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1 – 10 of 21Wendelin Küpers and Desmond Wee
Walking is considered as a particular relationship for rhythmic moving in cityscapes and as method for understanding. The purpose of this paper is to explore the significance of…
Abstract
Purpose
Walking is considered as a particular relationship for rhythmic moving in cityscapes and as method for understanding. The purpose of this paper is to explore the significance of an embodied way of sensing and making sense, of knowing and learning that is relevant for tourism education and studies and other forms of experiential learning.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses a conceptual, discursive and research-based approach based on a phenomenological understanding of embodied learning. Empirical “data” from two educational tours (Edutour) in Lisbon and Shanghai are presented, contextualized and interpreted.
Findings
Walking through cityscape related to projects is an “effective” embodied practice of learning in which senses “make sense.” The empirical material and experiences that emerged during Edutour demonstrated the significance of walking as form of embodied knowing, learning and interrelating to place and paces of a tourist city.
Originality/value
The idea of walking as method within tourist cities is hardly explored. Hence, this constitutes a unique, innovative and interpretative event in which new approaches, such as “fielding” and “reflactions” “in the feeld”, defy more traditional concepts. It emphasizes the role of the city as a medium and remains a valuable contribution for tourism and education research.
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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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The purpose of this paper is to analyze the role of embodied dimensions and relational possibilities of (serious) play at work. It shows how a phenomenological and processual…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the role of embodied dimensions and relational possibilities of (serious) play at work. It shows how a phenomenological and processual approach can help in developing an integral understanding of (serious) play and its paradox in relation to work and practical wisdom and professional artistry in organizations.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on the literature review and phenomenology, the role of embodied dimension, and the nexus of playful practitioners, practices and playgrounds are discussed. Systematically, then the concept of “inter-playing” is proposed as a specific embodied and processual practice. Subsequently, the in-between is shown to be a medium and transrelational nexus for (serious) play that allows a more comprehensive understanding and implications.
Findings
Based on the phenomenological and relational approach, the concept of (inter-)play allows an extended understanding of serious play and its paradox as a form of an inter-practice. The mediating in-(ter-)between is revealed as decisive for playful practices and playgrounds in organizations. Serious play is linked to practical wisdom and professional artistry in organizations.
Research limitations/implications
Specific theoretical and methodological implications for exploring and enacting play are offered. It is suggested to take research itself as a form of inter-practice and to enact a more integral epistemology and methodological pluralism, including body-related and art-based approaches and critical issues.
Practical implications
Some specific practical implications are provided that facilitate and enable embodied play and play-spaces in an ongoing, arts-based learning and development process in organizational and educational contexts.
Social implications
The corporeality of responsive inter-play is seen as connected to sociality and social interaction as self and others are considered as a nexus. In particular, poetic phrónêsis in professional playful practice is linked to social creativity that includes attention and recognition of others and otherness as well as social inclusivity.
Originality/value
By extending the existing discourse and using an embodied approach, the paper proposes a novel orientation for re-interpreting serious play. Equally, it offers the new processual concepts of inter-play and inter-practice that allow more explorations and connections to discourses and practices of phronesis and art(istry).
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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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Based on a critique of reductive understandings of physicality, this chapter explores the significance of embodied materiality, the artefactual physical, the role of the living…
Abstract
Based on a critique of reductive understandings of physicality, this chapter explores the significance of embodied materiality, the artefactual physical, the role of the living body and embodiment in relation to ‘intra and inter’ practices of leadership from a phenomenological perspective. Using a phenomenological and cross-disciplinary approach, issues of an embodied physicality in leadership are systematically explored and implications discussed beyond physicalist empiricism and meta-physical idealism. Furthermore, the chosen phenomenological approach reveals problematising limitations of naturalist and constructionist approaches.
Following Merleau-Ponty an extended understanding of physicality as well as the significance of the co-constitutive role of embodiment, inter-corporeality and intra-action in and of leadership practices in organisational life-worlds are identified and discussed. Insights into the role of corporeal materio-socio phenomena and expressions of meaningful practices of leading and following are rendered. The chapter concludes by noting limitations and implications of embodied physicality and physical inter-becoming of ‘bodiment’ for a more integral and sustainable conception of leader-and followership in organisations. Through its specific post-dualistic approach the chapter provides an innovative perspective on the interrelations between living, material, bodily and embodied dimensions of physicality in leadership.
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Based on showing the significance of embodied and relational learning, this paper aims for contributing to a more comprehensive and integral approach to learning in and of…
Abstract
Purpose
Based on showing the significance of embodied and relational learning, this paper aims for contributing to a more comprehensive and integral approach to learning in and of organizations and its underlying dynamics.
Design/methodology/approach
Methodologically, advanced phenomenology and an integral framework are used for generating a more comprehensive analysis and relational understanding of learning in organizations.
Findings
Learning in and by organizations is an ongoing embodied, responsive and relational practice. As such it is covering internal and external as well as individual and collective dimensions entangled within an interdependent nexus and developmental context and integral cycle. Based on these findings perspectives on an “inter‐learning” are presented.
Research limitations/implications
Some theoretical and methodological implications are discussed as well as avenues for future research outlined.
Practical implications
Some practical implications and specific measurements for different domains of learning are outlined briefly.
Originality/value
The paper contributes to a needed non‐reductionist, integral and relational understanding of learning in and by organizations. Following a process‐oriented turn, the article provides innovative perspectives on embodied learning as an inter‐relational process, including interior and exterior as well as individual and collective dimensions within an intertwined nexus.
