Hugo Letiche
Biographic Data
| ID | 104125 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Hugo Letiche |
| GIVEN NAMES | Hugo |
| FAMILY NAME | Letiche |
| SIGNATURE | LETICHE H |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Humanistic Studies |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5866-8826 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 41 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 18 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 31 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 10 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1991 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
The fashioning of the researcher
This essay explores the process of becoming or fashioning the researcher. It focuses on the becoming and being of the ‘self-as-researcher’. It will be posited that such a ‘self’ is created interactively and is thus inherently social. In particular, the researcher is fashioned by the relatedness of interacting with the researched. However, the interactive social processes of becoming a researcher are rarely investigated or made explicit. Researche…
Black being and us: Confronting Anti-Blackness
This article examines how Blackness operates as a structural negation in Management and Organization Studies (MOS), rendering Africans invisible and unintelligible within its theoretical frameworks. Drawing on Afropessimist theory and empirical work done in Kenya, we argue that the invisibility is not accidental but inherent to MOS as a field. Through an analysis of both theoretical literature and the authors’ encounters in Mwingi, Kenya, we expl…
NGO ‘Screen-Being’ and Stakeholder Engagement: A ‘Wicked Problem’
Ample survey research and content analysis has established that NGO internet presence is qualitatively weak and characterized by the dominance of asymmetrical communication. We argue that the emergent communicative and social paradigm of on-line interaction forms what could be defined as a wicked problem. NGOs, seen as a ‘sender’ of information, may well face a crisis of accountability determined by the very nature of the media; whereas the NGOs’…
T(w)alking responsibility: A case of CSR performativity during the Covid‐19 pandemic
This paper centers on a case study of CSR performativity during the COVID‐19 pandemic. In the extant CSR literature, CSR performativity has focused on “walking the talk” and/or “talking the walk,” wherein narrative and action around CSR are typically treated as two different things with their relationships questioned. We focus on what has been called “t(w)alking” wherein speech is understood to be performative and wherein speech acts and CSR are …
Researching culture and organization; what possibilities
FNEGE 4, ABS 2
Liminality Affect and Flesh
Liminality is an anthropological concept that has been influential in contemporary social studies. This article is written from an organisation culture and studies perspective wherein liminality has been seen: (i) as something that must be controlled, (ii) as a utopian call to creativity, and (iii) as a dystopian entrapment. Liminality has to do with whether the study of practice has been excessively cognitive whereby the human is reduced to conc…
Bernard Stiegler and the necessity of education is the hammer broken and so what
There has been an excellent series of formative articles centring on Bernard Stiegler (1952-2020) as an inspiration to pedagogical thought; this is a summative article written from the perspective of after his death. Stiegler argued that education is ontologically crucial to human development, wherein technics or the ‘not-experienced-condition(s)-necessary-for-experience’ are crucial to humanity’s ability to create its own existence. Technics mak…
Introductory chapter to Part II –Magic being re-understood
This chapter has two goals: first, it provides an overview of ‘magic’ as a research theme, primarily in anthropology. Second, it introduces radical perspectivism as the most promising contemporary approach to the study of in magic. The chapter begins with a brief overview of the classical anthropological approaches to magic: Taylor, Frazer, Mauss, Malinowski, Evans-Pritchard pass the review. Is magic merely the primitive’s flawed effort at cognit…
The Magic of Organization
Exploring magic as a creative necessity in contemporary business, this book clarifies the differences between magic as an organizational resource and magic as fakery, pretence and manipulation. Using this lens, it highlights insights into the relationship between anthropology and business, and organizational studies.Ours is an economy dependent on magic; success depends on innovation and creativity producing unexpected, unpredictable and amazing …
Simondon: Investigating the Pre-Organizational
Gilbert Simondon (1924-1989) was a radical process thinker; forms of relatedness and not objects were his focus. This is all the more remarkable as he was not a vitalist prioritizing Gaia or autopoesis. He based his thought on analyses of technology/technics and communication/cybernetics, and in both cases rejected the perspective of the machine or message as in itself objectifiable. Life objects, machines and societies, according to Simondon, in…
Belief, Parrhesia and Practice
