Into the Far Field

Abstract

In asking you, the reader, to metaphorically Step into “Heidegger’s Shoes” I am suggesting that the provisional “truth” of the equipmentality of this text be allowed to fall away to reveal an other-place. The interpretation of the text becomes yours. The collective action of both I, as author, and you, as reader, merely presents the start of a process of social negotiation. This negotiation acts to mediate a plausible narrative within our shared world — that of the potentiality, within this world, of considering the manager-artist. The task of this book is therefore to facilitate your potential presence within a world in which both the study and practice of organizational management can be informed by the basic social process that is art. In this respect, this text constitutes a philosophically informed exploration into the question of what, if anything, this world of management and organization can learn from the world of art. In initiating a negotiation with you, this book merely advances a central Art-aesthetic, paradigmatic thesis in which I argue that — given the general and growing uncertainties and constraints inherent in running a business in a “real” world — management might, under certain circumstances, be both legitimately and beneficially practiced as an artform.