Metatheoretical Reflections Research Articles

The concept of discontinuity in project marketing research: emergence, dissipation and glimpses of the future

PurposeThis study aims to focus on a specific project marketing concept, i.e. “discontinuity,” and analyzes how this concept emerged in project marketing, becoming its key scholarly embodiment, how it became decoupled from the increasingly service-intensive project business practice and what the relevance of discontinuity is for project marketers moving forward.Design/methodology/approachThis study is built on a systematic literature review of 31 years (1993–2023) of publishing data from major marketing and management journals.FindingsThis study provides three findings. First, the author reveals the risks related to marketing scholars and practitioners losing sight of each other as business practices evolve much faster than scholarly research can keep up. Second, the author highlights the role of interdisciplinary collaboration in advancing conceptual innovations. Finally, the research elucidates the need for broader metatheoretical reflection to keep this research tradition on an upward trajectory.Research limitations/implicationsThe aim of this study is not to criticize project marketing, as many strands of business-to-business (B2B) marketing face the same challenge, but to elucidate a need for conceptual innovations, collaboration with practitioners and other disciplines and broader metatheoretical reflection to keep this research tradition on an upward trajectory.Originality/valueThis study makes several contributions to the project marketing research tradition. First, it reviews the emergence and dissipation of the concept of discontinuity, drawing on semantical, etymological and epistemological insights. It also reflects on recent disruptions in the marketplace and envisions future research trajectories for this elusive concept. In addition, the author develops a conceptual framework that combines project types with exchange elements in project and service businesses. This conceptual framework helps elucidate what part of the exchange is continuing and what is discontinuing in the resulting business relationships. Furthermore, the research contributes to B2B marketing more broadly by highlighting the fleeting correspondence between theory and the real world. It underscores the need for constant updates to maintain relevance.

Rethinking Leadership in Projects for a Resilient and Just Future

With their emphasis on the human aspects of project work, project leadership theories offer a powerful way of understanding how project performance may be enhanced. Based on a meta-theoretical reflection, viewing theory generation as social practice, and drawing on a narrative literature review, this article argues that dominant assumptions of modernism limit the potential of project leadership theories to help create a resilient and just future. Instead, it proposes embracing the duality of modernism and postmodernism by presuming the mutual constitution of seemingly contradictory leadership elements as well as projects and more permanent forms of organizing. Accordingly, it offers a new agenda for future research.

Neuropsychological assessment methodology revisited: metatheoretical reflections.

Theory building in neuropsychology, similar to other disciplines, rests on metatheoretical assumptions of philosophical origin. Such assumptions regarding the relation of psychological and physiological variables influence research methodologies as well as assessment strategies in fields of application. Here, we revisit the classic procedure of Double Dissociation (DD) to illustrate the connection of metatheory and methodology. In a seemingly unbridgeable opposition, the classical neuropsychological procedure of DD can be understood as either presupposing localizationism and a modular view of the brain, or as a special case of the generalized neuro-lens model for neuropsychological assessment. In the latter case, it is more easily compatible with a perspective that emphasizes the systemic-network, rather than the modular, nature of the brain, which as part of the organism, proportionately mediates the situatedness of the human being in the world. This perspective not only makes it possible to structure ecological validation processes and give them a metatheoretical foundation, but also to interlace it with the phenomenological insight that the laboratory as one context of empirical research may be analyzed in terms of situated experience. We conclude with showing that both the localizationist and the system science approach can agree on a view of the brain as a dynamical network, and that metatheory may thus offer important new perspectives of reconciliation.

16Theory on Theory

Abstract Taking up what was foreshadowed in last year’s instalment of ‘Theory on Theory’, this chapter takes as its theme the evident and disturbing trend within our field to forget, if not actively attempt to erase, Marxist and dialectical thought. The first section notices this tendency in the course of its wider review of a major new reference work, the Oxford Encyclopedia of Literary Theory. The second section notices another manifestation of the tendency in the course of reviewing a significant new work of metatheoretical reflection and critique, Elizabeth Anker’s On Paradox. In the third and final section, a cluster of works are reviewed that show the range and ongoing vitality of dialectical thought.

