Why is it that so many aspects of organizations are now spoken of as practices? How can organizations be studied within a practice-based approach? How can workable knowledge about them be produced? The authors answer these questions theoretically and through empirical examples. They provide an overview on practice-based studies illustrating their main topics, research methods, and the theoretical reflections that support a non-rationalist and non-cognitivist view of organizations. The book addresses the principal features of practice-based theorizing and its key concepts, then concludes with methodological reflections on the practice-based approach.
Written for a university public already in possession of basic notions in organizational studies and intending to conduct analysis of organizing as a social practice, it will also prove essential for master and PhD students as well as organizational scholars designing research within Practice-Based Studies. Including a lively and wide-ranging debate conducted at international level, the book will be of interest to practitioners curious about a view of work as a practical activity that develops within ecology of social, economic and material relationships.
Contents:
Introduction
Part I: Practice-based Theorizing
1. Practice-Based Theorizing on Learning and Knowing in Organizations: An Introduction'
2. Knowing in Practice: Aesthetic Understanding and Tacit Knowledge
3. Knowing as Desiring. Mythic Knowledge and the Knowledge Journey in Communities of Practitioners
4. Situated Knowledge and Situated Action: What do Practice-Based Studies Promise?
5. Through the Practice Lens: Where Is the Bandwagon of Practice-Based Studies Heading?
Part II: Key Concepts
6. Sensible Knowledge and Practice-Based Learning
7. Knowing in a System of Fragmented Knowledge
8. Learning in a Constellation of Interconnected Practices: Canon or Dissonance?
9. Aesthetics in the Study of Organizational Life
10. The Passion for Knowing
11. Practice? It's a Matter of Taste!
Part III: Methodological Insights for a Practice-based Approach
12. When Will He Say: 'Today the Plates are Soft'?: Management of Ambiguity and Situated Decision-Making
13. Do You Do Beautiful Things?: Aesthetics and Art in Qualitative Methods of Organization Studies
14. Organizational Artifacts and the Aesthetic Approach
15. The Critical Power of the Practice Lens
Silvia Gherardi, University of Trento, Italy and Antonio Strati, University of Trento, Italy and chercheur associé PREG-CRG (Ecole Polytechnique) of Paris, France
