Learning and Knowing in Practice-based Studies

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