Savagery in right-wing populist leadership: between theatricality and political social engineering

Contemporary leadership practices in politics are full of emotions, which, on the one hand, may be a manifestation of various types of expressions or moods in the individual and collective dimension, and on the other hand, are an important source of political mobilization or an instrument enhancing effectiveness in the election competition. In this article inducing and politicizing savagery among followers – defined as an emotional social engineering strategy for articulating given goals and interests – will be treated as a populist manifestation and an expression of planned radicalization of political competition. The aim of the article is a meta theoretical reflection on the instrumentalisation of wildness in the leadership of the right-wing populist – Donald Trump. A practical rationale for discussing collective savagery in politics will be the attack on the Capitol in Washington on January 6, 2021. This event will serve as an example to explain the political exteriorization of the confrontational Trump followers, thanks to which the right-wing populist leader not only articulated his own goals, shaped public self-presentation or theatrical political presence, but also redefined and challenged the existing rules and principles of democratic political culture.

The Political Imaginary, or the Democratic Transformation Domain

Abstract Cornelius Castoriadis’ entire work is shot through with reflections on the political imaginary, but it is rarely named explicitly and is not considered as a central, stand-alone, privileged idea within the social imaginary. This is why it is important to develop this idea in the domain of philosophy of politics. Moreover, for each contemporary democratic movement it is crucial to understand what “Political Imaginary” exactly is, to develop an effective change in politics in itself, as some Latin American countries (Brazil, Colombia and Chile) show us. In these countries, there are contemporary socio-historical examples of what is an effective transformation in the political imaginary domain. They allow us to enrich the meta-theoretical reflection through the historical identification of the political imaginary carried out by peculiar instituting movements that generated important transformations in the social self-representation and in the practice of collective power in the countries where they took place.

Paradygmaty metafilozofii – historia i współczesność

Metaphilosophy as a research discipline is concerned with the overall metatheoretical reflection of philosophy on its own subject matter, assumptions, methodology, and goals guiding this form of human intellectual activity. The aim of this article is to present a cross-sectional analysis of the main stages in the historical development of this discipline, and offer a general characterization of the current state of research. The means to achieving this goal of study is a confrontation between two partly competitive and partly complementary paradigmatic approaches to metaphilosophical reflection which currently determine a relatively wide range of interests in this theoretically promising and heuristically fertile field of philosophical analysis.

System or Process? A Meta-theoretical Reflection on the Nature of the Firm

The paper revisits the fundamental question of the nature of the firm by contrasting two philosophic worldviews suggested by process philosophy and the Luhmannian systems theory. Whereas the former worldview takes reality to be internally related, the latter ones underscores the tendency of social systems, such as firms, to disregard much of this interrelatedness. The productive tension between these worldviews suggests that the firm provides a context where systemic imperatives meet the rich concrete reality of human life. The role of the firm is to house those aspects of this reality that are too organic to be accommodated by the abstract “language of prices” corresponding, in institutional economics terms, to the reliance on market governance. The major examples of these aspects explored in the paper are dynamic capabilities and business ethics, both of which hold the potential to improve the firm’s sustainability, both economic and social. The proposed contrast between the process-philosophic and systems-theoretic worldviews thus illuminates not only the nature of the firm but also the managerial relevance of corporate sustainability instruments.

