GRASPING THE LOGIC OF PRACTICE : THEORIZING THROUGH PRACTICAL RATIONALITY

There is an increasing concern that management theories are not relevant to practice. In this article we contend that the overall problem is that most management theories are unable to capture the logic of practice because they are developed within the framework of scientific rationality. We elaborate practical rationality as an alternative framework and show how it enables development of theories that grasp the logic of practice and, thus, are more relevant to management practice.

[1]  Gloria Dall'Alba,et al.  Returning to Practice Anew: A Life-World Perspective , 2009 .

[2]  H. Tsoukas,et al.  What is Reflection-in-Action? A Phenomenological Account , 2009 .

[3]  Kathleen M. Sutcliffe,et al.  Learning Through Rare Events: Significant Interruptions at the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Museum , 2009, Organ. Sci..

[4]  D. Rousseau,et al.  Bridging the Rigour–Relevance Gap in Management Research: It's Already Happening! , 2009 .

[5]  A. Kieser,et al.  Why the Rigour-Relevance Gap in Management Research is Unbridgeable , 2009 .

[6]  Davide Nicolini,et al.  Articulating Practice through the Interview to the Double , 2009 .

[7]  R. Mizen.  The embodied mind. , 2009, The Journal of analytical psychology.

[8]  N. Gane.  Concepts and the `New' Empiricism , 2009 .

[9]  Tarja Tiainen.  Using Technology and Constituting Structures in Professional Kitchens , 2009 .

[10]  Davide Nicolini,et al.  Zooming in and zooming out : a package of method and theory to study work practices , 2009 .

[11]  H. Tsoukas.  Craving for generality and small-N studies : a Wittgensteinian approach towards the epistemology of the particular in organization and management studies , 2009 .

[12]  Robert Chia,et al.  The nature of knowledge in business schools , 2008 .

[13]  P. Jarzabkowski.  Shaping Strategy as a Structuration Process , 2008 .

[14]  Barbara Czarniawska.  A Theory of Organizing , 2008 .

[15]  Yiannis Gabriel.  Against the Tyranny of PowerPoint: Technology-in-Use and Technology Abuse , 2008 .

[16]  Susan V. Scott,et al.  10 Sociomateriality: Challenging the Separation of Technology, Work and Organization , 2008 .

[17]  Jeffrey Pfeffer,et al.  A Modest Proposal: How We might change the Process and Product of Managerial Research , 2007 .

[18]  D. Hambrick.  THE FIELD OF MANAGEMENT'S DEVOTION TO THEORY: TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING? , 2007 .

[19]  Kenneth G. Brown,et al.  The Very Separate Worlds Of Academic And Practitioner Periodicals In Human Resource Management: Implications For Evidence-Based Management , 2007 .

[20]  Debra J. Cohen,et al.  The Very Separate Worlds of Academic and Practitioner Publications in Human Resource Management: Reasons for the Divide and Concrete Solutions for Bridging the Gap , 2007 .

[21]  L. Saari,et al.  Bridging the Worlds , 2007 .

[22]  W. Orlikowski.  Sociomaterial Practices: Exploring Technology at Work , 2007 .

[23]  M. Tushman,et al.  Research and Relevance: Implications of Pasteur'S Quadrant for Doctoral Programs and Faculty Development , 2007 .

[24]  Costas Markides,et al.  In search of ambidextrous professors. , 2007 .

[25]  Anita M. McGahan,et al.  Academic Research That Matters to Managers: On Zebras, Dogs, Lemmings, Hammers, and Turnips , 2007 .

[26]  F. Vermeulen.  “I Shall Not Remain Insignificant”: Adding a Second Loop to Matter More , 2007 .

[27]  Sarah Kaplan.  Strategy as practice: An activity-based approach , 2007 .

[28]  Bradley L. Kirkman,et al.  Perceived Causes and Solutions of the Translation Problem in Management Research , 2007 .

[29]  Martin Mulder,et al.  The concept of competence in the development of vocational education and training in selected EU member states: a critical analysis , 2007 .

[30]  K. Weick.  The Generative Properties Of Richness , 2007 .

[31]  Jörgen Sandberg,et al.  Managing Understanding in Organizations , 2007 .

[32]  Robert Chia,et al.  Post-processual challenges for the emerging strategy-as-practice perspective: Discovering strategy in the logic of practice , 2007 .

[33]  I. Stensaker,et al.  Making sense of different responses to corporate change , 2007 .

[34]  P. Jarzabkowski,et al.  Strategizing: The challenges of a practice perspective , 2007 .

[35]  Tamar Frankel.  [The theory and the practice...]. , 2001, Tijdschrift voor diergeneeskunde.

[36]  Jörgen Sandberg,et al.  Professional Competence as Ways of Being: An Existential Ontological Perspective , 2009 .

[37]  Marlys K. Christianson,et al.  A sensemaking lens on reliability , 2006 .

[38]  A. V. D. Ven,et al.  Knowledge for Theory and Practice , 2006 .

[39]  John Shotter,et al.  Understanding Process From Within: An Argument for ‘Withness’-Thinking , 2006 .

