Irrespective of whether one thinks of philosophy explicitly, each organizational researcher is a philosopher. A philosophical position is predicated on a variety of approaches relating to ontology, epistemology, methodology, ethics, and political positions. Depending on where one stands with regard to these philosophical building blocks, their orientation may be characterized as positivist, realist, critical-realist, and constructivist, with pragmatist and political considerations weighing in as well. Also, management theories all inhabit the same spectrum of philosophical positions that enrich them and add to their relevance to the world of firms and organizations. This book provides a broad-based commentary on the terrain of philosophy as it pertains to management studies, especially for the relatively unfamiliar organizational theorist. This book serves as a succinct overview of the field of management philosophy as well as a roadmap for those readers who wish to explore the terrain further. The book argues that all knowledge inquiry invokes philosophy and philosophical thinking, and that the artificial separation between philosophy and social science is fallacious. Just as philosophy is everywhere, so is power, and for better or worse they go hand in hand. Hence, philosophical positions are political positions. The authors do not shy from addressing the politics of their own research practice or the subjects of their inquiry. Philosophy and Management Studies targets a new generation of management researchers, whose interest in philosophy vastly exceeds their resources to engage with it, partly because of their unfamiliarity with its often mystifying and outsider-unfriendly conventions. It seeks to bridge the chasm between interest in philosophy in organizational studies and knowledge about it. It is not for the trained philosopher or the expert, but for a relative newcomer.

Irrespective of whether one thinks of philosophy explicitly, each organizational researcher is a philosopher. A philosophical position is predicated on a variety of approaches relating to ontology, epistemology, methodology, ethics, and political positions. Depending on where one stands with regard to these philosophical building blocks, their orientation may be characterized as positivist, realist, critical-realist, and constructivist, with pragmatist and political considerations weighing in as well. Also, management theories all inhabit the same spectrum of philosophical positions that enrich them and add to their relevance to the world of firms and organizations. This book provides a broad-based commentary on the terrain of philosophy as it pertains to management studies, especially for the relatively unfamiliar organizational theorist. This book serves as a succinct overview of the field of management philosophy as well as a roadmap for those readers who wish to explore the terrain further. The book argues that all knowledge inquiry invokes philosophy and philosophical thinking, and that the artificial separation between philosophy and social science is fallacious. Just as philosophy is everywhere, so is power, and for better or worse they go hand in hand. Hence, philosophical positions are political positions. The authors do not shy from addressing the politics of their own research practice or the subjects of their inquiry. Philosophy and Management Studies targets a new generation of management researchers, whose interest in philosophy vastly exceeds their resources to engage with it, partly because of their unfamiliarity with its often mystifying and outsider-unfriendly conventions. It seeks to bridge the chasm between interest in philosophy in organizational studies and knowledge about it. It is not for the trained philosopher or the expert, but for a relative newcomer.

The Routledge Companion to Philosophy in Organization Studies provides a wide-ranging overview of the significance of philosophy in organizations. The volume brings together a veritable "who's-who" of scholars that are acclaimed international experts in their specialist subject within organizational studies and philosophy. The contributions to this collection are grouped into three distinct sections: Foundations - exploring philosophical building blocks with which organizational researchers need to become familiar. Theories - representing some of the dominant traditions in organizational studies, and how they are dealt with philosophically. Topics - examining the issues, themes and topics relevant to understanding how philosophy infuses organization studies. Primarily aimed at students and academics associated with business schools and organizational research, The Routledge Companion to Philosophy in Organization Studies is a valuable reference source for anyone engaged in this field.

The Routledge Companion to Philosophy in Organization Studies provides a wide-ranging overview of the significance of philosophy in organizations. The volume brings together a veritable "who's-who" of scholars that are acclaimed international experts in their specialist subject within organizational studies and philosophy. The contributions to this collection are grouped into three distinct sections: Foundations - exploring philosophical building blocks with which organizational researchers need to become familiar. Theories - representing some of the dominant traditions in organizational studies, and how they are dealt with philosophically. Topics - examining the issues, themes and topics relevant to understanding how philosophy infuses organization studies. Primarily aimed at students and academics associated with business schools and organizational research, The Routledge Companion to Philosophy in Organization Studies is a valuable reference source for anyone engaged in this field.

Peter Fisher's Odyssey: Marine Mammal Warfare This is a story of marine mammal warfare involving the development and deployment of dolphins and whales as open ocean weaponry platforms created and utilized by the CIA for separate, but interrelated, missions against China, Cuba, and Russia. These marine mammal platforms are capable of delivering weapons of mass destruction into any of the world's harbors or open ocean locales. The story's significance lies in its scientific secrecy and political intrigue relative to the self-proclaimed omnipotence of those who control the development and operational use of such weaponry. The CIA's dolphin and whale weaponry bears a significant relationship to their development and deployment of drones; they are the drone's underwater counterpart. Peter's story transports its reader into the unique underwater Atlantis of dolphins and whales (70% of the earth's surface) as the opposing marine mammal weapon systems of the CIA and the Chinese attempt to resolve political differences and confusions by killing one another. The story unfurls around the CIA's determination that the Chinese are developing Pilot Whales for use in anti-submarine warfare, and to also make the technology available (capable of delivering weapons of mass destruction) to Islamic extremists so they, and not China, will become America's prime adversary. This would leave China to be the mediator, benefactor, and the moving force in reconciling the world's priorities and their assumption of world leadership. The CIA's strategy is to stop the Chinese development of marine mammal weaponry dead in its tracks. This causes Hamilton (an Assistant Director of the CIA) to send a CIA armada of biological weaponry to confront and battle the Chinese systems in the Yellow Sea of China. The CIA's development of its marine mammal weaponry, the Operant conditioning (training) of their animals, and the technical capacities implicit to their remote control over long open ocean transits, has implications that go beyond the obvious. The capacities of the CIA's animals are compared to the achievements of the Pavlovian conditioning of the Chinese whales. Therefore, the battle that takes place in the primordial womb of Mother Ocean between the American and Chinese marine mammal systems becomes a battle to the death between opposing theories of behavior and political philosophy. The significance of this showdown lies in which theory prevails and why? Peter Fisher's Odyssey is presented as a carefully drawn parallel to Melville's Moby Dick. Peter, like Ishmael, the only survivor to step forth from the whaling ship Pequod, also becomes a lone survivor. However, Peter, unlike Ishmael, is not just a passive observer and crewmember of the Pequod, but of the marine mammal control vessel, Rachel, and he, rather than being a passive observer, is Ahab's (the CIA's) unwitting alter ego. The story is symbolic of the madness of Ahab, while the implicit evilness of the Great White Whale becomes the inherent failure of civilization and theology. Peter's story, as told, is fiction, but the use and development of such systems by the CIA is real and may have even greater humanistic, scientific, and philosophic significance, for "truth is invariably stranger than fiction." Certainly, the reader's understanding of the Ocean People (dolphins and whales), will, by the advent of Hamilton's Grand Armada, have obtained an appreciation of the biological and scientific significance of these extraordinary animals - an understanding that will both surprise and challenge key beliefs, following a read which will have been as fascinating as it is politically and psychologically enlightening.