Helping Business Schools Engage with Real Problems: The Contribution of Critical Realism and Systems Thinking

The world faces major problems, not least climate change and the financial crisis, and business schools have been criticised for their failure to help address these issues and, in the case of the financial meltdown, for being causally implicated in it. In this paper we begin by describing the extent of what has been called the rigour/relevance debate. We then diagnose the nature of the problem in terms of historical, structural and contextual mechanisms that initiated and now sustain an inability of business schools to engage with real-world issues. We then propose a combination of measures, which mutually reinforce each other, that are necessary to break into this vicious circle – critical realism as an underpinning philosophy that supports and embodies the next points; holism and transdisciplinarity; multimethodology (mixed-methods research); and a critical and ethical-committed stance. OR and management science have much to contribute in terms of both powerful analytical methods and problem structuring methods

When fiction trumps truth : what ‘post-truth’ and ‘alternative facts’ mean for management studies

In this essay, we explore the notions of ‘post-truth’ and ‘alternative facts’ for management studies. Adopting a pragmatist perspective, we argue that there is no intrinsically accurate language in terms of which to refer to reality. Language, rather, is a tool that enables agents to grab hold of causal forces and intervene in the world. ‘Alternative facts’ can be created by multimodal communication to highlight different aspects of the world for the purpose of political mobilization and legitimacy. ‘Post-truth’ politics reveals the fragmentation of the language game in which mainstream politics has been hitherto conducted. Using the communicative acts of businessman-turned-politician President Trump and his aides, as a prompt, we explore the implications that ‘alternative facts’ and ‘post-truth’ have for today’s management scholarship. We argue that management scholars should unpack how managers navigate strategic action and communication, and how the creation of alternative realities is accomplished in conditions of informational abundance and multimodal communication

The epistemic predicament of a pseudoscience: social constructivism confronts Freudian psychoanalysis

Social constructivist approaches to science have often been dismissed as inaccurate accounts of scientific knowledge. In this paper, we take the claims of robust social constructivism seriously and attempt to find a theory which does instantiate the epistemic predicament as described by SC. We argue that Freudian psychoanalysis, in virtue of some of its well known epistemic complications and conceptual confusions, provides a perfect illustration of what SC claims is actually going on in science. In other words, the features SC mistakenly ascribes to science in general correctly characterize the epistemic status of Freudian psychoanalysis. This sheds some light on the internal disputes in the field of psychoanalysis, on the sociology of psychoanalytic movement, and on the “war” that has been waged over Freud’s legacy with his critics. In addition, our analysis offers an indirect and independent argument against SC as an account of bona fide science, by illustrating what science would look like if it were to function as SC claims it does

Realism and Antirealism

Our best social scientific theories try to tell us something about the social world. But is talk of a “social world” a metaphor that we ought not take too seriously? In particular, do the denizens of the social world—cultural values like the Protestant work ethic, firms like ExxonMobil, norms like standards of dress and behavior, institutions like the legal system, teams like FC Barcelona, conventions like marriages—exist? The question is not merely academic. Social scientists use these different social entities to explain social phenomena such as the rise of capitalism, the decline in oil prices, or the effect of unions on the sports labor market. But how could these explanations possibly work if social entities don’t exist

Seeing the potentialities at the intersection: A reflection on performativity and processuality mindsets

© 2019 M@n@gement. In this paper, we propose to approach performativity and processuality as mindsets. We suggest that researchers interested by or pursuing performative studies should recognize more explicitly the inherent processuality of performativity. After offering broad overviews on performativity and process thinking, we highlight that both mindsets rest on a similar view of reality as processual, and both share a strong commitment to qualitative empirical work. In spite of the differences that exist between the two mindsets-such as their treatment of agency, the place of socio-materiality and their approach to continuity and change-we contend that acknowledging and engaging more directly with processuality benefits performative studies, as it helps these studies to deal with some of the challenges they often face. In doing so, performative studies could refine their analyses of managerial and organizational phenomena and would also increase their contribution to our field

Reflections on the ontology of money

The suggestions outlined here include the following. Money is a bundle of institutionally sustained causal powers. Money is an institutional universal instantiated in generic currencies and particular money tokens. John Searle's account of institutional facts is not helpful for understanding the nature of money as an institution (while it may help to illuminate aspects of the nature of currencies and money particulars). The money universal is not a social convention in David Lewis's sense (while currencies and money particulars are characterized by high degrees of conventionality). The existence of the money universal is dependent on a larger institutional structure and cannot be understood in terms of collective belief or acceptance or agreement separately focusing on money. These claims have important implications for realism about money.Peer reviewe

Reflexivity of Anticipations in Economics and Political Economy

When the social reality is changing, we need to know also the following: What exactly is changing and why? To what extent is reflexivity involved in changes that take part in making the future uncertain and open? For instance, an announced policy change can become a self-altering prediction (or involve such a prediction), which is subject to contradictory and complementary determination, resulting either in net self-fulfilling or self-denying tendency. I approach these questions also by analyzing two significant real-world historical examples, the Euro crisis and global financial crises. Both examples involve reflexive predictions, reflexive feedback loops, and performativity. What I find particularly striking is how the capitalist market economy – with all the historical shifts and changes in its institutions, regulations, and political structures – has managed to retain at least some of its recurrent economic patterns. Further, I examine the general methodological problem of the absence of decisive tests between theories. This has consequences: normative and ideological positions evolve easily and tend to fortify themselves rapidly; and actors can modify, perhaps inadvertently, their public anticipations in line with their interests or normative aims. In the final section, I argue that the main aim of social sciences is not to predict accurately but to bring about desirable outcomes, explaining how to move from strategic actions and reflexive ideologies to emancipation.Peer reviewe

Nicolas Brisset, economics and performativity: exploring limits, theories and case

The concept of performativity, which is broadly defined as the power of language to effect change in the world (Cavanaugh, 2015), has received wide attention from social scientists. More than 30 years after Judith Butler (1990) foresaw the significance of the concept, originally developed by John Austin, in her theory of gender performativity, discussions are ongoing of whether the performativity approach is useful for analyzing social phenomena (for a typical example, see Gond et al., 2016)...

Naturalizing institutions: Evolutionary principles and application on the case of money

In recent extensions of the Darwinian paradigm into economics, the replicator-interactor duality looms large. I propose a strictly naturalistic approach to this duality in the context of the theory of institutions, which means that its use is seen as being always and necessarily dependent on identifying a physical realization. I introduce a general framework for the analysis of institutions, which synthesizes Searle's and Aoki's theories, especially with regard to the role of public representations (signs) in the coordination of actions, and the function of cognitive processes that underly rule-following as a behavioral disposition. This allows to conceive institutions as causal circuits that connect the population-level dynamics of interactions with cognitive phenomena on the individual level. Those cognitive phenomena ultimately root in neuronal structures. So, I draw on a critical restatement of the concept of the meme by Aunger to propose a new conceptualization of the replicator in the context of institutions, namely, the replicator is a causal conjunction between signs and neuronal structures which undergirds the dispositions that generate rule-following actions. Signs, in turn, are outcomes of population-level interactions. I apply this framework on the case of money, analyzing the emotions that go along with the use of money, and presenting a stylized account of the emergence of money in terms of the naturalized Searle-Aoki model. In this view, money is a neuronally anchored metaphor for emotions relating with social exchange and reciprocity. Money as a meme is physically realized in a replicator which is a causal conjunction of money artefacts and money emotions. --Generalized Darwinism,institutions,replicator/interactor,Searle,Aoki,naturalism,memes,emotions,money