‘Inside the Moment of Managing’: Wittgenstein and the Everyday Dynamics of Our Expressive-Responsive Activities

Abstract

It is easy to ignore small, concrete, and idiosyncratic details as unimportant in our inquiries into management processes. Indeed, at the moment, we feel that if we are to improve them and to avoid mistakes, then we must still seek a better understanding of them in the same way that we seek a better understanding of all else in the world around us in the proposing of theories of the supposed ‘hidden’ causes responsible for the outcomes of the management process, and in seeking and discussing evidence in favor of (and against) such explanatory theories. In other words, we adopt the same mode of inquiry toward other people (and other living things) as toward inert, physical objects. Wittgenstein’s philosophy, however, is oriented toward showing us that if we fail to distinguish between the relations we can have with living beings as compared to those with dead things, then we can mislead ourselves in ways that can have disastrous consequences for us. With respect to the process of managing, instead of achieving an easy familiarity with it, our current methods of inquiry can lead us to achieve only the power of manipulation and control. Rather than our understanding regularities and repetitions, Wittgenstein’s methods can help us understand how we can arrive at unique understandings of unique persons and events - the kind of understandings that enable us to ‘go on’ in a practical situation.