Se perdeu na tradução? Implicações da ontologia multifacetada de Theodore Schatzki para os Estudos Organizacionais

Purpose Despite the growing interest in the field of supply chain sustainability (SCS), little exploration of new theories exists. Therefore, this paper aims to introduce practice theories to SCS studies through a practice turn. Design/methodology/approach This is a conceptual paper in nature. Hence, based on theoretical arguments, the authors elaborate on how the practice turn can arise in the SCS field. Findings The theoretical elaboration is rooted in the understanding that sustainability is not limited to the materiality of environmental and social issues, as often observed. Instead, there is a need to include immaterial, emotional and intangible elements to better comprehend SCS practice. The authors argue that a continuum exists for a practice turn, including practice-based view, practice-based studies and critical practice theory. Research limitations/implications The authors provide a research agenda with a comprehensive perspective of understanding the application and implications of practice theories to SCS. Practical implications The practice turn in SCS studies can support managers to better understand their practices not only through recognizing explicit activities but also mainly by reflecting on hidden elements that affect their performance. Social implications SCS studies can better engage with grand challenges through a practice turn, which helps increase its contribution to solving social problems. Originality/value Unlike previous literature, the paper elaborates on how practice theories are powerful in supporting both scholars and practitioners in moving away from an extremely economic focus to genuinely embrace sustainability practice. In doing so, the practice turn appears as an important phase for SCS field maturity.

There has been a prominent trend in recent decades for theorising within the arts and social sciences to appeal to human practices as the fundamental bearers of understanding, intelligibility and meanings. This effect of this ‘practice turn’ is that the once-favoured mental entity concepts of earlier theorising (beliefs, desires, emotions and purposes) are displaced by concepts associated with human practices (embodied capacities, know-how, skills, tacit understanding and dispositions). The practice turn has a strong philosophical lineage including Hubert Dreyfus (inspired significantly by Heidegger), Alasdair MacIntyre (strongly influenced by Aristotle) and Theodore Schatzki (strongly influenced by Wittgenstein). Other philosophers influential amongst practice theorists are Dewey, Brandom and Charles Taylor. As well, leading social theorists (e.g. Bourdieu, Giddens) have also produced detailed accounts of practice.

This chapter provides a detailed overview of contemporary sociomaterial and practice-based approaches, focusing in particular on their implications for conceiving workplace learning. It lays the theoretical foundations for the analysis and arguments developed in Parts II and III. It sets out an ontological position, and key concepts that are not so much applied in the subsequent empirical work, but tangled up in it (including in the approach to ethnographic fieldwork. These foundations are set in a broader context, namely sociomaterial approaches. The way in which contemporary theorists are ‘rethinking the thing’ is highlighted, based on performative, diffractive and non-representational ontologies. The ‘practice turn’ is located within these wider, diverse, traditions, and Schatzki’s practice theory is presented as an overarching framework for this book. Next, research on workplace learning is considered, highlighting the metaphor of emergence and its links to concepts of knowledge. Here Gherardi and others’ practice-based studies are significant, emphasising knowing in practice and aesthetics. The chapter then shifts gear introducing the key arguments that are developed in the remainder of the book. Times, spaces, bodies and things are introduced as four essential dimensions of professional practice and learning, and then a distinctive view of professional learning in an asymmetrical and non-reversible relationship with practice is presented. Learning and practice are viewed as entangled, but analytically distinguishable, and criteria for specifying this distinction are presented.

What makes an employer decide in a graduate’s favour when applying for a new job? This question is urgent and important for many graduates who are hoping to get the upper hand in competing for their first job, yet research can tell us little about how to answer it. In an effort to inquire into this question, the following chapter outlines an understanding of graduate employability based in workplace practices. Practice theory is an umbrella term for a number of theories and concepts focusing on the importance of activity for understanding the social world. ‘The practice turn’ in social science seeks to bridge some problematic dualisms (such as actor-structure) in other theories. In the version of practice theory that will be presented below, we draw upon the theorisation presented by Theodore Schatzki (2001, 2005) and our previous work within this framework (Lindberg and Rantatalo 2015), in an effort to translate practice-theory concepts into research tools for examining graduate employability.

