Wendelin Kuepers

Karlshochschule International University

Based on a phenomenological approach, this paper discusses possibilities of an embodied and artful design in relation to sustainable practices. Moving beyond conventional design-thinking, and by following Merleau-Ponty's philosophy, design of sustainable practices are seen as a situated, emergent process of bodily beings and dynamic, material, soci...

Following the recent turn to senses and affect across the social sciences this article discusses the contribution of a phenomenology of senses as bodily and cultural phenomena and discusses their affective, pathic and emotional qualities. Correspondingly, organisations will be interpreted as sensuous embodied socio-cultural life-worlds and the sign...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the multidimensional, ambivalent and responsive process of transformation, particularly as related to non-cognitive processes and effects of leader- and followership. Design/methodology/approach – Based on a critical literature review, advanced phenomenology and...

This article raises questions about and provides meta-paradigmatic perspectives on an integral understanding of leadership. In view of the various shortcomings of conventional leadership discourse, an integral orientation considers that leadership research demands a comprehensive framework and multi-level approach suited for investigating the compl...

Phenomenologies are an important dimension of Management and Organization Studies (MOS). They are particularly helpful to understand organizing processes as experiences instead of mere representations or objectivations of the world. Yet several misunderstandings still pervade discussions about what they are and what they could bring. This Handbook...

Phenomenologies are an important dimension of Management and Organization Studies (MOS). They are particularly helpful to understand organizing processes as experiences instead of mere representations or objectivations of the world. Yet several misunderstandings still pervade discussions about what they are and what they could bring. This Handbook...

Following a (post-)phenomenological orientation, this chapter explores possibilities and limitations for integrating embodied commons, extended to practices of ‘commoning’ and enfleshed con-viviality in relation to organisation. The chapter starts by defining the commons and commoning and then outline the need and a critical understanding of an emb...

Borrowing lessons from Tai Chi Chuan philosophy, principles and practice, this discussion paper examines how management responses to the tumult of daily relational practice can become more balanced. Viewing both management practice and Tai Chi Chuan as embodied and relational processes, Tai Chi concepts of grounding, stillness within movement, and...

This paper focuses on the figure of the flâneur and sets out to explore how the practice of flânerie might offer social researchers a different way of engaging with digital worlds. It is articulated around two main interests: the relationship of the flâneur to digital worlds and the theoretical and methodological implications of envisioning the pra...

Digitalisation offers a wide array of opportunities, but also challenges, for universities and business schools alike, regarding the provision and delivery of their teaching and learning activities. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted some of these challenges, as it forced educational institutions to move their pedagogic activities online in line...

This article brings together mindfulness and habitus theory in relation to developing wise leaders. In particular, we present new insights about the intersection of time, subjective and intersubjective experience, and mindfulness that are relevant to developing embodied wisdom in leaders. We show that temporal competence is essential for shaping ha...

Exploring the different facets of the new world of work (including the hacker and maker movements, platform work, and digital nomadism), this edited volume sets out to investigate and theorise how these new work practices are experienced by various actors. It explores such changes at both the micro and macro levels and sets out to link them back to...

This chapter reviews forms and effects of increased digitalised learning from an embodied phenomenological perspective. In particular, the moves from and between embodied co-presence to virtual tele-presence and its implications are reflected on critically and illustrated by using empirical vignettes. Furthermore, some possibilities for re-embodyin...

Purpose The purpose of this article is to develop a critical and extended understanding of practices in organizations from a phenomenological point of view. It explores the relevance of Merleau-Ponty's advanced phenomenology and ontology for understanding the role of the lived body and the embodiment of practices and change in organizational lifewo...

The essay will outline possibilities for be(com)ing other-Wise convivial, interbetween. To this end, relational possibilities for embodied enlivening are described as queering practice for moving from Anthropocene toward sustainable futures. Based on exploring certain qualities of be(com)ing queer some perspectives on queer futures are discussed. R...

The following paper discusses the contexts, conditions and implications of the so-called ‘Anthropocene’ (1). In particular, the following challenges the hyper-separation between nature and culture (2). Afterwards, possibilities for an anthro-decentric transformation are outlined (3). For this transformation-and following (eco) phenomenology-then th...

Corona is not just a virus! Why? The following will discuss bodied vulnerabilities, inter-and intra-actions, the meaning of "Krisis", and our lives in the mesh of nature-and-culture and the role of "Co-immunism" for offering some answers….

