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1 – 10 of over 5000
Article
Publication date: 7 October 2019

Wendelin Kuepers

This paper aims to propose to rehabilitate prâxis and revive possibilities of practical wisdom (phrónêsis) and a reinterpret excellence as an ethically committed way for…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to propose to rehabilitate prâxis and revive possibilities of practical wisdom (phrónêsis) and a reinterpret excellence as an ethically committed way for responsible and sustainable form of living, while operating in the midst of a systematically constrained world of neoliberal regimes.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on a literature review, this essay first presents some basic understandings of prâxis, practices and its architecture as well as phrónêsis and its interconnection. Further, possibilities for integrating excellence in prâxis and success in poiêtic practice are suggested in form of a critical poiêtic phrónêsis, and some implications are outlined in conclusions.

Findings

Considering the systemic constrains of contemporary neoliberal regimes, this paper has shown the significance of a reviving the inter-relational nexus between prâxis, embodied practices, phrónêsis and sustainable action. An integral holonic approach of constrained prâxis was discussed, by which the macro-level is holonically connected to meso-level of likewise constrained practices to micro-level of action and vice versa. In particular, constrained excellence-oriented practical wisdom was connected with constraining result- and success- poiesis in a critical poietic phrónêsis and creative actions in inter-practices as part of inter-prâxis discussed.

Research limitations/implications

The paper is a meta-reflective paper and view point, but links to “prâxis-related research” are offered.

Practical implications

Some practical and political implications are provided.

Social implications

Some links to social and societal implications are discussed.

Originality/value

The proposed integration of prâxis, embodied practices, sustainable actions and practical wisdom for organisation and in relation to society is genuine and critical. It is orginal in that it provides possibilities to re-assess, re-vive and further investigate the relevance of embodied forms of an integral prâxis, practicing, phronesis and action in and through organizations as well as stakeholder towards a flourishing unfoldment.

Details

Society and Business Review, vol. 14 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1746-5680

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 15 June 2015

Sonja Gallhofer, Jim Haslam and Akira Yonekura

The purpose of this paper is to add to efforts to treat the relationship between accounting, democracy and emancipation more seriously, giving recognition to difference in this…

7437

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to add to efforts to treat the relationship between accounting, democracy and emancipation more seriously, giving recognition to difference in this context. To open up space for emancipatory praxis vis-à-vis accounting, the authors articulate a delineation of accounting as a differentiated universal and emphasise the significance of an appreciation of accounting as contextually situated. The authors outline implications of a reading of new pragmatism for emancipatory praxis in relation to accounting that takes democracy and difference seriously.

Design/methodology/approach

Critical and analytical argument reflecting upon previous literature in the humanities and social sciences (e.g. Laclau and Mouffe, 2001) and in accounting (e.g. Gallhofer and Haslam, 2003; Bebbington et al., 2007; Brown, 2009, 2010; Blackburn et al., 2014; Brown and Dillard, 2013a, b; Dillard and Yuthas, 2013) to consider further accounting’s alignment to an emancipatory praxis taking democracy and difference seriously.

Findings

A vision and framing of emancipatory praxis vis-à-vis accounting is put forward as a contribution that the authors hope stimulates further discussion.

Originality/value

The authors extend and bolster previous literature seeking to align accounting and emancipation through further reflection upon new pragmatist perspectives on democracy and difference. In the articulations and emphases here, the authors make some particular contributions including notably the following. The accounting delineation, which includes appreciation of accounting as a differentiated universal, and a considered approach to appreciation of accounting as contextually situated help to open up further space for praxis vis-à-vis accounting. The authors offer a general outline of accounting’s positioning vis-à-vis a reading of a new pragmatist perspective on emancipatory praxis. The authors articulate the perspective in terms of key principles of design for emancipatory praxis vis-à-vis accounting: take seriously an accounting delineation freeing accounting from unnecessary constraints; engage with all accountings in accord with a principle of prioritisation; engage with accounting in a way appreciative of its properties, dimensions and contextual situatedness; engage more generally in a new pragmatist praxis. This adds support to and extends prior literature. The authors elaborate in this context how appreciation of a new pragmatist continuum thinking that helps to highlight and bring out emancipatory and repressive dimensions of accounting can properly inform interaction with existing as well as new envisaged accountings, including what the authors term here “official” accountings.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 28 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 22 March 2019

Victoria Stewart, Matthew Campbell, Sara S. McMillan and Amanda J. Wheeler

The purpose of this paper is to explore the experiences of students and teachers who had participated in a postgraduate work-based praxis course within a Master of mental health…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore the experiences of students and teachers who had participated in a postgraduate work-based praxis course within a Master of mental health practice qualification.

