What is Organization?

Författare

Sverre Spoelstra

Summary, in English

This book is about the relation between philosophy and organization in so far as it concerns organization studies. The book, then, revolves round the interplay between philosophy, organization and organization studies. The purpose is both to ask philosophically the question ‘What is organization?’ and to question the importance of this kind of philosophical questioning for the field of organization studies. The central argument of the book is that philosophy performs two radically different roles in organization studies, each based upon a different conception of philosophy. The first role corresponds to the under-labourer conception of philosophy in which philosophy is of value because it performs functions for organization studies: philosophy offers different paradigms, methods or frameworks in which one can perform organizational research. The second, contrasting, conception of philosophy is philosophy as the creation of concepts. In this conception, which is presented through a reading of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, philosophy has a positive dimension which is lost when it is understood in terms of its usefulness for the social sciences. Philosophy of organization, in this sense, means asking the question ‘What is organization?’ philosophically, i.e. by creating concepts of organization. It is this second conception of philosophy that is developed in the book; by asking what it is (part I) and by exploring philosophy of organization through readings of Spinoza, Robert Cooper and Michel Foucault (part II). Taken together, the two parts argue for a more important role of philosophy of organization in organization studies, as distinguished from a philosophy for organization studies.

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