Philosophy of Management 2015

PHILOSOPHY OF MANAGEMENT 2015
The 10th Philosophy of Management International Conference 2015  

St Anne’s College Oxford
9 – 12 July 2015

Organised by Philosophy of Management
Sponsored by University of Greenwich Business School  

Philosophy of Management 2015 is the tenth in a series of conferences open
to all.  It will be of special interest to philosophers, management
researchers and teachers, consultants and practising managers.

Following the successful conference held at DePaul University in Chicago
last year, we are pleased to return to St Anne's College, Oxford.  In
accordance with our well-established model we are designing an event to
offer opportunities for unhurried presentation of papers and discussion,
high-quality supportive interaction and feedback, ample opportunity for
networking and a gathering in which all participants can pursue informal,
rich conversations and the continuing exploration of shared concerns.  All
residential accommodation is on the compact College campus. Participants
will be limited to 75 plus plenary speakers.

Contributions are invited to any of the Conference tracks – or on any aspect
of philosophy of management and from within any cultural or philosophical
tradition. We will especially welcome papers, panels and workshops on the
relationship between philosophy and management practice.

PUBLICATION

Papers will be blind-reviewed and appear on the Conference Papers website. 

Important: It is a condition of acceptance that Philosophy of Management
journal has first refusal to publish accepted papers or revised versions.

PLENARY SPEAKER/S

tbc

TRACKS

Papers combining empirical research and case studies with philosophical
treatment of issues will be particularly welcome in all tracks.

See full track details at the end of the Call.

1.  Management and the Philosophy of Mind
Track convenor: Paul Griseri

2.  Management in Process
Track convenor: Mark Dibben

3.  Ancient Philosophy for Contemporary Management Practices
Track convenor: Anindo Bhattacharjee

4: Neo-Liberalism and Management Scholarship: Critiques of Mainstream
Principles and Methodologies in Management Scholarship
Track convenor: Miriam Green

5. Philosophy of Management, Ethics, and Economics
Track convenor: Martin Kelly

6.  Managing Voice, Exit and Loyalty
Track convenor: Wim Vandekerckhove

7. Philosophies of Entrepreneurship and Innovation and Creativity
Track convenor: Vincent Blok

8. Dialogue in Management
Track convenors: Marja-Liisa Kakkuri-Knuuttila, Kai Alhanen and Andrea
Hornett

9. Management Studies as Science, Scientism, Social Science, Social
Technology, Moral Science
Track convenor: Rod Thomas

10.  Divers
Papers on any other aspect of philosophy of management will be welcome.

CONFERENCE FORMAT

o Plenary session with invited leading speakers
o Presentations of papers in parallel sessions
o Workshops, panel discussions and interviews
o Poster presentations

We invite participants to propose collaborative formats for their sessions:
eg paper, prepared reply and moderated discussion; contrasting approaches to
an issue with papers from theorists and practitioners.  Contributors are
welcome to assemble small panels to offer a series of linked papers.

LANGUAGE

The language of the conference will be English.

BEST PAPER AWARD

All full papers received by the 27 March paper submission deadline will be
considered for the Conference Best Paper Award.  Judges will be drawn from
members of the Conference Committee.

TO CONTRIBUTE...

Please submit a 500 word abstract proposal with contact details and brief cv
all in one WORD (or equivalent) file to arrive by Monday 12 January 2015. 
(Please do not submit full length papers at this stage.)

Please indicate the track to which you wish to contribute.
Please name your file as follows:   (Yoursurname–Papertitle-TrackNumber).doc

Email to   [email protected]
 
Papers will be blind peer reviewed.


TIMETABLE

12 January                           Proposal abstracts due

30 January                           Contributors informed of acceptance 

27 March                             Full papers due

8 May                                    Notification of conference tracks

19 June                                 Issue of conference programme and
full set of abstracts to all participants

9 – 12 July                            Conference       
               
Please note that the texts of all papers will be available before the
conference on the conference papers website.  Speakers will speak to their
abstracts which will be issued by email on 19 June. 