When the workshop that became this book1 was first proposed, it was nicknamed ‘organization and belief’, with the assumption that trust, belief and conviction were necessary for organization to be able to exist, persist and/or prevail. The authors, I think, ended up focusing on the convictions that do or do not underpin how self relates to other, and therein what this means for self. As the book has developed, it has become focused on how belief …
Philosophy as Activity
In this chapter, we describe, explain and reflect on doing philosophy as a dialogic practice. Ostensive definition or doing what one talks about will play a major role. We explore the ‘philosophical exercises’ as a deeply optimistic voice about (organizational) knowing and awareness. Leadership here entails directly addressing human problems and dilemmas. Not avoidance but exploration; not senseless cliché but valuable advice; not alienation but …
Belief and Organization
Research ethics: Dance, presence, performance and performativity
Embracing via Levinas the face as the origin of ethics, I explore here the research ethics of openness. If research is responsive, it will have to face up to the other. Face – as the presence of personal identity, singularity and self – is my theme. Research that sees and acknowledges or ignores and denies the face of the other is at issue. The turn in research to performance tries to make face more visible – not just researched/researchers’ word…
Coherence in the Midst of Complexity
A discussion on the social complexity approach, where dialogue and stories allow for the degrees of freedom needed for the opportunities of emergence to take root. The authors focus on the experience
The marriage of story and metaphor
Stories and metaphors are currently widely discussed by scholars of organizations. This is due in part to the increased interest in organizational discourse and the linguistic turn in organization
Live metaphor: Hardiness and postcards
Live metaphor embraces living thought, developing consciousness and emergent awareness. Mundane literalness achieves none of these. We have applied Ricoeur's theory of ‘live metaphor’ (P. Ricoeur. 1975. La Métaphore vive. Paris: Seuil (Translated 1978 as: The rule of metaphor. Toronto: University of Toronto Press; London: Routledge)) to story-telling research in an effort to reveal the continuum between work-place stories and metaphors. The story…
The marriage of story and metaphor: A special issue of Culture and Organization to be published in 2012
Stories and metaphors are currently widely discussed by scholars of organizations. This is due, in part, to the increased interest in organizational discourse and the linguistic turn in organizatio
Reflexivity and affectivity
The goal of this paper is to explore the reflexivity of the writer in the writing of organizational studies. The self‐reflexive move that tries to account for and/or to understand researcher reflexivity questions the epistemological and ethical prerequisites to the text. Malcolm Ashmore’s (1989 Ashmore, M. 1989. The reflexivity thesis: Wrighting the sociology of scientific knowledge, London: University of Chicago Press. [Google Scholar]) explorat…
The man in the black hat
A century after the American Frontier was closed, the cowboy remains an iconic figure. A sturdy individualism, a steely disregard for convention and the bravery to do what’s gotta be done: these are powerful tropes that seemingly define a particular type of heroism. One that seems ageless despite the disappearance of the border environment in which the fictive cowboy operated. Our aim in this paper is to explore the mythology of the cowboy as dep…
Bodily Chiasms
The theory of the body I want to explore here, assumes that researcher and researched are part of the same flesh of the world and can be understood in radical conjunction and not in duality. An interview is examined, first from the lifeworld (nursing) research paradigm and thereafter on the hand of Merleau-Ponty's concept of the reversibility of touching and being touched, wherein 'subject' (who touches) and 'object' (who is touched) are radicall…
Jobs that matter: Butler's “performativity” in the Dutch police force
Purpose The purpose of this research is to examine the use that critical philosophical concepts can have within management studies. Design/methodology/approach The paper introduces the notion “performativity” from the American philosopher Judith Butler and shows its fertility for organisation theory. It applies the notion to a case of the introduction of a job evaluation system within the Dutch police. Findings Although the notion of “performativ…
Critical theory: 15 Years Later
Purpose The pupose of this paper is to explore the role of criticism in the growth of academic communities and their organizational transformations. Design/methodology/approach Through a comparison between the Frankfurter School of critical thought with contemporary critical management studies, possible routes for further development of the latter are explored. Findings The cognitive turn in behavioural sciences and the bureaucratic professionali…
Existential management
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify what the philosophy of Martin Heidegger (1889‐1976) can contribute to the training of managers. Design/methodology/approach After a short introduction focussing on philosophy and management, Heidegger's potential contribution to managers will be addressed via Safranski's book Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil . Findings It is often said that change in organizations is hard or even impossible …
