International Masters Program in Practicing Management (IMPM) is a collaborative effort by major business schools and corporations around the world, balancing practical and academic issues within pedagogy of “experienced reflection”. This action research into the IMPM aims to explain the IMPM and its importance for the global knowledge economy, as well as identify and improve the current limitations of the program. As a result, we hope to provide specific suggestions for the IMPM practice and general guidelines for business education. Our (...) suggestions are based upon a framework of “refraction” that follows a methodology of action research and pluralistic knowledge science epistemology, a critique of management learning, and a literature review on (critical) reflection, as well as our findings about the IMPM practice. Also, critically reviewing Mintzberg and other authors’ ideas on management learning and IMPM specifically supports our discussion in this paper. (shrink)

This article presents some modern philosophical reasons that lay behind the introduction of the concept of the hermeneutical horizon to explain scientific change; cf. [1], chapter 17. These reasons reveal arbitrariness of sociological variabilism following from its elimination of the objective intellectual factors, essential in knowledge creation.

The original publication is available at JAIST Press http://www.jaist.ac.jp/library/jaist-press/index.html.

This paper discusses a vision of the research that stems from the philosophical and empiric field. The concrete objective is to elaborate a strong systemic epistemology due to the conviction that in the field of cognition it might necessarily be evolutive. That is, change when the research demands it and the discipline formalization reaches maturity. The great search is directed towards the study of foundations on Transdisciplinar Systemics. There is still an open debate on the characteristics and significant notes of (...) Systemics as a theoretical-practical activity, domain and fields of conceptual support, methodologies and technologies as such in use. Enlightening comes to those who devote themselves to action research, to systemics instruction (especially at university) and to its diffusion. Systemics aspects as a discipline, interdiscipline are distinguished from those as a transdiscipline. The efforts made to widespread and increase Systemics have been culminated by an event, an International seminar on Transdisciplinar Systemics that will be held in the North of Argentina. It will be an opportunity for debate and exchange experience from Spanish-speaking systemicists. This communication contains an initial layout regarding the research’s focus of interest. The search in the methodological order, the epistemologies chosen as support, as well as the authors for conceptual references that lead to the assumption of a framework perspective. The final thesis includes conclusive comments that summarise the findings carried out. The proposal of this paper in this symposium hopes to receive comments or contributions which will be considered feedback to the research. (shrink)

Systemics is a discipline which has transdisciplinary characteristics; it shares its foundations with other scientific disciplines. This paper argues that the principles and methodologies of Systemics enrichs Information Systems Engineering (ISE). Thus ISE could be consider as a sub-domain of Systemics. The most relevant ISE’s objetive is to obtain succesful information systems (IS). Hence, it tries to improve analysis/design techniques. ISE’s core is found in the models -or abstract representations of reality- and systemic modellization belongs to ISE’s methodologies set. This (...) modellization needs to be supported by robust theoretical foundations. Based on that argument, this paper presents: Bunge’s system models which are widely used to improve IS analysis/design modelling languages; and Bunge’s social ontology which studies the social aspects of IS. These are two examples of how system models contributes to the design of IS. (shrink)