Covid-19 and The Islamic Council of Norway: The Social Role of Religious Organizations

The new coronavirus came to Norway along with vacationers returning from Italy and Austria in February 2020. In less than a month, the demographic profile of the individuals infected by the virus changed from the privileged to the less privileged and from people born in Norway to immigrants from certain mostly Muslimmajority countries. This article presents how The Islamic Council of Norway (ICN) produced and distributed information material about the coronavirus in the early phase of the pandemic in Norway. Further, it examines how the ICN’s informational material reflects particular ideas about the social role of religious organizations. The empirical material analyzed in the article stems from media reports, government press releases, and information material published online; the analysis is inspired by Niklas Luhmann’s theory of society. The results show dedifferentiation occurring as the ICN linked religion to politics and health as well as how the ICN links the Norwegian national public with a transnational Muslim public. Thus, this article shows how different ideas of the religious and the secular as well as of the national and the transnational coexist in Norway. The discussion relates this to theories about the social role of religion and religious organizations, focusing particularly on the concept of religious organizations as public spaces. The article contributes to a metatheoretical reflection on religious social practice. It also employs and tests alternative theoretical understandings of integration and social cohesion. The results are relevant for practitioners and analysts of religious social practice in modern, secular, and diverse social contexts.

The development of different selves on the basis of leading maternal affects: Metatheoretical, clinical and technical reflections

In this article I will discuss, departing from the usual disintegration of the newborn’s experiences, how one can model the integration of different forms of memory, sensory channels, and mode of representation of these early experiences. Based on the inborn semiotics of the affect system, I pursue the idea that the affect expression of the mother comprises the organizational nucleus of the child’s future personality, and that the representational format of the very young child comprises the mother’s faces and vocalizations. In the aftermath of parental projections, the baby is confronted with plenty of dominant affect expressions, for example contempt, disgust, anger, and fear. These act in contrast to happiness in terms of guiding the affect expression of secure attachment. Following Tomkins, I call these interaction schemes “emotional scripts” and demonstrate that they are carried on into adulthood. Here I launch and discuss four clinical vignettes that can be characterized as being governed by such an “emotional script.” I try to show that these scripts can be redrafted if the governing affect can be exchanged with a different one. These considerations have led to a revised form of the procedure called “splitting.” In addition, implications for treatment techniques are depicted.

An empirical analysis of research paradigms within international human resource management: The need for more diversity

The goal of this article is to provide a fine-grained analysis of international human resource management research that addresses the different perspectives applied in that research. We coded 203 peer-reviewed international human resource management articles published between 2011 and 2018 with content analytical methods guided by the compass of management research developed by Sieben, which is rooted in critical management research. We were particularly attentive to the various discursive orientations international human resource management scholars have adopted, including ideologically critical, poststructuralist, functionalist and interpretive perspectives. We further examined which methods, theoretical perspectives and topics were common within and across different perspectives. This analysis indicated that critical research intending to politicize and question existing structures and ways of organizing is still marginal. Along with the dominance of functionalist and interpretive studies, papers in our dataset commonly use a strategic human resource perspective, are predominantly interested in the human resource management–performance link and focus rather narrowly on multinational corporations and expatriates. Furthermore, while international human resource management scholars increasingly account for the contextual embeddedness of organizations through macro-level theories, they mainly apply institutional perspectives that view organizations as adapting to institutional constraints. We propose a more diverse and reflexive approach – inspired by ideologically critical and poststructuralist perspectives – that may help to overcome these blind spots. Such an approach might, for instance, look at types of organizations other than multinational corporations and individuals other than highly skilled expatriates and might explicitly bring multiple, external stakeholders into the picture. We conclude by suggesting that international human resource management research and practice would benefit from more research diversity which enables more holistic analyses of phenomena, more innovative research and resultant insights, and more space for meta-theoretical reflections.

From post-democracy to post-truth politics : the crisis of contemporary democracy in three analytical moves.

This essay is aimed at thematising the topic of post-truth in the ‘post-democratic’ constellation. From this perspective, it firstly illustrates contents and features of the broad concept of post-democracy, therefore analysing both the issue of the crisis of democracy and the impact of contemporary neoliberal platform capitalism on these process. Hence, it addresses the related topics of new technologies and changes in political communication, along with the unfolding of the neo-populist phenomenology. A number of concluding meta-theoretical reflections on the relationship between democracy, knowledge and political representation are also developed.