Introduction from the Guest Editors
Talk’ and Hermès
Attention to ‘textuality’ has been used in organizational studies to point to the strong situational quality of organizing, but there has been little detailed empirical or theoretical examination of talk in action. Simply stating that ‘organizing is talk’ is not enough. Starting with Boden's analysis of organizing as ‘talk’, the import of the communication‐based interpretation of organizing is examined. A ‘flat’ or ‘one‐dimensional’ analysis of o…
Simondon: Investigating the Pre-Organizational
Gilbert Simondon (1924-1989) was a radical process thinker; forms of relatedness and not objects were his focus. This is all the more remarkable as he was not a vitalist prioritizing Gaia or autopoesis. He based his thought on analyses of technology/technics and communication/cybernetics, and in both cases rejected the perspective of the machine or message as in itself objectifiable. Life objects, machines and societies, according to Simondon, in…
Viagra(ization) or Technoromanticism
Viagra can rather obviously be termed "techno-romantic"--literally it is a technology to make sex possible. But technoromanticism is also a philosophical term referring to the belief that advances in technology serve "truth" "unity" and "wholeness" according to Coyne (1999). Surprisingly many pharmaceutical companies seem to have developed "Viagra" or at least substances that were very similar, but to have ignored and/or rejected commercializing …
Researching culture and organization; what possibilities
FNEGE 4, ABS 2
Bernard Stiegler and the necessity of education is the hammer broken and so what
There has been an excellent series of formative articles centring on Bernard Stiegler (1952-2020) as an inspiration to pedagogical thought; this is a summative article written from the perspective of after his death. Stiegler argued that education is ontologically crucial to human development, wherein technics or the ‘not-experienced-condition(s)-necessary-for-experience’ are crucial to humanity’s ability to create its own existence. Technics mak…
The marriage of story and metaphor
Stories and metaphors are currently widely discussed by scholars of organizations. This is due in part to the increased interest in organizational discourse and the linguistic turn in organization
Live metaphor: Hardiness and postcards
Live metaphor embraces living thought, developing consciousness and emergent awareness. Mundane literalness achieves none of these. We have applied Ricoeur's theory of ‘live metaphor’ (P. Ricoeur. 1975. La Métaphore vive. Paris: Seuil (Translated 1978 as: The rule of metaphor. Toronto: University of Toronto Press; London: Routledge)) to story-telling research in an effort to reveal the continuum between work-place stories and metaphors. The story…
Reflexivity and affectivity
The goal of this paper is to explore the reflexivity of the writer in the writing of organizational studies. The self‐reflexive move that tries to account for and/or to understand researcher reflexivity questions the epistemological and ethical prerequisites to the text. Malcolm Ashmore’s (1989 Ashmore, M. 1989. The reflexivity thesis: Wrighting the sociology of scientific knowledge, London: University of Chicago Press. [Google Scholar]) explorat…
The man in the black hat
A century after the American Frontier was closed, the cowboy remains an iconic figure. A sturdy individualism, a steely disregard for convention and the bravery to do what’s gotta be done: these are powerful tropes that seemingly define a particular type of heroism. One that seems ageless despite the disappearance of the border environment in which the fictive cowboy operated. Our aim in this paper is to explore the mythology of the cowboy as dep…
Picture Melancholy
Via texts of Walter Benjamin and paintings of Barend Blankert, melancholy is explored as a force for passivity, a motor for action, and a condition of normalcy. Is melancholy a source of mediocrity and overnaming, or of ur‐language and authenticity? Does the trauerspiel of chatter prevail, or will the schwung of antithesis triumph? Or are such oppositions false and melancholy just a part of quotidian reality? And how does all this influence 'sens…
Evoking Metis: Questioning the logics of change, responsiveness, meaning and action in organizations
In this writing, the concept of ‘metis’ or ‘cunning intelligence’ will be explored in the context of organizational theory. The article begins with a genealogy (in the tradition of Hopfl, 1999) of the concept in classical Greek and contemporary theoretical sources, focusing on the juxtaposition between cunning intelligence and scientific rationality. It continues, evoking the experience of metis, with a rhetorical analysis of organizational chang…
Prostitution as a Male Object of Epistemological Pain
It is not, in the first place, prostitutes’ physical and psychological pain that is examined in this article, but the pain encountered in trying to come to terms with the studying of prostitution. Prostitution upsets consciousness’ efforts and confuses its epistemes of representation. It reveals issues of (male) avoidance and over‐rationalization that apply just as well to how business and organization are (not) studied, as to prostitution. Follo…
Some postmodern observations on student reflexivity
Some postmodern observations on student reflexivity
