Learning and Knowing in Practice-based Studies

Why is it that so many aspects of organizations are now spoken of as practices? How can organizations be studied within a practice-based approach? How can workable knowledge about them be produced? The authors answer these questions theoretically and through empirical examples. They provide an overview on practice-based studies illustrating their main topics, research methods, and the theoretical reflections that support a non-rationalist and non-cognitivist view of organizations. The book addresses the principal features of practice-based theorizing and its key concepts, then concludes with methodological reflections on the practice-based approach.

Written for a university public already in possession of basic notions in organizational studies and intending to conduct analysis of organizing as a social practice, it will also prove essential for master and PhD students as well as organizational scholars designing research within Practice-Based Studies. Including a lively and wide-ranging debate conducted at international level, the book will be of interest to practitioners curious about a view of work as a practical activity that develops within ecology of social, economic and material relationships.

Contents:
Introduction
Part I: Practice-based Theorizing
1. Practice-Based Theorizing on Learning and Knowing in Organizations: An Introduction'
2. Knowing in Practice: Aesthetic Understanding and Tacit Knowledge
3. Knowing as Desiring. Mythic Knowledge and the Knowledge Journey in Communities of Practitioners
4. Situated Knowledge and Situated Action: What do Practice-Based Studies Promise?
5. Through the Practice Lens: Where Is the Bandwagon of Practice-Based Studies Heading?
Part II: Key Concepts
6. Sensible Knowledge and Practice-Based Learning
7. Knowing in a System of Fragmented Knowledge
8. Learning in a Constellation of Interconnected Practices: Canon or Dissonance?
9. Aesthetics in the Study of Organizational Life
10. The Passion for Knowing
11. Practice? It's a Matter of Taste!
Part III: Methodological Insights for a Practice-based Approach
12. When Will He Say: 'Today the Plates are Soft'?: Management of Ambiguity and Situated Decision-Making
13. Do You Do Beautiful Things?: Aesthetics and Art in Qualitative Methods of Organization Studies
14. Organizational Artifacts and the Aesthetic Approach
15. The Critical Power of the Practice Lens