Purpose This paper aims to propose to rehabilitate prâxis and revive possibilities of practical wisdom (phrónêsis) and a reinterpret excellence as an ethically committed way for responsible and sustainable form of living, while operating in the midst of a systematically constrained world of neoliberal regimes. Design/methodology/approach Based on...

The following paper discusses the context, conditions and implications of the so-called Anthropocene (1). In particular, this paper challenges the hyper-separation between nature and culture (2), the possibilities for an anthro-decentric transformation (3) as well as the role of a body-mediated turn towards an enlivening proto-wise Eco-cene (4), an...

This contribution is reinterpreting leverage-points as leverage-practices, while offering an embodied and integrative understanding of leveraging processes, qualified by wisdom. Based on the concept of practice-architectures, material-economic, socialethical and political arrangements as well as cultural-discursive arrangements for leveraging pract...

Purpose Walking is considered as a particular relationship for rhythmic moving in cityscapes and as method for understanding. The purpose of this paper is to explore the significance of an embodied way of sensing and making sense, of knowing and learning that is relevant for tourism education and studies and other forms of experiential learning....

Following insights of phenomenology, this paper aims to contribute to a critical understanding of embodied place in relation to touring and performative mobility. From a relational perspective, touring will be interpreted as a bodymediated movement, situated in ‘inter-places’. Then a ‘de-touring’ is explored as an alternative metaphor and creative...

Purpose This conceptual paper analyses the role of embodied dimensions and relational possibilities of (serious) play at work. It shows how a phenomenological and processual approach can help to develop an integral understanding of (serious) play and its paradox in relation to work and practical wisdom and professional artistry in organizations. D...

Based on phenomenology , this chapter shows the significance of the body and an embodied spirituality for organizations situated in in a ‘World of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity’ (VUCA). Following an integrative re-membering in relation to the nexus of ‘self-other-things’ and an enfleshed integral being in organization Merleau-Po...

The following article explores meanings and implications of mobile technologies and embodiment in a globally networked context. Drawing on ethnographic research on global travelers moving through Nepal and India, we focus on the role mobile technologies play in mediating perceptions and performances of place. Facilitated by contemporary media and m...

It is time to re-think and to re-do! Our contemporary world of organizations and management; respectively, leadership as well as its socio-cultural embedment calls for a radical re-thinking (Bolden et al. 2016; Birkinshaw 2012; Ladkin 2012; Mowles 2011). But what does it mean to re-think something in general, and to re-think management in particula...

This book assembles multi-disciplinary contributions to delve deeper into ReThinking Management. The first part provides some foundational considerations and inspirations. Further chapters offer more specific links to the arts and creativity sectors as well as empirical research and case reflections. ReThinking Management pursues the main idea that...

Publié en ligne début 2017 Compter en novembre (ok signature ICN)

One of the most elementary way in which members in organisations are involved in their performances are their embodied and expressed relations and interactions. The paper shows how phenomenology can help to render explicit these incorporated experiences and dimensions of performances in organizational life-worlds. Particularly, Merleau-Ponty`s phen...

Wir leben in einer Welt, die aktuell und akut gekennzeichnet ist von immer mehr komplexeren, lokalen und zunehmend globalen Problemlagen und Herausforderungen für den Einzelnen und Kollektive. Unverantwortliche und unethische Denk- und Verhaltensweisen, moralisch problematische Gruppendynamiken sowie dominierende Systemimperative, wie eindimensiona...

Based on a phenomenological approach this paper discusses embodied and relational possibilities of serious play at work. The intention is to develop an integral and transformative understanding of play as individual and collective co-creative action in organizations. For this the concept and practice of " inter-playing " will be proposed in which t...

Wir leben in einer Welt, die aktuell und akut gekennzeichnet ist von immer mehr komplexeren, lokalen und zunehmend globalen Problemlagen und Herausforderungen für den Einzelnen und Kollektive. Unverantwortliche und unethische Denk- und Verhaltensweisen, moralisch problematische Gruppendynamiken sowie dominierende Systemimperative, wie eindimensiona...

Following insights of phenomenology, this paper aims to contribute to a critical understanding of embodied place in relation to touring and performative mobility. From a relational perspective, touring will be interpreted as a body-mediated movement, situated in 'inter-places'. Then e 'de-touring' is explored as an alternative metaphor and creative...

Following a phenomenological understanding of the body and embodiment, this paper explores corporeal ethics as a practice in organisations. With the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, bodily dimensions and enfleshed intercorporeality are seen as media for ethically enacted and morally responsive, thus responsible forms of practicing and relationships....