[40]  Stefano Brusoni,et al.  Special Issue: Organizational Design: Making Design Rules: A Multidomain Perspective , 2006, Organ. Sci..

[41]  Roger L. M. Dunbar,et al.  Special Issue: Organizational Design: Learning to Design Organizations and Learning from Designing Them , 2006, Organ. Sci..

[42]  J. Pfeffer,et al.  Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense: Profiting from Evidence-based Management , 2006 .

[43]  Julia Balogun,et al.  Managing Change: Steering a Course between Intended Strategies and Unanticipated Outcomes , 2006 .

[44]  S. Rynes,et al.  What Makes Management Research Interesting, And Why Does It Matter? , 2006 .

[45]  James T. Walz.  Managers not MBAs: A Hard Look at the Soft Practice of Managing and Management Development , 2006 .

[46]  Davide Nicolini,et al.  Organizational Knowledge: The Texture of Workplace Learning , 2006 .

[47]  R. Whittington.  Completing the Practice Turn in Strategy Research , 2006 .

[48]  Robert Cheng Huat Chia,et al.  Strategy as Practical Coping: A Heideggerian Perspective , 2006 .

[49]  William H. Starbuck,et al.  The production of knowledge : the challenge of social science research , 2006 .

[50]  Lucy Suchman,et al.  Human–Machine Reconfigurations: Reconfigurations , 2006 .

[51]  Seonaidh McDonald,et al.  Studying actions in context: a qualitative shadowing method for organizational research , 2005 .

[52]  L. G. Hrebiniak,et al.  Implementing Strategy: An Appraisal and Agenda for Future Research , 2005 .

[53]  Karl E. Weick,et al.  Theory and Practice in the Real World , 2005 .

[54]  S. Ghoshal.  Bad Management Theories Are Destroying Good Management Practices , 2005 .

[55]  Françoise Delamare Le Deist,et al.  What Is Competence? , 2005 .

[56]  R. Swedberg.  The Max Weber Dictionary , 2005 .

[57]  Jörgen Sandberg.  How Do We Justify Knowledge Produced Within Interpretive Approaches? , 2005 .

[58]  P. Petit,et al.  Positions , 2020, Constructing Musicology.

[59]  J. Balogun,et al.  Organizational Restructuring and Middle Manager Sensemaking , 2004 .

[60]  J. Urry,et al.  Enacting the social , 2004 .

[61]  Chris Argyris,et al.  Reasons and Rationalizations , 2004 .

[62]  A. Cunliffe.  Reflexive Inquiry in Organizational Research: Questions and Possibilities , 2003 .

[63]  M. Feldman,et al.  Reconceptualizing Organizational Routines as a Source of Flexibility and Change , 2003 .

[64]  Elizabeth Chell,et al.  Critical incident technique. , 2003 .

[65]  Davide Nicolini,et al.  Introduction : Toward a Practice-Based View of Knowing and Learning in Organizations , 2003 .

[66]  M. Fischetti.  Working knowledge. , 2003, Scientific American.

[67]  Andreas Reckwitz.  Toward a Theory of Social Practices , 2002 .

[68]  Ann L. Cunliffe,et al.  Reflexive Dialogical Practice in Management Learning , 2002 .

[69]  Theodore R. Schatzki,et al.  The site of the social , 2002 .

[70]  Christopher Grey,et al.  Re‐imagining Relevance: A Response to Starkey and Madan , 2001 .

[71]  Haridimos Tsoukas,et al.  Complex Thinking, Complex Practice: The Case for a Narrative Approach to Organizational Complexity , 2001 .

[72]  J. Llewelyn,et al.  A Guide to Heidegger's Being and Time , 2001 .

[73]  M. Gibbons,et al.  Re-Thinking Science: Knowledge and the Public in an Age of Uncertainty , 2003 .

[74]  B. Flyvbjerg.  Making Social Science Matter , 2001 .

[75]  Peter van Inwagen,et al.  Ontology, Identity, and Modality: Essays in Metaphysics , 2001 .

[76]  M. Feldman.  Organizational Routines as a Source of Continuous Change , 2000 .

[77]  A. Sayer.  System, Lifeworld and Gender: Associational Versus Counterfactual Thinking , 2000 .

[78]  S. Gherardi.  Practice-Based Theorizing on Learning and Knowing in Organizations , 2000 .

[79]  Jörgen Sandberg.  Understanding Human Competence at Work: An Interpretative Approach , 2000 .

[80]  Scott A. Snook,et al.  Friendly Fire , 2000 .

[81]  Eric W. K. Tsang,et al.  Replication and Theory Development in Organizational Science: A Critical Realist Perspective , 1999 .

[82]  Robert Folger,et al.  Theorizing as the Thickness of Thin Abstraction , 1999 .

[83]  Akbar Zaheer,et al.  Time Scales and Organizational Theory , 1999 .

[84]  B. Pentland.  Building Process Theory with Narrative: from Description to Explanation , 1999 .

[85]  D. Buchanan.  The Logic of Political Action: an Experiment with the Epistemology of the Particular , 1999 .

