In 2000 the ISCE Group, in conjunction with the Centre for Practical Humanistics of the University for Humanist Studies, proposed to offer a part-time Ph.D. program in the area of corporate anthropology. The program culminates in a Ph.D. in humanistic studies (granted by the University for Humanist Studies, Utrecht, the Netherlands). This program delves into complexity theory as applied to the creation of reflective space in organization(s), communicative management, and emergence.

The program encompasses three fields of study: post-structuralism and complexity theory, ethnographic research into organizing, and organizational studies with an emphasis on questions of significance and meaning. The program seeks to address such questions as: When and how will organizational participants make meaning out of the change process(es) they experience? What are relevant criteria for meaning creation and destruction in organizational interaction? How do the actions of organizational actors affect, constrain, or determine the meaning they create surrounding their actions and how does that meaning affect, constrain, or determine the possibilities for further act

The Ph.D. program was created to pursue teaching and research around the processes of defining, assessing, and strengthening the human quality of work and organization. A focus on how meaning is generated, exchanged, and maintained – both individually and in groups – allows organization studies to be grounded in humanist considerations. Increased attention to problems of organizational coherence has defined a need for rigorous investigation into the human value and significance of the organizing process. Practitioners often need to attend to issues of meaning when dealing with organizational (re)structuring and technological change, but too often an experiential meaninglessness of organizational change defeats and frustrates any intended progress. Often, the inability to ground local concrete work activity in an experiential meaning structure makes organizational action appear absurd and unwarranted. Organizing based on participative shared meaning creation is gaining ground amongst practitioners, but because any such organizing requires a complex feel for social ethical questions it has not been championed by the technocratic and hierarchically inclined American business schools. The ISCE program thus expands upon traditional business doctorates, and upon economics and sociology degrees, by examining labor, organization, and management. As compared to a more traditional program:

1. The roles played by social Darwinism and conceptual linearity in restricting organizational thought and action, are laid bare.
2. Alternative schools of radical relationality, post-structuralism and complexity theory are taught and investigated.
3. Research is focused on specific organizational action and how meaning creation structures social interactivity.
4. Qualitative research is the preferred research technique, with grounding in anthropological methodology and action research.
5. Attention is directed to both the discourses of mainstream managerial thought as well as alternative organizational studies, to ensure that the discussion and research is adequately contextualized (even if as a critique) in practitioner activity.

The program is linked to current practitioner thinking, and senior practitioners who, on the basis of their experience, want to define and further investigate meaning creation in the organizing process, will find a sympathetic platform for undertaking research.

For information regarding admissions, please contact Hugo Letiche, or visit the UvH website here.