QUERIES

Please contact Nigel Laurie at
[email protected]
 
BOOKING

Conference bookings are being managed by the University of Greenwich.
Details will be posted to this list shortly.

Please address any inquiries direct to

Miss Jordan Drinan
Events Management Officer
University of Greenwich Business School
Hamilton House, 15 Park Vista, London SE10 9LZ
 
Telephone: +44(0)208 331 9083
Email: [email protected]

ORGANISING COMMITTEE

Kit Barton
Pathway Leader, Regent's American College London

Anindo Bhattacharjee
School of Management Sciences Varanasi, India

Vincent Blok
Assistant Professor in Responsible Innovation and Sustainable
Entrepreneurship Wageningen University, The Netherlands

Mark Dibben
Co-Editor, Philosophy of Management, Associate Professor School of Business
& Economics, University of Tasmania

Miriam Green
Senior Lecturer in Organisation Studies (Sessional), Icon College of
Technology and Management

Paul Griseri
Editor in Chief, Philosophy of Management, Former Head of Management,
Middlesex University

Andrea Hornett
Assistant Professor
Fox School of Business, Temple University

Marja-Liisa Kakkuri-Knuuttila
Professor of Philosophy of Management
Department of Management Studies, Aalto University

Martin Kelly
Associate Professor, Waikato Management School

Nigel Laurie (Co-chair)
Founding Editor, Philosophy of Management, Visiting Professor, Royal
Holloway School of Management, Managing Partner, London Facilitators

Rod Thomas
Senior Lecturer and MBA Programme Leader Newcastle Business School

Wim Vandekerckhove (Co-chair)
Principal Lecturer, Human Resources & Organisational Behaviour Dept,
University of Greenwich Business School

Please forward this to anyone who would be interested.  Thank you. 

Nigel Laurie & Wim Vandekerckhove
21 November 2014


FULL TRACK DESCRIPTIONS

1.  Management and the Philosophy of Mind Track convenor: Paul Griseri
Mentality in organisations covers a wide range of managerially-relevant
content.  Much organisational behavior is public, and therefore has
collective impacts and significance.  The idea of a company as a collective
raises the question of how all and any mental phenomena can be given an
interpretation that goes beyond individual psychology. Other aspects of
organisational life that raise issues of the mind include: what conceptions
of character underpin the idea of organisationally based virtues?  How does
the role (a key element in leadership) link with personality? How far do
attitudes shape perceptions and judgment in organisations?
Sample topics

o The nature of collective mental phenomena – deliberation, action,
perception, memory, attitude
o Managerial decision-making
o Managerial judgment
o Thought and language in organisations
o Moral psychology and the virtues
o Aesthetics and efficiency as attitudes to organization

2.  Management in Process
Track convenor: Mark Dibben

Deconstructive Postmodern renderings of Management and Organization Studies
topics have made a significant advance towards comprehending the complexity
of managerial life. They have, however, tended to rely upon a range of
philosophers’ basic ideas, such as those of Bergson, Whitehead, Deleuze,
Peirce, Spinoza and Dewey in concert, to develop their arguments. In
contrast, this track seeks to embody the principles of Philosophy of
Management to encourage either: a) the coherent, in-depth and systematic
application of one philosopher to topics in management; b) the writing of
genuinely new process philosophy of management; or c) auto-ethnographic
accounts of practitioner experiences of process and its impact on their ways
of being/becoming in the Paul Weiss ‘Philosophy [ie. of Management] in
Process’ (1966) tradition. Process relational philosophers are postmodern in
the emphasis on “persons in community” (Cobb, 2007). Relationality is
fundamental, but crucially relationships are always internal, not external;
we create ourselves out of our relationships with each other and the larger
world which is both around and within us. In this sense, we seek papers that
connect with the Re-constructive Postmodern approach in seeking ‘‘to
overcome the modern worldview through…a new unity of scientific, ethical,
aesthetic and religious intuitions” (Griffin, 1993: vii-x).