This chapter outlines an introductory understanding examining classical Husserlian phenomenology as well as illustrating some of its limitations, various critiques and further developments. For Merleau-Ponty phenomenology in general is discernible as a specific style and movement of thought, as expressed in the quotation above. Accordingly, it is c...

As we have seen before, intentionality means a basic directedness of experiences towards phenomena. Phenomenologically, intentionality has a constitutive and operative function for experiences, orientation, actions and meanings of and for organizing. Very basically, intentionality is the ontological structure of the interrelationality between exper...

Despite the mid-20th century vintage of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, its long-time neglect and its dense, complicated and at times elusive idioms, it continues to offer promising resources and insights for numerous contemporary concerns, including life-worlds and research on them. His philosophy also has a power to alleviate lingering problems in so...

The following shows how the relational ontology of Merleau-Ponty offers revealing descriptions and provides informative possibilities for a different interpretation of organization, its members and its practice, especially in understanding ways of dealing with dilemmas and paradoxes. In particular, the idea of the working of chiasm and chiasmic ‘Fl...

With their experiential, dynamic and provisional statuses, the previously described forms and transformational qualities of senses and the various phenomenological dimensions and processes of embodied inter-practice and chiasmic organizing defy control and elude easy management. Because they do not exist as given, stable, fixed entities or objects,...

What is it like to consider things done by embodied actors and for them to experience embodied others doing something or acting in relation or together with them? How far are bodies of thought and identity (Burkitt, 1999) also those of action?

From a phenomenological perspective, organizations and their management can be interpreted as specific life-worlds.1 These worlds of life serve as a starting point and focus for any phenomenological inquiry into organizing and managing (Sandberg and Dall’Alba, 2009). The life-world is the living world of materialities, realities and experiences in...

Following insights of phenomenology, this paper aims to contribute to a critical understanding of being emplaced and embodied in relation to mobility in organizations. From a relational perspective, being mobile is interpreted as a way of being bodily mediated thus relationally and performatively placed. Recognizing mobility as a dynamic, de-centre...

Based on a critique of reductive understandings of physicality, this chapter explores the significance of embodied materiality, the artefactual physical, the role of the living body and embodiment in relation to ‘intra and inter’ practices of leadership from a phenomenological perspective. Using a phenomenological and cross-disciplinary approach, i...

This paper presents a phenomenology of affect and discusses its relevance for organizational life-worlds. With Merleau-Ponty, affects are interpreted as bodily and embodied inter-relational phenomena, which have specific pathic, ecstatic and e-motional qualities. Relationally, they will be situated as "inter-affection" that are part of the inter-co...

Drawing on contemporary debates and processing a lacuna in organization and management studies and responding to calls from organizational practice, Phenomenology of the Embodied Organization explores the essential and inter-relational processes of the body and embodiment in organizational life-worlds.

This paper offers phenomenological perspectives on leadership as an embodied material and relational practice. Based on Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of embodiment and practice, leadership is interpreted as an emergent process of the inter-practice of leading and following. For showing the enactment of this embodied inter-practicing as a creative o...

Reviews 'In a world of change and escalating risk, this book on practical wisdom offers new vision and hope. It is based in the best of human nature, and draws on the forefront of innovative management scholarship, teaching, and practice today.' Ruth Richards, Saybrook University and Harvard Medical School, USA and editor of Everyday Creativity and...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe how a phenomenological approach can help to understand embodied dimensions and compare different and shared qualities, functions and potential, as well as ambivalences and limitations of metaphors and stories in organisations. Design/methodology/approach – Based on a phenomenological understanding...

This article presents a phenomenological inquiry into storytelling practices in corporate strategy-making processes, as experienced by nonsenior stakeholders. The authors utilize the potential of phenomenological methods to provide an enriched understanding of strategy as lived, embodied experience. Based on a strategy workshop in a company called...

Vision, visional relationships and visuality, a corresponding visual culture (Campell & Schroeder 2011; Fuery & Fuery, 2003) as well as visual consumption (Schroeder, 2005) are playing an increasingly important role in the present societal and economic context as well as in organisational and managerial life-worlds. Apparently we are living - and o...

Facing the widely spread malaise in and through irresponsible practices of and by modern organizations, phenomenology can provide an approach that is helpful for assessing this situation as well as getting a renewed perception concerning work and life (Fay & Riot, 2007). In particular, it can contribute to a renewal of understanding and enacting re...

