Forms of Knowledge and Forms of Life in Organized Contexts

Abstract

Abstract MAINSTREAM organization and management studies (OMS) has historically been antagonistic towards the lay knowledge organizational members possess. One of OMS’s foundational assumptions has been that the management of people in organizations will be more effective the more lay knowledge is displaced by social scientific precepts. It has also been assumed that the body of formal knowledge necessary to enable this is increasingly becoming available from OMS, as the discipline of the social sciences dealing with the human aspects of organizing and managing (see Donaldson 1985; Lupton 1983; Pinder and Bourgeois 1982; Simon 1957 [1976]; Thompson 1956-7).