Sample topics

o The manager’s experience as active subject in relation to others
o Freedom Relational Power in organisations
o Overcoming the problem of managers as ‘mini Omni-gods’
o Understanding change: From objective events to subjective flows
o The co-creation of value in organisations
o Towards an ‘ecological management [/civilisation]’?

3.  Ancient Philosophy for Contemporary Management Practices Track convenor:
Anindo Bhattacharjee

In recent years, there has been growing debate over the relevance and
sustainability of the existing management paradigms. Post the financial
crisis of 2008, the various economic and management paradigms have been
severely criticised for their viability in the contemporary world. One of
the solutions that emerged out of these debates was increasing the use of
philosophy in the development of the foundational principles of management.
This track creates scope for intellectual and practical discussions on how
to apply the timeless principles of the most ancient philosophical
traditions on the planet to arrive at new perspectives for contemporary
management that are more holistic, inclusive, responsible, sustainable and
culturally relevant.

An indicative list of the schools of thought in Ancient Philosophy from
various traditions and their possible areas of relevance in business is
provided below. The list is only indicative, and so we are also open to
submissions about any other element of ancient philosophy that has not been
covered in the list but has important relevance to the study and practice of
business and management. 

Sample ancient philosophical traditions

o Ancient Occidental Philosophy
o Pre-Socratic, Classical Greek, Hellenistic schools, Neo-Platonism, etc.
o Ancient Faith-based traditions
o Christianity, Islam, Sufism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Jewish
traditions, Zoroastrianism, etc.
o Ancient Oriental Philosophy
o Vedanta, Samkhya, Nyaya, Confucianism, Daoism, Zen, etc.
o Other Ancient Philosophies
o Ancient Egyptians, Shamanism, Mayan, Aztec, etc.
o Philosophy from Ancient literary works


4. Neo-Liberalism and Management Scholarship: Critiques of Mainstream
Principles and Methodologies in Management Scholarship Track convenor:
Miriam Green

Neoliberalism is now regarded as far more than an economic system, but as
pervading all forms of political, social and individual life and as embedded
in the everydayness of current societies (Lilley & Papadopoulos, 2014).  It
has been argued that neoliberalism promotes ‘rationality’, by which is meant
efficacy, cost effectiveness and calculations for utility, benefit and
satisfaction.   This involves a market rationale for decision-making in all
spheres. This has been extended to domains previously excluded, such as
questions of values, morality, politics, and also education.  (Brown, 2005).

The implications for education are institutional, with regard to the
independence of universities, colleges and schools, and epistemological, in
terms of what is acceptable and legitimated as scholarship and knowledge,
and what is excluded.  This is relevant for current management (including
‘management accounting’ in all instances) scholarship.   Debates have been
going on for decades about philosophical, sociological and methodological
approaches; their validity, the commensurability / incommensurability
between approaches; the extent of acceptance of critiques of main stream
approaches and possible reasons for successful resistance to such
critiques.   Scholars engaging in such debates in the management and
management accounting fields include Otley and Panozzo.  Prominent social
theorists such as Habermas, Derrida, Bourdieu and Bhaskar, and philosophers
and historians of science, eg Hanson, Kuhn and Feyerabend have also written,
sometimes passionately, about these issues.

Sample topics

o Analysis of ontological, epistemological and methodological approaches in
management scholarship
o The relationship between neoliberal principles and what is legitimated as
valid scholarship in the management area
o The influence of neoliberalism on university curricula and research
projects
o The influence of neoliberalism on academic institutions
o The influence of the academy (journal editors, journal rankings,
institutional pressures) on the types of management scholarship produced
o Trends in management accounting scholarship
o ‘Objectivist’ versus ‘subjectivist’ scholarship in management:
incommensurable or complementary?
o  ‘Objectivist’ management scholarship – are its claims to be scientific
valid?
o Implications for knowledge / scholarship of the absences or exclusions
from mainstream management scholarship

