Beyond MacIntyre: grounding the business as practice debate
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Date
2012-09
Authors
Kavanagh, Donncha
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Publisher
Irish Academy of Management, IAM
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Abstract
Alasdair MacIntyre’s distinction between institutions and practices helps illuminate how powerful institutional forces frame and constrain the practice of organizational research as well as the output and positioning of scholarly journals. Yet his conceptual frame is limited, not least because it is unclear whether the activity of managing is, or is not, a practice. This paper builds on MacIntyre’s ideas by incorporating Aristotle’s concepts of poíēsis, praxis, téchnē and phrónēsis. Rather than ask, following MacIntyre, whether management is a practice, this wider network of concepts provides a richer frame for understanding the nature of managing and the appropriate role for academia. The paper outlines a phronetic paradigm for organizational inquiry, and concludes by briefly examining the implications of such a paradigm for research and learning.
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Keywords
MacIntyre , Phronesis , Virtue ethics , Management , Aristotle
Citation
Kavanagh, Donncha (2012) 'Beyond MacIntyre: grounding the business as practice debate,' Irish Academy of Management (IAM) Conference, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, 6-7 September.
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© 2012, the author