The purpose of this article is to develop a critical and extended understanding of creative practices in organisation from a phenomenological point of view. To develop such an understanding of practice, this paper will first outline a phenomenological understanding of creative practice, understood particularly with Merleau-Ponty as an embodied and...

Based on an extended phenomenological understanding, this paper discusses the potential of a responsive, responsible and hence sustainable orientation integral to practice. First, basic ideas about a phenomenology of responsiveness are outlined, and then the notion of responsibility is discussed critically, opening it up towards an extended underst...

Based on insights of phenomenology and pragmatism, this paper contributes to an integral and processual understanding of practice in organisations. Adopting a phenomenological perspective and insights from pragmatism, practice is argued to be an embodied and situated nexus of action. Correspondingly, a holonic and integral 'pheno-pragma-practice' i...

The specific treatment that Ken Wilber gives phenomenology in his model ofintegral theory requires a critical investigation. According to Wilber's model, differentmethodologies are situated in distinct quadrants or "domains of knowing," namely thesubjective, objective, intersubjective and interobjective domains, labeled by their positionin the mode...

This chapter examines the interplay between three interdependent concepts – climate, culture and interpersonal relationships. We present organizations as life-worlds in which climate and culture have a reciprocally influencing relationship which, in turn, impacts upon workplace peer relationships.

This paper presents a model of practical wisdom that integrates various dimensions of experience and multiple levels of analysis, providing a meta‐theoretical framework through which to understand wise leadership practice in contemporary organizations. Drawing on phenomenological accounts of embodiment and emotion, we seek to overcome limitations i...

Purpose Based on showing the significance of embodied and relational learning, this paper aims for contributing to a more comprehensive and integral approach to learning in and of organizations and its underlying dynamics. Design/methodology/approach Methodologically, advanced phenomenology and an integral framework are used for generating a more...

The main purpose of this paper is to outline the state‐of‐the‐art of research on emotion in organisations and to provide perspectives on an integral orientation and research approach. On the basis of an extended understanding of emotions, reasons for the neglect of emotions and some main influences of emotions in organisations and research findings...

This chapter provides perspectives on a more integral understanding of practice and theory of leadership and organisation. Based on a critical overview of the fragmented contexts of practices and research of organisation and leadership, an integral framework with specific multidimensional and interrelated spheres will be outlined. The task of this...

The paper provides meta-paradigmatic perspectives on an integral understanding of leadership. In view of the various shortcomings of conventional leadership discourse, an integral orientation considers that leadership research demands a comprehensive framework and multi-level approach suited for investigating the complex, inter-related processes in...

Based on a phenomenological understanding of knowing and knowledge in organisation, this chapter aims to contribute to an integral perspective on conceptual and methodological research development. Adopting an advanced phenomenological approach, knowing is argued to be an embodied and emotional process. Furthermore, an integral "pheno-practice" is...

Decisions follow rational patterns to a limited extent only. However, conventional business studies in particular find it difficult to formulate and examine a decision-making process oriented to real situations in a way that is adequate to the problem. The paper therefore pursues the goal of conceiving the decision-making process from a comprehensi...

This paper investigates the multidimensional phenomenon of wisdom in organizations and management as an integral and relational process. In particular, the paper will show how phenomenology can help to render an extended understanding of the “incorporated” dimensions of wisdom situated in organizations and managerial life‐world practises. Based on...

Purpose This paper seeks to investigate the significance of emotions in transformational leadership (TL), particularly the explicit and implicit coverage of emotional dimensions and emotional intelligence (EI) competencies within the specific components of TL. The goal is to contribute an extension to the concept of TL. Design/methodology/approach...

Bezogen auf das integrale Models von Ken Wilber untersucht der Beitrag die Bedeutung des Lernens in und von Organisationen. Nach einer Darstellung der Relevanz und des Grundverständnisses des Lernens im Organisationskontext, werden integrale Dimensionen des Lernens dargestellt. Im Einzelnen werden die verschiedenen Sphären eines inneren-subjektiven...

Purpose Seeks to argue for a phenomenology of embodied implicit and narrative knowing in organizations and show the significance of experiential dimensions of implicit and narrative knowing and their mutual interrelations in organizations. Design/methodology/approach For this the advanced phenomenology of Merleau‐Ponty will be used as a framework...

Aiming for developing a comprehensive understanding this paper investigates the multidimensional phenom-enon of well-being in organizations as an embodied and integral process from a phenomenological perspec-tive. In particular, the paper will show how the advanced phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty (1962, 1964) can help to render an extended understan...