This is to invite you to attend 'Returning to Dialectics? Towards a Critical
Philosophy of Management' - a conference at the Essex Management Centre,
8th-9th June 2006. The conference is free and catering will be provided (you
will have to find your own accommodation though). If you would like to
attend, please let us know by Monday 5 June the latest. We will then give
you information on how to get to Colchester and find appropriate
accommodation.
Kind regards,
Steffen Boehm and Sam Mansell - conference organisers
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Conference schedule:
8th June
13:00 - Conference begins with lunch.
13:45 - Introduction and welcome from Steffen Boehm.
14:00 - Stephen Dunne: The Challenge of Reading Hegel (to be presented by
Campbell Jones).
14:45 - Cynthia Dereli: The dialectical thinking of George Simmel and the
potential for dialogue with 21st century business theory in the context of
global capitalism.
15:30 - Coffee/tea break.
16:00 - Sarah Philipson: Capital functions and the position of workers -
Implementation of a Marxian theory of business administration in the case of
ABB Ltd.
16:45 - Robin West: Realising Nature? Culture, Contingency, and Emergence in
the Dialectics of Environmental Preservation.
17:30 - End of the first day.
19:00 - Conference Dinner.
9th June
09:00 - Jeff Waistell: Discourse, Dialectics and Critical Management.
09:45 - Przemek Piatkowski: The concept of tradition in Paul Ricoeur's
dialectic of interpretation and its relevance for organisation studies.
10:30 - Coffee/tea break.
11:00 - Eleni Karamali: The Pharmakon of Dialectics.
11:45 - Samuel Mansell: Business Ethics and the Question of Objectivity: the
Concept of Moral Progress in a Dialectical Framework.
12:30 - Closing discussion
13:30 - Lunch.
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Original conference call:
Returning to Dialectics?
Towards a Critical Philosophy of Management
A Conference at the Essex Management Centre, University of Essex, 8th-9th
June 2006
Dialectics has had a bad press in recent years. In times when management is
all about a continuous movement, in times when everyone rushes to get the
latest French philosopher's book, in times of the historical aftermath of
the downfall of state socialism (and its official state philosophy), it
seems that the mostly German philosophical tradition of dialectics has past
its sell-by date. As Slavoj ®i¾ek, one of the few vivid readers of Hegel has
said recently:
"For the last two decades, multitude has been in, unity out; contingency in,
necessity out; subjectivation in, subject out; multiculturalism in, the
European legacy out; difference in, universality out; antinomy in,
contradiction out; resistance in, revolution out..." (Slavoj ®i¾ek,
'Critical Response: I a symptom - of what?', Critical Inquiry, 29,3:
486-503, 2003)
®i¾ek's list of ins and outs could, of course, be easily continued by saying
that Spinoza has been in, Hegel out; flows in, and dialectics out. In fact,
one could go as far as to suggest that there has been a certain
anti-Hegelianism and a distrust of the dialectical tradition in many of
today's popular contemporary philosophies. Management theory has also had
its fair share of movement therapy; whether it has been Bergson, Whitehead,
or Deleuze; management philosophies of movement have been in, and
dialectical critiques of management out.
In the midst of such a profound anti-dialectical mood it seems odd for us to
want to return to dialectics and explore how this current of thought can
shed a critical light on the contemporary practice and theory of management.
Why is such a move necessary? Do we simply want to role back history and
return to Hegel and the Prussian state bureaucracy? Returning somewhere is
more than going back to one's roots. Returning is more than going back in
time. A return, or re-turn, is not a simple defence of what happened in the
past. Instead, it is a re-reading of the past; a re-reading that might be
able to tell us how we got to where we are; it might help us to read history
in a new way; a reading that might just allow us to turn the table and
discover new possibilities of and for history. This is why such a move is
necessary: only by returning to history, will we be able to see new
possibilities of history. Or even more: only by returning to history does
history become possible.
In the light of such possibilities we propose to explore what a return to
dialectics might look like and what it might do to management theory. We aim
to investigate not merely the dialectical tradition as found in the works of
Hegel and the German idealists, but how the history of dialectical thought
within the wider spectrum of recent philosophy and management theory might
serve as a critical focus for contemporary engagements with management.
Abstract outlines of no more than 700 words should be submitted as an email
attachment to Steffen Böhm ([log in to unmask]) and Sam Mansell
([log in to unmask]) by 24th March. Full papers will be due by 31st May so
that they can be distributed to all conference participants before the
conference. Furthermore, we intend to publish a selection of the papers
presented in a dedicated special issue of the journal Philosophy of
Management.
If you have any enquiries about this conference, please do not hesitate to
contact the conference organisers, Steffen Böhm ([log in to unmask]) and
Sam Mansell ([log in to unmask]).
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