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Understanding the intricate details and intertwined power plays and shifts in complex urban processes is a key to actually empowering change for the better. A longitudinal qualitative research approach can be particularly valuable to that endeavour. In this chapter, a ‘phronetic long-haul’ methodology is proposed, based on the authors’ ongoing research into certain practices that have been popularised in the name of urban sustainability. The motivation for articulating such an option derives from discontent with the predominance of perfunctory, snapshot studies of contemporary urban development projects. To offset that ascendancy, the authors have sought ways to facilitate a rich, deep, holistic and integrated understanding of contemporary urban change over time, underpinned by the concept of phronesis. Phronetic practice involves the exercise of situational knowledge, intuition and common sense derived from experience, values and judgement.¹ Keeping attention on issues of power, using multiple narratives to show how power works, the approach seeks to comprehend urban planning situations in a practical way by maintaining a long-term, ethnographic and reflective connection with the practices under study.

The chapter proposes that higher education researchers descriptively analyze and evaluate practices regarding university leadership and management through the lens of phronēsis (understood as “practical reasonableness”). It elaborates and develops an emerging orientation, coming from a range of social and organizational theorists, for a “philosophical” or “moral sociology” that derives neo-Aristotelian insights into agency and social practices.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an example of how applied phronesis can be used as a methodological approach in social research. The example consists of an exploration of the discourse of productivism in elderly care policy in Australia.

The research interrogates arrangements of objective facts within recent representations of the aged which render particular policy discourses rational. An analysis of selected secondary data and texts is offered to demonstrate how applied phronesis may be used to discern when objective facts are presented in particular ways to sustain useful discourses, such as productivism.

The paper demonstrates that, rather than being rational discourse, productivism employs suitable arrangements of objective facts leading to particular rationalisations, including that the elderly should be viewed as a separate “category”, that they are a burden on society and that they contribute to increasing health care costs. Alternative interpretations and arrangements of the same objective facts indicate that what is rendered as rational within the discourse of productivism may also be seen as a construct of power rather than an unavoidable and logical outcome.

Because it is intended mainly as a demonstration, this paper offers a limited application of applied phronesis.

The research is employed as a practical demonstration of the efficacy of applied phronesis in social research. At the same time, this is the first phronetic exploration of productivism in aged care policy.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how critical management studies' (CMS) awkward relationship with the world of practice may have allowed it to become a dominated field in academia, which features a nearly exclusive focus on research for theory's sake, a lack of interest or discomfort with practical applications, and a devaluing of non‐academic pursuits. Despite research on oppression, resistance, and emancipation, CMS scholars do not tend to focus on the field's own domination or to ensure that its emancipatory agenda offers any practical impact.

The paper loosely draws on Bourdieu's notions of habitus and symbolic violence to make sense of his experience of attempting to fit in the CMS community as a scholar interested in practical applications of CMS insights.

The paper argues that CMS is uniquely positioned to help organization studies become a phronetic science, both practical and capable of addressing questions of power and values, essential to management practice.

The estrangement between theory and practice in CMS is symptomatic of the same phenomenon in the broader organization studies community.

The paper addresses not only how CMS can become a more phronetic science but also the benefits of phronetic research for the broader organization studies.

The purpose of this paper is to unpack the conflation between the silence and purported passivity of the Third World NGOs (TNGOs). Explaining the invisibility of their voices in the critical and post-development perspectives, it locates the inquiry in the context of the action of these TNGOs.

The paper follows the phronetic research approach, which involves a case study of a locally developed Indian NGO. It uses phronetic inquiry along with Ashis Nandy’s notion of “silent coping” as the conceptual framework. To explain the purported passivity of TNGOs in the texts under global circulation, the paper uses Walter Mignolo’s discussion on “texts in circulation”.

