The (Im)possibility of Educating an Ethical Sense of Kairos in Organizations

Abstract

The question of timeliness, or kairos, is taken up in studies of practical wisdom in organization studies (Holt and Johnsen, 2019) to give it an ethical direction. It is important to link kairos with phronesis to avoid the temptation of devious opportunism. Developing an ethical sense of kairos in organizations depends on specifying the way it can be learned and taught. Some authors contend that this is simply not possible. Other authors trust that it is possible to train people in organizations about it, others that it can be developed only through experience and thanks to the inspiration from exemplar people. In this paper we argue that learning and teaching phronesis and the associated sense of kairos in organizations does not come from exemplarity per se, but as the outcome of a shared capacity of agents to mobilize and nurture the imaginary variations of their capacity to act. This must be made in an ethical way, aiming at “good life”, caring for others in just institutions (Ricoeur, 1994), to face singular circumstances in a timely fashion. Mobilizing the power of imagination to seize opportunities matters to depart from a pure rationalistic view that may not reflect the fullness of the human experience of kairos.