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p.5 In this sense, the term ‘practical wisdom’ refers to an
optimal (i.e., ‘virtuous’) orientation toward uncertainty.
p.5-6 many scholars and proponents of ‘scientific management’
may regard the popular business section in the bookstore as a pile of claptrap equivalent in rigor and bottom-line value to
the spirituality or self-help sections. Without denying the importance of methodological rigor and peer review, we
regard the ongoing proliferation of practitioner-oriented management books simply as evidence that people continue in spite
of the bias toward science to seek (precisely by reading the personal anecdotes offered by successful leaders, gurus
and CEO’s) what Aristotle and many others have referred to as practical wisdom.
p.8 “Management is bounded by great depths of uncertainty
and ignorance within which it is constituted, which is what makes the discipline a candidate for treatment
as an example of ‘phronesis’ rather than of a context independent, objective and value-free rationalist
science. Phronesis, an Aristotelian term, refers to a discipline that is pragmatic, variable, context
depending, based on practical rationality, leading not to a concern with generating formal covering law-like explanations
but to building contextual, case-based knowledge” (Clegg and Ross-Smith, 2003: 86).
p.8-9 “Practical wisdom has much to do with the skill and
knowledge of the strategist, who realizes both existing knowledge of the market and firm and its aspirations practically,
through the performance of a particular strategy, involving multiple negotiations, truces, agreements, investments and commitments
(Hendry, 2000). Practical wisdom thus captures the oscillation between animation and orientation that comprises strategic
thinking and acting (Cummings and Wilson, 2003). It is, however, an under researched topic so that
we lack a comprehensive understanding of what constitutes the political, social, cultural, conceptual and material resources
through which such oscillation occurs (Whittington, 2003)” (Wilson and Jarzabkowski, 2004: 16).
p.9 we now proceed with the development of a dynamic model of practical
wisdom. [JLJ - this I gotta see...]
p.10 we leave such questions concerning the common good to be answered by
organizational actors themselves, while we focus our attention on developing an interpretative framework that allows
management and organizational researchers to identify those practically wise activities that contribute to increased preparedness
in organizations... we choose to base our interpretative framework on Robert Sternberg’s ‘balance theory
of wisdom’ for two reasons. First, as we have already acknowledged, we find that the explicit emphasis on balance is
most coherent with the Aristotelian differentiation between scientific knowledge and practical wisdom, and
thus most appropriate to those situations in which the limits of the thinkable and the possible are approached.
p.11 As we have seen above, practical wisdom should not be considered
as a quantity of information, nor as a functioning capacity that exists independently of the function it performs. Instead,
practical wisdom refers to an habituated pattern of actions that are normatively positive both in terms of their process
and in terms of their outcome.
p.11 Sternberg writes:
“In adaptation, the individual tries to find ways to conform
to the existing environment that forms his or her context. Sometimes adaptation is the best course of action under
a given set of circumstances. But typically one seeks a balance between adaptation and shaping, realizing that fit to an environment
requires not only changing oneself, but changing the environment as well...” (Sternberg (2001: 231).
p.12 where Sternberg claims that the balance of interests is struck
in view of short- and long-term future, we suggest that the consideration of short-, medium- and long-term time horizons is
a distinct balance unto itself.
p.13 With respect then to different logical modalities,
we can say that instrumental rationality privileges calculation and analysis to determine or approximate necessary relations... By contrast, practical wisdom would involve experimentation and action as a way to enact the possible.
Here the model that most directly contrasts the homo economicus is homo ludens... there is a stream of research that
casts planning processes in terms of scenario learning (van der Heijden et al, 2002).
p.14 we
believe that practical wisdom remains subject to dynamic change depending on media available for action and expression...
we believe that any action that balances interests, time horizons
and environments, precisely to the extent that it draws on tacit knowledge, appeals to values and enacts the common good,
must be considered and deliberated about in view of its contextual circumstances... wisdom itself remains, in spite of every effort to develop it as a habit, subject to dynamic change...
practical wisdom should be understood as a habit, a practice, a pattern
of actions that can emerge in certain circumstances, just as it can fade in others.
p.15
practically wise habits appear to serve as means toward the end of
preparedness to the extent that they can help to expand and extend what is thinkable and possible for the organization...
ultimately it cannot be known with any certainty whether a given organization
is more or less prepared. What is worse, even when specific decisions and actions appear to exemplify practical wisdom,
good ideas can still fail for unexpected reasons and well-intended bad ideas can still lead to terrible consequences.
And yet precisely in view of these constraints, we suggest that practical wisdom provides a model of the form of human intelligence
that is most suited to dealing ethically and effectively with such uncertainty and unpredictability.
p.16 Once the limits of thought and action have been surpassed, individuals may very well have no choice
but to ‘go with the flow’ and see what emerges. In this respect, future research should focus
on those practices through which emergent forms of intentional action are cultivated and encouraged (e.g., Roos,
Victor & Statler, 2004; Jacobs & Statler, 2005).
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