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Facing the widely spread malaise in and through irresponsible practices of and by modern organizations, phenomenology can provide an approach that is helpful for assessing this…
Abstract
Facing the widely spread malaise in and through irresponsible practices of and by modern organizations, phenomenology can provide an approach that is helpful for assessing this situation as well as getting a renewed perception concerning work and life (Fay & Riot, 2007). In particular, it can contribute to a renewal of understanding and enacting responsibility in the lifeworld of business. Practically, it may also provide reflexive practitioners with clues that can trigger new and more responsible practices. The following phenomenological perspective on responsiveness is a kind of application of phenomenology (Harmon, 1990) for reevaluating the constitution of responsibility as capacity to respond adequately in and of organizations and its members. Part of the organizational realities for its members is that it is challenging them to act, speak, and express, that is, they are provoked to give answers. A corresponding responsiveness as an answering behavior can be defined specifically as one, in which there is openness for the points of view of both (or various) parties involved, and by which the setting of pattern and standards coevolve.3
The purpose of this paper is to describe how a phenomenological approach can help to understand embodied dimensions and compare different and shared qualities, functions and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to describe how a phenomenological approach can help to understand embodied dimensions and compare different and shared qualities, functions and potential, as well as ambivalences and limitations of metaphors and stories in organisations.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on a phenomenological understanding and use of multiple discourses, the specific expressive and communicative nature, linkages to meaning, mediation and integration, as well as transformational, innovating and generating potentials of metaphors respectively, narratives are analysed conceptually and discussed. Accordingly similarities and differences, overlapping and conflicting patterns, thus correspondences and rapprochements of both metaphors and narratives are shown and illustrated.
Findings
The critical comparison of various, especially transformative functions, ambivalences and ambiguous uses of metaphorical and narrative sides and practices reveals their inherently dynamic inter‐relational nexus. The analysis shows how metaphors and stories/narratives can serve each other, as well as how they work together and contribute for transformation in organizations. In turn, this also offers new potential for understanding the practical opportunities and obstacles to the management of change.
Originality/value
The originality of this paper lies in that besides using multiple discourse, it follows an advanced Merleau‐Pontyian phenomenological approach and thus considers embodied dimensions of metaphors and stories/narratives and its implication for organizations critically. Working out the intriguing relationship between metaphor and narrative offers significant new insight and avenues for the research of organizational inertia and change.
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Donna Ladkin and Steven S. Taylor
Although within the leadership literature there is a body of research concerning the physical attributes of leaders, close examination reveals that much of it offers a rather…
Abstract
Although within the leadership literature there is a body of research concerning the physical attributes of leaders, close examination reveals that much of it offers a rather surface level of analysis. A number of studies, for example, attempt to correlate leaders’ height with their success, and attempts have been made to identify a relationship between leaders’ performance and their attractiveness. In this book, a range of scholars from differing perspectives delve below the apparent level of physicality to highlight its paradoxically ‘invisible’ aspects including: the impact of gesture, the way in which the physical is intrinsically interwoven with the social and the contradictory nature of bodily taboos. The book shows how each of these aspects plays an important role in the creation and maintenance of leadership relationships.
This chapter introduces three tussles we and our authors have faced in navigating this territory. Firstly, we have worked hard to find forms of writing which ‘point towards’ the experience of physicality. Realising that written language can never ‘be’ that experience (just as Magritte demonstrates with his painting, ‘Ceci n’est pas une pipe’ that the reproduction of the pipe is not the pipe itself) we have encouraged authors to contribute first-person accounts, in-depth case studies focused on individuals and even activities which involve the reader in order to evoke a sense of the physical. Secondly, we have endeavoured to distinguish the ‘inside-out’ phenomenon of ‘embodiment’ from the ‘outside-in’ occurrence of ‘physicality’. Finally, our authors have worked to reveal the mutual entanglement of social and material worlds, such that paradoxically, the physical reveals itself to be ‘in flow’ and continually in a process of ‘becoming’. After describing how we have sought to resolve these challenges, a taster from each chapter is offered. The chapter concludes by reasserting the importance of recognising the physical nature of the connection at the heart of human relationships experienced as leadership.
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Wendelin Küpers and Jürgen Weibler
This paper seeks to investigate the significance of emotions in transformational leadership (TL), particularly the explicit and implicit coverage of emotional dimensions and…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper seeks to investigate the significance of emotions in transformational leadership (TL), particularly the explicit and implicit coverage of emotional dimensions and emotional intelligence (EI) competencies within the specific components of TL. The goal is to contribute an extension to the concept of TL.
Design/methodology/approach
Systematically, the paper reveals the coverage and emotional ties of TL as operationalised through the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ). For analysing the emotional quality of the MLQ an interpretative method is used. This hermeneutic and qualitative investigation shows which emotions, respectively dimensions, functions and effects of emotions are entailed in the specific components. Then, based on a comparison of a refined EI framework, EI competencies are related to specific dimensions of TL.
Findings
The interpretative analysis shows that the TL and the MLQ have not integrated emotions and emotional competencies systematically. Facing conceptual deficits and various omissions, the paper proposes that emotions and emotional competencies should be reconsidered more comprehensively in the debate surrounding TL and its corresponding instruments.
Research limitations/implications
The paper is limited in using only the MLQ as a reference point for TL and Goleman's EI framework. Other instruments for measuring TL and EI might reveal different results. Research implications with regard to methodology and contents for future research are outlined.
Practical implications
Practical implications for reducing the identified weaknesses in integrating emotions into TL are offered.
Originality/value
The paper offers important clarifications and reasons for a necessary extension of TL. It shows systematically the deficits concerning the neglected emotional dimensions in TL and opens up perspectives for integrating them. With this it is contributing to the advancement of the conventional leadership discourse and research on TL in particular.
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