Phenomenological Doubt

This entry illustrates the philosophical concept of phenomenological doubt and underscores its contribution to innovating organizational research and management learning by disrupting the order of doing research, playing with philosophy to sharpen understanding of organizational life, and blurring the science, art and poetics of the imagination in management learning. The concept of doubt has been widely debated in philosophy and, in general, has been considered a thought. Phenomenological philosophy, instead, stresses the corporeality of doubt and emphasizes that doubt is felt in one’s body and in one’s heart, which is an aesthetic experience. Inspired by the distinction between phenomenological and ideological doubt proposed by the Czech phenomenologist philosopher Vilém Flusser, phenomenological doubt has been introduced in organization studies to highlight the relevance of the multiplicity and equity of points of view to avoid the ideological understanding of organizational life.