Researching organization by implosion and fatality
Drawing on Jean Baudrillard's postmodernist text, this paper examines two non-traditional research designs: implosion (characterized by hyper-reality), and the strategy of fatality (based on self-transcendence). On the basis of a paraphysic case of mo(u)rning - displaying an uneasy tension between the assertion and loss of subject, while highlighting ambivalence between new beginnings and ruination; the author explores alternative routes to inves…
Postmodernism and Organizations
Introduction - Martin Parker and John Hassard Postmodernism and Organizational Analysis - John Hassard An Overview PART ONE: TOWARDS POSTMODERNISM From Interpretation to Representation - Paul Jeffcutt Deconstruction in the Study of Organizations - Steve Linstead Eco and the Bunnymen - Gibson Burrell PART TWO: DEBATES WITH POSTMODERNISM Modernism, Postmodernism and Motivation, Or Why Expectancy Theory Failed to Come Up to Expectation - Pippa Carte…
Text(S) from place, space & non-place: Discourses of poland
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall the author has participated in several projects aiming to change the practice of management in Central Europe. He has now moved from trying to facilitate reform to writing about the cultural, managerial and intellectual difference(s) experienced. This confronts the possibility of text-ualizing these (Central European) experiences as something: (i) to be gazed at, (ii) as glances towards an object wherein (authori…
Prostitution as a Male Object of Epistemological Pain
It is not, in the first place, prostitutes’ physical and psychological pain that is examined in this article, but the pain encountered in trying to come to terms with the studying of prostitution. Prostitution upsets consciousness’ efforts and confuses its epistemes of representation. It reveals issues of (male) avoidance and over‐rationalization that apply just as well to how business and organization are (not) studied, as to prostitution. Follo…
Viagra(ization) or Technoromanticism
Viagra can rather obviously be termed "techno-romantic"--literally it is a technology to make sex possible. But technoromanticism is also a philosophical term referring to the belief that advances in technology serve "truth" "unity" and "wholeness" according to Coyne (1999). Surprisingly many pharmaceutical companies seem to have developed "Viagra" or at least substances that were very similar, but to have ignored and/or rejected commercializing …
Talk’ and Hermès
Attention to ‘textuality’ has been used in organizational studies to point to the strong situational quality of organizing, but there has been little detailed empirical or theoretical examination of talk in action. Simply stating that ‘organizing is talk’ is not enough. Starting with Boden's analysis of organizing as ‘talk’, the import of the communication‐based interpretation of organizing is examined. A ‘flat’ or ‘one‐dimensional’ analysis of o…
Picture Melancholy
Via texts of Walter Benjamin and paintings of Barend Blankert, melancholy is explored as a force for passivity, a motor for action, and a condition of normalcy. Is melancholy a source of mediocrity and overnaming, or of ur‐language and authenticity? Does the trauerspiel of chatter prevail, or will the schwung of antithesis triumph? Or are such oppositions false and melancholy just a part of quotidian reality? And how does all this influence 'sens…
Introduction: Artaud, the Real and the Melancholy
Introduction: Artaud, the Real and the Melancholy." Culture and Organization, 11(4), pp. 233–234
Evoking Metis: Questioning the logics of change, responsiveness, meaning and action in organizations
In this writing, the concept of ‘metis’ or ‘cunning intelligence’ will be explored in the context of organizational theory. The article begins with a genealogy (in the tradition of Hopfl, 1999) of the concept in classical Greek and contemporary theoretical sources, focusing on the juxtaposition between cunning intelligence and scientific rationality. It continues, evoking the experience of metis, with a rhetorical analysis of organizational chang…
Jobs that matter: Butler's “performativity” in the Dutch police force
Purpose The purpose of this research is to examine the use that critical philosophical concepts can have within management studies. Design/methodology/approach The paper introduces the notion “performativity” from the American philosopher Judith Butler and shows its fertility for organisation theory. It applies the notion to a case of the introduction of a job evaluation system within the Dutch police. Findings Although the notion of “performativ…
Critical theory: 15 Years Later
Purpose The pupose of this paper is to explore the role of criticism in the growth of academic communities and their organizational transformations. Design/methodology/approach Through a comparison between the Frankfurter School of critical thought with contemporary critical management studies, possible routes for further development of the latter are explored. Findings The cognitive turn in behavioural sciences and the bureaucratic professionali…
Existential management
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify what the philosophy of Martin Heidegger (1889‐1976) can contribute to the training of managers. Design/methodology/approach After a short introduction focussing on philosophy and management, Heidegger's potential contribution to managers will be addressed via Safranski's book Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil . Findings It is often said that change in organizations is hard or even impossible …
