifies four key touch points that evoke the Hollister store experience – each of which reveals how the body is affected by particular relational and material specificities. These are sensory activation, brand materialities, corporeal relationality and (dis)orientation. These may lead to consumer emplacement.
Research limitations/implications
The authors propose that taking an “intelligible embodiment” approach to consumer experiences in retail contexts provides a deeper, more holistic understanding of the embodied processes involved. They also suggest that more anthropological, body-grounded studies are needed for the unique insights they provide. Finally, they note that there is growing consumer demand for experiences, which, they argue, points to the need for more research from an embodied experience perspective in our field.
Practical implications
The study reveals the perils and pitfalls of adopting a sensory marketing perspective. It also offers insights into how the body leads in retail brandscapes, addressing a lack in such approaches in the current retailing literature and suggesting that embodied, experiential aspects of branding are increasingly pertinent in retailing in light of the continued growth of on-line shopping.
Originality/value
Overall, the study shows how an embodied approach challenges the dominance of mind and representation over body and materiality, suggesting an “intelligible embodiment” lens offers unique insights into consumers’ embodied experiences in retail environments.
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The general aim of this paper is to shift the interest in two particular stakeholders, the entrepreneur and the company itself, from a vision based on a company perceived as a…
Abstract
The general aim of this paper is to shift the interest in two particular stakeholders, the entrepreneur and the company itself, from a vision based on a company perceived as a stock package towards an aesthetic perception of its creation. It intends to link creative entrepreneurship and creativity in the arts. Emanating from the phenomenological thought of Maurice Merleau‐Ponty on artistic vision, this research intends to read the motivations of a creator by a calling, that amounts to a counter‐gift to the beauty of the world. This motivation to create can be articulated in two non‐financial impulses: to dis‐cover and to correct. A sketch portrait of a French entrepreneur is depicted to illustrate the urge to create a small business. A stakeholder understanding is suggested, taking into account schutzian multiple orders of reality.
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