Exploring the Meaning Problem of Big and Small Data Through Digital Method Triangulation

Abstract In this article, knowledge building through combinations of methods in a digital context is discussed and explored. Two types of digital bigger and smaller data-driven media studies are used as examples: digital focus groups and the combination of internet traffic measurements, surveys and diaries. The article proposes the concept of digital method triangulation. Digital method triangulation is argued to be a way to approach the “meaning problem” to make sense of small and big data. Digital method triangulation is argued 1) to stimulate the innovative use of known methods for unexpected dimensions within the studied topic; 2) with appropriate theoretical and meta-theoretical reflections, to provide more certainty in conclusions; and 3) to assist in constructing a more comprehensive perspective on specific analyses. The conclusion is that triangulation is even more important in the digital realm, as it facilitates dialogue between conventional and digital methods, dialogue that seems crucial to capture the complexities of the onlife.

Toward inclusive mathematics education: a metatheoretical reflection about countering ableism in mathematics standards and curriculum

This article documents efforts to advance inclusive mathematics education practices involving the introduction of equity-oriented resources in state-level mathematics standards guidance documents in a Midwestern United States jurisdiction. We adopt a critical stance by looking at ways to interrogate available metatheories for these kinds of change-making processes. The guiding resources documented in the present article center on issues of difference. These issues are related to dis/ability in mathematics education standards and curriculum to not only raise teachers' awareness of constructions of difference in order to foster inclusive education, but also to promote critical self-reflections around ableism. Guiding resources are a means to support recognition of dis/ability difference as a source of multiple mathematical knowledge bases from which to learn and advance mathematics thinking. Yet, we also recognize the need to be vigilant about the complex interpretative contours and the relational dynamics at work throughout their various layers of implementation, assessment, and anti-ableist realignment. Accordingly, we reflect metatheoretically about three questions: How might concepts of access, achievement, identity, and power support teachers of mathematics in advancing inclusive practices? How do word choices in mathematics standards, curriculum, and practices dis/able students in classroom practices? What may we learn from the mathematics education experiences of individuals with dis/abilities and their families in the broad configuration of change-making dynamics of educational policies and teaching practices?

Law in Theory and History: New Essays on a Neglected Dialogue edited by Maksymilian Del Mar and Michael Lobban*

This volume is an important contribution to a topic which has seen something of a resurgence lately and one from which both legal theorists and legal historians will greatly benefit. Some of the essays in this volume tackle questions on the ground floor, as it were, of interactions between legal theory and legal history. Others offer metatheoretical reflections on legal theory and legal history. Some combine the two. Given that the essays offer a rich variety of perspectives and do not unfold according to a master plan, it would be ill advised for a reviewer to impose an artificial order on them to be able to discuss the whole in one go. Instead, the discussion in this review will revolve primarily around some key themes revolving around the method and aims of legal theory.

On the Procedural Character of Hilbert’s Axiomatic Method

Hilbert’s methodological reflection has certainly shaped a new image of the axiomatic method. However, the discussion on the procedural character of the method is still open, with commentators subscribing to three differing points of view: (1) some have seen it as a synthetic method, i.e. a method to derive theorems from axioms already and arbitrarily established; (2) others have counter-argued in favour of its analytic nature, i.e. given a particular scientific field, the method is useful to reach the conditions (axioms) for the known results of the field (theorems) and to rightly place both in a well-structured theory; (3) still others have underlined the meta-theoretical character of the axiomatic reflection, i.e. the axiomatic method is the method to verify whether axioms already identified satisfy properties such as completeness, independence and consistency. Each of these views has highlighted aspects of the way Hilbert conceived and practiced the axiomatic method and, therefore, they can be harmonized into an image better suited to the function the method was called to fulfil: deepening the foundations of given scientific fields, to recall one of Hilbert’s well-known expressions. Here, I argue that the axiomatic method is, in Hilbert’s hands, a very flexible tool of inquiry, and that for the method to lead analytically to an axiomatic well-structured and reasonably grounded theory it needs to include both synthetic procedures and meta-theoretical reflections in a dynamic interplay. Therefore, in Hilbert’s thought, the expression “deepening the foundations” denotes the whole set of considerations, permitted by the axiomatic method, that allow the theoretician first to identify and then to present systems of axioms for given scientific fields.