Design/methodology/approach

This qualitative study used an interpretative phenomenological approach to understand the lived experience of students and course convenors participating in a work-based praxis course. Seven students and two convenors were recruited. Interview and reflective portfolio data were analysed thematically.

Findings

The main themes identified were the importance of planning, the value of partnerships, the significance of learning in the workplace and how the facilitation of work-based learning differs from coursework.

Originality/value

Work-based learning within postgraduate coursework qualifications can support higher-level learning, knowledge and skills has received limited attention in the literature. This study supported the value of providing postgraduate students with work-based learning opportunities, resulting in the application of new or advanced skills, within their existing work roles. This study is important, because it provides insights into the student experience of postgraduate work-based learning and the impact of this learning on professional practice.

Details

Higher Education, Skills and Work-Based Learning, vol. 9 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2042-3896

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 18 May 2015

Niamh M. Brennan and Collette E. Kirwan

The purpose of this paper is to review and critique prior research on audit committees using a practice-theory lens. Research on audit committees has followed the same trajectory…

3931

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to review and critique prior research on audit committees using a practice-theory lens. Research on audit committees has followed the same trajectory as early research on boards of directors, which has been criticised for its singular theoretical perspectives and methodologies that do not capture the complexity of real-world experiences/behaviours.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors devise an analytical framework based on practice theory to conduct the review. The authors examine what audit committees should do (i.e. best practice) vs what audit committees actually do (i.e. actual activities in practice – praxis). Attributes of audit committee members, and the relationship dynamics relevant to their role execution (i.e. practitioners), are considered.

Findings

Research on boards has found that over-emphasis on agency theory’s monitoring role negatively impacts boards’ effectiveness. The authors invoke other theories in examining what audit committees do in practice. The authors characterise the role of audit committees as oversight not monitoring. The authors question whether, similar to auditing, audit committees are blamist tools or are genuinely orientated towards supporting improvements in organisational management systems. The authors unpack the ritualistic ceremonial behaviours and symbolic endeavours vs substantive engagement by audit committees. The analytical framework also considers the “guardianship circle” around audit committees in the form of the key practitioners and their relationships: audit committee members, auditors and managers.

Originality/value

Drawing on the analytical framework, the authors provide directions for further opportunities for research of audit committees.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 28 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 9 April 2018

Paulo Alberto Battazza Iasbech and Rosalia Aldraci Barbosa Lavarda

In analyzing the field of strategic management in public organizations, scholars have noted a lack of studies that investigate how public organizations actually apply strategic…

Abstract

Purpose

In analyzing the field of strategic management in public organizations, scholars have noted a lack of studies that investigate how public organizations actually apply strategic management tools (Hansen, 2011) as well as studies that investigate how strategic knowledge is developed and used in practice in public organizations (Bryson et al., 2010). Voicing similar concerns, the 2013 World Health Report pointed out the challenges facing many governments in providing universal health coverage and the importance of conducting new studies that focus on practical approaches using the existing knowledge rather than only investing in research related to new technologies. The purpose of this paper is to analyze how Telemedicine System of Santa Catarina (TSSC)’s strategy has resulted in significant improvements as seen through the lens of structuration theory (ST).

Design/methodology/approach

The authors support the analysis using the strategy as practice (SAP) framework of practice, praxis and practitioners and the ST of Giddens (1984), using Orlikowski’s (2000) technology in practice framework. The authors have applied a qualitative methodology using a single case study which analyzes a healthcare system that has resulted from a successful cooperation agreement between two public organizations in Brazil. This research is based on the analysis and identification of the structural aspects (interpretative schemes, facilities, norms and stock of knowledge) that are enacted by the practitioners through their practices and praxis.

Findings

The authors have identified five strategic practitioners that perform six strategic practices and praxis, and have analyzed the structures they enact during their praxis. The authors have also identified the interpretative schemes, norms and facilities that motivate these social practices and how they influence the results of the TSSC.

Research limitations/implications

As limitations of this study, the authors highlight the focus given to the service provider practitioners, leaving aside the political practitioners and patients. The researcher perception and possible biases must be considered also as a limitation, despite of the efforts to minimize them with the rigor of the methodology and the use of mixed data collection techniques to enable data triangulation.

