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Vita Contemplativa

Mundane Poetics: Searching for Wisdom in Organization Studies

University of Michigan, USA karlw{at}umich.edu

The craft of idea generation is explored autobiographically, using as the core principle the theme that ideas generate their own contexts for development. Ideas generate their own contexts by means of conceptual affinities, as is illustrated by the author’s movement from ideas about unintended consequences to ideas about cognitive dissonance, enacted environments, organizational failures, and wisdom. Ideas also generate their own context by means of the assumptions they entail, in the author’s case, these entailments being assumptions of continuity, evolution, ambivalence, complexity, and levels of analysis. When activated, these diverse resources may generate portraits of human organizing that have poetic overtones, but that resemblance simply mirrors the fact that people do poetry in their everyday living.

Key Words: idea generation • assumptions about organizing • organizational process • breakdowns

Organization Studies, Vol. 25, No. 4, 653-668 (2004)
DOI: 10.1177/0170840604042408


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