The uncertain nature of action – that it begets further action possibilities; precludes the prospect of visualizing such action spaces in the context of their generation. This emergent nature of local action spaces makes it difficult to capture them within the dominating global discursive structures, thereby creating local spaces of agency for the TNGO actors. Selective appropriation of artefacts and texts from the global circulation and the creation of alternate stake structures at the local level support the realization of such action spaces. Further, such local artefacts and texts do not travel into texts circulating globally, thereby rendering the TNGOs invisible and silent in the reading of global texts and leading to the TNGOs being framed as passive.

This paper locates the voices and acts of the TNGOs and highlights the mechanisms that enable them to silently cope with structures of discursive domination, thereby contributing to post-development studies and post-colonial organizational analysis.

In the UK, major IT public procurement projects regularly fail at significant cost to the taxpayer. The prevalence of these failures presents scholars with a challenge; to both understand their genesis and to facilitate learning and prevention. Functional approaches have revealed numerous determinants of failure ranging from procurement specifications to risk escalation, but true and definitive causes remain elusive. However, since failure is not itself an absolute truth, but rather a concept which is reached when support is withdrawn, the survival of a project depends on there being sufficient belief in its legitimacy. We use critical hermeneutic methods and the conceptual lens of legitimacy to reveal powerful legitimating influences that enable and constrain action, but which are not analysed in the retrospective government inquiries that determine lessons learned.

Hofstede's theory may be problematic from both a methodological/theoretical and practical view when applied to the 80 per cent of the globe we term developing. It is necessary to break out of an epistemic paradigm and a “view from nowhere” in order to focus on multiple layers of cultural interfaces within power dynamics that influence the nature of hybrid organizations and individual cultural identity. The purpose of this paper therefore is to develop a theory of cross‐cultural interfaces.

Cross‐cultural values theory provides a blunt instrument in Africa, does not take into account global dependencies and is not able to analyse local perceptions of reality within a context of these dependencies. A theory of cultural interfaces is developed that incorporates an Aristotelian phronetic approach to social science.

This moves away from the universals of analytical rationality towards practical value‐rationality that considers culture from a context‐dependent viewpoint, provides a synthesis for cultural‐institutional approaches, and engages researchers beyond merely looking at differences in cultures and the consequences, and towards what should be done about issues that arise.

By providing an example of how cultural interfaces may be researched, and discussing the associated conceptual issues, it is hoped that this paper will help to move forward the debate about cross‐cultural management.

The purpose of this paper is to present a personal reflection on the nature of international business (IB) as a field of both academic study and business practice and, specifically, a domain of political action and societal impact.

The author summarizes what he consider to be his personal contributions to the field of IB over the 15 years of Critical Perspectives on International Business’s existence, to underpin a set of critically reflective questions on the nature of IB, and to inform a brief ‘manifesto’ for how the author envisages a meaningful future for IB research.

The argumentation of this paper is directed at supporting IB research and activity that is underpinned by an Aristotelian phronetic perspective – thinking to inform action for the good of society at large.

This paper presents an original perspective from the author, one that appreciates the multitude of perspectives, values and beliefs of the full range of stakeholders who might impact or be impacted by IB activity.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the establishment and development of a leadership centre in a South African University. The paper is concerned with reviewing concepts of identity, ideology and struggle from a systems‐wide perspective and their impact on working with transformational change in a society in transition.

A conversational framework was used by the authors to create deeper understandings of the complexity of human and social relations in the context of the case. The paper uses methodologies for reflective investigation informed by the work of Boje and Flyvbjerg to review a ten year longitudinal case study.

The paper supports the view that “idealised” forms of organizational intervention and narratives about it often ignore the real world of competing rationalities, such as issues related to multiple and competing identities, contested ideologies and conflict and therefore “edit out” what is involved in the struggle to lead alternative forms of organization in periods of transition.

As with all research based on a case study approach it is difficult to make claims about a major contribution to generative knowledge. However, an in‐depth review of situated knowledge can offer insights which may be useful in exploring the dynamics of transformational change in other societies in transition.

The paper offers an in‐depth review of factors impacting on change and develops an interpretative framework that could be applied in other contexts. Given the current systemic changes taking place within the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, the paper could offer insight into working with transformational change in societies in transition.