Wise Organizations? Aggregated and Distributed Wisdom in Organizations

Abstract

This working paper explores wisdom in organizations. Experiences vital to understanding mediating functions and flows in open systems have seldom been the focus of attention. This paper aims to highlight some challenges inherent in wisdom and applying wisdom, knowing and related research within organizations. It aims to unravel gaps in literature and frame a new research worthy problematique. In doing so, the paper also discusses why unraveling and filling these gaps has been challenging. Wisdom in organizational settings has often been regarded as an oxymoron, because it has been difficult to conform to conventional notions and ideals of wisdom. This paper takes a practical wisdom (phronesis) perspective. Phronesis is useful in wisdom research, because it encompasses contextual and situational complexities as well as perspectives. To understand this contextuality, open systems framework is invoked to cater to ever changing dynamics to understand how wisdom manifests in organisational functioning through positive and negative capabilities, imaginations, assumptions, hopes and wishes of role holders in their actual role sets. The paper concludes that for organisations to be “wise”, understanding is needed of how boundaries and primary tasks within open systems mould and create perceptions, effects, experiences and practices that bring new insights into what phronesis is or could be about and that we need to look at wisdom as a property of groups as well as individuals and building increasingly on phenomenal contracts and weak ties.