The label “practice theory” refers to a group of approaches in late twentieth‐century social and cultural theory which highlights the routinized and performative character of action, its dependence on tacit knowledge and implicit understanding. Besides, these approaches emphasize the “material” character of action and culture as anchored in embodiment and networks of artifacts. Practice theory has its roots in anti‐intellectualist and anti‐dualist social philosophy, above all in Ludwig Wittgenstein and Martin Heidegger. In contemporary social theory, the works of Pierre Bourdieu, Theodore Schatzki, Anthony Giddens, Harold Garfinkel, and others contain diverse forms of practice theory. In a broad sense, the approaches of Bruno Latour and Judith Butler, and partly also that of Michel Foucault, comprise praxeological ideas as well. Currently, practice‐theoretical frameworks influence a wide range of empirical analyses in sociology and cultural studies, from gender studies to organizational and science studies, which analyze social structures from the point of view of “doing” culture (organization, gender, subjects, etc.).

In recent times, practice-based approaches have gained momentum as theoretical tools to understand entrepreneurship. Even if this project is far from finished, in this paper we argue that it needs its own critical assessment by zooming in on one of the major implications which comes with taking the practice turn, namely the question of reflexivity. Drawing on Bourdieu’s rich and refined conception of reflexivity, which forms an inherent part of his practice theory, we delineate the importance of incorporating this notion in how we further apply Bourdieu in practice-based entrepreneurship studies, while also opening up for a reflexive outlook of the practice turn in entrepreneurship studies. In particular, we argue that reflexivity is not so much a self-involved scholarly issue but rather a matter of attending to the social and intellectual unconscious embedded in our research and analytical tools, which can bring both epistemic and civic renewal in the ways practice-based approaches are developed in entrepreneurship studies. In the conclusion, we underline that the practice turn, without a reflexive outlook, will rather maintain the status quo of the field of entrepreneurship studies instead of realizing the promise it holds for the study of entrepreneurship.

In recent times, practice-based approaches have gained momentum as theoretical tools to understand entrepreneurship. Even if this project is far from finished, in this paper we argue that it needs its own critical assessment by zooming in on one of the major implications which comes with taking the practice turn, namely the question of reflexivity. Drawing on Bourdieu’s rich and refined conception of reflexivity, which forms an inherent part of his practice theory, we delineate the importance of incorporating this notion in how we further apply Bourdieu in practice-based entrepreneurship studies, while also opening up for a reflexive outlook of the practice turn in entrepreneurship studies. In particular, we argue that reflexivity is not so much a self-involved scholarly issue but rather a matter of attending to the social and intellectual unconscious embedded in our research and analytical tools, which can bring both epistemic and civic renewal in the ways practice-based approaches are developed in entrepreneurship studies. In the conclusion, we underline that the practice turn, without a reflexive outlook, will rather maintain the status quo of the field of entrepreneurship studies instead of realizing the promise it holds for the study of entrepreneurship.

Proponents of the ‘practice turn’ in the social sciences rarely mention American pragmatism as a source of inspiration or refer to pragmatist philosophy. This strikes us as not only odd, but also a disadvantage since the pragmatist legacy has much to offer practice theory in the study of organizations. In this paper we want to spell out the theoretical similarities and divergences between practice theory and pragmatism to consider whether the two traditions can find common ground when gazing upon organization studies. We suggest that pragmatism should be included in the ‘tool-kit’ of practice-based studies of organizations.

In this paper, I will attempt to show that there is a fundamental similarity between Husserl's genetic phenomenology and Heidegger's hermeneutic phenomenology. I will do this by analyzing the concept of ”genesis” in Husserl's genetic phenomenology and also in Heidegger's hermeneutic phenomenology. I will show that there is a fundamental similarity between the transcendental genesis as the main topic of Husserl's genetic phenomenology and the ontological genesis as the main topic of Heidegger's hermeneutic phenomenology. Due to the similarity between them, there is a fundamental similarity between Husserl's transcendental subjectivity as the bearer of the transcendental genesis and Heidegger's Dasein as the bearer of the ontological genesis. Moreover, there is a fundamental similarity Husserl's concept of the world and Heidegger's concept of the a priori field, between ”world consciousness and genetic constitution” in Husserl and ”understanding and interpretation” in Heidegger.

