How do managers and leaders know what to do when they are caught off guard or taken by surprise? How do they create when they do not know what to do next? These are challenges of an organizational world of existential uncertainty; one where the future does not conform to but challenges our expectations and assumptions. Steven Segal demonstrates that creating in a world of existential uncertainty requires a new understanding of the relationship between management inquiry and the lived experience of organizing. Using existential philosophy he demonstrates how moods of concern serve as a framework to integrate management theory and practice, thereby providing a framework for managers, management educators, and consultants to share a common framework. In a globalized free market characterized by unexpected disruptions management inquiry is not a science conducted from an objective distance. The book advocates an existentially reflexive and participant observer perspective to management inquiry. By participating in managing, a felt sense of being a manager develops. Through existential observation new ways of organizing are made possible. It is inquiry from within rather than from an objective distance. Such inquiry opens new doors and opportunities. Existential hermeneutic phenomenology and the free market phenomenon of creative destruction are linked to each other. The former provides a framework to work through the breakdown in conventions of organizing that occur in creative destruction.

How do managers and leaders know what to do when they are caught off guard or taken by surprise? How do they create when they do not know what to do next? These are challenges of an organizational world of existential uncertainty; one where the future does not conform to but challenges our expectations and assumptions. Steven Segal demonstrates that creating in a world of existential uncertainty requires a new understanding of the relationship between management inquiry and the lived experience of organizing. Using existential philosophy he demonstrates how moods of concern serve as a framework to integrate management theory and practice, thereby providing a framework for managers, management educators, and consultants to share a common framework. In a globalized free market characterized by unexpected disruptions management inquiry is not a science conducted from an objective distance. The book advocates an existentially reflexive and participant observer perspective to management inquiry. By participating in managing, a felt sense of being a manager develops. Through existential observation new ways of organizing are made possible. It is inquiry from within rather than from an objective distance. Such inquiry opens new doors and opportunities. Existential hermeneutic phenomenology and the free market phenomenon of creative destruction are linked to each other. The former provides a framework to work through the breakdown in conventions of organizing that occur in creative destruction.

Coming Face to Face with your own practice is an emerging approach to management and professional research that has a significant impact on management practice. It closes the gap between theory and practice. An existential form of research means that the researcher carefully attends to their experience of researching and managing. This book demonstrates that by bringing an existential sensibility to research, unexpected possibilities for research and for professionality, are revealed. Each chapter shows authors grappling with the constraints of a system, navigating issues of humanness, questioning themselves, unfolding their understanding of appropriate ethics and finally, elucidating a depth of response that in itself reveals a way forward. In Face to Face with Practice, authors demonstrate how they drew on moments of estrangement from their practices. They found that when such moments are respected and carefully examined, a kind of clarification and at the same time often deep disillusionment with the taken-for-granted conventions of their practice, emerge. Through exploring these conventional ways of operating, authors develop new and original accounts of what it means to manage better in their particular field of practice. Such an approach is called hermeneutic existential phenomenology, affectionately known as HEP. Face to Face is about making a difference: a difference to the ways that management is practiced; a difference to the experience of the manager; and actually a difference towards a more humane and thoughtful approach to managing our society today.

Coming Face to Face with your own practice is an emerging approach to management and professional research that has a significant impact on management practice. It closes the gap between theory and practice. An existential form of research means that the researcher carefully attends to their experience of researching and managing. This book demonstrates that by bringing an existential sensibility to research, unexpected possibilities for research and for professionality, are revealed. Each chapter shows authors grappling with the constraints of a system, navigating issues of humanness, questioning themselves, unfolding their understanding of appropriate ethics and finally, elucidating a depth of response that in itself reveals a way forward. In Face to Face with Practice, authors demonstrate how they drew on moments of estrangement from their practices. They found that when such moments are respected and carefully examined, a kind of clarification and at the same time often deep disillusionment with the taken-for-granted conventions of their practice, emerge. Through exploring these conventional ways of operating, authors develop new and original accounts of what it means to manage better in their particular field of practice. Such an approach is called hermeneutic existential phenomenology, affectionately known as HEP. Face to Face is about making a difference: a difference to the ways that management is practiced; a difference to the experience of the manager; and actually a difference towards a more humane and thoughtful approach to managing our society today.