Drawing on contemporary debates and responding to an analytic lacuna in organization and management studies and calls from organizational practice, Phenomenology of the Embodied Organization explores the fundamental and integral role of the body and embodiment in organizational life-worlds.

The 17 original essays of this volume explore the relevance of the phenomenological approach to contemporary debates concerning the role of embodiment in our cognitive, emotional and practical life. The papers demonstrate the theoretical vitality and critical potential of the phenomenological tradition both through critically engagement with other disciplines (medical anthropology, psychoanalysis, psychiatry, the cognitive sciences) and through the articulation of novel interpretations of classical works in the tradition, in particular the works of Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jean-Paul Sartre. The concrete phenomena analyzed in this book include: chronic pain, anorexia, melancholia and depression.

Early in the first volume of his Ideen zu einer reinen Phiinomeno logie und phiinomenologischen Philosophie, Edmund Husserl stated concisely the significance and scope of the problem with which this present study is concerned. When we reflect on how it is that consciousness, which is itself absolute in relation to the world, can yet take on the character of transcendence, how it can become mundanized, We see straightaway that it can do that only by means of a certain participation in transcendence in the first, originary sense, which is manifestly the transcendence of material Nature. Only by means of the experiential relation to the animate organism does consciousness become really human and animal (tierischen), and only thereby does it achieve a place in the space and in the time of Nature. l Consciousness can become "worldly" only by being embodied within the world as part of it. In so far as the world is material Nature, consciousness must partake of the transcendence of material Nature. That is to say, its transcendence is manifestly an embodiment in a material, corporeal body. Consciousness, thus, takes on the characteristic of being "here and now" (ecceity) by means of experiential (or, more accurately, its intentive) relation to that corporeal being which embodies it. Accordingly, that there is a world for consciousness is a conse quence in the first instance of its embodiment by 2 that corporeal body which is for it its own animate organism.

To say that we are embodied subjects is to affirm that we are both extended and conscious: both a part of the material world and a place where that world comes to presence. The ambiguity inherent in our being both can be put in terms of a double "being in." Thus, while it is true that the world is in consciousness taken as a place of appearing, it is equally true that, taken as embodied, consciousness is in the world. How can our selfhood support both descriptions? Starting with Husserl's late manuscripts on birth and death, James Mensch traces out the effects of this paradox on phenomenology. What does it mean to consider the self as determined by its embodiment? How does this affect our social and political relations, including those marked by violence? How does our embodiment affect our sense of transcendence, including that of the divine? In the course of these inquiries, such questions are shown to transform the very sense of phenomenology.

Phenomenological approaches to Management and Organization Studies offer a means to problematize 'appearances' in the field, allowing us to 'see' things in a different light and uncover what is hidden from our consideration by our theoretical or ideological assumptions. This handbook aims at showing the unexpected richness and diversity of phenomenological and post-phenomenological thinkers such as Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Arendt, or Scheler, as well as others belonging to the French new phenomenology (Marion, Henry) or the German neo-phenomenology (Schmitz). It also details the contributions of thinkers like Bachelard, Deleuze, or Foucault whose inscription and departures from phenomenology are illuminated. In this process, phenomenologies are historically, critically, and openly discussed by leading scholars while highlighting the interweaving between phenomenologies and other streams such as process studies or critical perspectives. Beyond a theoretical description, the chapters also show how phenomenologies and post-phenomenologies can help management and organization scholars and students to understand a huge variety of contemporary phenomena such as distributed collective activity, artificial intelligence, digitalization of organizational processes, remote work, financial markets and financial instruments, entrepreneurial events, cinematographic organizing of social media, issues of place and emplacement, commons and communalization processes and questions of embodiment and disembodiment at work.

Patricia Benner′s philosophical introduction to phenomenology develops the reader′s understanding of the strategies and processes involved in this approach to human science. Contributors to the volume discuss the constitutive relationships between theory and practice, consider the possibility of a science of caring from a feminist perspective, introduce interpretive phenomenology for studying natural groups such as families, and suggest a ground for developing nursing ethics that is true to the caring and healing practices of nurses. Following a thorough and engaging exposition of the field′s theoretical and philosophical foundations, the work shifts focus to interpretive studies currently being undertaken within the scholarly community; the research tradition is then applied and reexamined as it relates to specific lines of inquiry. Interpretive Phenomenology presents an inclusive and well-integrated discussion of the many correlative topics within this subject area. Its relevance and accessibility will make this book an invaluable resource for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, as well as professional researchers in nursing and other health sciences. "The authors share a deep regard for the primacy of practice and caring. This is not the ethereal caring of many current theorists. . . . Interpretive Phenomenology presents an inclusive and well-integrated discussion of the author′s philosophical and practical approach, looking especially at the relationship between theory and practice." --Journal of Christian Nursing