[86]  William J. Rothwell,et al.  Competency Identification, Modelling and Assessment in the USA. , 1999 .

[87]  K. Weick.  That's Moving Theories that Matter , 1999 .

[88]  Edward E. Lawler,et al.  Doing Research That Is Useful for Theory and Practice , 1999 .

[89]  G. Symon.  Qualitative research diaries. , 1998 .

[90]  Haridimos Tsoukas,et al.  The word and the world: a critique of representationalism in management research , 1998 .

[91]  Lois W. Sayrs.  Interviews : an introduction to qualitative research interviewing , 1996 .

[92]  Hubert L. Dreyfus,et al.  Disclosing New Worlds: Entrepreneurship, Democratic Action, and the Cultivation of Solidarity , 1997 .

[93]  Diane Vaughan,et al.  The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA , 1996 .

[94]  J. Shotter,et al.  Hearing the patient's 'voice': toward a social poetics in diagnostic interviews. , 1996, Social science & medicine.

[95]  Hubert L. Dreyfus,et al.  Being and power: Heidegger and Foucault , 1996 .

[96]  Brian Barry,et al.  Cosmopolis: The hidden agenda of modernity , 1996 .

[97]  John Shotter,et al.  Articulating Practices: Methods and Experiences: Articulating a Practice from within the Practice Itself: Establishing Formative Dialogues by the Use of a 'Social Poetics' , 1996 .

[98]  K. Weick.  FROM SENSEMAKING IN ORGANIZATIONS , 2021, The New Economic Sociology.

[99]  R. Reeves.  Back to the Rough Ground: ‘Phronesis’ and ‘Techne’ in Modern Philosophy and in Aristotle , 1995 .

[100]  Richard J. Morris,et al.  The Sixth Sense , 1994, Environmental Health Perspectives.

[101]  K. Weick.  The Collapse of Sensemaking in Organizations: The Mann Gulch Disaster , 1993 .

[102]  S. D. N. Cook,et al.  Culture and Organizational Learning , 1993 .

[103]  Charles Taylor,et al.  Engaged agency and background in Heidegger , 1993 .

[104]  Chris Argyris,et al.  Knowledge for Action: A Guide to Overcoming Barriers to Organizational Change , 1993 .

[105]  J. Shotter.  Conversational Realities: Constructing Life through Language , 1993 .

[106]  Dennis L. Sepper.  Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, Division I , 1991 .

[107]  H. Steward.  Responses , 1991, Problems and Perspectives of Conventional Disarmament in Europe.

[108]  Richard Rorty,et al.  Essays on Heidegger and others , 1991 .

[109]  Etienne Wenger,et al.  Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation , 1991 .

[110]  J. Bruner.  Acts of meaning , 1990 .

[111]  H. Tsoukas.  The Validity of Idiographic Research Explanations , 1989 .

[112]  K. Weick.  Theory Construction as Disciplined Imagination , 1989 .

[113]  Samuel B. Bacharach,et al.  Organizational Theories: Some Criteria for Evaluation , 1989 .

[114]  Robert Brown.  Human Agency and Language, Philosophical Papers , 1989 .

[115]  Philip Mirowski,et al.  More Heat than Light , 1989 .

[116]  A. Baier,et al.  Philosophy and the Human Sciences, Philosophical Papers Vol.2 , 1988 .

[117]  Frances J. Milliken,et al.  Challenger: Fine-Tuning the Odds Until Something Breaks , 1988 .

[118]  B. Latour.  Science in Action , 1987 .

[119]  Terry Winograd,et al.  Understanding computers and cognition , 1986 .

[120]  Hwa Yol Yung,et al.  The Return to Cosmology , 1985 .

[121]  J. Llewelyn.  Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis , 1985 .

[122]  Bill McKelvey,et al.  Populations, Natural Selection, and Applied Organizational Science. , 1983 .

[123]  Donald A. Sch.  The reflective practitioner: how professionals think in action , 1983 .

[124]  C. Guignon.  Heidegger and the problem of knowledge , 1983 .

[125]  Richard E. Boyatzis,et al.  The Competent Manager: A Model for Effective Performance , 1982 .

[126]  G. Bateson,et al.  Mind and Nature , 1980 .

[127]  R. Rorty,et al.  Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. , 1980 .

[128]  S. Bartky.  Heidegger and the Modes of World-Disclosure , 1979 .

[129]  M. Clowes.  Talking to Machines , 1972, Nature.

[130]  Linda K. Stroh,et al.  Organizational behavior. , 1970, Physical therapy.

[131]  R. Nett.  CONSTRUCTING SOCIAL THEORIES. By Arthur L. Stinchcombe. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968. 303 pp. $3.95 , 1969 .

[132]  L. Wittgenstein.  Philosophical investigations = Philosophische Untersuchungen , 1958 .

[133]  D. Mitrany.  Methodology of the Social Sciences , 1945, Nature.

[134]  J. Gledhill,et al.  Practical Reason , 1942, Philosophy.

[135]  J. Dewey.  Logic, the theory of inquiry , 1938 .

[136]  T. G.,et al.  Logic in Practice , 1934, Nature.