5. Philosophy of Management, Ethics, and Economics Track convenor: Martin
Kelly

Economics pervades much of Western thinking today, and has perhaps replaced
religion as the most used guide to ‘good’ behavior.  Economic rationality
guides much personal, institutional and societal decision making.  The major
leaders in contemporary society are more likely to have received business
management ‘education’ than the religious training received by many societal
leaders prior to the 20th century.  If something appears likely to yield an
economic return, it often requires little further support to justify its
creation, without consideration of its effect on the natural environment and
broad societal wellbeing.  Modern citizens have been induced to adopt an
instrumental reasoning, which implies that all that is profitable is
‘good’.  Such reasoning may be applied without adequate ethical safeguards. 
Who should be responsible for:

creating ethical safeguards?
deciding on, and explaining, the reasoning that underlies these safeguards
(education)? ­ ensuring these safeguards are implemented effectively?

These questions are difficult to answer in a societal environment that has
been dominated so effectively by economic theories, which have substantially
increased the economic wealth of powerful Western political and managerial
decision makers.  How can the dominance of economic thought over societal
developments be broken?  What might happen if it is not?

Sample topics

o Historic analyses:  how did we get to where we are now?  Would Adam Smith
approve?
o International comparisons of societal decision making, and the place of
economic thought.  Creating an ethical market place
o The place for market forces in the Boardroom
o Thoughts on how to make societal decision making in the Western world more
ethically appropriate
o Thoughts on shareholder primacy, and corporate domination
o What went wrong with: CSR, Sustainability and the Triple Bottom Line?
 
6.  Managing Voice, Exit and Loyalty
Track convenor: Wim Vandekerckhove

In an obvious wink to Albert Hirschman - who would have had his 100th
birthday in 2015 - this track welcomes papers on any aspect of Hirschman’s
most famous schema: exit, voice, and loyalty. The track looks for papers
making a strong conceptual contribution, but with some empirical base.

Sample topics

o Papers on different types of voice and how these imply different
managerial emphases
o Old vs new exit strategies (eg poaching) and their commonalities
o Ideologies of loyalty and how to game these
o Managing trust and indifference
o Managing resistance and sabotage
o Employment relations and customer relation management

7. Philosophies of Entrepreneurship and Innovation and Creativity Track
convenor: Vincent Blok

Sample topics

o Philosophical reflections on basic concepts in entrepreneurship research,
like the nature of entrepreneurship and the entrepreneurial activity,
opportunity recognition, risk taking and the role of failure, the relation
between entrepreneurship and innovation, the contribution of entrepreneurs
to societal progress (producing existing products in a more (economic)
efficient way versus new product development in response to societal needs)
etc
o Creating business opportunities versus finding business opportunities; the
role of rationality, practical wisdom and emotions in the entrepreneurial
process of opportunity recognition and opportunity exploitation
o Philosophical reflections on central notions of innovation, such as the
idea of innovation and possible tensions between different concepts of
innovation (like disruptive innovation and responsible innovation), the
self-evidence of a technological conceptualization of innovation and the
importance of innovations in human/societal  behaviour, the role of
tradition and craftsmanship (the old) in the production of the new, the
self-evidence of economic theories in innovation and the advantages of
alternative conceptualizations, like free and open source, commons based
peer-to-peer (p2p) innovation strategies etc
o The role of entrepreneurship and innovation  in our society, reasons for
the entrepreneurship hype, the imperative of corporate innovation, the
self-evidence of economic theories in entrepreneurship, the changing role of
entrepreneurship in the sharing economy, circular economy etc
o The ethics of entrepreneurial decision making processes, entrepreneurial
self-efficacy and the role of egocentrism and altruism, the trade-offs
between economic and societal/environmental interests, the entrepreneurial
virtues, the political responsibility of corporations for the future impact
of innovations, the distribution of costs and benefits of corporate
innovation in our society etc.

For more information about specific topics and references to the literature,
please contact Vincent Blok, Wageningen University, The Netherlands 
[email protected]  www.vincentblok.nl 

8. Dialogue in Management
Track convenors: Marja-Liisa Kakkuri-Knuuttila, Kai Alhanen and Andrea
Hornett

Contemporary developments of dialogical practices revive the ancient Greek
insight that knowledge and understanding best develop by speaking and
thinking together in a democratic atmosphere. As far as the details
concerning the goals, roles of the participants, and logical structure of
interchange is concerned, Plato’s Socratic dialogue differs greatly from the
contemporary forms of dialogue which, after all, also present a wide
variety.