The value of knowledge sharing in decision-making and organisational development: a model-theoretic systemic analysis of an intervention in an Austrian S.M.E.

This paper addresses the question of how to cultivate organisational development to support organisations towards a sustainable future. Seeking to identify, systematise and elucidate the process of redevelopment in an Austrian small/medium enterprise by means of Language-Information-Reality, a multidimensional system of semantics, it is argued that sustainable organisational development can be explained by the enactment and management of four well-selected knowledge components: expertise, competence and capabilities in their operational influence upon organisational action, as well as explanatory meta-theoretical reflection. This paper contributes to the theory on organisational development by demonstrating the value of knowledge sharing by individual employees from different domains of expertise, and acknowledges the research leading to the paradigm of sense-making in organisations.

Some Metatheoretical Reflections on Adaptive Decision Making and the Strategy Selection Problem

AbstractOrganisms must be capable of adapting to environmental task demands. Which cognitive processes best model the ways in which adaptation is achieved? People can behave adaptively, so many frameworks assume, because they can draw from a repertoire of decision strategies, with each strategy particularly fitting to certain environmental demands. In contrast to that multi‐mechanism assumption, competing approaches posit a single decision mechanism. The juxtaposition of such single‐mechanism and multi‐mechanism approaches has fuelled not only much theory‐building, empirical research, and methodological developments, but also many controversies. This special issue on “Strategy Selection: A Theoretical and Methodological Challenge” sheds a spotlight on those developments. The contribution of this introductory article is twofold. First, we offer a documentation of the controversy, including an outline of competing approaches. Second, this special issue and this introductory article represent adversarial collaborations among the three of us: we have modeled adaptive decision making in different ways in the past. Together, we now work on resolving the controversy and point to five guiding principles that might help to improve our models for predicting adaptive behavior. Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Against Imagination: On the Ambiguities of a Composite Concept

ABSTRACTIn this article, I argue that “imagination” and “imaginaries” (arguably quite different but often conflated) have acquired too many meanings, which are in turn too imprecisely applied and combined, to usefully illuminate mechanisms of social belonging. I begin by reviewing others’ critiques of the concepts and the ways scholars have sought to organize and manage its meaning(s) and offering a synthesis of these. I argue for the arbitrariness of such lineages before demonstrating the ways in which various combinations of imagination‐imaginaries have been assembled and deployed in current literature. I contend that ongoing efforts to use and extrapolate the term, or to decipher or cull its meaning, merely recuperate its value as a catchall device for asserting social collectivity and claiming broad relevance of often limited ethnographic data. After arguing, through example, that other theories and concepts often better do the analytical work that anthropologists intend imagination and imaginaries to perform, I conclude with a metatheoretical reflection on the relationship between imagination and contradiction.

Towards a GIS Analysis of Literary Cultures: The Making of the Slovenian Ethnoscape Through Literature

This article presents methodological starting points, heuristics and the results of a GIS-based analysis of the history of Slovenian literary culture from the 1780s to 1941. The ethnically Slovenian territory was multilingual and multicultural; it belonged to different state entities with distant capitals, which was reflected in the spatial dynamic of literary culture. The research results have confirmed the hypotheses of the research project ‘The Space of Slovenian Literary Culture,’ which were based on postulates of the spatial turn: the socio-geographical space influenced the development of literature and its media, whereas literature itself, through its discourse, practices and institutions, had a reciprocal influence on the apprehension and structuring of that space, as well as on its connection with the broader region. Slovenian literary discourse was able to manifest itself in public predominantly through the history of spatial factors: (a) the formation, territorial expansion and concentration of the social network of literary actors and media; (b) the persistent references of literary texts to places that were recognized by addressees as Slovenian, thereby grounding a national ideology. Taking all of this into account, and based on meta-theoretical reflection, the project aims to contribute to the development of digital humanities and spatial literary studies.