The Dent in the Floor: Ecological Knowing in the Skilful Performance of Work

Michael J. R. Butler and Ann L. Cunliffe

Journal of Management Studies, 2024, vol. 61, issue 5, 1766-1791

Abstract: This paper draws on a phenomenological perspective to explore how people develop and enact skill in work at through ecological knowing – a sensuous form of knowing in one's being embedded in and across place and time. In doing so, we abductively interweave the work of Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa and British anthropologist Tim Ingold with an empirical study of two industrial museums and two contemporary illustrations of choral conducting and motion capture performance. Our contribution is threefold: first, we expand theories of knowledge and corporeality by theorizing ecological knowing as encompassing emplaced wisdom and embodied skill – thus elevating embedded and embodied human agency in contrast to studies that focus on the body, skill, and knowledge as objects. Secondly, we present an alternative way of understanding how expertise develops and is enacted in work activities. Finally, we offer methodological resources, currently underutilized in management studies, for studying this sensorial form of knowing in a way that is consistent with its underlying phenomenological commitments.

Date: 2024
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