In the management context, evidently, the most popular form of dialogue is
the Bohmian one, originally established by the quantum physicist David Bohm
(1927-1992), and further developed by Peter Senge (1990/2006) and William
Isaacs (1999), for instance. The starting point of this dialogue form is
that the experiences and knowledge of different persons deviate and thus
complement each other. Each of them is, as such, limited, but taken together
may yield a picture of a whole system of meanings and/or causal relations.

Bohm, like his followers, emphasizes the need to separate dialogue and
decision making as distinct forms of communication, not to be carried out
simultaneously. And yet, the Bohmian dialogue is claimed to offer such
benefits as the higher performance of the organization, as well as the
possibility of personal development of those participating in the dialogue
practice (Senge et al. 1994).

Another important concept of dialogue, called dialogical network meetings,
is based on Bakhtin (1980). It was developed by Seikkula and Arnkil (2006)
for psychosocial and social work. It consists of open dialogue meant for
crisis solution in cases such as psychosis, and anticipation dialogue for
solving less acute problems. In contrast to the Bohmian dialogue, which is
focused on the structure and principles of discussion, dialogical network
meetings involve practical principles guiding the creation of
well-functioning networks and working in them. It differs from the Bohmian
dialogue also by aiming at decisions for solving the problems arising in
hearing the different voices of the members of the network.

We welcome papers based on theoretical and / or empirical research.

Sample topics

o Practical examples of well-functioning dialogue in organizations
o Dialogue (of a specified type) and performance (case studies)
o Conceptual analysis of dialogue and related phenomena (intersubjectivity,
equality, empathy, reciprocity, group thinking etc)
o Ethical implications of (a specified type of) dialogue
o The limits and possibilities of (a specified type of) dialogue  in
organizations
o The role of systems thinking in the Bohmian dialogue
o Revealing mental models in dialogue
o Historical considerations on dialogue

9. Management Studies as Science, Scientism, Social Science, Social
Technology, Moral Science Track convenor: Rod Thomas

The study of management, business and administration is a major activity
within Higher Education institutions. For instance, by student numbers
classified by subject, it presents by far the largest constituency of first
degree and postgraduate students in the United Kingdom. One might thereby
assume that everyone involved in such a large-scale and well-established
activity knows what they are trying to do and achieve. But are there reasons
to think otherwise? How does the study of management relate to the great
sphere of human knowledge? It has been variously presented as a science, a
social science and a social technology. Yet others have sought to debunk its
scientific pretentions, viewing management studies more as scientism than
science proper. And then there are those who wish to recover the idea of the
‘moral sciences’ by arguing that it is a grave mistake to think that moral
problems are the sole concern of moral philosophers. Can subjects such as
management, economics and law be studied in isolation from moral philosophy?
Have the problems of management now become so wholesale that they spill over
to question the disciplinary divisions of the university as traditionally
understood?

Sample topics

o Management Studies: science, social science or social technology?
o Nature, convention and the possibilities of generalization
o Cause versus meaning
o Theories and their consequences: accounting for reflexivity in human
activity systems
o Types of knowing: knowing ‘what’, knowing ‘why’, knowing ‘that’ and
knowing ‘how’
o Demarcation problems in the philosophy of science and their relevance to
management studies
o The grounds for theory transfer between disciplinary domains
o Recovering the notion of the ‘moral sciences’ and its relevance to
management studies
o Theories of scientism, pseudo-science, humbug, balderdash and bullshit –
do they apply to management studies?
o Relevant contributions of individual philosophers and research programmes:
eg Wittgenstein, the logical positivists, Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend,
Weber, Winch, Gellner, Hayek, Darwinism
o The place of the Business and Management School in the modern university

10.  Divers

Papers on any other aspect of philosophy of management will be welcome.