Call for Papers
FROM PHILOSOPHY TO MANAGEMENT AND BACK AGAIN? PHILOSOPHY AND THE EDUCATION
OF MANAGERS
University of Gloucestershire Business School, Cheltenham
Thursday 20 November 2003 9.30 - 5.00 pm
A 1-day seminar/workshop organised by the University of Gloucestershire
Business School in association with Philosophy of Management (formerly
Reason in Practice).
AIMS AND APPROACH
This informal event provides an opportunity for teachers, researchers,
consultants and managers to:
o Share experiences of the issues, challenges and approaches taken in
enhancing the contribution of philosophy and philosophers to management
education
o Discover how others have worked through issues of common importance
o Learn about resources that have proved to be valuable in bringing a
philosophical dimension to management education
o Review outcome studies completed or in progress
o Consider follow up actions
CONTRIBUTIONS
We invite contributions in the form of brief paper presentations, poster
presentations, demonstrations and workshops.
Presentations should be supported with slides and/or handouts and last up to
20 minutes, with an additional 10 minutes allowed for discussion. Posters
should be displayed on approximately 4-6 sheets of A3 paper. Workshops and
demonstrations should last up to 75 minutes including discussion.
If there is sufficient interest, Philosophy of Management will arrange
publication of the conference materials in some form.
Topics to be addressed could include the following:
o Why do many in the field of management misperceive philosophy and
philosophising: as anti-practice, ‘negative’, irrelevant, etc?
o How can the misperceptions of philosophy and philosophising best be
corrected?
o How is philosophy being integrated into the management curriculum?
o What curriculum designs and teaching strategies involving philosophy have
proved successful with managers and student managers?
o How can philosophers contribute in assessing values and assumptions and
choosing goals and methods in management education and training?
o What resources have proved useful in bringing a philosophical component to
management education and training: texts, textbooks, film, video,
psychometric and other instruments, cases, etc?
o What philosophical methods have proved successful in helping managers
philosophise agers e.g. communities of enquiry, Socratic dialogues?
o Where can and should philosophy contribute to the management curriculum?
o Who should teach or facilitate the philosophical contributions?
This list is purely illustrative.
TIMETABLE
o Proposals with abstracts (250 words) - Due by Monday 20 October to Nigel
Laurie, Philosophy of Management, 74a Station Road East, Oxted, Surrey, RH8
0PG, UK or by email [log in to unmask]
o Feedback and acceptances - Notified by Friday 24 October
o Master copy of presentation materials for issue to participants - Due by
Friday 14 November. Word, RTF or PDF files if possible, to be sent to Sue
Pearce at The University of Gloucestershire Business School, Pallas Villa,
Park Campus, Cheltenham, Glos, GL50 2QF or email [log in to unmask]
o Workshop - Thursday 20 November
SEMINAR PROGRAMME
9.30 Registration and coffee
10.00 Welcome address
10.15 Session 1
10.45 Session 2
11.15 Session 3
11.45 Poster viewing/Discussion
12.00 Buffet lunch
1.00 Session 4 Workshop demonstration: taking a philosophical approach to a
management issue
2.15 Session 5
3.00 Tea/Coffee
3.15 Session 6
4.00 Plenary and panel discussion involving all speakers
4.30 Close
WORKSHOP CONVENORS
Edward Kingsley Trezise
University of Gloucestershire
The Business School
Broadlands Villa
The Park
Cheltenham
Glos. GL50 2QF UK
Email: [log in to unmask]
Tel: + 44 (0) 1242 543258
Fax: + 44 (0) 1242 543327
Nigel Laurie
Editor and Publisher of Philosophy of Management
Management Consultant and Chair of the Society for Philosophy in Practice
74a Station Road East
Oxted
Surrey RH8 0PG UK
Email: [log in to unmask]
Tel/Fax: +44 (0) 1883 715419
To discuss proposals or any aspect of the workshop please contact one of the
above.
REGISTRATION
The seminar/workshop fee is £50, or £25 for full-time students. This price
includes morning tea/coffee, lunch, afternoon tea/coffee and all papers.
To book your place at the seminar, please complete the booking form attached
to this email or visit http://online.glos.ac.uk/pom where the booking form
is available to be downloaded.
Travel/Accommodation
For information on travel to The University of Gloucestershire and overnight
accommodation, please visit
http://online.glos.ac.uk/pom
or contact Sue Pearce, Business Development Coordinator at the University of
Gloucestershire by telephone on + 44 (0) 1242 544077 or via email
[log in to unmask]
RATIONALE
Ever since Plato’s Socrates raised the question of how we should manage the
state philosophers have touched on issues of management, business and
organisation. Awareness, however, is now growing that philosophy can offer
much to the theory and practice of management education. While the early
business schools focused first on finance and later the social sciences, in
recent years there have been growing calls for management to be treated as a
humanity.