Practical implications

This research contributes to a better understanding of the benefits that the practice perspective offers and provides insights into the possible management cooperation between institutions. It also provides substantial evidence of the relationship between SAP and ST as it contributes to the reinforcement of empirical studies using ST. In addition to academic advances, this study contributes to the field by highlighting how the relationship between practices, praxis, practitioners and the existing structures has positively influenced the results of a public healthcare system and by presenting a successful initiative that has helped to improve the public healthcare system.

Originality/value

The authors believe that this paper will contribute to the field by highlighting how the relationship between practices, praxis, practitioners and existing structures has positively influenced the results of a public healthcare system and the roles played by the human agents involved.

Details

International Journal of Public Sector Management, vol. 31 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3558

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 27 May 2014

Ingmar Björkman, Mats Ehrnrooth, Kristiina Mäkelä, Adam Smale and Jennie Sumelius

The purpose of this paper is to develop an “HRM-as-practice” research agenda. The authors suggest that the HRM-performance literature would benefit from an actor-centric approach…

3099

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to develop an “HRM-as-practice” research agenda. The authors suggest that the HRM-performance literature would benefit from an actor-centric approach and a focus on activities, and that the HR roles research needs to shift its attention toward a more dynamic perspective of HR work and link this further to performance.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper first provides an overview of strategy-as-practice (SAP) literature, and then review how extant HRM literature deals with three core notions of SAP: practices, praxis and practitioners. Based on this, the paper outlines an “HRM-as-practice” research agenda.

Findings

Focussing on the intersections between praxis, practitioners and practice, the paper suggests that an “HRM-as-practice” approach can give new insights into first, how people-related decisions are made, implemented and enacted in organizations; second, how employees and other HRM stakeholders interpret and engage with HRM; third, how HR actors become more effective and influential organizational agents; and fourth, what the short-term and long-term effects of these actions and activities are.

Research limitations/implications

The authors acknowledge the fuzzy and intertwined nature of the practices, practitioners and praxis categories, but believe that their intersections provide a fruitful theoretical lens to examine the practice of HRM.

Originality/value

The authors use the HRM-as-practice lens to suggest novel research approaches that can shed new light on several open questions within the HRM field.

Details

Journal of Organizational Effectiveness: People and Performance, vol. 1 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2051-6614

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 11 June 2020

Martina Hutton and Teresa Heath

This paper aims to provoke a conversation in marketing scholarship about the overlooked political nature of doing research, particularly for those who research issues of social…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to provoke a conversation in marketing scholarship about the overlooked political nature of doing research, particularly for those who research issues of social (in)justice. It suggests a paradigmatic shift in how researchers might view and operationalise social justice work in marketing. Emancipatory praxis framework offers scholars an alternative way to think about the methodology, design and politics of researching issues of social relevance.

Design/methodology/approach

This is a conceptual paper drawing on critical theory to argue for a new methodological shift towards emancipatory praxis.

Findings

As social justice research involves a dialectical relationship between crises and critique, the concept of emancipation acts as a methodological catalyst for furthering debate about social (in)justice in marketing. This paper identifies a set of methodological troubles and challenges that may disrupt the boundaries of knowledge-making. A set of methodological responses to these issues illustrating how emancipatory research facilitates social action is outlined.

Research limitations/implications

Emancipatory praxis offers marketing scholars an alternative methodological direction in the hope that more impactful and useful ways of knowing can emerge.

Practical implications

The paper is intended to change the ways that researchers work in practical and concrete terms on issues of social (in)justice.

Social implications

Although this paper is theoretical, it argues for an alternative methodological approach to research that reorients researchers towards a politicised praxis with emancipatory relevancy.

Originality/value

Emancipatory praxis offers a new openly politicised methodological alternative for addressing problems of social relevance in marketing. As a continuous political and emancipatory task for researchers, social justice research involves empirical encounters with politics, advocacy and democratic participation, where equality is the methodological starting point for research design and decisions as much as it is the end goal.

Article
Publication date: 13 January 2022

EJ Renold and Gabrielle Ivinson

This paper introduces the concept of posthuman co-production. It explores how processual and relational onto-epistemologies inform an artful, response-able (Barad 2007) feminist…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper introduces the concept of posthuman co-production. It explores how processual and relational onto-epistemologies inform an artful, response-able (Barad 2007) feminist new materialist praxis that decentres the human and re-centres matter.