‘Practice’ is a familiar term in everyday language but it also has a long history of scholarship. What then does it mean to ‘turn’ towards practice, and how would we know when a practice turn has occurred? To answer these questions, this article develops a theoretical view of practice as a transactional social process involving experience and action as mutually informing aspects of human conduct. This perspective is elaborated in detail by drawing on the ideas of the pragmatist philosophers, especially George Herbert Mead. In particular, it is asserted that ‘transactionality’ and ‘temporality’ , when taken together, offer a theoretical perspective on practice that is dynamic, emergent and socially agentic. The utility of this pragmatist approach is illustrated using a published study of a strategizing episode. The article concludes that a practice turn is indeed underway in organization studies, but there is still some distance to travel before the full potential of this turn is realized.

The focus on practice in management studies – and the strategy field more specifically – is a recent and important development in what organizational scholars pay attention to and how. Reflecting the more general social-theoretic ‘practice turn’ (Ortner 1984; Schatzki, Knorr Cetina and von Savigny 2001; Reckwitz 2002), this development is diverse and dynamic, expressing both a range of approaches and a set of emerging possibilities (Gherardi 2006; Feldman and Orlikowski 2011; Molloy 2007; Postill 2010; Whittington 2006). Schatzki (2001a: 4) argues that, given the broad array of interpretations and interests, the most effective notion of practice may be in its framing and orienting of research. It is in this spirit of exploring various ways of structuring practice research that I offer the discussion below, and not to propose or defend any particular conception or appropriation of practice ideas. In what follows, I want to distinguish three modes of engaging with practice in research, and highlight some of their attending entailments. I then discuss some of the challenges and implications associated with taking practice seriously in studies of organizations. Throughout this commentary, I will draw on illustrations from the arena of organizational research that I am most familiar with: technology studies. These examples should offer some useful analogies and applications for strategy-as-practice research, in which parallel considerations and formations are evident. Modes of engaging practice in research I find it useful to differentiate between the different ways that the notion of practice has been attended to in the management literature (including the strategy-as-practice literature). These variations arise as a result of differences in the locus of researchers’ attention and the logic of their inquiry. Three modes of engaging practice in research are evident. The first mode emphasizes practice as a phenomenon – the notion that what is most important in organization research is understanding what happens ‘in practice’, as opposed to what is derived or expected from ‘theory’; the second mode advocates practice as a perspective – the articulation of a practice-centred theory about some aspect of organizations; and the third mode highlights the notion of practice as a philosophy – the commitment to an ontology that posits practice as constitutive of all social reality, including organizational reality.

This article investigates ways through which entrepreneurship scholars can overcome some of the methodological weaknesses preventing a more refined understanding of context. It is suggested that a framework based upon insights from ethnomethodology, conversation analysis and broader ‘practice turn’ in organisation studies can offer new perspectives on the situated nature of entrepreneurial practices. This article contributes to entrepreneurship scholarship in two ways. First, through studying real-time interaction data, it is possible to empirically demonstrate how entrepreneurial actors negotiate contextual constraints as they emerge and dissipate over time. Second, this article provides a framework that we hope will encourage a greater focus on actual instances of practice in entrepreneurship scholarship – something that is currently underrepresented.

The ‘practice turn’ in organizational studies has recently emerged as an important set of perspectives which has implications for understanding processes of knowing and learning within and between organizations. Consisting of a range of different approaches, it emphasizes the situated nature of knowing and learning in practice and offers an alternative to understanding human action that transcends the dualism of structure and agency effects on action. The ontological and epistemological underpinnings of a practice‐based approach are explored before attention is directed towards assessing the implications for understanding the knowledge, learning and change in project‐based organizations associated with the emergence of partnering.

This article proposes the social sciences consider texture – rather than text − as the important legacy of the ‘cultural turn’ in the social sciences. The article considers texture in the literal sense of surface-patterns, as well as texture as a metaphor for the ‘dynamic’ and hard-to-capture qualities of social life. The article draws on the philosopher Stephen C. Pepper and the anthropologist Tim Ingold, the ‘practice turn’ in organizational studies and recent developments in geography and cultural research to map out different textural frameworks. While sociologists have lagged behind their counterparts in other fields in embracing a textural sensibility, the article considers the writings of Georg Simmel and the Yale School of Cultural Sociology as prominent exceptions to that rule. The article concludes by encouraging sociologists to consider the textural as a way into a ‘theoretical’ – as against a purely ‘methodological’ conception – of the qualitative.

Theodore Schatzki's new book, Martin Heidegger: Theorist of Space, is a concise introduction to Heidegger's philosophy in general and, more particularly, his thoughts on space and human spatiality....