Introduction from the Guest Editors
Organizational studies: (Not‐) Smothering Each Other as a Behavioural Strategy
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to show that relationships between academics and professionals can gain in organizational studies by prioritizing practical wisdom, which also benefits teaching. Design/methodology/approach To explore practical corollaries of Flyvbjerg's claim that social scientists are better equipped than natural scientists to produce phronesis or practical wisdom. Findings Practical wisdom emerges when social scientists int…
The emancipatory power of the tacit dimension
Purpose - The purpose of this research is to explore a concept of the management of professionals that can withstand critical questioning. Design/methodology/approach - A case study is analysed with use of key concepts from Polanyi. Findings - The instrumental approach to knowledge, so frequently used in knowledge management, neglects important issues. The conventional question: "How should we organize knowledge?" neglects the question: "How shou…
Media(tion)
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to use media studies as a creative impulse for critical research into practices of organization. Design/methodology/approach Through an aesthetic reflection on the use of media, an experience of organization is examined as a form of postponed judgement. Findings Aesthetic judgement can be helpful to establish new forms of relationships, but it is questionable if organizations are willing to stimulate this form…
Critical management studies (not) in The Netherlands
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore what “critical” could mean in “critical management studies” (CMS) in the current (Dutch) regime of re‐commodification. Design/methodology/approach Conflicts that typify the context, within which “criticalness” does or does not emerge, are examined. The specific circumstance of “criticalness” in organizational studies within the Dutch political and intellectual circumstance is appraised. Findings The…
Management concepts: Their transfer and implementation
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to claim that Habermas's pragmatic speech act theory helps us to extend our understanding of how management concepts are actually applied. First, the relevant features of management concepts are examined, to indicate how the diffusion of knowledge about management practices and organizational structuring takes place. Subsequently, the paper focuses on the adoption of management concepts in companies, looking a…
Homology: Owen versus Darwin in Organizational Studies
‘Homology’ or the logic of ‘sameness’ will be examined in non‐Darwinian and Darwinian perspectives. It is argued that Darwinian ‘homology’ is both imprisoned in a non‐explanatory logic, and that the line from Owen’s pre‐Darwinian definition to complexity theory’s concept of weak signals and ‘attractors’ better serves the need of organizational studies to establish a concept of ‘sameness’
Bodily Chiasms
The theory of the body I want to explore here, assumes that researcher and researched are part of the same flesh of the world and can be understood in radical conjunction and not in duality. An interview is examined, first from the lifeworld (nursing) research paradigm and thereafter on the hand of Merleau-Ponty's concept of the reversibility of touching and being touched, wherein 'subject' (who touches) and 'object' (who is touched) are radicall…
Reflexivity and affectivity
The goal of this paper is to explore the reflexivity of the writer in the writing of organizational studies. The self‐reflexive move that tries to account for and/or to understand researcher reflexivity questions the epistemological and ethical prerequisites to the text. Malcolm Ashmore’s (1989 Ashmore, M. 1989. The reflexivity thesis: Wrighting the sociology of scientific knowledge, London: University of Chicago Press. [Google Scholar]) explorat…
The man in the black hat
A century after the American Frontier was closed, the cowboy remains an iconic figure. A sturdy individualism, a steely disregard for convention and the bravery to do what’s gotta be done: these are powerful tropes that seemingly define a particular type of heroism. One that seems ageless despite the disappearance of the border environment in which the fictive cowboy operated. Our aim in this paper is to explore the mythology of the cowboy as dep…
The marriage of story and metaphor: A special issue of Culture and Organization to be published in 2012
Stories and metaphors are currently widely discussed by scholars of organizations. This is due, in part, to the increased interest in organizational discourse and the linguistic turn in organizatio
Coherence in the Midst of Complexity
A discussion on the social complexity approach, where dialogue and stories allow for the degrees of freedom needed for the opportunities of emergence to take root. The authors focus on the experience
Sociology (35 works) · Epistemology (30 works) · Philosophy (29 works) · Philosophy (21 works) · Management and Organizational Studies (20 works) · Computer Science (17 works) · Psychology (16 works) · Political science (14 works) · Social science (12 works) · Aesthetics (11 works)