Design/methodology/approach

Posthuman co-production gives prominence to crafting “dartaphacts” (Renold, 2018); creative research artefacts, carrying “what matters” and enacting change that can be mapped across time and multiple “problem spaces” (Lury, 2020), as an expansive, post-qualitative praxis of slow, co-production.

Findings

The paper stories this praxis across three “fugal figurations” providing glimpses into the post-qualitative journeys of assembled dartaphacts in the policy and practice field of relationships and sexuality education (RSE) in Wales. Each fugue hints at the polytical, resourceful and living potential of dartaphacts in the making and their mattering over a period of six years. Collectively, they chart a rhizomatic journey that re-configures co-production as a response-able, becoming-with what matters.

Originality/value

As more-than-human forces for change, dartaphacts continue to surface “the cries of what matters” (Stengers 2019) for children and young people well beyond the periods of funded research and engagement, giving new meaning to the sustainability and material legacies of research impact.

Article
Publication date: 25 June 2018

Kristine Yap and Sarojni Choy

This paper aims to present findings from a qualitative case study which investigated how workers engage in workplace learning for safe work in a precarious workplace. The findings…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to present findings from a qualitative case study which investigated how workers engage in workplace learning for safe work in a precarious workplace. The findings from this research suggest that learning to work safely is firmly embedded within the social cultural fabric of workplaces, and is intentionally driven to maintain coherence in ideologies, values and practices for effective praxis.

Design/methodology/approach

This study was conducted in a petrochemical plant in Singapore. Data were collected through face-to-face interviews with 20 site operators who held positions as engineers, plant workers and maintenance technicians. These site operators were directly involved in working with dangerous chemicals and high-risk equipment and processes; their conversations elicited an in-depth understanding of individuals’ experiences, providing an account of how participants learnt safe work practices in a precarious work setting. All interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed. Data were coded and analysed using an inductive analytical approach to identify key themes about workers’ learning in the workplace.

Findings

The findings suggest that learning to work safely is a socially constructed and facilitated process – leading to intentionalising what is learnt. The participants’ experiences suggest that safe work practices materialise through collective action, shared knowledge and responsibility to generally seek sameness for recursive practice. The significance of inter-subjectivity and intentionality are discussed with respect to how they intersect within the social cultural context of precarious work sites, where learning and praxis are seamlessly commingled to achieve effective praxis in workplace safety. A combination of contributions at organisation, individual and group levels supports the social cultural environment. The study concludes that a combination of mutually bound learning space, relational agency and dialogic interactions provides communicative spaces and mediates learning that nurtures inter-subjectivity and intentionality to work safely.

Research limitations/implications

As the study is situated in a particular case context, replication of this research with different occupational groups in other precarious workplaces is needed for further insights on social construction of learning spaces for safety practice.

Practical implications

This paper concludes that deliberate and cautious efforts are necessary to create contextual conditions for learning and to promote greater inter-subjectivity and intentionality for effective praxis. Group interactions and partnerships at work are advocated to generate mindful learning and a common frame of reference that the work community recognises, values and shares. These social processes provide necessary communicative spaces for clarification and validation of what is learnt and what is being interpreted by individuals. The quality and legitimacy of guidance are also emphasised to validate the expertise of those providing guidance, effective mentorship and intervention for the distribution of knowledge. Furthermore, strong and committed leadership is necessary to sustain the social cultural architectures that will support learning and praxis for safety.

Originality/value

This study offers insight about pedagogical contributions to learning about safe work practices in distinct circumstances of work.

Details

Journal of Workplace Learning, vol. 30 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1366-5626

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 June 2001

Steve Graham‐Hill and Andrew J. Grimes

Praxis” is the stated goal of Radical Humanist scholarship. But, this has been a goal without realization, and without method. To our knowledge there is no record of the…

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Abstract

Praxis” is the stated goal of Radical Humanist scholarship. But, this has been a goal without realization, and without method. To our knowledge there is no record of the realization of this goal in a management context. This paper reports our effort to develop a method to achieve praxis – “dramatism” as suggested by the work of Kenneth Burke, our “field test” of dramatism in a business setting, and the extent of our “success.” Our partial success points to refinements in the method, as it applies to Critical Theory agenda. We conclude by re‐examining our understanding of praxis, questioning our purposes, and discussing the power of the method to affect the researchers.

Details

Journal of Organizational Change Management, vol. 14 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0953-4814

Keywords

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