With management theorists and researchers struggling to find a ‘core
discipline’ for their field, philosophy offers more promise than many
candidates. Philosophical techniques and approaches can help clarify and
evaluate the aims and values of management education. Concepts commonly
treated by philosophers figure increasingly in management debates; power,
authority, rights, justice, virtues, citizenship, community, property,
value, knowledge, rationality, dialogue, responsibility, passion, and
emotion are just some of the most salient. In addition, managers find some
of their own core concepts problematical - such as manager, leader,
motivation, communication, system, organisation, measurement, control - and
the scope for philosophy to assist here is obvious. The different
philosophical traditions such as analytical philosophy, critical theory,
phenomenology and post-modern theory offer a choice of routes to tackling
problems managers face.
In addition, philosophical methods offer managers new ways of enhancing
personal and team capacities such as reflection, surfacing assumptions,
holistic thinking, analysis, critical and creative thinking,
decision-making, self-understanding and growth.
Finally philosophers throughout history have produced work that managers can
find relevant, accessible and stimulating if contextualised and presented
appropriately.
Current Practice
While Peter Senge has remarked, “the quality of our thinking affects
everything we do”, philosophy has too often stayed on the margins of
management education and practice. All too often ‘business ethics’ has
appeared in a modular ghetto while the management curriculum remains
unaffected by the contribution of philosophy - to its design or
implementation. Among many managers in some cultures, reflection and theory
are often treated as if they were hostile to effective practice.
It was not always so. In 1632, the precursor to the University of
Amsterdam - the Athenaeum Illustre - was founded to educate students in
Trade and Philosophy. Today, fresh approaches are evident. One leading
business school is under student pressure to raise the profile of corporate
responsibility in the curriculum. At the University of British Columbia the
award winning MBA Core programme is staffed by five faculty - including a
philosopher, Wayne Norman, alongside experts in accounting, marketing,
organisational behaviour, information technology and operations - working
together “in the same room, five days a week, for four months”.
(http://www.ethics.ubc.ca/people/norman/index.htm).
Copenhagen Business School has offered a BSc in Business Administration and
Philosophy since 1996. “The philosophical dimension trains students in
argumentation, in recognising general contexts, incorporating values, and in
understanding our time in a historical perspective - all qualities greatly
demanded in the knowledge-based society of the future.”
(http://www.cbs.dk/stud_pro/hafiluk.shtml)
More recently an MSc in Business Administration and Philosophy has been
launched at the Copenhagen Business School. It builds on the skills,
concepts and themes taught on the above programme, “specifically:
o the phenomenon of knowledge (truth, validity and applicability)
o the basis for actions in attitudes and values
o the rhetoric dimension of language (management language and aesthetic
communication)
In addition, it emphasises the importance of the above dimensions within and
in relation to business economics. The dynamics between the economic and
philosophical dimension are maintained, and the two perspectives
simultaneously integrated.” (http://www.cbs.dk/stud_pro/cmfiluk.shtml)
At the Free University of Amsterdam an MA in Philosophy of Organisation is
in plan, the latest in a series of initiatives bringing philosophical
thinking to management through the Prato Centre.
(http://www.ph.vu.nl/prato/eng/)
Alongside the journal Philosophy of Management (formerly Reason in Practice)
a philosophy of management textbook is now in preparation. Senior
executives at BP are exposed to philosophical ideas as part of their
development. And outside the academy, philosophical practitioners have for
many years employed philosophical methods with their clients, especially in
Australia, the Netherlands, Scandinavia and the United States.
© Copyright 2003
_____________________________________________________________________
Nigel Laurie
Editor and Publisher
Philosophy of Management (formerly Reason in Practice)
74a Station Road East
Oxted
Surrey RH8 0PG
UK
Tel/fax +44 (0)1883 715419
Visit our website at www.managementphilosophers.com
Join the ManagementPhilosophers discussion list
Email: [log in to unmask]
with the following message:
SUBSCRIBE MANAGEMENTPHILOSOPHERS
and leave the subject line blank.
Nigel Laurie
Editor and Publisher
Philosophy of Management (formerly Reason in Practice)
74a Station Road East
Oxted
Surrey RH8 0PG
UK
Tel/fax +44 (0)1883 715419
Visit our website at www.managementphilosophers.com
Join the ManagementPhilosophers discussion list
Email: [log in to unmask]
with the following message:
SUBSCRIBE MANAGEMENTPHILOSOPHERS
and leave the subject line blank.
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