"Doing phenomenology, becoming phenomenological: The evolution of person and practice"

Abstract

This paper revisits the phenomenological method with particular focus on how it is meaningful for the author. The effort is to present this method as a personal journey that has evolved over 13 years and to illustrate how it might become a more accessible approach for meaning making and serving others. This is accomplished in part by dethroning it from its lofty philosophical perch such that is available for daily use by practitioners, educators, and researchers. Further accessibility is provided through the presentation of various examples in health care, higher education, and personal reflections on the experience of understanding and employing phenomenology. The paper concludes with reflective notes on how it has become embodied in this author and the experience of not just doing phenomenology but becoming phenomenological. Phenomenology is especially relevant given the theme of the AOM meeting as Capitalism in Question. As managers and teachers meet staff and students, we are compelled to ask questions about how best to mutually serve one another. Phenomenology offers the potential to reveal the dynamics of these relationships and what lies beneath the daily patina and typical behavior concurrent with these roles.